Calendrier du 17 décembre 2020
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 17/12/2020 de 16:30 à 18:00
ON LINE
GIULIANO Paola (UCLA, Anderson School of Management)
The Seeds of Ideology: Historical Immigration and Political Preferences in the United States
écrit avec Marco Tabellini
We test the relationship between historical immigration to the US and political ideology today. We hypothesize that European immigrants brought with them their preferences for the welfare state, and that this had a long-lasting effect on the political ideology of US born individuals. Our analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we document that the historical presence of European immigrants is associated with a more liberal political ideology and with stronger preferences for redistribution among US born individuals today. Next, we show that this correlation is not explained by the characteristics of the counties where immigrants settled or other specific, socioeconomic immigrants' traits. Finally, we provide evidence that our findings are driven by immigrants who had been more exposed to social-welfare refroms in their country of origin. Consistent with a mechanism of transmission from immigrants to natives, results are stronger when inter-group contact, measured with intermarriage and residential integration, was higher. Our findings also indicate that immigrants influenced American political ideology during one of the largest episodes of redistribution in US history -- the New Deal -- and that such effects persisted after the initial shock.
Behavior seminar
Du 17/12/2020 de 15:00 à 16:00
FATAS Enrique (School of Business and Economics (Loughborough University))
In Science We (Should) Trust
The magnitude and nature of the COVID-19 pandemic prevents public health policies to rely on coercive
enforcement. Practicing social distancing, wearing masks and staying at home becomes voluntary
and conditional on the behavior of others. We present the results of a large scale survey experiment run in
nine countries with representative samples of the population (by age and gender) and find that both
empirical and normative expectations play a vast and significant role in compliance, beyond the effect of
any other individual or group characteristic. In our survey experiment,
when empirical and normative expectations of individuals are high, compliance goes up by 55% (relative
to the low expectations condition). Similar results are obtained when we look at self-reported compliance
among those with high expectations (37% higher). Our results are robust to different specifications and
controls, and driven by an asymmetric interaction with individuals’ trust in government and trust in
science. Holding expectations high, the effect of putting trust in science is substantial and significant in
our vignette experiment (22% increase in compliance), and even larger in self-reported compliance (76%
and 127% increase before and after the lockdown). By contrast, putting trust in government generates
modest effects. At the macro level, the country level of trust in science, and not in government, becomes a
strong predictor of compliance.
Texte intégral
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 17/12/2020 de 14:00 à 15:00
online
BLUMENTHAL Benjamin (ETH Zurich)
Political Agency and Legislative Subsidies with Imperfect Monitoring
Voters are frequently ill-equipped to evaluate politicians' actions and can often only imperfectly monitor them: to wit, that a road was built is easy to see, whether shady practices were involved is harder to tell. I consider a stylised two-period political agency model with moral hazard and adverse selection to study the consequences of imperfect monitoring on politicians' behaviour and voters' welfare. I show that imperfect monitoring has an ambiguous effect on voters' welfare and that being unable to monitor politicians perfectly can be welfare improving. I also study how an interest group might subsidise policy making and show that legislative subsidies from an interest group with interests opposed to those of voters can improve voters' welfare. Finally, I endogenize the monitoring process and show that voters' will rationally not monitor politicians perfectly.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 17/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
USING ZOOM
GALBIATI Roberto (Sciences Po)
J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair
écrit avec Quoc-Anh Do (Northwestern and Sciences Po) Benjamin Marx (Sciences Po) Miguel A. Ortiz Serrano (Sussex)
This paper studies discrimination in financial markets in the context of the Dreyfus Affair in 19th
century France. Firms with Jewish board members experienced abnormal returns after several salient
episodes of the Affair, resulting from the wrongful conviction of a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus.
However, in the long run, firms with Jewish connections yielded higher returns during the media
campaign initiated by J'Accuse...!, a famous editorial that led to Dreyfus' rehabilitation. Building
on empirical evidence and a model with antisemitic and unbiased investors, we argue that media
coverage of the Affair debiased antisemitic beliefs, producing excess returns for those who bet on
Jewish-connected firms. Our findings provide novel evidence that discrimination can affect stock
prices and create rents for some market participants. While these rents elicit betting against discriminators,
the uncertainty surrounding discriminatory beliefs can limit the extent of arbitrage and allow
discrimination to survive in the long run.
Behavior Working Group
Du 17/12/2020 de 11:00 à 12:00
https://zoom.univ-paris1.fr/j/91585525960?pwd=b0Evc2l2VlpuKzJiV1J6T2FSVTRDZz09
TZINTZUN Iván (PSE)
The Causal Effect of Physical Activity on Health in Early Adulthood: A Gene By Environment Instrumental Variables Approach
écrit avec Lise Rochaix