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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://canssiontario.utoronto.ca/
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UID:MEC-c4760fdb6f393e3adad5f7eda06a80e5@canssiontario.utoronto.ca
DTSTART:20260309T150000Z
DTEND:20260309T160000Z
DTSTAMP:20260211T200100Z
CREATED:20260211
LAST-MODIFIED:20260212
SUMMARY:Data Sciences Speaker Series: Timothy Christensen
DESCRIPTION:\nThis event is co-organized by the U of T Data Sciences Institute and CANSSI Ontario.\n\n\n\nJoin us for the next installment of the Data Science Speaker Series with:\n\n\n\nTimothy ChristensenProfessorDepartment of EconomicsYale University\n\n\n\nFree Event | Registration Required\n\n\n\nTalk Title:Unstructured data in economics: Opportunities and challenges\n\n\n\nAbstract:Researchers across economics and related social sciences increasingly use machine learning and AI to generate new variables from unstructured data. These generated variables are typically used as inputs in downstream models. However, naively treating the generated variables as regular numerical data can lead to biased estimates and invalid inference. This talk discusses methods to debias estimates and restore valid inference when validation data are not available. We focus on two key economic applications: measuring “soft” variables for macroeconomic forecasting, and demand estimation for online platforms. We will also relate the approach prediction-powered inference, highlighting challenges that arise when, as is often the case in economics, complete validation datasets are unavailable.\n\n\n\nSpeaker Profile:Prof. Christensen’s research interests lie broadly across theoretical and applied econometrics, financial econometrics, and statistics/data science. His most recent research is at the intersection of econometrics and machine learning, where he works on the integration of unstructured data into quantitative economic modelling. Before joining Yale, he was a Professor of Economics at University College London.\n\n\n\n\n
URL:https://canssiontario.utoronto.ca/event/dsss-timothy-christensen/
ORGANIZER;CN=CANSSI Ontario:MAILTO:esther.berzunza@utoronto.ca
CATEGORIES:Data Sciences Speaker Series at U of T
LOCATION:700 University Avenue, Toronto, ON
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://canssiontario.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Christensen_Web.png
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