Evan S. Totty

I received my Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University in 2016. I work in the Center for Enterprise Dissemination - Disclosure Avoidance in the Research & Methodology Directorate at the U.S. Census Bureau. Our work involves the application of disclosure avoidance mechanisms to Census data products and the evaluation of their effects on privacy and utility.

I am an applied economist specializing in labor economics and applied econometrics. I am particularly interested in the economics of minimum wages, education, and data privacy. My work on minimum wages and education revolves around bringing better methods and data to important questions, allowing me to improve upon limitations in prior work and extend the literature in new directions. This line of work has appeared in top field journals such as the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Applied Econometrics (2x) and won the best paper award in Economic Inquiry. I also developed an interest in data privacy and the economics of privacy while working at the U.S. Census Bureau. This work revolves around understanding how privacy concerns impact the quality of data collected by statistical agencies and how privacy protection impacts the quality of data released back to the public. These topics have important impacts on scientific progress and equitable data access in the economics profession. My early work on this topic appeared in inter-disciplinary journals and book chapters, while my recent research has appeared in NBER outlets.