About Me
Before joining ACES, I did my undergraduate work at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Eau Claire, majoring in Economics and Mathematics. My Ph.D. work in Economics at Indiana University-Bloomington was applied and data-centric. Topically, my research interests range from Political Economy to Industrial Organization. Using big data and frontier data science and geographic information systems (GIS) methods I look to evaluate and test economic theory.
I enjoy collaborative research environments and have personally found that interdisciplinary communities in particular often foster the richest ideas and produce the most compelling research.
Joseph (Joe) Westenberg (he/his/him)
About my Research
My research falls within the realm of Political Economy and Industrial Organization, utilizing tools in applied microeconometrics and data science to answer empirical questions and test economic theory.
I have experience working with:
- Nielsen Consumer Panel
- Nielsen Retail Scanner
- EPA Pollution Monitors
- NOAA Weather Monitors
- U.S. Decennial Census
- BLS Labor Statistics
In one work in progress I develop a novel dataset that combines data from multiple data sources by using GIS techniques to map locations into each other across data sets. I map EPA pollution monitor data into both congressional district and county shapefiles. In this way I can attribute certain monitors to specific politician’s districts as well as linking to BLS county-level labor statistics. This type of work can be extremely valuable for expanding the types of questions we can ask of the data. A more in depth description of this data can be found here.
Joe's Blog
Past Grill Photos
One of my favorite activities to do when weather is nice (also at times when it’s not) is to grill out. This is where past photos I had on my previous website will live.
Read moreMapping with Leaflet
Simple example of using Leaflet to plot shapefiles.
Read moreTeaching
Election Maps
Main home for my current project of using OpenElections and IPUMS GIS shapefiles to map out election results 2000-2020.
Read moreIntroduction to Data Science
(Spring 2021) These notes were designed to assist in lectures given at IU-Bloomington for graduate students in Economics. The goal of the lectures and notes are to give graduate students a very prelimenary introduction into coding/working with data in R. Lectures given Spring 2021.
Read moreFeatured categories
courses (2) book (1) elections (1)