Kelsey Pukelis

Teaching

Applied econometrics

Public policy and economics

Applied econometrics

Quantitative Analysis and Empirical Methods II, Harvard Kennedy School

Teaching Fellow, Spring 2023

I was a teaching fellow for a Master of Public Policy course on regression analysis taught by Professors Michela Carlana, Benjamin Schneer, and Teddy Svoronos at the Harvard Kennedy School. This five-week course covered regression analysis relevant to policy evaluation, including multivariate regression, non-linear methods, and experiments. Assignments required students to implement basic regression analysis in R using Jupyter notebooks. I prepared my own discussion section materials under the guidance of Professor Teddy Svoronos, linked below.

Teaching materials

Advance Topics in Impact Evaluation, University of Virginia

Teaching Assistant, Fall 2018

I was a teaching assistant for a Master of Public Policy course on impact evaluation taught by Professor Sally Hudson at the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. The course covered econometric approaches to policy analysis, including experiments, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and panel data methods. Assignments required students to replicate analyses from policy-relevant economics journal articles.

Causal Inference and Econometrics Groups

Organizer, Summer 2020 & 2021

During the summer of 2021, Stephanie Kestelman and I organized a causal inference "bootcamp" for Harvard PhD students. For our meetings, graduate students review causal inference strategies, present state-of-the-art applied papers, and write code in R or Stata to implement the designs.

During the summer of 2020, I organized an econometrics reading group for Harvard PhD students with the guidance of Professors Isaiah Andrews and Elie Tamer. Other graduate students helped select and present papers.

Topics covered

  • Publication bias
  • Decision theory and experimental design
  • Bayesian computation
  • Bunching designs
  • Spatial analyses
  • Networks
  • AKM models
  • Two-way fixed effects
  • Bartik instruments
  • Judge instrumental variables
  • Bridging structural and reduced form approaches
  • Semiparametric inference and machine learning
  • Finite sample inference
  • Measurement error

See this link for the applied and theory groups' schedules.

Public policy and economics

Resources, Incentives, and Choices II: Analysis of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Teaching Fellow, Spring 2022

I was a teaching fellow for a Master of Public Policy course on economics and social policy taught by Professor Mark Shepard at the Harvard Kennedy School. The course covered topics in social policy using principles from economics such as equity and efficiency tradeoffs, behavioral responses and adverse selection, supply and demand, and cost-benefit analytical frameworks. Topics covered included taxation, social insurance, transfer programs, education, housing policy, and health insurance. Assignments required students to apply basic economic tools in toy policy scenarios and use tools from the course to evaluate real-world policy proposals in memo form.

Teaching materials

  • Cost-benefit analysis using recent economic evidence + Recent literature on evictions - Slides
  • Equity and efficiency in taxation + Empirical evidence on behavioral responses to taxes - Slides excerpt
  • Discussion about "schmeduling" in week on tax schedules - Slides excerpt
  • Inequality in labor markets - Slides excerpt

Economics of Health Equity Reading Group

Presenter, 2021-2024

I presented once a year in the Economics of Health Equity Reading Group run by Professors Marcella Alsan and David Cutler. The reading group meets weekly to discuss published papers and ongoing student projects on health equity topics. I have used the reading group to present on topics closely related to my own research interests, including disability insurance and benefits, equity in application reviews, and the relationship between political preferences and benefit take-up.

Summary and review slides

  • "Disability Insurance: Error Rates and Gender Differences" by Hamish Low and Luigi Pistaferri - Slides (with Gabriella Fleischman, 2021)
  • "The (Lack of) Anticipatory Effects of the Social Safety Net on Human Capital Investment" by Manasi Deshpande and Rebecca Dizon-Ross - Slides (2023)
  • "Policy Uptake as Political Behavior" by Amy E. Lerman, Meredith L. Sadin, and Samuel Trachtman and "Political Adverse Selection" by Leonardo Bursztyn, Jonathan T. Kolstad, Aakaash Rao, Pietro Tebaldi and Noam Yuchtman - Slides (2024)