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.