Data Initiative
The Heller-Hurwicz Data Initiative is a longitudinal data gathering project housed in the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute. Driven by undergraduate researchers, it provides educational outreach to the university community and simultaneously generates a valuable resource for economists. The project constructs and maintains a publicly available unemployment insurance (UI) database and associated calculator that can be used in conjunction with panel data of US workers to construct estimates of the UI benefits available to them.
"Working on the UI database project was a rewarding experience for all involved; a chance to gain practical experience using software such as STATA while concurrently assisting future researchers in the field. To do unemployment research with the Heller-Hurwicz Data Initiative was an opportunity to study first-hand what has been for many economics students a frustratingly theoretical discipline, often rarified and far-removed from empirical research at the undergraduate level."
-Edward Lins, 2015 research assistant