Calendrier du 04 juin 2018
GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar
Du 04/06/2018 de 13:00 à 14:00
Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
VOLPE Christian (Inter-American Development Bank)
Information and Exports: Firm-Level Evidence from an Online Platform
Lack of information is an important trade barrier. Online platforms connecting firms can reduce this barrier and thereby affect firms’ exports. We examine whether this is the case by focusing on a free online business platform that, by the end of 2016, connected more than 16,000 firms from almost a hundred countries. In particular, we estimate the impact of using the platform on firms’ export outcomes, along both the intensive and extensive margins, exploiting data on firms’ participation in this platform along with customs data from Peru for the period 2010-2016. In so doing, we apply an instrumental variables approach whereby firms’ use of the business platform is instrumented with information on the distribution of emails announcing its launching by Peru’s national trade promotion organization. Consistent with the interpretation of the platform as an information cost-reducing mechanism, our results suggest that its utilization allowed firms to expand their exports by primarily increasing the number of products they sell abroad and enlarging their buyer base.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 04/06/2018 de 12:00 à 14:00
Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
JESSOE Katrina (UC Davis)
Gains from Water Markets: Micro-level Evidence on Agricultural Water Demand
écrit avec with Ellen Bruno
This paper demonstrates that the establishment of well-functioning water markets may substantially mitigate the costs of drought. We develop a framework to model the costs of incomplete water regulation, and simulate the efficiency gains from water trading across the agricultural and urban sectors. Critical to this exercise are credible estimates of the price elasticity of demand for agricultural water. We use monthly panel data on well-level agricultural groundwater extraction in an area that charges volumetric rates for groundwater to estimate the elasticity. Demand is inelastic, with estimates ranging from -0.17 to -0.22. Our simulation suggests that in an agriculturally productive and dense urban area of California, a water market could have reduced the welfare impacts to residential users from the 2015 drought mandate by 60% from $83 million to $33.5 million. Water markets present a promising adaption strategy to climate change.