# EconLLM Lab

> AI × Economics research — integrating large language models into economic science.

The EconLLM Lab integrates pre-trained AI models—particularly large language models (LLMs)—into economics research to expand both who gets studied and how they are studied. We build research tools that simulate understudied populations, model cultural preference heterogeneity, pilot experiments at lower cost, and integrate multimodal data into econometric frameworks.

## Pages

- [Home](/): Lab overview, mission, and featured research.
- [Research](/research): Working papers and publications across our four research programs (Synthetic Cultural Agents, LLMs as Economic Agents, Cultural Alignment & Measurement, High-Dimensional Econometrics).
- [Team](/team): Principal investigators, graduate researchers, undergraduates, and affiliated labs.
- [Workshops](/workshops): Recorded talks, tutorials, and conference workshops on AI-integrated economics.
- [Contact](/contact): Get in touch about collaboration, recruitment, or workshop participation.

## Research Programs

### Synthetic Cultural Agents (SCAs)
LLM-based agents that simulate members of specific populations, including non-WEIRD groups, to enable controlled simulation before costly field experiments.

### LLMs as Economic Agents
Evaluating language models with economic games and revealed-preference frameworks to identify where LLMs approximate or deviate from human behavior.

### Cultural Alignment & Measurement
Measuring and steering cultural dimensions in LLMs via embeddings, fine-tuning, preference optimization, and activation engineering.

### High-Dimensional Econometrics
Integrating text and speech embeddings into formal econometric models, with identification conditions for AI-based estimation.

## Optional

- [GitHub Organization](https://github.com/orgs/EconLLM-Lab/repositories): Open-source code releases.
- Email: econllmlabcgu@gmail.com
- Location: Claremont, CA, USA