Panel:

• Naomi Kellman (Target Oxbridge)
• Laura van der Erve (IFS)
• Marcos Vera Hernández (UCL)

Chair: Stefania Paredes Fuentes (Warwick)

Organised by Stefania Paredes Fuentes and CTaLE (UCL)

Register here to attend on Zoom. The session will be live-streamed on YouTube (CTaLE channel)

Jaden Chen (Cornell University), Title TBA

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85257798189?pwd=emw0WE4rb2hSV2JmcVNpcGd1VFhBUT09
Meeting ID: 852 5779 8189
Passcode: SET2022

Title of paper: A Theory of Choice Bracketing Under Risk

Personal website

Title of paper:

Ravi Jagadeesan (Stanford University), Title TBA

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85257798189?pwd=emw0WE4rb2hSV2JmcVNpcGd1VFhBUT09
Meeting ID: 852 5779 8189
Passcode: SET2022

Title of paper: Understanding and Improving Policymakers' Sensitivity to Program Impact

Personal website

Title of paper: The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets

Personal website

Title: The relationship between module Moodle engagement and module results.

Speaker: Alessandro Pavan Link opens in a new window(Northwestern University), “Expectation Conformity in Strategic Cognition”Link opens in a new window (slidesLink opens in a new window) (with Jean Tirole)

Zoom information:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89151696625?pwd=RjFFeitHT1pVemV5ckJmQkdENlRaZz09Link opens in a new window

Meeting ID: 891 5169 6625
Passcode: SET2022

Isabela will be visiting the department for this Seminar - Dennis Novy will be hosting this visit.

Title to be advised.

Time to be advised.

Speaker: Jean-Jacques HeringsLink opens in a new window (Maastricht University), Expectational Equilibria in Many-to-one Matching Models with Contracts - A Reformulation of Competitive EquilibriumLink opens in a new window
Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89151696625?pwd=RjFFeitHT1pVemV5ckJmQkdENlRaZz09Link opens in a new window
Meeting ID: 891 5169 6625 Passcode: SET2022

Zero-hours Contracts in a Frictional Labor Market

J. J. Dolado, E. Lalé and H. Turon

Abstract

We propose a model to evaluate the U.K.’s zero-hours contract (ZHC) – a contract that exempts employers from the requirement to provide any minimum working hours, and allows workers to decline any workload. We find quantitatively mixed welfare effects of ZHCs. On one hand they unlock job creation among firms that face highly volatile business conditions and increase labor force participation of individuals who prefer flexible work schedules. On the other hand, the use of ZHCs by less volatile firms, where jobs are otherwise viable under regular contracts, reduces welfare and likely explains negative employee reactions to this contract.

Title of paper: The Death and Life of Great British Cities.

Organisers: Bishnupriya Gupta and Claudia Rei

This seminar is joint with Bristol University and Warwick will be hosting today's event.

Title: The Use of Robotic Players in Online Games

Abstract: Short in-class games have become an increasingly common way to teach a range of key concepts and theories in economics. These allow students to gain first-hand experience of incentives and the impact on decision making. This makes it easier for tutors to convey underlying economic theory and the implications of the resulting predictions. However, moving to an online environment presents a number of challenges for using this method of interactive teaching. In particular, the widespread adoption of asynchronous activities provides students with greater flexibility over the timing of their studies but also means that students cannot play interactive games against one another.

An alternative is to run games in which students play against robotic players that make decisions according to some pre-programmed rules. This greatly increase the possibility of using online games asynchronously. However, as it stands very little is known about how this affects student learning. The aim of this research was to investigate how student perceptions and behaviour change when robotic players are used. In a series of different treatments, we varied whether students knowingly or unknowingly played an online Prisoner’s Dilemma game against other students or robotic players. We then tested how this affected the students’ decisions in each round of the game and used pre and post questionnaires to measure their perceptions of the game.

First, we find that perceptions of the game were similar across all treatments. Students typically found the game to be fun to play, helped them to understand economic theories and represented real-world situations. In addition, we asked the students about their perceptions of greed both before and immediately after playing the game. We find that a significant change occurred as a result of playing the game only for students that played against a robot and knew that they were doing so. These students became less averse to greed after the game. This suggests that the in-game experience and perceptions of this may influence student learning outcomes from playing in-class games.

Then, to investigate further, we examined the in-game decision making for each of the treatments across each round of the game. We find that cooperation in a given round of the game was more likely for female students, those that had not studied economics before and students doing a pure economics degree. Furthermore, the likelihood of cooperation was unaffected if students played against a robot but didn’t know that this was the case. However, cooperation was significantly less likely when students knew that they were playing against a robot. We then show that this is in-part driven by students in this treatment being more willing to deviate in the next round having established cooperation with their robot opponent in the previous round.

Overall, our findings indicate that knowingly playing in-class games against robotic players can influence in-game decision making and this in turn can influence learning outcomes from playing the game. This suggests care needs to be taken in using robotic players in online games.

This is a hybrid seminar via MS Teams - Click here to join the meetingLink opens in a new window

Title: Caution and Reference Effects (with Simone Cerreia-Vioglio and David Dillenberger)

Title: Overkill, extinction and the Neolithic Revolution

Via Zoom Link: https://monash.zoom.us/j/82838864348?pwd=OFN0RzVrK3RJRjFrdDhSbXd1ZDIzQT09

Title:

Title: New Developments in Causal Inference with Panel Data.

This is part of 2^nd year MRes module and could be of interest to the research group as Yiqing's presentation is partly based on his new research.

The meeting is via zoom  https://turing-uk.zoom.us/j/94621198343?pwd=L3djU01uSW8xVnFsZml1VitXS0tmUT09Link opens in a new window

If you would like to meet with Yiqing, please let Mingli know.

Search Costs, Intermediation, and Trade: Experimental Evidence from Ugandan Agricultural Markets

with Lauren Bergquist and Meredith Startz.

Abstract:

Search costs may be a barrier to market integration in developing countries, harming both producers and consumers. We present evidence from the large-scale experimental rollout of a mobile phone-based marketplace intended to reduce search costs for agricultural commodities in Uganda. We find that market integration improves substantially: trade increases and excess price dispersion falls by 20% between treated markets. This reflects price convergence across relative surplus and deficit markets, with no change on average. Interpreting the experimental variation through the lens of a model with fixed costs of search, we estimate that the marketplace caused a 5% reduction in total trade costs between treated markets. Contrary to the stated goals of the marketplace, but consistent with the existence of economies of scale in search or other trade costs, almost all activity on the platform is among larger traders, with very little use by smallholder farmers. Nevertheless, the benefits of improved arbitrage by traders appears to pass through to farmers in the form of higher revenues in surplus markets, as trader entry increases and measured trader profits decrease in response to falling search costs.

Title to be advised.

Title Efficient Risk Sharing and Separation join with Arpad Abraham

Speaker: Darshak Patel (University of Kentucky)

Chair: Parama Chaudhury (UCL)

This is a hybrid event:
Venue: UCL, Room 780, Bedford Way, UCL Institute of Education (London)
To attend online on Zoom register here
The event will be live-streamed on YouTube.

Organiser: Stefania Paredes Fuentes

Title: Women and Asylums

Organisers: Bishnupriya Gupta and Claudia Rei

Title: Indirect Effects of Access to Finance, joint with Jing Cai