Data Privacy Protection and the Conduct of Applied Research: Methods, Approaches and Their Consequences

Ruobin Gong, V. Joseph Hotz, and Ian M. Schmutte, Organizers

May 4-5, 2023

NBER 2nd Floor Conference Room, 1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Conference Code of Conduct


Statistical Disclosure Limitation and Total Survey Error
Thursday, May 4
8:30 am
Continental Breakfast
9:00 am
Welcome Remarks
9:15 am
Using Privacy-Protected Data, Session 1

Disclosing Economists’ Privacy Perspectives: A Survey of American Economic Association Members on Differential Privacy and Data Fitness for Use Standards

A Bootstrap-based General-purpose Approach for Statistical Inference with Differential Privacy
10:45 am
Break
11:15 am
Strategies for Protecting Social Science Data

Can Swapping be Differentially Private? A Refreshment Stirred, not Shaken

Assessing Utility of Differential Privacy for RCTs
12:45 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm
Privacy Risk and Data Policy

Quantifying Privacy Risks of Public Statistics to Residents of Subsidized Housing

Prior-itizing Privacy: A Bayesian Approach to Setting the Privacy Budget in Differential Privacy (slides)

Allocating Microdata from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Among Access Tiers: A Framework for Decision-Making and Initial Investigations
4:35 pm
Break
5:00 pm
Statistical Disclosure Limitation Decision-Making: A Discussion

An Economist's Guide to Statistical Disclosure Limitation Decision-making
Discussants: Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University
Robert A. Moffitt, Johns Hopkins University and NBER
6:30 pm
Reception and Dinner
Friday, May 5
8:00 am
Continental Breakfast
8:30 am
Assessing Synthetic Data in Applied Research

Using Synthetic Data to Estimate Earnings Dynamics: Evidence from the SIPP GSF and SIPP SSB

A Penny Synthesized is a Penny Earned? An Exploratory Analysis of Accuracy in the SIPP Synthetic Beta
10:00 am
Break
10:30 am
Using Privacy-Protected Data, Session 2

Causal Inference with Corrupted Data: Measurement Error, Missing Values, Discretization, and Differential Privacy

Estimating Gravity Models with High-Dimensional Fixed Effects On Privacy-Protected Data
12:00 pm
Lunch
1:00 pm
Remarks from the Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review
Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University
1:15 pm
Privacy Preferences

The Privacy Elasticity of Behavior: Conceptualization and Application

Choice Architecture, Privacy Valuations, and Selection Bias in Consumer Data
2:45 pm
Break
3:00 pm
Wrap-Up Panel and Discussion
John Friedman, Brown University
David Johnson, Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT)
Charles Manski, Northwestern University
Nathan Yoder, University of Georgia
4:00 pm
Closing Remarks
4:15 pm
Adjourn