Research at CAIDS

Our CAIDS faculty and staff support the data research and teaching initiatives of the Tulane community but also participate in their own scholarly activities and advance their own research agendas around data across different fields.

Our faculty has advanced multi-disciplinary fields using data science through the production of research publications, datasets, and community-engaged scholarship.

Featured Research:

Statistical and Data Methodology

Our faculty develops and improves methodologies for using data, such as regression analysis, experimental design, or natural language processing.

Balfe, Catherine, Patrick Button, Mary Penn, and David Schwegman. 2023. “Infrequent Identity Signals and Detection Risks in Audit Correspondence Studies.” Field Methods 35 (1): 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X211057623.
Burn, Ian, Patrick Button, Luis Munguia Corella, and David Neumark. 2022. “Does Ageist Language in Job Ads Predict Age Discrimination in Hiring?” Journal of Labor Economics 40 (3): 613-67. https://doi.org/10.1086/717730.
Button, Patrick. 2016. "Model Uncertainty and Model Averaging in Regression Discontinuity Designs." Journal of Econometric Methods 5 (1): 1-3-116. https://doi.org/10.1515/jem-2014-0016.
Levendis, John. 2023. Time Series Econometrics: Learning Through Replication (2nd ed) Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37310-7.

Applied Data Research

Our faculty uses applied data research methods, such as experiments, regression, causal inference, and descriptive work, to answer research questions.

Fumarco, Luca, Benjamin Harrell, Patrick Button, David J. Schwegman, and E Dils. 2024. “Gender Identity, Race, and Ethnicity Discrimination in Access to Mental Health Care: Evidence from an Audit Correspondence Field Experiment.” American Journal of Health Economics 10 (2): 182-214. https://doi.org/10.1086/728931.
Raj, Anita, Melissa Evans, Namratha Rao, Emma DeLeon, Jacquelyne Thoni Howard, Katherine Theall, K. S. James, and Arnab K. Dey. 2024. Status of Women in New Orleans – 2024. The Junior League of New Orleans.
Harrell, Benjamin, Luca Fumarco, Patrick Button, David Schwegman, and Kyla Denwood. 2023. “The Impact of COVID-19 on Access to Mental Healthcare Services.” AEA Papers and Proceedings 113: 420-2. https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20231058.
Levendis, John and Aaron Lowen. 2022. What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States. Journal of Family and Economic Issues 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09835-2.
Button, Patrick. 2019. "Do Tax Incentives Affect Business Location and Economic Development? Evidence from State Film Incentives." Regional Science and Urban Economics 77: 315-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2019.06.002.
Neumark, David, Ian Burn, and Patrick Button. 2019. "Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment." Journal of Political Economy 127 (2): 922-970. https://doi.org/10.1086/701029.
Button, Patrick, and Brigham Walker. 2020. “Employment Discrimination Against Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” Labour Economics 65 (Aug.): 101851. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2020.101851.
Bui, Truc T. M., Patrick Button, and Elyce G. Picciotti. 2020. “Early Evidence on the Impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the Recession on Older Workers.” Public Policy & Aging Report 30 (4): 154-59. https://doi.org./10.1093/ppar/praa029. 
Dicle, Mehmet F., and John Levendis. 2020. Historic Risk and Implied Volatility. Global Finance Journal 45, 100475. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfj/2019/100475. 
Hall, Joshua, John Levendis and Alexandre Ribeiro Scarcioffolo (2020). The Efficient Corruption Hypothesis and the Dynamics between Economic Freedom, Corruption, and National Income. Journal of Developing Areas, 54 (3): 161-175.
Papakroni, Erlina, Marie Rice, and Lisa M. Dilks. 2023. "The Fraud Goes On: The Effects of Fraud Duration, Victim Organization Type, and Perpetrator Status." Journal of Forensic Accounting Research 8 (1): 44-73. https://doi.org/10.2308/JFAR-2020-027.
Schmidt, Marshall R., Tucker S. McGrimmon, and Lisa M. Dilks. 2022. "Social Roles and Organizational Culture: Attributions of Responsibility and Punitiveness for Financial Crimes." Journal of White-Collar and Corporate Crime: Special Issue – Responses to Contemporary Challenges in the Regulation of Corporate Crimes and Harms 3 (1): 46-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/2631309X211041611.
McGrimmon, Tucker S., and Lisa M. Dilks. 2022. "Role Congruity in the Offender-Victim Dyad: The Effect of Gendered Expectations on Crime Clearance." Pp. 23-49 in Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 39, edited by W. Kalkhoff, S. R. Thye, and E. J. Lawler. Bingley, England: Emerald Publishing Limited.
Momen, Rayna E., and Lisa M. Dilks. 2021. "Examining Case Outcomes in US Transgender Homicides: An Exploratory Investigation of the Intersectionality of Victim Characteristics." Sociological Spectrum – Intersectional Experiences and Marginalized Voices 41 (1): 53-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/02732173.2020.1850379.

Data Studies and Datasets

Our faculty critically studies how data is used throughout society and within digital infrastructures and constructs new knowledge through dataset creation.

Howard, Jacquelyne Thoni. 2024. "Zoom Etiquette Guides: Negotiating Between Workplace Professionalism and Gendered Homeplace Surveillance in the Videoconferencing Borderlands" in Nunes, Mark, and Cassandra Ozog, eds. 'You're Muted': Perfomance and Precarity and the Logic of Zoom. Bloomsbury Academic.
Adams, Kate and Jacquelyne Thoni Howard, 2017-Present. “This Beautiful Sisterhood of Books Project.” Digital Archival Project and Dataset that was peer reviewed by the Recovery Hub for American Women Writers.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Our faculty promotes the use of collaborative pedagogies when teaching about data topics and developing data-related student programming.

Alm, Jim, Patrick Button, Christine P. Smith, and Toni Weiss. 2025. “Do Academic Honesty Statements Work? Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial.” Forthcoming at the Journal of Economic Education..
Howard, Jacquelyne Thoni, Enilda Romero-Hall, Clare Daniel, Niya Bond, and Liv Newman. 2025. Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online, Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771994286.01
Romero-Hall, Enilda, Clare Daniel, Jacquelyne Thoni Howard, Niya Bond, Liv Newman. 2025. “A Feminist Scholars Collective Supporting the Growth and Dissemination of a Digital Guide: A Collaborative Autoethnography,” Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) special issue, “On Gathering.” https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.5878
Howard, Jacquelyne Thoni and Rachel Tabor. 2023. “From a Zoom Crisis Response to Feminist Talking Circles: Leveraging Digital Tools to Reconsider Collaborative Feedback Practices in the Digital Humanities,” for the Digital Humanities in Times of Crisis Special Edition, IJHAC: A Journal of Digital Humanities. https://doi.org/10.3366/ijhac.2023.0308
Howard, Jacquelyne Thoni. 2023 “Interdisciplinary Technology Communities: Using Feminist Epistemologies and Pedagogy in a DH Lab to Promote Social Good through Undergraduate Student Programming,” in Digital Humanities and Laboratories: Perspectives on Knowledge, Infrastructure and Culture, Routledge, November 2023.
Button, Patrick, LaPorchia A. Collins, Augustine Denteh, Benjamin Harrell*, Elliott Isaac, Mónica I. García[1]Pérez, and Engy Ziedan. 2021. “Teaching Controversial and Contemporary Topics in Economics Using a Jigsaw Literature Review Activity.” Journal of Economic Education, 52 (4): 286-95. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220485.2021.1963373.