Ny ph.d.-studerende - Emil Bories Hüttel

Hi everyone! :) 

My name is Emil, and I’ve just started my PhD at the department this week. Some of you may already have seen me lurking around the lounge, as I’ve been a student assistant at CFA throughout most of my bachelor’s and master’s studies. A few of you might also know me from my time as a student instructor.

In broad strokes, my project investigates how political elites engage with empirical evidence and the extent of their knowledge about such evidence. More colloquially, I examine whether elites know descriptive empirical facts about their constituencies—such as the unemployment rate—and whether they understand the policy levers that affect these conditions, for example the effects of specific labor market policies. A unifying focus of the project is the measurement and modeling of uncertainty, both in elites’ prior beliefs and in the evidence itself. Overall, the project aims to advance our understanding of how elites perceive societal conditions and available policy levers, as well as how they seek out, interpret, and select information about those conditions and levers.

I’m a man of many (ever-changing) hobbies, but the most prominent ones at the moment are riding my bike (as fast as I can!) and watching pretentious old movies. While I try to keep my mind off work in my spare time, I sometimes end up doing odd data projects anyway—such as this croissant database from my internship in Paris: https://emilbhuttel.shinyapps.io/Croissant/. I’m also currently trying to learn how to write Stan code and would greatly appreciate any advice on that front!

You’re all very welcome to drop by my office (1340-134) for a chat about Bayesian statistics, voter and elite behavior, probabilistic belief elicitation, housing politics, causal inference, etc. etc.—my research interests are many. Of course, I’m just as happy to talk about bike racing, movies, film photography, or other interesting stuff.