Title of JMP - Intergovernmental Conflict and Censorship: Evidence from China’s Anti-corruption Campaign

Title of JMP - Wage and Employment Discrimination by Gender in Labor Market Equilibrium

Title of JMP - Better Alone? Evidence on the Costs of Intermunicipal Cooperation

Title of JMP - Price Discrimination in International Transportation: Evidence and Implications

Title of JMP - Sorting into Neighborhoods: The Role of Minimum Lot Sizes

Title of JMP - Irrigation vs education: The long run effects of opium cultivation in British India

Title of JMP - A BLP Demand Model of Product-Level Market Shares with Complementarity

Title of JMP - Secondary School Expansion through Televised Lessons: The Labor Market Returns of the Mexican Telesecundaria

Title of JMP - House Price Cycles, Wealth Inequality and Portfolio Reshuffling

The title of JMP: The Effects of Public Procurement on Medicine Supply

Title of JMP - Hassles and Environmental Health Screenings: Evidence from Lead Tests in Illinois

Title of JMP: What Drives Inequality in Parental Investment in Children?

Title to be advised.

Subhasish Dey with co-author Aditi Sanjay will be presenting the paper.

Title: Does a Legal Ban on Pre-Natal Sex Determination Improve Female Educational Attainment? Evidence from India

Abstract: The study attempts to empirically estimate the causal impact of a legal ban on pre-natal sex determination on female educational attainment in the Indian context. A differences-in-differences setup is employed to exploit the exogenous policy variation created by the implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1996. The paper establishes the economic channels linking the direct effect of the Act on the odds of occurrence of a female birth to its indirect effect on female educational attainment. The results of the analysis report that the Act has significantly increased the probability of a female birth by 2.56% and years of education completed by 2.15 years. Hence, this study contributes to the scarce literature on the long-term consequential impact of this legislation and to the relevance of demographic policies in shaping human capital formation.

The title of JMP: Reporting Peers' Wrongdoing: Experimental Evidence on the Effect of Financial Incentives on Morally Controversial Behavior

Model and Predictive Uncertainty: A Foundation for Smooth Ambiguity Preferences (joint with Tommaso Denti)
Abstract: Smooth ambiguity preferences (Klibanoff, Marinacci, and Mukerji, 2005) describe a decision maker who evaluates each act according to a twofold expectation defined by a utility function, an ambiguity index , and a belief over a set of probabilities. We revisit the logic behind this well known representation. We interpret the set of probabilities as a subjective statistical model, and posit that according to the decision maker it is point identified. Our main result is an axiomatic foundation for this representation within the standard Anscombe-Aumann framework. The result is based on a joint weakening of the Savage and the Anscombe-Aumann axioms. Finally, we extend the analysis to statistical models that are partially identified, in order to capture ambiguity about unknowables.

Title of paper: Low Rates and Bank Loan Supply: Theory and Evidence from Japan, co-authored with Yann Koby

Seminar organisers: Federico Rossi & Marta Santamaria

Organiser - Christopher Roth

Title of talk: On the properties of the synthetic control estimator

Title: Macroeconomic crises and cross-country achievement gap

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of economic crises during childhood on academic achievement across countries. Current literature focusses on the consequences of a specific economic crisis in one country on long-term educational attainment and labour market outcomes. This paper contributes to the study on economic shocks and human capital accumulation by extending to both global and country-specific crises and conducting a cross-country comparison. Second, in order to fully describe the different experiences of crises by students, it analyses the impact of economic crises from four dimensions based on the length, number and age of exposure rather than the mere occurrence of the events. I use 2003-2015 PISA datasets for students’ demographics, family and school characteristics. The Global Crises Data by Harvard Business School is used to generate four measures for economic crises. Preliminary results show that total years of exposure is the most significant element that explains the achievement gap and the effect of the age of exposure is insignificant. Students of both genders have lower reading, mathematics and science test scores for longer exposure to crises, but females’ scores are 1.2-2.5 points lower than males’. Native and immigrant students suffer lower scores from longer period of crises experienced. While natives have smaller drop in reading score, their performances in mathematics and science are worse than immigrants.

Title: Simple Preference Intensity Comparisons

Seminar organisers: Sinem Hidir & Costas Cavounidis

Organisers: Federico Rossi, Christine Braun & Marta Santamaria

Title of paper is Identification and Inference of Network Formation Games with Misclassified Links joint with Takuya Ura.

 Abstract: This paper considers a network formation model when links are potentially measured with error. We focus on a game-theoretical model of strategic network formation with incomplete information, in which the linking decisions depend on agents’ exogenous attributes and endogenous positions in the network. In the presence of link misclassification, we derive moment conditions that characterize the identified set of the preference parameters associated with homophily and network externalities. Based on the moment equality conditions, we provide an inference method that is asymptotically valid when a single network with a large number of agents is available. Finally, we apply our results to study trust networks in rural villages in southern India.

Organiser: Christopher Roth

Title to be advised

About the talk:

While the toolkit of economics can be applied to investigate a range of problems and issues that affect all our daily lives it is surprisingly common to hear students on economics degrees claim that it is difficult for them to engage with the discipline and, perhaps worse still, that they feel alienated by what and how we teach. However, staff too can often feel frustrated bemoaning, for example, a lack of student engagement. The result is that staff and students can struggle to develop a meaningful relationship: one where there is empathy. In the workshop we discuss what can be done to develop a more empathetic relationship focusing on the role that the GES competences of knowledge, application and communication can play to make the teaching of economics a more rewarding experience for both staff and students alike.

Dr Dean Garrat is a Senior Teaching Fellow. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Associate of the Economics Network. Dean is coauthor of 3 leading undergraduate economics textbooks led and inspired by John Sloman: Economics, Essentials of Economics, and Economics for Business. He has also received various recognitions for his teaching, such as Outstanding Teaching Prize by the Economics Network in 2006, and Nottingham Business School Teacher of the Year in 2013. Dean is also academic assessor for the Government Economic Service (GES), where he helps to assess potential recruits to the GES with particular responsibility for assessing candidates' ability to articulate their understanding of economics, including non-technical terms.

Dr Robert Riegler is a Teaching Fellow at Aston Business School. Robert is an applied economist, with research in areas of foreign direct investment, trade and economics education. He promotes the usage of technology for teaching and learning, and is an Associate of the Economics Network.

Seminar organiser: Stefania Paredes Fuentes (Christian Soeggard will host this seminar)