Calendrier du 21 novembre 2019
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 21/11/2019 de 15:45 à 17:00
PSE - 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
ZANETTI Francesco (Oxford)
Search Complementarities, Aggregate Fluctuations, and Fiscal Policy
écrit avec Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Federico Mandelman, and Yang Yu
We develop a quantitative business cycle model with search complementarities in the inter-firm matching process that entails a multiplicity of equilibria. An active static equilibrium with strong joint venture formation, large output, and low unemployment can coexist with a passive static equilibrium with low joint venture formation, low output, and high unemployment. Changes in fundamentals move the system between the two static equilibria, generating large and persistent business cycle fluctuations. The volatility of shocks is important for the selection and duration of each static equilibrium. Sufficiently adverse shocks in periods of low macroeconomic volatility trigger severe and protracted downturns. The magnitude of government intervention is critical to foster economic recovery in the passive static equilibrium, while it plays a limited role in the active static equilibrium.
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TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 21/11/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
salle R2-20, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
NUNEZ Mathias (CREST - Ecole Polytechnique)
A solution to the two-person implementation problem
écrit avec Jean-François Laslier, Remzi Sanver
We propose a solution to the classical problem of Hurwicz and Schmeidler
[1978] and Maskin [1999] according to which, in two-person societies, no Pareto
efficient rule is Nash-implementable. To this end, we consider implementation
through mechanisms that are deterministic-in-equilibrium while lotteries
are allowed off-equilibrium. For strict preferences over alternatives and under
a very weak condition for extending preferences over lotteries, we build
simple veto mechanisms that Nash implement a class of Pareto efficient social
choice rules called Pareto-and-veto rules. Moreover, under mild richness conditions
on the domain of preferences over lotteries, any Pareto efficient Nashimplementable
rule is a Pareto-and-veto rule and hence is implementable through
one of our simple veto mechanisms.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 21/11/2019 de 12:30 à 13:45
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-14
SILVA Joana (UCP)
The Organizational Economics of School Chains
écrit avec Co-authors: L. Neri and E. Pasini
Academics and policy makers are increasingly advocating school autonomy as a way to improve student achievement. At the same time, however, many countries are experiencing a counterbalancing trend: the emergence of chains that bind schools together into institutionalized structures with varying degrees of centralization. Despite their prominence, no evidence exists on the determinants and effects of differences in the organizational set-up of school chains. Our work aims to fill this gap. We use the insights of the incomplete contracts literature to study the internal organization of school chains seen as firms. We match detailed survey information on decentralization decisions of procurement activities regarding 410 chains and 2,000 schools in the England to student, school and market-level administrative records. We find that chains with a larger share of schools whose leadership background is aligned with the chain board’s expertise, younger chains, and chains that are closer to the market value-added (‘productivity’) frontier decentralize more. These patterns are in line with the predictions developed by organizational economics theories that focus on the structure of the firm. However, contrary to the insights from this field, we find no association between the value-added heterogeneity of the markets in which the chains operate and their decision to delegate. We further investigate the link between the structure of school chains and their students’ performance, and find a weak negative association between centralization and average pupil value-added.
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 21/11/2019 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
KNIGHT Brian (Brown University)
Opposition Media, State Censorship, and Political Accountability: Evidence from Chavez’s Venezuela
This paper investigates the effects of state censorship of opposition media using evidence from the closing of RCTV, a popular opposition television channel in Venezuela. The government did not renew RCTV’s license, and the channel was replaced overnight, during May 2007, by a pro-government channel. Based upon this censorship of opposition television, we have three key findings. First, using Nielsen ratings data, viewership fell, following the closing of RCTV, on the pro-government replacement,but rose on Globovision, the only remaining television channel for opposition viewers. This finding is consistent with a model in which viewers have a preference for opposition television and substitute accordingly. Second, exploiting the geographic location of the Globovision broadcast towers,Chavez approval ratings fell following the closing of RCTV in places with access to the Globovision signal, relative to places without access. Third, in places with access to the Globovision signal,relative to places without, support for Chavez in electoral data also fell following the closing of RCTV. Counterfactuals, which account for both substitution patterns in media consumption and the persuasive effects of opposition television, document that switching to uncensored outlets led to an economically significant reduction in support for Chavez.
Behavior seminar
Du 21/11/2019 de 11:00 à 12:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
MARIE Olivier (Erasmus School of Economics)
The Power of the Dutch Pill: Birth Control as Crime Control?
écrit avec Esmée Zwiers (Princeton University)
Fertility decisions have large long term effects on economic outcomes. This is true for both parents and children. Timing of selection into motherhood is especially important for young women as a birth can have large effects on human capital accumulation (HC). Individual fertility and HC investment decisions are however most likely endogenous and it is thus hard to establish causality in this relationship. This is also the case when considering the impact of parental selection on child outcomes. We therefore exploit the introduction of the contraceptive pill in the Netherlands as an exogenous shock to birth control technology that greatly enhanced women’s fertility decision making process. We first document that there was a massive drop in the proportion of women who had children after it became freely available to all women in 1970. We also investigate if the adoption of this new technology was linked its socially acceptability by looking at heterogeneity of the fertility response depending on an area’s religiosity. We proxy this by proportion votes for conservative religious parties and find much larger birth drops for more liberal municipalities relative to conservative ones. We then investigate how the pill impacted women's education and labour market outcomes and how this in turn influenced their children’s long-run outcomes with a focus on their offending behaviour.