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

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

Title: Pedagogy and challenges for online teaching

Abstract:

The pandemic has caused an accelerated change in higher education in the UK and across the world, with online learning becoming an attractive proposition for many. But while there are a number of institutions with decades of experience in distance learning, for the majority of ‘traditional’ face-to-face universities the intake of distance learning has been rushed, to transform their offering into a blended format. However, it is not the same to teach a student who opted voluntarily to study through distance learning courses, that to teach someone who, as a member of a face-to-face institution, expects different kinds of interaction with peers and staff, access to resources, and immerse themselves in full university life. This presentation will provide some insights on my experience as both student and teacher on distance learning settings, and as digital capabilities expert, highlighting the different approaches required to keep student engagement and successful outcomes, including examples of innovative approaches to teaching and assessment.

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

Title: The impact of climate transition risks on financial stability: A systemic risk approach

Zoom Link: https://monash.zoom.us/j/86161096916?pwd=eUtLZEl3dUJIakR0WGNyUVNkVVlSUT09

Title to be advised.

Title of paper: Policies for Early Childhood Skills Formation: Accounting for Parental Choices and Noncognitive Skills

Title to be advised.

Title to be advised.

Title - "Female Labor Force Participation and Intergenerational Mobility"

This paper is joint work with Jorgen Modalsli, Claudia Olivetti, and Daniele Paserman.

This seminar is online.

Andrew will be presenting Difference-in-Differences with a Continuous Treatment (with Brantly Callaway and Pedro Sant'Anna) .

If you would like to meet with him, please sign up here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19yAXbaJWko_UNrgwuktv3INE3rSueMLWviHEcgHYicM/edit?usp=drivesdk

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

Title: Targeting Precision Medicine: Evidence from Prenatal Screening , joint with Peter Conner, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Heidi Williams.

Seminar organisers: Manuel Bagues & Ludovica Gazze

Panel:

Eileen Tipoe (QMUL, The CORE Project)
Pedro Rey Biel (ESADE)
James Tierney (Tierney Education)

Chair: Cloda Jenkins (Imperial College London)

This is an online event. Register here to attend live on Zoom.
The event will be live-streamed on YouTube.

Organiser: Stefania Paredes Fuentes

Francesco Capozza (Erasmus) - "Mental health literacy, beliefs and demand for mental health support among university students" (joint with Michelle Acampora, Vahid Moghani)

Zoom Link: https://monash.zoom.us/j/82044505346?pwd=SER4emJlYVk5Tmx1Mkd4elpjdDlLUT09

Simulation-based estimation with many auxiliary statistics applied to long-run dynamic analysis
by Bertille Antoine and Wenqian Sun (Simon Fraser Univ.)

Abstract:

The existing asymptotic theory for estimators obtained by simulated minimum distance does not cover situations in which the number of components of the auxiliary statistics (or number of matched moments) is large - typically larger than the sample size. We establish the consistency of the simulated minimum distance estimator in this situation and derive its asymptotic distribution. Our estimator is easy to implement and allows us to exploit all the informational content of a large number of auxiliary statistics without having to, (i) know these functions explicitly, or (ii) choose a priori which functions are the most informative. This allows us to exploit, among other things, long-run information. We illustrate the implementation of the proposed method through Monte-Carlo simulation experiments based on small- and medium-scale New Keynesian models. These examples illustrate how to exploit information from matching a large number of impulse responses including at long-run horizons.

(Time to be confirmed)

Title: Diversity and Legitimacy – Evidence from Clinical Trials

With Harsh Gupta Maya Durvasula and Heidi Williams (Stanford)

Title to be advised.

Leonardo Melosi (a macroeconomist from Chicago Fed, https://sites.google.com/site/lemelosi/) .

CAGE-Crafts Lecture 2022

Title: Career and Family: Then and Now

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

Title to be advised.

Title: What are the likely macroeconomic effects of the EU Recovery Plan?

This is an opportunity for our PhD students to practice job talks.

Raghav will present paper: Price Changes And Welfare Analysis: Measurement Under Individual Heterogeneity

Fields: Microeconomic Theory, Labor Theory, Public Finance Theory

Supervisors: Herakles Polemarchakis, Costas Cavounidis, Robert Akerlof

Title: The Intertemporal Effects of Seeing Prices: Evidence from Garbled Offers in Malawi (with Maite Deambrosi and Jiajing Feng)

ABSTRACT: Preventive health care products are often sold at heavily discounted prices in developing countries. Does that hurt future demand for these products, by inducing subjects to anchor on low prices? Previous research on discounts for anti-malaria bed nets (Dupas, Ecma 2014) documents that experience and learning effects brought about by discounts dominate anchoring effects (if any). Bed nets are, however, an experience good sold at low frequency. Many essential preventive health care products – such as chlorine – are credence goods and have to be purchased at much higher frequency. Moreover, if discounts were perceived as a bargain by study participants, higher future demand might not generalize outside of the experiment. In a field experiment in Malawi, we investigate whether discounts generate anchoring and transaction utility effects across different types of preventive health care products. We do so by cross-randomizing actual discounts and implicit deals. Concretely, we decompose transaction prices into a sticker price and a randomly assigned delivery fee – revealed regardless of the purchasing decision. We find that demand decreases with discounts but increases with the size of the implicit deal. Such intertemporal effects of seeing prices are consistent with anchoring and transaction utility effects. Anchoring decays with time, but lasts up to 2 months after seeing prices. Using impulse-response functions, we simulate counterfactual demand under different pricing policies, showing that universal discounts are dominated by targeted (garbled) offers to those most responsive to each instrument.