Tristan Zajonc

Visiting Fellow at Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University
Co-founder and CEO of Sense
Email: tzajonc@fas.harvard.edu, tristan@senseplatform.com
Twitter: @tristanzajonc

Research Interests

My research lies at the intersection of economics and econometrics. I am currently a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard and co-founder and CEO of Sense where I ponder Bayesian statistics, probabilistic programming, and the future of statistical computing.

Education

PhD in Public Policy, Harvard University, 2012.
Dissertation: Essays on Causal Inference for Public Policy
MPA in International Development, Harvard University, 2006.
BA in Economics, Pomona College, 2003.

Working Papers and Publications

(new) Bayesian Inference for Dynamic Treatment Regimes: Mobility, Equity, and Efficiency in Student Tracking. August 2012. Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Do Value-Added Estimates Add Value? Accounting for Learning Dynamics (with Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das, and Asim Khwaja). July 2011. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Longer Version: Working Paper August 2009
India shining and Bharat drowning: comparing two Indian states to the worldwide distribution in mathematics achievement (with Jishnu Das). 2010. Journal of Development Economics, 92(2):174-187.
Software: Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Item Response Theory (IRT) models in Stata - OpenIRT.
Learning Levels and Gaps in Pakistan (with Jishnu Das and Priyanka Pandey). 2006. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper #4067.
Can Foreign Aid Create an Incentive for Good Governance? Evidence from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (with Doug Johnson). 2006.
Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data (with Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das and Asim Khwaja). 2006. Comparative Education Review, 50(3):446-477.
Selected Coverage: The Economist, Foreign Policy, NY Times, Kennedy School Insight Series, Al-Jazeera.

Winner of the George Bereday Award for outstanding article published in the CER for the year 2006.

Books and Chapters

Learning and Educational Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS): Insights to inform the education policy debate. (with T. Andrabi, J. Das, A. Khwaja, and T. Vishwanath).
Madrassa Metrics: The Statistics and Rhetoric of Religious Enrollment in Pakistan. (with Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das and Asim Khwaja). 2010. In Beyond Crisis: Re-Evaluating Pakistan, Naveeda Khan (ed.) Routledge: India.

In Progress

Cumulative Returns to Teacher Quality: A Dynamic Treatment Model of Skill Formation.
Regression Discontinuity Designs Along a Boundary.
Adaptive Importance Sampling for Probabilistic Programs.

Projects and Software

Sense - A Next-Generation Platform for Data Analysis and Business Analytics.
LEAPS Project - A randomized trial of report cards and large panel survey covering public and private schools in Punjab, Pakistan.
OpenIRT - Bayesian and Maximum Likelihood Estimation of IRT Models in Stata.
Scythe MCMC - Scythe MCMC library that eases the development of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers.

Teaching

Economics 2120 (PhD) — Introduction to Applied Econometrics (Teaching Fellow under Dale Jorgenson, Fall 2007, Spring 2009, Fall 2010)
API 208 (Masters/PhD) — Program Evaluation: Estimating Program Effectiveness with Empirical Analysis (Teaching Fellow under Alberto Abadie, Spring 2008, 2011)
Economics 970 (Undergraduate) — Economics of Education (Sophomore Tutorial, Spring 2008) [Syllabus]