Title - Unconventional Monetary Policy in the Face of External Stress

Title: Slavery and the British Industrial Revolution

Title: Ethnicity, prior schooling and graduate outcomes in the UK.

Organised by Subhasish Dey

Title to be advised.

Title to be advised.

Title: Going for Broke: Underwriter Reputaion and the Performance of Mortgage-Backed Securities (with Abe de Jong and Tim Kooijmans)

Title to be advised

Title: Asset-based microfinance for microenterprises: Evidence from Pakistan

http://simonrquinn.com/PaperHigherPurchase.pdf 

Abstract: We run a field experiment offering graduated microcredit clients the opportunity to finance a business asset worth four times their usual borrowing limit. We implement this using a hire-purchase contract; our control group is offered a zero-interest loan at the usual borrowing limit. We find large, significant and persistent effects: treated microenterprise owners run larger businesses with higher profits; consequently, household consumption increases, particularly on food and children’s education. A dynamic structural model with non-convex capital adjustment costs rationalises our results and allows counterfactual analysis; this highlights the potential for welfare improvements through large capital injections that are financially sustainable..

Title: Auctions with Frictions (joint with Asher Wolinsky)

Title: Unequal Global Convergence

Title: The Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Productivity Between 1941 and 1948

Title: Identification of Intertemporal Preferences From Choice Set Variation

Abstract: The paper provides conditions to identify the discount factor(s) and utility function in an infinite-horizon dynamic discrete choice model variation in choice sets over time. We show that if current choices or states are informative about the choice set the agent will face in the future, then the discount factor and utility are identified without any strong normalization. These identification results hold in both the exponential discounting model and, if the choice set provides a form of pre-commitment, the quasi-hyperbolic discounting model. Identifying the discount factor and utility allows us to identify the counterfactual policies which often are the objects of interest in dynamic discrete-choice analysis, but which are not generally identified. We conduct a data analyses to validate our approach.

Title: Urban-biased structural change (with Natalie Chen, Carlo Perroni and Horng Wong)

 Abstract: Over the past few decades, high-income countries have experienced a structural shift of economic activity from manufacturing towards services. Using rich administrative micro data from France, we document three stylized facts about structural change: (i) structural change has been urban-biased -- areas with higher population density have seen a faster shift into services than less densely populated locations; (ii) the urban bias is entirely driven by exporters; (iii) large manufacturing exporters locate in small cities, while large services exporters locate in large cities. Motivated by these findings, we build and estimate an open economy model of cities and exporters to quantify the role of agglomeration forces, falling trade costs, and sectoral productivity growth in shaping urban-biased structural change. We find that changing agglomeration benefits and falling international trade costs led manufacturing exporters to grow in small cities and services exporters in large cities, generating urban-biased structural change. Sorting by exporters and non-exporters into different locations plays a key role in understanding structural change -- if exporters and non-exporters had made the same location choices, there would be no urban bias in structural change.

Title - to be advised

Title: The Rise of China and the Global Production of Scientific Knowledge (with Tianrui Mu)

Title: Incentives and Efficiency in Constrained Allocation Mechanisms (joint with Joseph Root (Chicago)).

Please find the program and the registration form on our websiteLink opens in a new window.

Two 30 minutes talks:

Presentation 1 (Bruno Souza): Job amenities, compensating differentials, and wage rigidity: evidence from Brazil.

Presentation 2 (Cora Neumann): Property Rights and Fertility: Evidence from 19th and 20th Century United States.

Title to be advised.

Organised by Subhasish Dey

The Political Economic Determinants of Nuclear Power: Evidence from Chernobyl (by Alexey Makarin, Nancy Qian, Shaoda Wang)

This paper investigates the political-economic determinants of nuclear energy investment using the Chernobyl accident as a natural experiment. We document several facts. First, the accident sharply reduced worldwide growth in the number of operating nuclear reactors. Second, the reduction is driven by increased construction delays in democracies, leading to prolonged use of older and less safe plants. Third, the nuclear growth slowdown in democracies is more pronounced when large fossil fuel reserves are present. Fourth, the opening of a new nuclear power plant reduces air pollution in nearby cities. Finally, micro-level evidence from the UK Parliament and US Congress provides strong indication that political capture by energy groups played a role in reducing nuclear energy investment in democracies, which may have hindered efforts to improve nuclear safety and moderate climate change.

Title to be advised.

Title: Empirical Welfare Maximization with Constraints

The paper link is https://lsun20.github.io/EWM_constraints.pdf

Title: What is stopping you? The reasons behind falling employment-employment transitions in the UK 

Title to be advised.