Title: Diversity and Discrimination in the Classroom, joint with Dan Anderberg, Christina Felfe, Helmut Rainer and Thomas Siedler.

Abstract: What makes diversity unifying in some settings but divisive in others? We examine how the mixing of ethnic groups in German schools affects intergroup cooperation and trust. We leverage the quasi-random assignment of students to classrooms within schools to obtain variation in the type of diversity that prevails in a peer group. We combine this with a large-scale, incentivized lab-in-field-experiment based on the investment game, allowing us to assess the in-group bias of native German students in their interactions with fellow natives (in-group) versus immigrants (out-group). We find in-group bias peaks in culturally polarized classrooms, where the native and immigrant groups are both large, but have different religious or language backgrounds. In contrast, in classrooms characterized by non-cultural polarization, fractionalization, or a native supermajority, there are significantly lower levels of own-group favoritism. We find empirical evidence that culturally polarized classrooms foster negative stereotypes about immigrants' trustworthiness and amplify taste-based discrimination, both of which are costly and lead to lower payouts. In contrast, accurate statistical discrimination is ruled out by design in our experiment. Consistent with a simple model, discrimination in culturally polarized classrooms is associated with lower levels of intergroup friendship and larger identity gaps. Taken together, these findings suggest that extra efforts are needed to counteract low levels of inclusivity and trust in culturally polarized environments.

Title: Marriage and the Intergenerational Mobility of Women: Evidence from Marriage Certificates 1850-1920 

Abstract: Due to data limitations, long-run changes in women’s economic mobility are not well understood. Using a set of marriage certificates from Massachusetts over the period of 1850-1920, we link women and men to their childhood and adult census records to obtain a measure of occupational standing across two generations. Intergenerational mobility was higher for women than for men in the earliest 1850-70 cohort. Men’s mobility increases by the 1880-1900 cohort, whereas women’s does not, leading to a convergence. During a period with low married women’s labor force participation, the choice of a partner was crucial for women’s economic status. We find evidence of strong and increasing assortative matching prior to 1880, followed by declines to the 1900-20 cohort. Absent the increase in marital sorting, married women would have experienced the same increases in intergenerational mobility as did men in the sample. Finally, both men and women in the youngest cohort experience an increase in mobility and decreases in marital sorting, consistent with the widespread expansion of educational attainment during the “High School Movement."

Title:  Regulation by Reputation? Intermediaries, Labor Abuses, and International Migration (with Niharika Singh, University of Notre Dame)

Title : Immersive learning: 4-week block teaching.

Speaker: Rebecca Wilde (WMG)

Abstract:

Immersive learning has recently gained attention within the higher education sector. Current publications reflect heavily around the benefits gained from block teaching. A significant caveat within the existing body of literature is around how 4-week block teaching and immersive learning is operationalised in terms of curriculum design; and how this is cascaded to a course and module level. The focus of the session will be upon WMG’s experience of moving from a one-week block to a four-week block teaching model.

Title to be advised.

Title: Moving to Opportunity, Together

Title: Statistical Discrimination and the Distribution of Wages

Here is the MS Teams link for this CRETA seminar 

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3a44e76bae944e45478914cb98497b7098%40thread.tacv2/1715100204271?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2209bacfbd-47ef-4465-9265-3546f2eaf6bc%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22aac8c148-e99c-4793-9a9e-9a8b8d83de0e%22%7d

Title: National Road Upgrading and Structural Transformation: Evidence from Ugandan Households (with Ian Herzog and Siyuan Liu)
Abstract: Structural transformation, typically characterized by labor transitioning from agriculture to a diverse industrial economy, has been slow in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the region is urbanizing, a significant portion of the urban population continues to depend on agriculture. We argue that this is because smaller cities are isolated from national markets and trade. We test this claim using granular individual panel data and Uganda's doubling of paved roads, which improved remote areas' market access. We find that market access causes workers to quit family farms and take specialized paid work. Effects concentrate in peripheral areas, households with a comparative advantage in off-farm work and reflect off-farm opportunities rather than reduced demand for farm output. In addition, market access causes remote households to simplify farming techniques and scale back farming. Findings are consistent with reliable transport allowing trade with urban areas, creating opportunities to specialize according to individual comparative advantage.

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 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: 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: 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: 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.

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.

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 my student Yang Ning).

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