Who has the president's attention? Evidence from the presidential diaries
Guo Xu, Professor
Business, Haas School
Applications for Spring 2025 are closed for this project.
This project studies the time use of presidents by digitizing and leveraging the presidential diaries (1900-2017). The presidential diaries contain hourly information about activities and meetings of presidents throughout history, allowing us to take an unusually close look at how different political leaders allocate their time and attention.
Role: The URAP will gain experience in data collection and cleaning, as well as the descriptive analysis of newly digitized data. Much of the data has already been digitized and needs to be processed and converted into a standardized format that allows for statistical analysis. The student will gain hands-on experience in turning historical sources into datasets, as well as performing basic analysis.
Qualifications: Knowledge of Excel is essential. Experience with statistical packages and programming languages (R, Stata, Python) is desirable. The project is ideal for students majoring in economics, political science, or computer science.
Hours: 12 or more hours
Related website: http://www.guoxu.org
Social Sciences