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

Thursday, May 4
8:30 am
Continental Breakfast
9:00 am
Welcome Remarks
9:15 am
Using Privacy-Protected Data, Session 1
Aaron Williams, Urban Institute
Joshua Snoke, RAND Corporation
Claire Bowen, Urban Institute
Andrés F. Barrientos, Florida State University

Disclosing Economists’ Privacy Perspectives: A Survey of American Economic Association Members on Differential Privacy and Data Fitness for Use Standards
Marcel Neunhoeffer, Institute for Employment Research
Daniel Sheldon, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Adam D. Smith, Boston University

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
James Bailie, Harvard University
Ruobin Gong, Rutgers University
Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University

Can Swapping be Differentially Private? A Refreshment Stirred, not Shaken
Aleksandra Slavkovic, Pennsylvania State University
Aratrika Mustafi, Pennsylvania State University
Soumya Mukherjee, Pennsylvania State University
Lars Vilhuber, Cornell University

Assessing Utility of Differential Privacy for RCTs
12:45 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm
Privacy Risk and Data Policy
Diana Qing, University of California, Berkeley
Ryan Steed, Carnegie Mellon University
Zhiwei Steven Wu, Carnegie Mellon University

Quantifying Privacy Risks of Public Statistics to Residents of Subsidized Housing
Zeki R. Kazan, Duke University
Jerome P. Reiter, Duke University

Prior-itizing Privacy: A Bayesian Approach to Setting the Privacy Budget in Differential Privacy (slides)
Alison Aughinbaugh, US Bureau of Labor Statistics
Keenan Dworak-Fisher, US Bureau of Labor Statistics
Donna S. Rothstein, US Bureau of Labor Statistics
Julie Yates, US Bureau of Labor Statistics

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
John M. Abowd, Cornell University and NBER

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
Michael D. Carr, University of Massachusetts Boston
Emily E. Wiemers, Syracuse University
Robert A. Moffitt, Johns Hopkins University and NBER

Using Synthetic Data to Estimate Earnings Dynamics: Evidence from the SIPP GSF and SIPP SSB
Jordan C. Stanley, US Census Bureau
Evan S. Totty, U.S. Census Bureau

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
Anish Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rahul Singh, Harvard

Causal Inference with Corrupted Data: Measurement Error, Missing Values, Discretization, and Differential Privacy
Jung Sakong, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Alexander K. Zentefis, Yale University

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
Inbal Dekel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Rachel Cummings, Columbia University
Ori Heffetz, Cornell University and NBER
Katrina Ligett, California Institute of Technology

The Privacy Elasticity of Behavior: Conceptualization and Application
Tesary Lin, Boston University
Avner Strulov-Shlain, University of Chicago

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