Title: Organizing a Kingdom (with Charles Angelucci and Simone Meraglia)

Abstract: We develop a framework that examines the organizational challenges faced by central rulers governing large territories, where administrative power needs to be delegated to local elites. We describe how economic change can motivate rulers to empower different elites and emphasize the interaction between local and nationwide institutions. We show that rising economic potential of towns leads to local administrative power (self-governance) of urban elites. As a result, the ruler summons them to central assemblies in order to ensure effective communication and coordination between self-governing towns and the rest of the realm. This framework can explain the emergence of municipal autonomy and towns’ representation in early modern European parliaments -- a blueprint for Western Europe’s institutional framework that promoted state-formation and economic growth in the centuries to follow. We provide empirical evidence for our core mechanisms and discuss how the model applies to other historical dynamics, and to alternative organizational settings.

Title: Multidimensional Screening with Returns (joint with Alexander Haberman and Frank Yang)

Title: Market Exposure, Civic Values and Rules

Abstract: Does markets exposure foster or erode civic values and rules necessary to constrain opportunistic behavior? Using a natural experiment on market location from Ethiopia, I compare individuals who are from the same clan and attend the same market but vary in their exposure to that market. I find a positive effect of market exposure on civic values and rule formation. This result arises because exchange occurs primarily in livestock, which is prone to cooperation problem from asymmetric information and weak state capacity. I use vignette studies to show that societies develop different types of exchange structures to mitigate this problem, which then shapes their civic values and rules. In societies far from markets, there is no need for civic values and rules, as individuals rarely attend markets and sell livestock eponymously within their social network. In societies near markets, individuals regularly attend markets, whereby impersonal exchange creates a demand for civic values and community sanctioning in the absence of which individuals will have to forego efficiency gains. Exposure to markets without asymmetric information has no effect on civic values and rules, allowing me to rule out prosperity and contact hypothesis as alternative channels.

Title: Outside Job Opportunities and the Gender Gap in Pay

Abstract: A growing literature suggests that outside job offers are an important component of on-the-job wage growth. Such outside offers could contribute to the gender wage gap due to a differential arrival rate of (relevant) job opportunities and/or because of gender differences in negotiation. In this paper, we shed light on this source of gender wage inequality by empirically studying male and female wage and job mobility responses to the arrival of outside job opportunities that arise via family networks. We show in Swedish register data that such opportunities are associated with higher wages for men but not for women. However, women have higher job mobility in response to expansions in connected firms- particularly when those offer a shorter commute compared to the current employer. Together, our results are consistent with women being less likely to renegotiate in response to the arrival of job offers. The paper thus confirms in a broader setting that gender negotiation differences is an economically meaningful source of the remaining gender pay gap.

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Title: Divorce Expectation, Human Capital, and Life Cycle of Female Labor Supply

Abstract: There is a puzzle in economics and sociology that Black women have a higher labor supply than white women in the US. This paper shows the gap is driven by married Black women with high wages returning to work quickly after childbirth. I develop a life cycle model of female labor supply, human capital, consumption, and savings with marriage uncertainty. The structural model demonstrates that Black women stay in the workforce to maintain human capital and hedge against marital instability. Furthermore, this paper shows structural estimates of human capital depreciation in the labor literature are likely biased without sample selection correction for exclusive restriction.

Title: Minimum Wage, Marriage, and Fertility

Abstract: Exploiting state-varying minimum wage in the US from 1975 to 2016, this paper shows the causal effect of minimum wage on marriage, divorce, and fertility. An increase in state minimum wage by 1 dollar significantly increases the marriage rate by 0.6 percentage points, reduces the divorce rate by 0.4 percentage points, and increases the fertility rate by 0.5 percentage points. I develop an equilibrium life cycle model of marriage, fertility, labor supply, and consumption to decompose the causal effects by complementarity in leisure time among partners, and substitutability in child production. This paper demonstrates that labor market policy has significant spillovers on the marriage market.

Title: Enhancing Learning Through Group Work: Challenges and Strategies

Abstract: Group work is a powerful pedagogical tool that promotes active learning, collaboration, and critical thinking skills among students. This seminar explores some effective strategies for implementing group work in educational settings along with the challenges associated with integrating group work into formative and summative assessments.

Title: How Does Social Protection Affect Local Politics? (joint with Tatsuya Koyama and Pablo Querubin)

Host: Andreas Stegmann

Title: Gravity of Violence

Title: Dealing with Adversity: Religiosity or Science? Evidence from the Great Influenza Pandemic, co-authored with E.Berkes, D.Coluccia, and G Dossi.
Abstract: How do societies respond to adversity? After a negative shock, separate strands of research document either an increase in religiosity or a boost in innovation efforts. In this paper, we show that both reactions can occur at the same time, driven by different individuals within society. The setting of our study is the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in the United States. To measure religiosity, we construct a novel indicator based on naming patterns of newborns. We measure innovation through the universe of granted patents. Exploiting plausibly exogenous county-level variation in exposure to the pandemic, we provide evidence that more-affected counties become both more religious and more innovative. Looking within counties, we uncover heterogeneous responses: individuals from more religious backgrounds further embrace religion, while those from less religious backgrounds become more likely to choose a scientific occupation. Facing adversity widens the distance in religiosity between science-oriented individuals and the rest of the population, and it increases the polarization of religious beliefs.

Title: Testing Inequalities Linear in Nuisance Parameters (with Gregory Cox and Yuya Shimizu) at the econometrics seminar.

 Abstract- This paper proposes a new test for inequalities that are linear in possibly partially

identified nuisance parameters, called the generalized conditional chi-squared (GCC)

test. It extends the subvector conditional chi-squared (sCC) test in Cox and Shi (2023,

CS23) to a setting where the nuisance parameter is pre-multiplied by an unknown

and estimable matrix of coefficients. Properly accounting for the estimation noise in

this matrix while maintaining the simplicity of the sCC test is the main innovation

of this paper. [How? New variance formula? Rank condition?] As such, the paper

provides a simple solution to a broad set of problems including subvector inference for

models represented by linear programs, nonparametric instrumental variable models

with discrete regressor and instruments, and linear unconditional moment inequality

models. We also derive a simplified formula for computing the critical value that makes

the computation of the GCC test elementary.

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Title: Pushing the Envelope: A Field Experiment in Negotiations (with Ricardo Perez-Truglia and Bobak Pakzad-Hurson)

What role does negotiation play in the job market for professionals? Does it affect the allocation of labor and split of surplus? In a field experiment with over 3,000 mid-career professionals actively seeking offers, we establish new facts about how people negotiate and the causal impact of negotiation on employment terms. We use experimental results and detailed offer data to propose a model of portfolio bargaining.

There will be two presentations:

1: Lily Shevchenko - Title: Does cancel culture work? Evidence from Reddit

Abstract: How well can platforms police user behaviour? We look at the popular social media site, Reddit, where a mass ban of toxic communities occurred in response to a change in the site's conduct policy. We aim to see how the users of these communities changed their behaviour after the ban, as well as at the impact on the platform as a whole.

2. Benjamin Koch - Title: Smart or Corrupt? Informed Trading in the U.S. Congress

Abstract: U.S. Committee members enjoy an information privilege in regard to emerging regulations due to their role in shaping legislation. This privilege allows for a better prediction of a company’s future profit. If a politician indeed capitalizes on this privilege by trading affected stock, it would constitute an abuse of office in violation of ethical and legal standards. The identification of information-conflicted trades is not straightforward. Committee members often have prior expertise in the industry the committee is supposed to oversee, and working on the committee further enhances their expertise. To tackle these issues, I link stock transaction records of politicians with information on congressional committees, bills, and stock prices of affected firms. First, I compare Congress members’ portfolio returns before and after they join committees in a difference-in-differences framework, differentiating between committee-associated and -unassociated sub-portfolios. I then contrast the change in returns when Congress members join and leave committees for each sub-portfolio. Second, I use public relevations of milestones of bills and examine the frequency and timing of a politician’s transactions anticipating stock price reactions. My novel approaches contribute to the public and academic debates on how politicians can privately benefit from public office and on the prevalence of insider trading by politicians.

Title: Dynamic Concern for Misspecification

Abstract: We consider an agent who posits a set of probabilistic models for the

payoff-relevant outcomes. The agent has a prior over this set but fears the
actual model is omitted and hedges against this possibility. The concern for
misspecification is endogenous: If a model explains the previous
observations well, the concern attenuates. We show that different static
preferences under uncertainty (subjective expected utility, maxmin, robust
control) arise in the long run, depending on how quickly the agent becomes
unsatisfied with unexplained evidence and whether they are misspecified. The
misspecification concern's endogeneity naturally induces behavior cycles,
and we characterize the limit action frequency. This model is consistent
with the evidence on monetary policy cycles and choices in the face of
complex tax schedules.

Title: More powerful Difference-in-difference (co-authored with Yang Ning).

Title: Homeward Bound: How Migrants Seek Out Familiar Climates (with Marguerite Obolensky, Charles A Taylor)..

There will be two presentations:

1. Elaheh Fatemi Pour - Title: Natives' Demand for Immigrant Integration and Economic Contribution: Experimental Evidence from the UK

2. Anisha Garg - Title: Safe Travels: Transport Advancement and Women’s Safety in India

Title: The effects of government spending under trend inflation: theory and empirics

Title: The Geography of Structural Transformation and Women's Work: Evidence from India

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