Calendrier du 30 septembre 2024
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 30/09/2024 de 16:00 à 17:15
R1-09
CORRAO Roberto (MIT)
Optimally Coarse Contracts
écrit avec Joel Flynn and Karthik Sastry
We study a principal-agent model with imperfectly contractible actions and a cost of determining what is contractible. If contractibility costs satisfy a monotonicity property---implied by any arbitrarily small difficulty in distinguishing actions when writing the contract---then optimal contracts are necessarily coarse, specifying finitely many actions out of a continuum. By contrast, costs of enforcing a contract affect allocations but yield complete contracts. We provide first-order conditions that describe the structure of optimally incomplete contracts. Applying these results, the model rationalizes discrete pay grades in employment contracts. The presence of private information about productivity coarsens the optimal pay scale.
Econometrics Seminar
Du 30/09/2024 de 16:00 à 17:15
ZOOM
RITZWOLLER David (Stanford University)
Simultaneous Inference for Local Structural Parameters with Random Forests
écrit avec Co-author: Vasilis Syrgkanis
We construct simultaneous confidence intervals for solutions to conditional moment equations. The intervals are built around a class of nonparametric regression algorithms based on subsampled kernels. This class encompasses various forms of subsampled random forest regression, including Generalized Random Forests (Athey et al., 2019). Although simultaneous validity is often desirable in practice--for example, for fine-grained characterization of treatment effect heterogeneity--only confidence intervals that confer pointwise guarantees were previously available. Our work closes this gap. As a by-product, we obtain several new order-explicit results on the concentration and normal approximation of high-dimensional U-statistics.
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Régulation et Environnement
Du 30/09/2024 de 11:00 à 12:15
R1-09
SINGER Gregor (LSE)
"Complementary Inputs and Industrial Development: Can Lower Electricity Prices Improve Energy Efficiency?”
The transition from traditional labor intensive to modern capital intensive production is a key factor for industrial development. Using half a million observations from Indian manufacturing plants, I analyze the effects of a secular decrease in industrial electricity prices through the lens of a model with technology choices and complementarities between electricity and capital inputs. Using instrumental variables, I show how lower industrial electricity prices can increase both labor productivity and electricity productivity. Apart from positive effects on firm economic and environmental performance, cost-price pass through significantly benefitted consumers, and the productivity improvements limited increases in carbon emissions.