Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Ned Smith, Northwestern University "How 'Market Value' Can Increase Discrimination Even When Most Firms Are Fair"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Title:
Can One Bad Apple Spoil the Bushel? How "Market Value" Can Increase Discrimination Even When Most Firms Are Fair.
Speaker:
Ned Smith, Associate Professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Talk Abstract:
In 1957 economist Gary Becker first published "The Economics of Discrimination." In it Becker argued that efficient and competitive markets should eliminate discrimination in hiring and wage setting over the long run. Becker's argument was as profound as the logic underlying it was straightforward; because discriminating firms are willing to pay a premium to hire only those workers who fit a desired profile, competition should drive discriminating firms out of business and any wage gaps resulting from discrimination should be eliminated away over time. For Becker, this process lends to a remarkable outcome: the presence of even a single non-discriminating employer in a market otherwise composed of discriminators will reduce average discrimination to zero in equilibrium.
We begin with a contrary proposition: the presence of even a single discriminating employer in a market otherwise composed of non-discriminators can, under certain circumstances, increase average discrimination in the market to the level of the single discriminator (or greater) over the long run. Our model turns on what we view to be an increasingly common practice in professional hiring and wage setting; that is, looking to "the market" for guidance in evaluating a given job candidate. To be more specific, we endogenize the price setting process by allowing for interdependence between a given job candidate's "market value" and her valuation as determined by individual hiring firms.
Our adjustment to Becker's model is both theoretically significant and empirically justified. As "financial thinking" (Davis 2009) increasingly dominates contemporary economic and social spheres of life, and "market logics" continue to permeate labor markets in particular (Nelson and Bridges 1999), it is well time to consider the effects and potential consequence of over-weighting market-based methods of valuation at the detriment of other methods of valuation. We build explicitly on Becker's model, itself a promising testament to the power of markets for eliminating prejudice and discrimination under certain conditions, to demonstrate how an overreliance on markets can spread prejudicial and discriminatory behaviors under other conditions. For all the promise of Becker's original model we demonstrate an equally remarkable, but also very plausible, consequence. Discriminatory hiring practices and wage setting can spread through a market like an invisible virus, infecting even those who believe themselves immune.
Speaker Bio:
Ned Smith is an Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a core faculty member of the Northwestern Institute for Complexity (NICO). Professor Smith has two main areas of research. First, he studies the effects of social structure on the behavior and decision-making of individuals and organizations. His research in this area was awarded a Kauffman Foundation Fellowship in 2009. More recently, Ned's articles on investor decision-making in the hedge fund industry ("Identities as Lenses," Administrative Science Quarterly), and market responses to new executive appointments ("Better in the Shadows", with Kevin Gaughan) were awarded the (2012) Best Published Paper Award by the Academy of Management and the (2016) Best Paper Award by the Academy of Management, respectively. Second, Ned works to connect research on cognitive processes and network theories of social capital to better understand how people utilize (and squander) the resources available to them in their social networks. This research analyzes how people mentally construct their social worlds, i.e., their social networks, according to various psychological and situational factors.
Live Stream:
Time
Wednesday, November 1, 2017 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Ágnes Horvát, Northwestern University "Science on the Web: How networks bias academic communication online"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speaker:
Ágnes Horvát - Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, School of Communication, Northwestern University
Title:
Science on the Web: How networks bias academic communication online
Abstract:
Most academics are promoting their work online. At the same time, the public, journalists, and interested governments increasingly turn to the Web for scientific information. It thus becomes ever more critical that we better understand the dynamics of online science dissemination networks. My talk presents our latest results about (1) how scientific publications spread on various types of online platforms, losing essential information; (2) how gender and ethnic inequalities impact the coverage of scholarship; and (3) how subsequently retracted articles receive more attention online. Our findings highlight crucial biases in the online sharing of science. They inform efforts to close gaps in scholars' success and curb the online spread of science-related misinformation.
Speaker Bio:
Ágnes Horvát is an Assistant Professor in Communication and Computer Science (by courtesy) at Northwestern University, where she directs the Technology and Social Behavior PhD program. Her research lies at the intersection of computational social science, social computing, and communication. Using interdisciplinary approaches from network and data science, her research group, the Lab on Innovation, Networks, and Knowledge (LINK), investigates how networks induce biased information production, sharing, and processing on digital platforms. For example, they study the impact of networks and diversity on scholarly communication, identify expressions of collective intelligence and opportunities for innovation in crowdsourcing communities, and develop tools to support creativity and predict success in culture industries. Professor Horvát received her PhD in Physics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95881985279
Passcode: NICO23
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, February 8, 2023 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Yong-Yeol "YY" Ahn, Indiana University Bloomington "Science of science, law of law, and patterns of patents: universal citation dynamics in knowledge systems"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speaker:
Yong-Yeol "YY" Ahn, Associate Professor, Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington
Title:
Science of science, law of law, and patterns of patents: universal citation dynamics in knowledge systems
Abstract:
Citation is a fundamental way for humans to acquire and expand on existing knowledge. Although many laws and regularities of citation dynamics have been discovered from scientific citations, it is unclear whether and to what extent these regularities are inherent in how humans seek, use, and create knowledge. We show that, despite many stark differences between these systems, the citation dynamics in science, law, and patents share universal patterns. Given the differences in procedure and incentives that exist between judges, inventors, and scientists, our findings suggest that universal citation dynamics may be innate to any cumulative human knowledge system. Our model demonstrates that the evolution of collective attention and a handful of fundamental mechanisms can produce observed universal patterns of citation dynamics.
Speaker Bio:
Yong-Yeol (YY) Ahn is an Associate Professor at Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. He was a Visiting Professor at MIT during 2020-2021. Before joining Indiana University, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University and as a visiting researcher at the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute after earning his PhD in Statistical Physics from KAIST in 2008. His research focuses on developing network science and machine learning methods, and applying them to complex social and biological systems. He is a recipient of several awards including Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship and LinkedIn Economic Graph Challenge.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/93818374439
Passcode: NICO23
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, February 15, 2023 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Chris Kuzawa, Northwestern University "Fetal developmental plasticity as signal-noise problem: the case of nutrients and stress physiology"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speaker:
Chris Kuzawa, John D. MacArthur Professor, Department of Anthroplogy, Northwestern University
Title:
Fetal developmental plasticity as signal-noise problem: the case of nutrients and stress physiology
Abstract:
The stage of human development marked by greatest sensitivity and developmental plasticity occurs prior to birth, when the developing embryo and fetus are embedded within the highly regulated intrauterine environment maintained by the mother’s body. In this talk, I will discuss the timescales of maternal experience that modify this milieu, with a focus on two crucial systems: nutrient metabolism and stress physiology. I will argue that elaborate and redundant maternal buffering of nutrient delivery uncouples short term variability in what the mother eats – whether negative changes like famine or improvements in the form of nutritional supplementation - from fetal nutrition and development, which instead track changes in maternal nutrition on a longer, generational timescale. In contrast, stress physiology is by design highly responsive to the mother’s short-term experiences and the responsiveness of these systems have broad spill-over effects on fetal development, thus linking offspring biological and health outcomes to acute variability in maternal stress during pregnancy. I will discuss the relevance of these principles for understanding the evolution of the flow of ecological information across generations and the design of interventions aimed at harnessing early life plasticity to improve future population health.
Speaker Bio:
Chris Kuzawa and his students and collaborators use principles from anthropology and evolutionary biology to gain insights into the biological and health impacts of human developmental plasticity. Thier primary field research is conducted in Cebu, the Philippines, where they work with a large birth cohort study that enrolled more than 3,000 pregnant women in 1983 and has since followed their offspring into adulthood (now 30 years old). They use the nearly 3 decades of data available for each study participant, and recruitment of generation 3 (the grandoffspring of the original mothers), to gain a better understanding of the long-term and intergenerational impacts of early life environments on adult biology, life history, reproduction, and health. A theme of much of this work is the application of principles of developmental plasticity and evolutionary biology to issues of health. Professor Kuzawa is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/91503621521
Passcode: NICO23
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, February 22, 2023 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Daniel Abrams, Northwestern University "Tractable mathematical modeling of social systems: some successes and failures"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speaker:
Daniel Abrams, Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics and (by courtesy) Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University
Title:
Tractable mathematical modeling of social systems: some successes and failures
Abstract:
TBA
Speaker Bio:
Daniel Abrams has broad scientific interests ranging from coupled oscillators to mathematical geoscience to the physics of social systems. He tries to approach these wide-ranging problems by creating greatly simplified mathematical models where rigorous analysis is possible, hopefully capturing some essential properties of the system. The work in different fields is generally connected by similar mathematical techniques drawn from the study of nonlinear dynamics.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98183822887
Passcode: NICO23
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Alina Arseniev-Koehler, Purdue University "Stigma's Uneven Decline"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speaker:
Alina Arseniev-Koehler, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Purdue University
Title:
Stigma’s Uneven Decline
Abstract:
Has the stigma targeting diseases declined? We analyze 4.7 million news articles to create new measures of stigma for 106 health conditions from 1980-2018, using word embedding methods for text analysis. We then examine how this stigma changed for different types of conditions across time using mixed effects regression modeling. We find that in the 1980s, most diseases were marked by strong connotations of disgust, immorality, and negative personality traits. Since then, stigma declined dramatically for chronic illnesses: cancers, neurological conditions, genetic diseases, and many other conditions have shed most of their negative connotations. But for other types of conditions, stigma proved especially resistant to change. Across the decades, behavioral health conditions (mental illnesses, addictions, and eating disorders) persistently connoted immorality and negative personality traits. Infectious diseases remained strongly linked to attributions of disgust. Stigma has transformed from a sea of negative connotations surrounding most diseases to a narrower set of judgments targeting conditions where the primary symptoms are aberrant behaviors. (This talk is based on research with Rachel Best at the University of Michigan).
Speaker Bio:
Alina Arseniev-Koehler is a computational and cultural sociologist with substantive interests in language, health, and social categories. Alina strives to clarify core concepts and debates about cultural meaning in sociology. For example, how do individuals learn and deploy stereotypes? Empirically, Alina focuses on cases where meaning is linked to inequality and health, such as the moral meanings attached to body weight, the stigmatizing meanings of disease, and gender stereotypes. To investigate these topics, Alina uses computational methods and machine learning, especially computational text analysis.
Alina’s work also circles around a methodological question: how can scientists measure meanings encoded in text data, such as news articles and social media posts? Computational text analysis requires scientists to mathematically model the nuanced ways in which human language encodes and conveys meaning. As highlighted by Alina’s work, innovation in computational text analysis is tightly intertwined with innovation in theoretical understanding of meanings.
Alina received a B.A. in Sociology from University of Washington in 2014, and a master’s and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2022.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/91034727443
Passcode: NICO23
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)