Invited Speakers

The ACM EAAMO'24 Invited Speakers series features experts from various fields discussing the role of algorithms and optimization in addressing equity and access challenges. These speakers will share research and practical insights on responsible algorithm design and equitable decision-making.

Irene Lo #

Mechanisms, Optimization, and Education Policy #

Abstract: What role can algorithms, mechanisms, and optimization play in education policy? What work can these fields do to ensure equity and access for the historically marginalized? I will explore these questions through a case study of student assignment policy in San Francisco. From 2018-2020, we worked with the San Franciso Unified School District (SFUSD) to design a new policy for student assignment system that meets the district’s goals of diversity, predictability, and proximity. We developed potential policies by building on the district’s proposal of restricting choice to zones with suggestions from the mechanism design literature on school choice. We suggested potential zones by using optimization methods for redistricting. We provided an end-to-end simulation tool to predict and evaluate different policies. We find that appropriately-designed zones with minority reserves can achieve all the district’s goals, at the expense of choice, and choice can resegregate diverse zones. Existing approaches in the school choice literature can improve diversity at lesser expense to choice. Our work informed the design and approval of a zone-based policy in SFUSD for use starting the 2026-27 school year.

Biography: Irene Lo is an Assistant Professor at the department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. She conducts research at the intersection of algorithms and economic theory to design matching markets and assignment processes, with a focus on public sector and non-profit applications. She is especially interested in resource allocation in education, the environment, and the developing world. Irene received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from Columbia University, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics at Stanford. She directs the Stanford Impact Lab on Equitable Access to Education, and was a program chair for the inaugural ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO ‘21).

Alessandra Fogli #

Beliefs, Social Context, and Macro Outcomes #

Abstract: The social context is an important determinant of economic outcomes: family, school, neighborhood and society at large significantly influence individual decision making. Standard economic models abstract from the social context: they are populated by atomistic individuals, who are endowed with homogeneous and exogenously given preferences, share common knowledge, and interact through anonymous markets.

In my research I explicitly model the social context and investigate how and to what extent it affects aggregate economic outcomes. Individuals in different social contexts interact with different people, hold different beliefs, and face different challenges and opportunities. Through these channels, the social context significantly affects aggregate outcomes such as labor force participation, human capital investment, and technology adoption. In turn, aggregate outcomes feed back into the social context: family structure, neighborhood composition, and individual friends’ networks evolve endogenously in response to the aggregate economy. In my talk, I will focus on how a woman’s social context influences her decision to work: her family structure, social networks, and ethnic background impose constraints and help shape her beliefs. Through these mechanisms, individual micro interactions affect the aggregate evolution of women’s labor force participation over time and across space. The macro aggregate, in turn, affects the evolution of the social context.

Biography: Alessandra Fogli is Monetary Advisor and Assistant Director in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. She is First Vice President of the Midwest Economic Association, co-founder of Women in Macro, and CEPR fellow. She has taught at NYU Stern and Bocconi University, and currently teaches at the University of Minnesota. Her research explores how an individual’s social context, including family, neighborhood, school, as well as society at large, affects economic behavior and in turn aggregate economic outcomes. Fogli’s research has been published in journals such as Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Journal, and the Journal of Monetary Economics. Fogli earned her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in economics from Bocconi University, and a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.