Eleanor Sigel

Eleanor Sigel

Eleanor Sigel is a pre-doctoral research fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, within the Stanford Initiative for Business, Taxation, and Society (STAX) on questions in public finance and tax policy. She received B.A. degrees in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Southern California in 2025. Outside of research, she is a competitive endurance runner and writes about food and economics.

Research

Stanford Graduate School of Business (July 2025–present)

As a pre-doctoral fellow at Stanford GSB, Sigel collaborates with Professor Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato at the STAX Lab on empirical projects in public finance, including tax incentives, R&D investment, and corporate behavioral responses to tax policy.

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (June–August 2024)

As a research intern in the Microeconomics Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Sigel contributed to two projects: a Regression Discontinuity study of Colombian import data examining the US–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (with Dr. Diego Jiménez Hernández), and early-stage applied micro research using US Court of Appeals judicial data (with Dr. Camilo Garcia-Jimeno).

USC Department of Economics (February 2022–October 2024)

Research assistant to Professor Augustin Bergeron on projects in applied microeconomics, development economics, and economic history, using Stata, QGIS, and R to analyze spatial, survey, and historical data. Contributed research assistance to "From Kin to Creed: Missions and the Reconfiguration of Social and Moral Order in Colonial Congo" (Bergeron, 2025), a study of how Christian missions in colonial Congo reshaped kinship ties, moral values, and group identity.

REU — "Research Projects in Data-Enabled Industrial Mathematics" (May–July 2023)

At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in partnership with the Nevada National Security Site, Sigel worked on "Uncertainty Propagation in Image Deblurring" — reframing image deblurring as a linear inverse problem and applying machine learning and mathematical methods in Python. Results were presented at the 2023 MAA MathFest and the 2024 Joint Mathematics Meetings.

Writing

Sigel writes on economics, food, and culture. Her essays are published on Medium. She was featured on The Sporkful, the three-time James Beard Award-winning food podcast, in an episode about running 31 miles while eating Taco Bell. [listen]

Projects

Not Your Gringa's Tacos: An Authenticity-Weighted Food Map

A data visualization mapping roughly 680 Mexican restaurants, taquerías, and taco trucks across Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Each restaurant's Google star rating is re-weighted to give more weight to reviews likely written by Hispanic/Latino diners — inferred from review language and, via U.S. Census surname data, reviewer surnames — to surface neighborhood spots that mainstream ratings may under-value. An exploratory research tool (beta); see the map's About panel for methodology and limitations. [view map]

You Say Potato, I Say…: The Post-Columbian Divergence in European Economic and Ideological Development

An essay examining how the introduction of the potato shaped divergent economic and ideological trajectories across Europe after the Columbian Exchange.

Running

Sigel competes in marathons and ultramarathons. Her UltraSignup profile contains some of her ultra results.

Selected Results

• Charlevoix Marathon — 3:19:33, 9th female (BQ)
• Beer City San Jose Half Marathon (2026)
• Marathon result — MarathonView #132708
• Alameda Pint race result
• Marathon result — MarathonView #134511

Education

Eleanor Sigel • esigel@stanford.edu • Stanford GSB