Emily Oster : Making numbers speak
Emily graduated from Harvard with a BA in Economics. After a little time off, she has become a PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard. Her undergraduate thesis examined the behavioral economics of Powerball players. She compiled two million pieces of data on Powerball players in Connecticut and constructed a FORTRAN program to analyze it. Earlier this year she published Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Medieval Europe in The Journal of Economic Perspectives (see graph below).
