Tony Williams writes:

I thought of this while reading a complaint on LinkedIn about after-work socialization always involving alcohol (and tobacco, for those so inclined).

There seems to be a lot of neat things that can address a nasty issue, DUI. I think it could make sense as an undergrad/MS applied paper idea or thesis.

Spatial differences (probably state level) on relaxation of social distancing policies. Companies, my guess mostly bigger companies located in or near major metropolitan areas, going to hybrid work schedules. Those companies also having different work-from-office days (though, honestly, Wed and Fri is the common one I’ve seen, and that’s obviously intended in part to not allow employees to live further away and “only” commute for two consecutive days).

Feel free to run with it if you’d like. Seems like a lot of natural variation that could be exploited for causal inference. I’d be interested in any results.

My reply: I have no idea, but my guess is that, any such idea, someone has looked into and maybe there’s even a literature on it. The literature would probably be full of the usual problems of selection on statistical significance, but anyone interested in this idea could check out any literature and then start from scratch from the raw data. Could be something interesting there if the signal is large enough compared to the variation.