Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research

The Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research brings together researchers throughout Saint Louis University who share a common interest in applied economic research.

These two maps of the St. Louis area depict cellphone geolocation "pings" on Labor Day in 2019 and 2020. In 2019, cell phone locations and, by default, people were concentrated in a number of recreational locations throughout the area. In contrast, 2020's map shows that people were more dispersed throughout residential areas, and only congregating in a few locations.

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This map series shows the number of people spending their days at established home locations in 2019, 2020, and during the first half of 2021. In 2019, relatively few St. Louis area residents spent their days at home; however, the proportion of those who did increased in both 2020 and 2021.

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The center is part of the SLU Research Institute, and reports to an advisory board consisting of the deans of the Chaifetz School of Business, the School of Education, and the College for Public Health and Social Justice. The center was established in the fall of 2018 following a generous gift from Dr. Jeanne and Mr. Rex Sinquefield.

Mission

The center's mission is to advance rigorous research on economic growth and social welfare that can inform public policy. Our research interest is urban economic development, with St. Louis as our laboratory. Center staff and affiliated researchers work on a broad range of applied economic research topics including taxation, education, health, regulation, entrepreneurship and technology policy. We take the “applied” in our title seriously. To that end, we invest in developing large and rich databases on schools, neighborhoods, employment and workforce development for the state and the St. Louis metro area that form the foundation for our applied research.

The work of the center promotes Jesuit values. Our mission is to use the tools of modern applied microeconomics to help create economic opportunity for all residents of St. Louis by promoting excellence in applied economic and social policy research. 

Research

The Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research (SCAER) brings together researchers from a variety of fields to engage in transformative economic research. Below are the works supported by SCAER.