Rate My Professor Liang Yin-Herr

Liang Yin-Herr serves as Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics at the College of William & Mary, a position she has held since 2023. She earned her Ph.D. in Econometrics from Boston College in 2023, an M.A. in Economics from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2015, and a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University in 2009. Prior to joining William & Mary, she worked as a Research Associate at Harvard Business School from 2019 to 2021, contributing to projects on the impact of AI deployment on sales through data analysis strategy design, the impact of career connections on trading volume and trading rate using RFM modeling and causal random forest analysis that improved model precision by 9 percent, and the impact of corporate responsibility on investment portfolios via difference-in-differences analysis. From 2021 to 2023, she served as a Research Consultant at Boston College, providing modeling suggestions, prototypes, and support for researchers. Her earlier roles include Consultant at Best Education from 2011 to 2013, guiding university students in graduate school choices, and Program Lead at Aston Educational Group from 2009 to 2011, where she started the Chinese language education program.

Professor Yin-Herr's research focuses on applied microeconomics and the economics of crime, employing causal inference methods such as instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, and causal random forest prediction. Her working papers include "The Distinct Roles of Poverty and Wealth in Driving Crime" with Benjamin Ferri, which examines how poverty and earnings tails influence equilibrium crime rates using U.S. Commuting Zones data from 1980 to 2016; "Self-Defense Regulations and Crime: Evidence from the Stand Your Ground Law" with Abby Hong, analyzing unintended escalation of violence through game-theoretic modeling and empirical evidence on murder rates; and "Crime Reporting Standards and Reported Crime," investigating discrepancies in FBI Uniform Crime Reports due to shifts from Summary Reporting System to National Incident-Based Reporting System. She has presented at the 2022 Western Economic Association International Annual Conference and the 2021 WEAI Virtual International Conference. At William & Mary, she teaches undergraduate Principles of Microeconomics and Intermediate Microeconomic Theory. Her technical skills encompass R, Python, SQL, and Stata.