Colleen O'Briant
| Research | Teaching |
 Curriculum Vitae Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Arkansas Fields: Applied Econometrics, Machine Learning, Industrial Organization Email: cobriant at uark.edu Github: cobriant
Essays and Other Projects:
How I Flip my Classes: effective flipped classroom policies to engage students in highly technical courses  The Dynamic Discrete Choice Workbook: a crash course for undergraduates on John Rust's NFXP algorithm 
Tidyverse Koans: a gentle, thorough, and self-paced way to learn the Tidyverse in R 
qelp (quick help): beginner-friendly help docs for commonly used functions in R Tidyverse for data analytics: videos, read-along zine, and koans. |
My research agenda is on bridging the gap between Econometrics and Machine Learning, especially with respect to dynamic models of discrete choice in AI and Industrial Organization.
Working Papers:
The Econometrics of Inverse Reinforcement Learning I bridge the gap between the Nested Fixed Point algorithm (Rust, 1987) and two Max-Margin Inverse Reinforcement Learning algorithms (Ng and Russell, 2000 and Abbeel and Ng, 2004) to estimate models of dynamic discrete choice on a GridWorld environment. Comparing Inverse Reinforcement Learning to Rust's Estimator I analyze publicly available 2013 taxi data to compare the practical capabilities of Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) and Nested Fixed Point (NFXP) methods in estimating payoffs for New York City taxi drivers during the morning commute. Limited Attention and New Product Adoption for Marijuana Dispensaries I use an instrumental variables approach to measure how small business owners may misattribute noise for profit signals. |
🏆 In 2023, I was awarded the Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Oregon's Economics Department for exemplary teaching support.
My Courses:
Microeconomic Theory (Intermediate) ECON 30303 - Fall 2024 at the University of Arkansas 
Economics of Organizations ECON 43303 - Fall 2024 at the University of Arkansas 
Introduction to Econometrics (I) EC320 - Fall 2023 at the University of Oregon 
Introduction to Econometrics (II) EC421 - Summer 2021 (online), Fall 2021, Summer 2022 (online), Fall 2022, Spring 2024 at the University of Oregon 
Scheduled Spring 2025:
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