Economics Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago

Sofia Shchukina

Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. I use experimental and applied microeconomic methods to study how contemporary technologies and sociocultural trends have affected human behavior in areas such as dating, education, and purchasing decisions.

I am the lead researcher for the Dating with Data Study, where we study how people use dating apps.

I am also a member of the Normal Lab, and I am advised by Professor Leonardo Bursztyn.

You can contact me at sofiashchukina@uchicago.edu.

Previously, I worked as a Research Assistant for Professors Jonathan Kolstad and Ricardo Perez-Truglia at UC Berkeley, and as a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company. I was also a Ph.D. Summer Fellow at NPR’s Planet Money podcast. I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in Economics and a minor in Statistics.



Research

Dating With Data
Dating with Data is a large-scale study of dating app use. Find out more here.

Changing Gears: The Welfare Impacts of Brand Ideology, with Ashton Pallottini
Working paper available here.

EV or not EV: How Information Frictions Impact Willingness-to-pay to Mitigate Carbon Emissions, with Ashton Pallottini
Work in progress

Friday Night Lights, Monday Morning Grades: How High School Football Success Affects Student Achievement, with Evan Bennett, Derek Rury, and Gagandeep Sachdeva
Work in progress



Teaching

I have been a teaching assistant for the following classes at the University of Chicago:

  • Accelerated Economics (MBA, Instructor: Jack Mountjoy). Fall 2024, Fall 2023
  • Economics of Gender (Undergraduate, Instructor: Alessandra Gonzalez). Spring 2024
  • Empirical Analysis III (Ph.D., Instructor: James Heckman). Spring 2023
  • Applied Microeconometrics (Undergraduate, Instructor: Juanna Joensen). Winter 2023
  • The Elements of Economic Analysis I (Undergraduate, Instructor: Antonis Tsiflis). Fall 2022

I received the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award from the University of Chicago’s Economics Department in 2023.