Part-Time Research Assistant- Smeal

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JOB DESCRIPTION AND POSITION REQUIREMENTS

Professors Steiner, Ambrose and Gustafson are looking to hire a part-time research assistant to support a joint research project. The project is about the effects of environmental policy uncertainty on households' investments in sustainable home upgrades. The research assistant would be expected to work on average 5 hours per week.

Duties will include, but are not limited to:

• Data collection
• Data analysis

A key part of the project is constructing an index of environmental policy uncertainty. This index will follow the methodology outlined here: http://www.policyuncertainty.com.

However, in contrast to the economic policy uncertainty index described on the website, our index will focus on environmental policy, and it should be on the state-level or ideally MSA-level rather than nationwide.

We are looking for a research assistant to take the methodology behind the economic policy uncertainty index and adapt it (under our guidance) to construct state- and local-level environmental policy uncertainty indices.

The work needs to be completed by the end of the spring semester 2025. Once the indices have been constructed, we hope to build a website for them and turn them into a regular research product like my co-author's alternative inflation index here: https://sites.psu.edu/inflation/ We are also thinking about building an application for interested researchers to access and use the indices based on our data, etc.

Requirements and Qualifications

• Background in computer science and/or data analytics
• Background in economics, finance, and/or real estate
• Python proficiency

 

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