Title: Embracing Artificial Intelligence in Assessment: designing in or designing out?

Title to be advised

Title: Cost Based Nonlinear Pricing with Tibor Heumann, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, tibor.heumann@uc.cl.

Stephen Morris, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, semorris@mit.edu

Abstract: How should a monopolist offer quantity or quality differentiated products if they have no information about the distribution of demand and must price based on cost conditions alone? Specifically, we consider a monopolist who cares about the "profit guarantee" of a pricing rule, that is, the minimum ratio value of expected profits to expected surplus for any distribution of demand.

We show that the profit guarantee is maximized by setting the price markup over marginal cost equal to (describe) function of elasticity. We provide profit guarantees (and associated mechanisms) that the seller can achieve across all possible distributions of willingness to pay of the buyers. With a constant elasticity cost function, constant markup pricing provides the optimal revenue guarantee across all possible distributions of willingness to pay and the lower bound is attained under a Pareto distribution. We characterize how profits and consumer surplus vary with the distribution of values and show that Pareto distributions are extremal. We also provide a revenue guarantee for general cost functions. We establish equivalent results for optimal procurement policies that support maximal surplus guarantees for the buyer given all possible cost distributions of the sellers.

Title: Targeting Social Assistance with Machine Learning

Abstract: Targeting is a central challenge in the design of anti-poverty programs: given available data, how does one identify the individuals and households with the greatest need? Here we show that machine learning, applied to non-traditional data from satellites and mobile phones, can improve the targeting of anti-poverty programs. Our analysis is based on data from three field-based projects -- in Togo, Afghanistan, and Kenya -- that illustrate the promise, as well as some of the potential challenges, of this new approach to targeting. Collectively, the results highlight the potential for new data sources to improve humanitarian response efforts, particularly in crisis settings when traditional data are missing or out of date.

Title: Who Controls the Agenda Controls the Polity.

Title: Electoral Turnovers (with Benjamin Marx, Vincent Rollet)

Abstract: In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change. Electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study the universe of presidential and parliamentary elections held since 1945. We document the prevalence of turnovers over time and estimate their effects on economic performance, trade, human development, conflict, and democracy. Using a close-elections regression dis-continuity design (RDD) across countries, we show that turnovers improve country performance. These effects are not driven by differences in the characteristics of challengers, or by the fact that challengers systematically increase the level of government intervention in the economy. Electing new leaders leads to more policy change, it improves governance, and it reduces perceived corruption, consistent with the expectation that recently elected leaders exert more effort due to stronger reputation concerns.

“The Effects of Business School Education on Manager Career Outcomes”

Title: State of the Art: Economic development through the lens of paintings (with Gorin and Heblich)

Title: Climate change and migration: the case of Africa.

Abstract:

This paper estimates the impacts of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) on migration and other economic outcomes. I develop a quantitative spatial model that captures the role of trade networks, migration barriers, and agricultural yields on the geography of the economy. I combine the model with forecasts of future crop yields to find that climate change, by the end of the century, reduces SSA real GDP per capita by 1.8 percent and displaces 4 million individuals. Migration barriers in SSA are very stringent: if absent, climate-induced migration exceeds 100 million individuals. Still, migration and trade are powerful adaptation mechanisms. Reducing migration barriers to the European Union (EU) standards eliminates the aggregate economic losses of climate change in SSA, but at the cost of more climate migration and higher regional inequality. Also reducing trade frictions to the EU levels attenuates this cost and makes SSA better off on aggregate and distributional terms.

Title: Historical Self-Governance and Norms of Cooperation

Abstract: Does self-governance, a hallmark of democratic societies, foster or erode norms of generalized cooperation? Does this effect persist, and if so, why? I investigate these questions using a natural experiment in Switzerland. In the middle-ages, the absence of an heir resulted in the extinction of a prominent noble dynasty. As a result, some Swiss municipalities became self-governing, whereas the others remained under feudalism for another 600 years. Evidence from a behavioral experiment, World Values Survey, and Swiss Household Panel consistently shows that individuals from historically self-governing municipalities exhibit stronger norms of cooperation today. Referenda data on voter-turnout, women's suffrage, and minority citizenship, allow me to trace these effects on individually costly and socially beneficial actions for over 150 years. Furthermore, norms of cooperation map into prosocial behaviors like charitable giving and environmental protection. Uniquely, Switzerland tracks every family's place of origin in registration data, which I use to demonstrate persistence from cultural transmission in a context of historically low migration.

Title: Accept this Paper" (with Andrea WilsonLink opens in a new window)

Title: Sectoral Development Multipliers, joint work with Francisco Buera (Washington University at St Louis).

Abstract: We study how technology adoption complementarities propagate through an input-output network of sector production. We devise a procedure to estimate both non-parametrically and structurally the incidence of distortions and the relevance of technology adoption across and within sectors. We then compute the response of aggregate output to sector revenue and adoption subsidies aimed to spur development through sector reallocation of production and technology adoption. Large multipliers occur for sectors that are central in both the production and adoption networks. Accounting for adoption greatly magnifies the relative importance of central sectors.

TItle: Frontier History and Gender Norms in the United StatesLink opens in a new window

The title of the talk is: How Biased are Observational Methods in Practice? Accumulating Evidence Using Randomised Controlled Trials with Imperfect Compliance, joint with David Rhys Bernard, Gharad Bryan, Sylvain Chabé-Ferret, Jon de Quidt and Roland Rathelot.

The abstract: Consider a policy maker choosing between programs of unknown impact. She can inform her decision using observational methods, or by running a randomised controlled trial (RCT). The proponents of RCTs would argue that observational approaches suffer from bias of an unknown size and direction, and so are uninformative. Our study treats this as an empirical claim that can be studied. By doing so we hope to increase the value of observational data and studies, as well as better inform the choice to undertake RCTs. We propose a large-scale, standardised, hands-off approach to assessing the performance of observational methods. First, we collect and categorise data from a large number of RCTs in the past 20 years. Second, we implement new methods to understand the size and direction of expected bias in observational studies, and how bias depends on measurable characteristics of programmes and settings. We find that the difference between observational estimators and the experimental benchmark is on average zero, but the resulting observational bias distribution has high variance.

Title: Workhorses of Opportunity: Regional Universities Increase Local Social Mobility (with Greg Howard).

Abstract: Regional public universities educate approximately 70 percent of college students at
four-year public universities and an even larger share of students from disadvantaged
backgrounds. They aim to provide opportunity for education and social mobility, in
part by locating near potential students. In this paper, we use the historical assignment
of normal schools and insane asylums (normal schools grew into regional universities
while asylums remain small) and data from Opportunity Insights to identify the effects

of regional universities on the social mobility of nearby children. Children in counties given a normal school get more education and have better economic and social

outcomes, especially lower-income children. For several key outcomes, we show this

effect is a causal effect on children, and not only selection on which children live near
universities.

Title is: The Topology of Quantum Theory and Social Choice.

Please register to attend here by Monday 22nd of May.
The event will also be live-streamed on the CTaLE YouTube Channel.

Panel:
Silvia dal Bianco (Chair, UCL and CTaLE)
Laura Harvey (University of East Anglia)
Amy Eremionkhale (Georgia State University)

Organiser: Stefania Paredes Fuentes

Title: Attitude towards success and failure

Title: State Capacity as an Organizational Problem. Evidence from the Growth of the U.S. State Over 100 Years (with Nicola Mastrorocco)

Title: Quota Mechanisms: Limitations and Robustness (with Deniz Kattwinkel).

Abstract: Quota mechanisms are commonly used within organizations to elicit private information when agents face multiple decisions and monetary transfers are infeasible. As the number of decisions grows large, quotas asymptotically implement the same set of social choice rules as do monetary transfers. We analyze the robustness of quota mechanisms to misspecified beliefs. To set the correct quota, the designer must have precise knowledge of the environment. We show that only trivial social choice rules can be implemented by quota mechanisms in a prior-independent way. Next, we bound the error that results when the quota does not match the true type distribution. Finally, we show that in a multi-agent setting, quotas are robust to misspecification of the agents' beliefs about each other. Crucially, the quota makes the distribution of reports common knowledge.

Title: “Countervailing power of firms in international trade”. It is available here: CountervailingPower_2023.pdf (annaignatenko.com) 

Abstract - This paper disentangles the effects of seller’s and buyer’s market power in firm-to-firm trade. I incorporate oligopoly, oligopsony, and bilateral bargaining in a trade model, in which buyers and sellers differ in productivity, bargaining ability, and preferences. These market structures predict differential patterns of price variation across buyers. Testing these predictions, I find, in most markets, price variation is consistent with oligopolistic price discrimination. More productive buyers pay lower mark-ups because of their better outside options, rather than scale economies, oligopsony power, or bargaining abilities. Consequently, more productive buyers have higher gains from trade and cost shocks’ pass-through into prices.

Title: Bidding for Talent: A Test of Conduct on a High-Wage Labor Market

Abstract: We propose a novel procedure for adjudicating between models of firm wage-setting conduct. Using data on workers' choice sets and decisions over real jobs from a U.S. job search platform, we first estimate workers' rankings over firms' non-wage amenities. We document three key findings: 1) On average, workers are willing to accept 12.3% lower salaries for a 1-S.D. improvement in amenities. 2) Between-worker preference dispersion is equally large, indicating that preferences are not well-described by a single ranking. 3) Augmenting differentials prevail. Following the modern IO literature, we then use those estimates to formulate a test of conduct based on exclusion restrictions. Oligopsonistic models incorporating strategic interactions between firms and tailoring of wage offers to workers' outside options are rejected in favor of simpler monopsonistic models featuring near-uniform markdowns. Misspecification has meaningful consequences: while our preferred model predicts average markdowns of 18%, others predict average markdowns of 26% (about 50% larger).

Title: Equilibrium Selection in Repeated Games with Patient Players

Title: After Amazing Grace: Britain's Campaign to End the Slave Trade

Title: When Are Estimates Independent of Measurement Units?

Abstract: Data transformations often facilitate regression analysis, yet many commonly used transformations make hypothesis testing misleading because the results depend on the measurement units of the data. This paper aims to address this issue by characterizing the set of transformations where measurement units do not affect conclusions in linear regressions. The equivalence theorem establishes that desirable properties—scale-equivariant coefficient estimates, scale-invariant t-statistics, and scale-invariant semi-elasticities—arise if and only if the transformation is a logarithmic or a power function. Power transformations thus offer a natural extension of logarithmic transformations that both preserves the essential feature of obtaining unit-independent estimates for unitless quantities of interest and can handle zero or negative values. On the other hand, popular alternatives that approximate the shape of the logarithmic function at large values, such as adding a small positive constant before applying a logarithmic transformation or the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation, result in similar inferences as in an untransformed linear regression when expressing outcomes in large measurement units and imply arbitrarily large effect sizes or arbitrarily large confidence intervals when expressing outcomes in small measurement units. We demonstrate using data from a randomized experiment that such transformations reverse the sign or significance of treatment effect estimates for up to 15 out of 49 outcomes variables when measurement units are changed to natural alternatives (e.g., from US dollars to local currency).