I completed a PhD in Economics at the University of Michigan in May 2014. I am currently an adjunct professor at the George Washington University. I also work independently as a consultant. I recently worked at Welch Consulting in Washington, DC. I previously worked as Research Professional at the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, University of Chicago Law School.
In my previous role at the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, I contributed to a variety of research projects. One of my main roles was using the expertise that I gained in graduate school to help faculty identify, create, and manage big data sets. I worked with Dean Thomas Miles on several projects related to criminal justice. I also spent some time as a consultant for the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic and the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, where I offered economic analysis on several pending cases.
My dissertation focused on the public income tax records from 1923 and 1924 that resulted from the Revenue Act of 1924. The Revenue Act of 1924 made US federal income tax information public for two years. I collected newspaper records to create a sample of high-income taxpayers in these two years. I match them to 1920 and 1930 census records to determine occupation, age, and marital status, and other facts. I used the different tax rates in 1923 and 1924 to estimate the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) with respect to the marginal net-of-tax rate.
The dataset has also been used in a working paper on social mobility, "Social Mobility Rates in the USA, 1920-2010: A Surname Analysis", by Greg Clark, which you can find here, as well as the book "The Son Also Rises", on which I am a minor co-author.
I have prepared a number of screencasts that may be helpful if you are cleaning and merging large datasets. I've embedded one below, but you can find them all on my YouTube page. Topics include:
I once ran for Congress, advocating for a set of reforms that economists generally advocate for, mainly the pollution tax. I ran against 29-term incumbent John Dingell in a Democratic primary. Here is coverage of me on NPR's The Takeaway, here is a writeup of that same interview, here I am on Michigan's Big Show, and here is my appearance on the Democratic Voice. Despite my entrenched opponent, lack of fundraising, and general desire to heavily tax things like gas, I still managed to scrounge together 21.5% of the vote and get the Detroit Free Press to say that "Marcin, at 25, appears talented and may have a future in politics". I don't anticipate ever running for anything again, but if you want some advice, I'm happy to help you out.