Calendrier du 17 mars 2021
Paris Migration Seminar
Du 17/03/2021 de 17:30 à 18:30
ROSSI-HANSBERG Esteban (Princeton)
The Economic Geography of Global Warming
écrit avec joint with Jose Luis Cruz Alvarez
Global warming is a worldwide and protracted phenomenon with heterogeneous local economic effects. In order to evaluate the aggregate and local economic consequences of higher temperatures, we propose a dynamic economic assessment model of the world economy with high spatial resolution. Our model features a number of mechanisms through which individuals can adapt to global warming, including costly trade and migration, and local technological innovations and natality rates. We quantify the model at a 1° × 1° resolution and estimate damage functions that determine the impact of temperature changes on a region’s fundamental productivity and amenities depending on local temperatures. Our baseline results show welfare losses as large as 15% in parts of Africa and Latin America but also high heterogeneity across locations, with northern regions in Siberia, Canada, and Alaska experiencing gains. Our results indicate large uncertainty about average welfare effects and point to migration and, to a lesser extent, innovation as important adaptation mechanisms. We use the model to assess the impact of carbon taxes, abatement technologies, and clean energy subsidies. Carbon taxes delay consumption of fossil fuels and help flatten the temperature curve but are much more effective when an abatement technology is forthcoming.
Texte intégral
Development Economics Seminar
Du 17/03/2021 de 16:30 à 18:00
Via Zoom
BEST Michael (Columbia University)
The Allocation of Authority in Organizations: A Field Experiment with Bureaucrats
écrit avec Oriana Bandiera, Adnan Qadir Khan, & Andrea Prat
We design a field experiment to study how the allocation of authority between frontline procurement officers and their monitors affects performance both directly and through the response to incentives. In collaboration with the government of Punjab,Pakistan, we shift authority from monitors to procurement officers and introduce financial incentives to a sample of 600 procurement officers in 26 districts. We find that autonomy alone reduces prices by 9% without reducing quality and that the effect is stronger when the monitor tends to delay approvals for purchases until the end of the fiscal year. In contrast, the effect of performance pay is muted, except when agents face a monitor who does not delay approvals. Time use data reveal agents’ responses vary along the same margin: autonomy increases the time devoted to procurement and this leads to lower prices only when monitors cause delays. By contrast, incentives work when monitors do not cause delays. The results illustrate that organizational design and anti-corruption policies must balance agency issues at different levels of the hierarchy.