Title to be advised.

Title : Parents’ Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-Kindergarten.

Title: The use of social networks to improve engagement and implement a research-led curriculum.

Abstract: Improving the integration between research and teaching in higher education is an interesting yet complex issue that has been studied in several research papers. However, the relationship between research quality and students’ satisfaction, is consistently negative for economics over time. Past research suggests that the integration of research in higher education teaching has positive results in both students’ motivation and final grades in different areas, but in practice, this is a complex issue. We introduce an Instagram account as a complementary teaching resource in 4 different modules across 2 universities.

The purpose of the account it to (1) introduce research-led teaching activities; (2) increase engagement and (3) relate teaching to students’ real lives. We find that engagement with the content persists even after the teaching term finishes, furthermore we observe a positive relationship between the students’ final grades and interaction with the account.

Title: Strategic Disclosure in Research Races (joint with Kalyan Chatterjee and Kaustav Das)

Title: Religion, Education, and the State (joint with Samuel Bazzi, Masyhur Hilmy).

Lily Shevchenko will discuss "Genome-wide association studies" by Uffelman et al (2021), published in Nature Reviews Methods Primers (https://www.nature.com/articles/s43586-021-00056-9) (supervisor: Mirko Draka)

Title to be advised.

Title to be advised.

Title: The Value of Ratings: Evidence from their Introduction in Securities Markets (Asaf Bernstein, Carola Frydman & Eric Hilt)

 Abstract: We study the effects of the first-ever ratings for corporate securities. In 1909, John Moody published a book that partitioned the majority of listed railroad bonds into letter-graded ratings based on his assessments of their credit risk. These ratings had no regulatory implications and were largely explainable using publicly available information. Despite this, we find that lower than market-implied ratings caused a rise in secondary market bond yields. Using an instrumental-variables design, we show that bonds that were rated experienced a substantial decline in their bid-ask spreads, which is consistent with reduced information asymmetries and improved liquidity. Our findings suggest that ratings can improve information transmission, even in settings with the highest monetary stakes, and highlight their potential value for the functioning of financial markets.

Title: Higher Order Moments for Differential Measurement Error, with Application to Tobin's q and Corporate Investment (co-authored with Daniel Kim) 

Here’s a link to the paper .

Title: Recruitment Efforts and the Labor Market Consequences of College Expansion.

Title: Financialization & Credit-Debt Reproduction Mechanism

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: Political Trenches: War, Partisanship, and Polarization (with Pauline Grosjean, Michael Vlassopoulos and Yves Zenou)

Abstract: We show how local segregation and exposure to partisans affect political behavior and polarization, and contribute to critical ideological realignment. We exploit large-scale, exogenous and high-stakes peer assignment due to universal conscription of soldiers assigned from each of 34,947 French municipalities to infantry regiments during WWI. Soldiers from poor, rural municipalities, where the redistributive message of socialism had yet to penetrate, vote more for the left after the war when exposed to left-wing partisans within their regiment, even while neighboring municipalities assigned to right-wing partisans become inoculated against the left. We provide evidence that these differences reflect the combination of persuasive information and material incentives rather than pure conformity. These differences further lead to the emergence of sharp and enduring post-war discontinuities across regimental boundaries that are reflected, not only in divergent voting patterns, but also in violent civil conflicts between Collaborators and the Resistance during WWII.

Title: Deep Learning to play games.

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.

Title to be advised.

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 to be advised.

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.