Manuela Puente Beccar (Bocconi) will be presenting: Health preferences and sorting in the city

Zoom Link: https://monash.zoom.us/j/81415393123?pwd=dlVCOHpON3ZrSnRCR1VEUHZmeGR2UT09Link opens in a new window

Title to be advised

Marta Santamaria will be hosting this visit.

Title: GMM is Inadmissible Under Weak Identification

If you would like to meet with Isaiah, please sign up here 

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

Shaoting will present his work in an informal seminar in room 2.77. The title of the paper is “Voting and Trading: The Shareholder’s Dilemma,” joint with Adam Meirowitz (University of Utah and Yale University). Shaoting will be visiting us until Friday. If you wish to talk to him, please feel free to email him.

Title: Dynamic Value Shading, joint with Maryam Saeedi

Title: The Legal Origins of Financial Development: Evidence from the Shanghai Concessions

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

This AYEW Workshop on Firms will be a 1.5 hour event, with three 30-minute presentations.

Here are the details:

1. Daniel Morrison (Princeton): “Disentangling the motivations for campaign contributions: Corruption or policy alignment”
2. Xiangyu Shi (Yale): “Hometown favoritism and intercity investment networks in China”
3. Jian Xie (Warwick): “The cultural origins of family firms” (joint with Song Yuan)

Title: A Cooperative Theory of Market Segmentation by Consumers

Abstract: We consider a market that may be segmented and is served by a single seller. The surplus of each consumer in a segment depends on the price that the seller optimally charges, and this optimal price depends on the set of consumers in that segment. This gives rise to a novel cooperative game between consumers that determines market segmentation. We study several solution concepts. The most demanding solution concept, the core, requires that there is no objection to the segmentation by a coalition of consumers who benefit by forming a new segment. We show that the core is empty except for trivial cases. We then introduce a new solution concept, stability. A segmentation is stable if for each possible objection by a coalition, there is a counter-objection by a coalition in the original segmentation. We characterize stable segmentations as ones that are efficient and ``saturated,'' which means that the segments are maximal in some sense. We use this characterization to constructively show that stable segmentations exist. Even though stable segmentations are efficient, they need not maximize average consumer surplus, and segmentations that maximize average consumer surplus need not be stable. Our weakest solution concept, fragmentation-proofness, rules out objections by coalitions that include consumers from more than one segment. We show that a segmentation is fragmentation-proof if and only if it is efficient.

This is joint work with Ron Siegel.

Title of Nathan’s talk is Political Parties as Drivers of U.S. Polarization: 1927-2018 (with Chad Kendall and Francesco Trebbi) .

This visit is hosted by Andreas Stegmann.

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar.

Gianni will be presenting paper: When Nation Building Goes South: Draft Evasion, Government Repression, And The Origins Of The Sicilian Mafia

Fields: Economic History, Political Economy

Supervisors: James Fenske, Sharun Mukand

Title: Tax Audits Under Weak Fiscal Capacity: Experimental Evidence from Senegal, joint work with Pierre Bachas, Alipio Ferreira, and Bassirou Sarr.

Abstract: Developing economies are characterized by limited compliance with government regulations, such as taxation. Resources for enforcement are scarce and audit cases are often selected in a discretionary manner. We study whether the increasing availability of digitized data helps improve audit targeting. In a field experiment at scale in Senegal, we compare tax audits selected by inspectors to audits selected by a risk-scoring algorithm. We find that inspector-selected audits are more likely to be conducted and uncover similar amounts of evasion as algorithm-selected audits. However, algorithm-selected audits require less manpower, are faster and may generate less corruption. In ongoing work, we attempt to unpack the algorithm’s (dis)functioning and its interaction with human capital.

Seminar organisers: Manuel Bagues & Ludovica Gazze

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar.

Cora will present paper: Unemployment, Migration, And Right-Wing Voting: Evidence From Germany

Fields: Economic History, Political Economy, Gender Economics

Supervisors: James Fenske, Manuel Bagues

Title: The Value of Data Records (with Simone Galperti & Aleksandr Levkun)

Abstract: Many online platforms intermediate trade between sellers and buyers using data records of the buyers' personal characteristics. How much value do such intermediaries derive from each record? Is this value higher for specific buyers? What are its properties? We find that an important component of the value of a data record is a novel externality that arises when a platform pools records to withhold information from the sellers. Ignoring this externality can significantly bias our understanding of the value of data records. We then characterize a platform's willingness to pay for more data, thereby establishing a series of basic properties of the demand side of data markets. Our analysis combines modern information design with classic duality methods and applies to a large class of principal-agent problems.

Joint with WBS

Title: Efficient Industrial Policy for Innovation: Standing on the shoulders of hidden grants

Title to be advised.

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar.

Giulia will present paper: Worker Sorting And The Gender Wage Gap

Fields: Labour

Supervisors: Manuel Bagues, Roland Rathelot

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar

Eleonora will present paper: Bad Science

Fields: Political

Supervisors: Thiemo Fetzer, Sascha Becker, Andreas Stegmann

Title: Causality: a Decision-Theoretic Foundation

Abstract: We propose a decision-theoretic model akin to that of Savage that is useful for defining causal effects. Within this framework, we define what it means for a decision maker (DM) to act as if the relation between two variables is causal. Next, we provide axioms on preferences that are equivalent to the existence of a (unique) directed acyclic graph (DAG) that represents the DM's preferences. The notion of representation has two components: the graph factorizes the conditional independence properties of the DM's subjective beliefs, and arrows point from cause to effect. Finally, we explore the connection between our representation and models used in the statistical causality literature (for example, that of Pearl).

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to present job talk seminar.

Jian will present paper: Investment, Connections, And Innovation: Evidence From Chinese Artificial Intelligence Startups

Fields: Applied Microeconomics

Supervisors: Daniel Sgroi, James Fenske

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar.

Diego will present paper: Multiple Equilibria And Exchange Rate Volatility

Fields: Macroeconomics

Supervisors: Roger Farmer, Herakles Polemarchakis, Pablo Beker

Title: “AI, firms and wages: Evidence from India” (joint with Ashley Pople, Katherine Stapleton)

Zoom Link: https://monash.zoom.us/j/81977796148?pwd=QXpwZjlOOCtiTnBhUHNGZW03bk5VQT09

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar.

Ozge will present paper: Can gender-blind algorithmic pricing eliminate gender gap?

Fields: Labour, Discrimination, Industrial Organization

Supervisors: Manuel Bages, Mirko Draca, Ludovica Gazze

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

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar.

Velichka will present paper: Returning From Africa. The Fertility Impact Of Mass Skilled Return Migration

Fields: Migration, Economic History, Labor

Supervisors: Manuel Bagues, James Fenske

This is an opportunity for our PhD student to practice job talk seminar.

Todor will present paper: Do Financial Incentives Improve Participation In Job Training Programmes For Job Seekers?

Fields: Labour

Supervisors: Clement Imbert, Dita Eckardt