Yiyang Chen

Predoctoral Research Fellow

Harvard University

About

I am an Economics predoctoral research fellow at Harvard University with Prof. Melissa Dell, working on deep learning methods and its application in political economy and economic history.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley. I served as research assistants for multiple professors and Ph.D. students at UC Berkeley, and worked on a wide variety of economic research projects and CS/DS projects.

My research interests include macroeconomics, economic development, and deep learning.

CV
Senior Honor Thesis

Interests

Macroeconomics
Development Economics
Deep Learning

Education

BA in Economics, 2023
University of California, Berkeley
BA in Computer Science, 2023
University of California, Berkeley

Experience

Research Fellow

Harvard University

Jul 2023 – Present Massachusetts

· Assist Professor Melissa Dell with research related to economic history and political economy, developing deep learning methods to extract and analyze novel datasets
· Developed deep learning pipeline to deduplicate and cluster newspaper scan images
· Supervised training and evaluation of topic classifiers on newspaper texts; created a pipeline to incorporate GPT

Research Assistant

University of California, Berkeley

Sep 2020 – Jun 2023 California

· (Fall 2022 – Spring 2023) Assisting Prof. Ulrike Malmendier on “Politician Voting”: Assemble datasets from CRSP, stockwatcher, and other sources; perform analysis on how politicians’ life experience affect their voting decisions and investment decisions

· (Fall 2022) Assisting Prof. Robert Edelstein on “Globalization and Climate Change”: Assemble warm-house gases and sustainable technology datasets; examine causal relationship with natural experiments

· (Fall 2021 – Spring 2022) Assisting Oliver Kim (PhD) and Joel Ferguson (PhD) on “Satellite Imagery and Historical East Asian Economic Growth”: Apply machine learning methods and train satellite data to predict Chinese economic growth status during 1950-1960s; gather gazetteer data and fetch geographical information used in training

· (Fall 2020 – Spring 2021) Assisting Jimmy Narang (PhD) on “Misinformation and Belief Updating”: Help with logistic and design of experiment model used in the research; gather empirical observations and perform preliminary analyses

Teaching Assistant

University of California, Berkeley

Sep 2021 – Jun 2023 California

· Work as teaching assistant for Econ 148: Data Science for Economists
and Data 88E: Economic Models
· Develop and update course content (including textbook, lecture and lab notebooks)
· Give lectures; hold discussion sections and office hours; manage class logistics (websites, discussion forums, etc.)

Peer Tutor and Course Liaison

UC Berkeley Student Learning Center Economics Program

Jan 2021 – Dec 2021 California

· Provide drop-in tutoring service to students in Econ 136: Financial Economics class
· Coordinate peer tutors in the cluster and connect with the professor and offer students’ feedback
· Hold exam review sessions and special workshops (academic and career)