Organisers: Federico Rossi, Christine Braun & Marta Santamaria

Title: Like an Ink Blot on Paper: Testing the Diffusion Hypothesis of Mass Migration, Italy 1876-1920.

A PDF is available at http://www.ariellzimran.com/spitzer_zimran_diffusion.pdf

Title: Narratives and the Economics of the Family

Abstract: We argue that families adopt stories and that different stories give rise to different patterns of behavior. We build a theoretical model, focusing on two common, competing stories, which we term the “protector narrative” and “fulfillment narrative.” Our model makes predictions regarding the bundle of behaviors associated with each of these narratives; it also makes predictions regarding the narratives families will choose to adopt. We show that the protector narrative gives rise to a type of “traditional” family with distinct gender roles: men are breadwinners, are authoritarian towards women and children, and are expected to be “tough”; women avoid work when feasible, and are not expected to be “tough.” Because of role differentiation, it is important to be part of a family. The fulfillment narrative gives rise to a type of “modern” family in which gender roles are less distinct, both men and women work, and marriages are based, to a greater extent, on romantic love.

Organiser: Christopher Roth

The Work Programme, Benefit Sanctions and Protest Voting (joint with Thiemo Fetzer)

Abstract: The Work Programme (WP) was an EU sponsored active labour market welfare-to-work programme in the UK introduced in June 2011 by the coalition government and affecting around 2 million individuals. Rewarded work programme providers helped welfare claimants finding a job through payment-by-result contracts. The program was radical in both scale and approach, caused a substantial public outcry, and lead to a substantial amount of media coverage questioning its effectiveness. This paper studies the WP and specifically focuses on intended and unintended effects. We exploit exogenous variation due to the random assignment of individual referrals to individual contractors. This generates, at a finer geographic level, excess referrals whereby a contractor has to handle out of chance more cases referred than they expected. This strengthens incentives to “skim the cream”.

We document that excess referrals are strongly and causally associated with a subsequent increase in benefit sanction referrals, which in turn produce financial grievances. We further investigate whether these WP-induced benefit sanctions had an impact on political outcomes and broader social and economic outcomes such as local election support for UKIP, support for Leave, etc. The latter is not unlikely as the Work Programme made the European Union immediately salient for all WP participants as all letters and communication were mandated to be branded with the European Union flag, as it co-financed by the European Union cohesion fund.

Title is Choice Simplification: A Theory of Mental Budgeting and Naive Diversification

http://home.cerge-ei.cz/matejka/choice_simplification.pdf.

Seminar organisers: Sinem Hidir & Costas Cavounidis

The title of paper is Long Live the Vacancy

Abstract: We reassess the role of vacancies in a Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides style search and matching model. Long-lived vacancies and endogenous job separations together with alternating offer bargaining greatly improve the ability of the model to replicate key stylized labor market facts. The model explains not only standard deviations and autocorrelations of labor market variables, but also their dynamic correlations. The model is consistent with a large surplus both on the worker and the firm side, and generates a wage response to productivity shocks that is in line with empirical evidence on the wage dynamics of new matches. With only one shock, the model captures the dynamics of the US labor market from 1951 to 2014 surprisingly well.

Organisers: Federico Rossi, Christine Braun & Marta Santamaria

Organiser: Yannick Dupraz

Title to be advised

Organiser: Helios Herrera

Title to be advised.

Seminar organisers: Sinem Hidir & Costas Cavounidis

Organisers: Federico Rossi, Christine Braun & Marta Santamaria

Future Shocked? AI, Skill Demand and Employment in the UK Labor Market (Emma Duchini, Mirko Draca, Arthur Turrell, Giulia Vattuone)

Abstract: Artifical Intelligence (AI) technologies are developing fast. Exploiting a granular data set on online job listing data, this paper explores the diffusion of AI in the UK labor market. First, it traces the demand for AI skills over time, across occupations and counties. Second, it uses novel measures of AI-occupational exposure to study potential dynamics of substitution and complementarity between AI-performed tasks and those performed by humans. Third, it aims to assess the impact of AI on the structure of jobs, by implementing a text-based analysis of job ads.

Organiser: Roland Rathelot

Organiser: Roland Rathelot

I invite the participants to propose their ideas on future talks and guests for the seminar series. Given the current scenario, this can also be an opportunity to talk about the support that we can offer in this period.

Organiser: Stefania Paredes Fuentes

Paper Title: "Sticky Wages on the Layoff Margin"
Time: Apr 23, 2020 3:00 PM London
Zoom Details: Contact the organisers

"The economic consequences of large-scale pandemics: lessons from the history of plague in Europe and the Mediterranean"

Link to Alfani's VoxEu column: https://voxeu.org/article/pandemics-and-asymmetric-shocks?

To register, people will need to send an email to cage.centre@warwick.ac.uk.

Here is the link to join the webinar via Teams

Organiser: Roland Rathelot

Chair: Parama Chaudhury (UCL)
Presenter: Stefania Paredes Fuentes (Warwick)

This will take place via Zoom, please register here and we will send you the details to participate.

(The event will be live-streamed on the CTaLE YouTube Channel)

Labour market effects of an urban public works program (with Simon Franklin)

Organiser: Roland Rathelot

Organiser: Roland Rathelot

Paper Title: "TBA"
Organiser: Maria Santamaria

Introduction and discussion - Stefano Caria

Organiser: Clement Imbert

This COVID seminar is to provide a summary of some of their recent work and we plan for there to be a decent amount of time for discussion.

Organiser - Mirko Draca
Join Zoom Meeting
https://lse.zoom.us/j/91883498237?pwd=SnJ1S0NMNHNySnpyZXNwYXc2NXFzQT09

Meeting ID: 918 8349 8237
Password: 029219

Organiser: Roland Rathelot

Speaker: Sam McLoughlin (globalbridge)

Chair: Stefania Paredes Fuentes (Warwick)

Series run in collaboration with CTaLE (UCL)
To join please register here.
If oversubscribe, the event will be live-streamed on the CTaLE YouTube Channel

About the speaker:

Sam McLoughlin works at an EdTech company globalbridge looking to give young people (aged 11-18) a level playing field to demonstrate their skills and talent. Since graduating in Economics from University of Newcastle in 2007, Sam has worked in education as Teacher, Careers Leader and other roles in Premier League football clubs and stat secondary schools. He also worked on an Enterprise education pilot project in Uganda which won an Enterprising Britain Award and has now been rolled out across a number of African and Asian countries. Sam has been interested in working and improving the quality of education of UK children in deprived areas. He was part of a senior leadership team that founded “ Studio West” using the Studio School Model in a highly deprived ward in the North East. He is also school governor and Director at two community/education organisations Linskill Centre and Green Shift Education).

Sam's focus has always been on young people becoming the best version of themselves, we he will share his experience with us. We hope this helps us to inform our policies on widening participation.