Calendrier du 13 septembre 2021
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 13/09/2021 de 17:00 à 18:15
Salle R1-09 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
AKBARPOUR Mohammad (Stanford)
Investment Incentives in Near-Optimal Mechanisms
écrit avec DUKE KOMINERS Scott ; LI Shengwu ; MILGROM Paul ¶
In many real-world resource allocation problems, optimization is computationally intractable, so any practical allocation mechanism must be based on an approximation algorithm. We study investment incentives in strategy-proof mechanisms that use such approximations. In sharp contrast with the Vickrey-Clark-Groves mechanism, for which individual returns on investments are aligned with social welfare, we find that some algorithms that approximate efficient allocation arbitrarily well can nevertheless create misaligned investment incentives that lead to arbitrarily bad overall outcomes.
However, if a near-efficient algorithm “excludes bossy negative externalities,” then its outcomes remain near-efficient even after accounting for investments. A weakening of this “XBONE” condition is necessary and sufficient for the result.
GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar
Du 13/09/2021 de 13:00 à 14:00
MSE - Room 116
SABBADINI Giulia (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID))
Firm-Level Prices and Markups:The Role of Immigrant Employment and Input Quality
Exploiting data for French manufacturing traders, this paper presents evidence of a positive effect of immigrant workers on firm-level markups that is attributable to price differences. Immigrant workers allow firms to access imported intermediate inputs of higher quality and therefore produce higher quality final goods for the export market. This quality advantage translates into firms charging higher export prices and markups. I provide econometric evidence in support of this mechanism. First, I show that the prices of exported final goods are positively affected by immigrant workers within narrowly defined varieties. Consistently, I find that immigrant workers positively affect the quality of exported final goods. Second, I show that there is a positive relationship between the price of imported intermediate inputs and the share of immigrant workers, which reflects differences in input quality. Finally, I provide suggestive evidence that immigrant workers allow firms to buy higher quality inputs by lowering upstream information frictions.
Texte intégral
Régulation et Environnement
Du 13/09/2021 de 12:00 à 13:15
Salle R1-13 - Campus Jourdan - 75014 PARIS
JEGARD Martin (INRAE)
An Optimal Distribution of Polluting Activities Across Space: An Application to France
Should the largest cities be the most polluting? On the one hand, spatial concentration of economic activities brings welfare gains through agglomeration economies and increased local real wages. On the other hand, aggregating too much polluting activities in the same place leads to lower air quality and detrimental effects on health and productivity of local workers. Building on a spatial general equilibrium model, featuring endogenous pollution, trade and between-cities migration, I investigate welfare effects of the spatial heterogeneity of local stringencies resulting from current air pollutants regulations. I calibrate the model using French data and show that current emission policies target the most populated cities. As a result, these cities are less polluting and relatively larger than what they would be under a spatially uniform policy stringency. However I also find that taking into account productivity and amenity intrinsic local endowments could lead to higher welfare gains.