Calendrier du 07 novembre 2022
Econometrics Seminar
Du 07/11/2022 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE, room R2-20
SPINI Pietro (Bristol)
Robustness, Heterogeneous Treatment Effects and Covariate Shifts
This paper studies the robustness of estimated policy effects to changes in the distribution of covariates. Robustness to covariate shifts is important, for example, when evaluating the external validity of (quasi)-experimental results, which are often used as a benchmark for evidence-based policy-making. I propose a novel scalar robustness metric. This metric measures the magnitude of the smallest covariate shift needed to invalidate a claim on the policy effect (for example, ATE >=0) supported by the (quasi)-experimental evidence. My metric links the heterogeneity of policy effects and robustness in a flexible, nonparametric way and does not require functional form assumptions. I cast the estimation of the robustness metric as a de-biased GMM problem. This approach guarantees a parametric convergence rate for the robustness metric while allowing for machine learning-based estimators of policy effect heterogeneity (for example, lasso, random forest, boosting, neural nets). I apply my procedure to the Oregon Health Insurance experiment. I study the robustness of policy effects estimates of health-care utilization and financial strain outcomes, relative to a shift in the distribution of context-specific covariates. Such covariates are likely to differ across US states, making quantification of robustness an important exercise for adoption of the insurance policy in states other than Oregon. I find that the effect on outpatient visits is the most robust among the metrics of health-care utilization considered.
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GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar
Du 07/11/2022 de 13:00 à 14:00
Maison des Sciences Economiques, Salle 116
TORUN David(Saint-Gallen)
TORUN David(University of St Gallen)
Quantifying the Extensive Margins of Trade and Production
This paper builds a Ricardian model of international trade capturing that most countries have only a few trading partners within narrowly defined industries. The set of partner countries responds endogenously to shocks, thereby allowing to identify alternatives to key trading partners. I introduce trade zeros—or, an extensive margin of trade—via a bounded productivity distribution and a non-homothetic final-goods-assembly function. In the limit, without productivity caps, trade shares reduce to a standard gravity equation. I develop a novel calibration strategy to fit data on industry-level bilateral trade flows and aggregate production. Counterfactual exercises suggest that welfare changes after trade-cost shocks are typically amplified when accounting for the extensive margin of trade. This is primarily true for low- to medium-income countries. The number of inactive industry-level trade relations changes by approximately half the shock size; for instance, a 10% rise in global trade costs increases the number of bilateral zeros by 5%.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 07/11/2022 de 12:00 à 13:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KOCH Xavier (PSE)
*The impact of Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility on carbon intensity: Evidence from French manufacturing firms
Corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly important topic, with CSR claims sending a respectability signal to investors, regulators, and consumers. The objective of this article is to provide
empirical evidence on the impact of environmental CSR on the carbon intensity of corporate production. Within the growing literature on the effects of corporate CSR on firm’s performance, the literature on its economic impacts is more developed than that on environmental impacts. This difference can be explained in part by the difficulty of obtaining emissions data from companies in addition to their CSR activities. This paper is the first to use a CSR score based on survey data to determine the impact of environmental CSR on the carbon intensity of production. The aim is to assess whether environmental CSR activity is greenwashing or a genuine effort to reduce the company’s environmental footprint. The results suggest that CSR activity reflects an actual effort by firms to reduce the carbon intensity of their production and is not greenwashing. The article relies on a method that instruments CSR according to a two-step procedure. It allows the estimation to account for the endogeneity of CSR activities with respect to the carbon intensity of production.