I am a strategist at Alberta Health Services with the EMS dispatch department.

I use tools from data science to evaluate initiatives, model resource allocation, and advise on the future direction of the ambulatory system in Alberta.


Previous Projects

Dissertation Extract

Land Use Regulations and Housing Development: Evidence from Tax Parcels and Zoning Bylaws in Massachusetts
Land use regulations come in a wide variety of forms and govern how development occurs. They restrict housing development resulting in housing supply being less responsive to demand shocks. Yet little is known on what facets of residential development are most impacted, hindered by lack of comprehensive data on land use regulation stringency. I address this shortcoming by compiling a novel measure of land use regulation based on applying natural language processing techniques to over 40,000 pages of zoning bylaw texts. Utilizing a spatial regression discontinuity design around municipal borders, I find that stringent land use regulations reduce housing supply primarily through increasing the land usage per house. Strongly regulated localities do not compensate by developing more land overall. These results highlight how regulations like minimum lot sizes and setback requirements pose barriers to housing development in high-growth regions.


Ongoing Research

Identifying and Teaching High-Growth Entrepreneurship: Experimental Evidence from Entrepreneurship Academies for University Students in Uganda (with Vojtěch Bartoš, Kristina Czura, Michael Kaiser, and Timm Opitz)
We disentangle the extent to which entrepreneurial success can be attributed to skill formation and to selection. To study skill formation of nascent entrepreneurs among Ugandan university students, we randomly accept applications to a business training program fostering an entrepreneurial mindset. We measure labor market outcomes, business creation and success, and cognitive and non-cognitive skills as key outcomes up to three years after program participation. To better understand individual motivation for entrepreneurship, we experimentally vary marketing messages to all interested students prior to their application decision, emphasizing either entrepreneurial profit or entrepreneurial freedom. Lastly, we describe endogenous self-selection through nonexperimental comparisons of key outcomes among applicants and eligible students from the same population who were aware of the entrepreneurship training program but did not express interest.


Previous Teaching

  • Econometrics (graduate, TA)
  • Microeconometrics (graduate, TA)
  • Empirical Econometrics II (undergraduate, TA)
  • Various seminars: Big Data, Empirical Analysis of Social Policy, Empirical Health Economics (undergraduate, TA)

Resume

You can download my resume here.


Contact

Mailing Address

101-1408 17 St SE
Calgary, AB T2G 5S8
Canada

Email Address

brendan.shanks@gmail.com