Calendrier du mois de décembre 2020
Du 31/12/2020
PSE Internal Seminar
Du 18/12/2020 de 13:46 à 14:15
online
VELLODI Nikhil(PSE)
OH Susanna(PSE)
Gender Norms in Marriage and Female Labor Productivity
This project investigates whether gender norms lead women to hold back their potential in the labor market. While the existing literature has shown that women tend to earn less than their husbands, there is limited direct evidence on whether women actively avoid earning more than their spouses and the determinants of such behavior. The experiment engages married couples working as casual laborers in a short-term manufacturing job that pays piece-rate on output. The experiment provides women an extra hour to work without this difference being salient, making it likely that they could earn more than their husbands. After husbands finish piece-rate production, women are randomized into one of three conditions in which 1) wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects both spouses to learn the couple’s individual production at the end of the day, 2) wife is informed of her husband’s production and expects that only she will learn the couple’s individual production, or 3) both spouses are only informed of their joint production. Pilot results show that women in the last two conditions achieve on average one hour’s worth of production more than that of their husbands, suggesting that women do not have intrinsic concerns about earning more than their husbands. However, this productivity gap disappears when women expect their husbands to also find out about individual production, suggesting that women care about husbands’ beliefs or reactions.
PSE Internal Seminar
Du 18/12/2020 de 13:15 à 13:40
online
VELLODI Nikhil(PSE)
OH Susanna(PSE)
Insider Imitation and Privacy on Platforms (co-author: Erik Madsen (NYU)
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
Paris Migration Seminar
Du 16/12/2020 de 17:30 à 18:20
STANTCHEVA Stefanie (Harvard University)
Immigration and redistribution
écrit avec Alberto Alesina and Armando Miano
We design and conduct large-scale surveys and experiments in six countries to investigate how natives perceive immigrants and how these perceptions influence their preferences for redistribution. We find strikingly large misperceptions about the number and characteristics of immigrants: in all countries, respondents greatly overestimate the total number of immigrants, think immigrants are culturally and religiously more distant from them, and are economically weaker -- less educated, more unemployed, and more reliant on and favored by government transfers -- than is the case. Given the very negative baseline views that respondents have of immigrants, simply making them think about immigration before asking questions about redistribution, in a randomized manner, makes them support less redistribution, including actual donations to charities. Information about the true shares and origins of immigrants is ineffective, and mainly acts as a prime that makes people think about immigrants and reduces their support for redistribution. An anecdote about a "hard working'' immigrant is somewhat more effective, suggesting that when it comes to immigration, salience and narratives shape people's views more deeply than hard facts.
Development Economics Seminar
Du 16/12/2020 de 16:30 à 18:00
via ZOOM
TAPSOBA Augustin (Toulouse School of Economics)
The Power of Markets: Impact of Desert Locust Invasions on Child Health
This paper investigates the consequences of a locust plague that occurred in Mali in 2004. We provide evidence of substantial crop market effects that explain the space-time pattern of the estimated impact of this plague. We argue first that the plague has affected households in Mali through two channels: first, a speculative price effect that kicked in during the plague itself, followed by a local crop failure effect. We find that, in terms of health setbacks, children exposed in utero only to the speculative price effect suffered as much as those exposed to the actual crop failure effect. Once we account for the impact on local crop prices, the estimated speculative effect vanishes, whereas the crop failure effect persists. Children born in isolated areas suffer more from the crop failure effect. Our results suggest that addressing local market reactions to this type of agricultural shocks is crucial for policy design.
Economic History Seminar
Du 16/12/2020 de 12:30 à 14:00
via ZOOM
ANDREESCU Marie(PSE)
SANTINI Paolo()
Do unions have egalitarian wage policies for their own employees? Evidence from the US 1959-2016
While labor unions bargain for more equality among their members and in the general society, little is known about their own compensation practices. Using administrative earnings data on U.S. labor unions over the period 1959-2016, we show that unions do “as they preach”. They pay wages that are on average 30% higher than in comparable U.S. private firms, but much more equally distributed: Gini coefficients are 20% smaller among unions and the share of total earnings accruing to the top 1% of wage earners is twice smaller. We show, moreover, that inequality has remained roughly stable in the past 60 years, contrary to what happened in the rest of the economy. We argue that such a low level of inequality, especially at the top, is puzzling because union leaders do have some margin to set their own pay due to the absence of a strong control mechanism on the pay-setting in such non-profit organizations. We confront two possible explanations to explain our findings: On one hand, unions are constrained to pay low salaries by market forces, on the other hand, union are unwilling to pay higher salaries to their leaders because of ideology and reputation concerns. We test these two alternative explanations in several ways landing strong support for the second view. In addition to helping understand the pay practices in the labor movement and the non-profit sector in general, these findings shed new light on how pay norms and ideology can affect real pay, even in a declining sector where firms have strong incentives to perform well in order to survive.
Histoire des entreprises et de la finance
Du 16/12/2020 de 10:30 à 12:00
Via Zoom
BUELENS Frans (University of Antwerp)
The Belgian Railways: financing, investors and performances
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 15/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/97117933045?pwd=VG5oY0RDaWJMbmtSY2o3Y2F5RkZxZz09
MADINIER Etienne (PSE)
Explaining heterogenous effects of Internet across parties in French elections
Virtual Development Economics Seminar
Du 15/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:15
BANDIERA Oriana (LSE)
Why do people stay poor?
écrit avec C. Balboni, R. Burgess, M. Ghatak and A. Heil
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 15/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
via ZOOM
LAVEST Chloé (CAE)
Consumption Dynamics in the COVID Crisis: Real Time Insights from French Data
écrit avec Camille Landais (LSE), Etienne Fize (CAE)
We use anonymised transaction and bank data from France to document the evolution of consumption and savings dynamics since the onset of the pandemic. We find that consumption has dropped very severely during the nation-wide lock- down but experienced a strong and steady rebound during the Summer. The effect of the second lockdown on consumption was significantly smaller. We also document a significant increase in aggregate households’ net financial wealth. This excess savings is extremely heterogenous across the income distribution: 50% of excess wealth accrued to the top decile. Households in the bottom decile of the income distribution experienced a severe decrease in consumption, a decrease in savings and an increase in debt. We estimate marginal propensities to consume and show that their magnitude is large, especially at the bottom of the income and liquidity dis- tributions.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 14/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
online
RENOU Ludovic (QMUL)
When are dynamic choices consistent with learning from common information?
A researcher observes a sequence of choices made by multiple agents in a binary-state, binary-action environment. Agents differ in terms of their initial prior beliefs about the unknown state, their preferences or both, but update beliefs based on common information in each time period. The state evolves according to a commonly known stochastic process and we separately examine the cases where the state is time-invariant and time-varying. We characterize the set of choices that are consistent with some preferences, priors, common information and stochastic process for the state. We apply our results to committee voting where they imply that the heterogeneity of voters in their bias versus their ideology can lead to very different sets of voting patterns.
Econometrics Seminar
Du 14/12/2020 de 16:00 à 17:15
FREYBERGER Joachim (University of Bonn)
Normalizations and misspecification in skill formation models
An important class of structural models investigates the determinants of skill formation and the optimal timing of interventions. To achieve point identification of the parameters, researcher typically normalize the scale and location of the unobserved skills. This paper shows that these seemingly innocuous restrictions can severely impact the interpretation of the parameters and counterfactual predictions. For example, simply changing the units of measurements of observed variables might yield ineffective investment strategies and misleading policy recommendations. To tackle these problems, this paper provides a new identification analysis, which pools all restrictions of the model, characterizes the identified set of all parameters without normalizations, illustrates which features depend on these normalizations, and introduces a new set of important policy-relevant parameters that are identified under weak assumptions and yield robust conclusions. As a byproduct, this paper also presents a general and formal definition of when restrictions are truly normalizations.
GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar
Du 14/12/2020 de 13:00 à 14:00
https://zoom.univ-paris1.fr/j/93971422235?pwd=eDdyZEJ2SUpsQnByUnR5eUpRMkV5Zz09
RASTER Tom ()
The Hanseatic League versus its competitors: Evidence from millions of shipments
Long-distance trade has emerged and expanded throughout history despite abundant obstacles. How trade regimes, such as merchant guilds, were able to operate under such circumstances has attracted attention from scholars of institutions and market imperfections. However, whether merchant guilds were conducive to overall growth or only benefited a few members of society remains disputed; as is their use of formal versus informal rules in their internal functioning (e.g. Greif, 1989; Ogilvie, 2011). To the best of my knowledge, this paper is the first to quantitatively study how the trade of a merchant guild compares to that of their competitors who do not belong to any guild. I focus on the Hanseatic League (1100s-1669), a trade confederation of, at its peak, almost 200 towns in the German Lands and surrounding areas. Newly collected archival data reveals the extent and timing of each town’s participation in the League’s meetings. I combine this information with expansive, novel data of nearly all maritime trade (1.5 million shipments) between the Baltic and North Sea areas from 1497 to 1700. During this crucial period in history, institutions of the First Commercial Revolution gave way to those of the Second, which oversaw the beginning of Atlantic trade. In the empirical analysis, I exploit features of the trade data to distinguish, for each shipment, whether the trade was conducted by the Hanseatic League, more independent Dutch traders, or by another trading regime. I then compare trade across these regimes along various dimensions, such as trade value, prices (volatility), and type of goods (including new luxuries). In doing so, I test various hypotheses raised in the literature, including the relationship between trade regimes and growth. Preliminary findings suggest marked differences across trade regimes and contribute to our understanding of trade institutions, historical and contemporary, that operate in environments where coordination is difficult.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 14/12/2020 de 12:00 à 13:00
https://zoom.us/j/98281389413?pwd=cWxiVzVPdVdCYm1Ec2pDcDYybk5tQT09
REGUANT Mar (Northwes)
*
Paris Game Theory Seminar
Du 14/12/2020 de 11:00 à 12:00
On line
MARLATS Chantal (LEMMA / Paris 2)
Voluntary confinement
EPCI (Economie politique du changement institutionnel) Seminar
Du 11/12/2020 de 11:00 à 12:30
AMABLE Bruno (U. Genève)
The brahmin left, the merchant right, and the bloc bourgeois. ZOOM :https://pantheonsorbonne.zoom.us/j/94995153219?pwd=RkFsUkVHV1prbDQ3cDRibzhYSFVkZz09
écrit avec avec Thibault Darcillon (Paris 8, LED)
Changes in the structure of political divides in developed democracies have been the focus of many studies in political science as well as in political economy. Some of these contributions argue that a new educational divide related with the attitude towards globalisation has supplemented and even sometimes replaced the traditional left/right cleavage. Piketty (2018, 2019) for instance finds that the left has become the party of the high-skilled and considers the emergence of a multi-elite party system: financially rich elites vote for the right (merchant right), high-education elites vote for the left (brahmin left). Using ISSP data for 17 countries, this paper tests the influence of income and education inequalities on political leaning and a variety of policy preferences: the support for redistribution, for investment in public education, for globalisation and immigration. Results show that income levels are still relevant for the left-right divide, but the influence differs across education levels. Our findings also point to a certain convergence of opinion among the brahmin left and the merchant right, which could lead to a new political divide beyond the left and the right, uniting a new social bloc, the bloc bourgeois.
brown bag Travail et Économie Publique
Du 10/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
USING ZOOM
MONTANA Jaime (Paris School of Economics)
Wage posting and multidimensional skills mismatch
This paper gives a new answer to an old question in labor economics, Who matches with whom?, by introducing a setting where firms and workers are different in many dimensions and we allow workers to be over and under qualified for the jobs they end up occupying. I present a random search model with two side multidimensional heterogeneity in which firms choose and post a wage with commitment i.e. maintaining the posted wage, independent of the productivity of the new worker. Posted wages determine the set of acceptable jobs for each worker and a unique applicants pool for each firm. The composition of these sets varies in size and composition across workers and firms. The optimal posted wage level takes into consideration the requirements of each firm and the characteristics of the applicants pool. In equilibrium, sorting is assortative but mismatches can occur across all skills dimensions. Using French data on workers observed skills and matches, I calculate structural parameters associated with the model for France. I find that the disutility of non cognitive skills is higher when mismatched, while employers value more highly good matches on cognitive skills. I also find that the number of dimensions plays an important role, since it is another source for frictions.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 10/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
online
GOURSAT Laure (PSE)
Whether and Where to Apply: Competition and coordination on a matching market with common preferences and priorities and Single and Scored Application mechanism.
This paper defines a class of Bayesian games, termed “Application Game”, to model strategic interactions on a two-sided one-to-one agent-object matching market, where preferences and priorities are common and the allocation occurs through the “Single and Scored Application” (SSA) mechanism, equivalently 1-truncated serial dictatorship. The analysis derives the Bayes-Nash equilibria, which amounts to answering the question: “Whether and where to apply?”. It elicits the trade-off between ambition (accepting competition on high-value objects), and pragmatism (seeking coordination on under-demanded objects). A surprising common feature of the multiple equilibria is the block structure, namely agents sort into a finite number of blocks of neighboring priority where they adopt exactly the same application strategy.
Behavior seminar
Du 10/12/2020 de 11:00 à 12:00
ALGAN Yann (SciencesPo)
The Role of Mindset in Education: A Large-Scale Field Experiment in Disadvantaged School
écrit avec With Coralie Chevallier5, Elise Huillery, Adrien Bouguen, Axelle Charpentier
This article provides experimental evidence of the impact of a school-based intervention aimed at developing students’ growth mindset and internal locus of control. Using a randomized experiment conducted in 97 disadvantaged middle schools in France, we follow 23,000 students over four years to assess the impact of the intervention. We find a 0.07 percent of a standard deviation increase in GPA, associated with a change in students’ mindset, improved behavior as reported by teachers and school registers, and higher educational
and professional aspirations. Given the low intensity of the intervention—12 one-hour in-class sessions over four years—and its small cost—65 euros per student—the intervention is particularly cost-effective in comparison with most education programs. Importantly, while all students eventually benefit from the program, better-behaved and higher-performing students benefit more.
Séminaire de recrutement
Du 09/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
ONLINE
ASTIER Nicolas (PSE et Ecole des Ponts)
What Kinds of Distributed Generation Capacity Reduces Network Investment and Operating Costs? Evidence from France
Electricity systems are hosting increasing amounts of distributed generation units, that is relatively small installations connected to low and medium voltage grids, known as distribution networks. Because these networks were initially designed to supply end-consumers, the impact of distributed generation on grid investment and operating costs has raised considerable debate. This paper presents evidence from the French electricity grid, where distributed generation capacities have reached over 28 GW in 2018, a ten-fold increase since 2005. We combine detailed information on installed distributed generation units with summary statistics derived from the hourly load curves of over 2,000 distribution sub-stations to estimate how different distributed generation technologies have impacted sub-station load curves. We find that solar and wind units have induced the most adverse changes.
Du 09/12/2020 de 12:30 à 14:00
via ZOOM
Economic History Seminar
Du 09/12/2020 de 12:30 à 14:00
via ZOOM
GABBUTI Giacomo (Oxford)
Inheritance and Ideology in Italy, c. 1870-1925
In this talk, I will discuss the reality and ‘ideology’ (in the sense of Piketty 2020) of inheritance in Italy between unification and fascism. First, drawing from a joint ongoing work with Salvatore Morelli, I will present new estimates of wealth inequality from 1870 to the outbreak of World War I – the so-called ‘Liberal Italy’, when the country experienced a relatively ‘benevolent’ industrial take-off within the broader first globalisation. An abrupt interruption in the series is represented not only by the war, but by the abolition of inheritance tax operated by Mussolini’s government in the summer 1923. The second part of the talk will deal with the historical reconstruction of the so-far largely neglected ‘adventures’ of inheritance tax in post-WWI Italy – from the sharp increases in rates in 1919-20, to the ignited debate over Rignano’s proposals, as well as the reaction by professional and banking associations, leading to its abrupt abolition in 1923 by Mussolini’s government.
Séminaire de recrutement
Du 08/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
ONLINE
DE CHAISEMARTIN Clément (Sciences Po)
Difference-in-differences estimators of intertemporal treatment effects
écrit avec Xavier D'Haultfoeuille
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 08/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/97117933045?pwd=VG5oY0RDaWJMbmtSY2o3Y2F5RkZxZz09
VANSTEENBERGHE Eric (PSE)
Global Games and Tail Risks
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 08/12/2020 de 14:45 à 16:15
Using Zoom
ALBORNOZ Facundo (Nottingham)
Firm Export Responses to Tariff Hikes
écrit avec Irene Brambilla and Emanuel Ornelas
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 08/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
via ZOOM
ASSOUAD Lydia (PSE)
Charismatic Leaders and Nation-Building
Can leaders shape identity and legitimize new political orders? I address this question by studying the role of Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey, in spreading a new national identity. Using a generalized difference-in-differences design that exploits time and geographic variation in Kemal’s visits to districts, I test whether exposure to a charismatic leader affects citizens’ take-up of the new Turkish identity. I find that people living in visited districts are more likely to embrace the national identity, as proxied by the adoption of first names in Pure Turkish, the new language introduced by the state. I show that Kemal was more efficient in rallying people, compared to Ismet Inonu, his Prime Minister, suggesting that he had an idiosyncratic effect. Results are mostly driven by districts where he met with local elites, rather than with the mass, and where he held a speech. Overall, the findings are consistent with the Weberian view that charismatic authority can legitimize new political orders.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 07/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
online
YODER Nathan (University of Georgia)
Information Design for Differential Privacy
écrit avec Ian Schmutte
Firms and statistical agencies that publish aggregate data face practical and legal requirements to protect the privacy of individuals. Increasingly, these organizations meet these standards by using publication mechanisms which satisfy differential privacy. We consider the problem of choosing such a mechanism so as to maximize the value of its output to end users. We show that this is equivalent to a constrained information design problem, and characterize its solution. Moreover, we use a novel result on the comparison of information structures to show that the simple geometric mechanism is optimal whenever data users face monotone decision problems.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 07/12/2020 de 12:00 à 13:00
https://zoom.us/j/98281389413?pwd=cWxiVzVPdVdCYm1Ec2pDcDYybk5tQT09
SCHMUTZLER Armin (UZH)
Killer Acquisitions and Beyond: Policy Effects on Innovation Strategies
écrit avec Igor Letina, Regina Seibel
This paper provides a theory of strategic innovation project choice by incumbents and start-ups. We show that prohibiting killer acquisitions strictly reduces the variety of innovation projects. By contrast, we find that prohibiting other acquisitions only has a weakly negative innovation effect, and we provide conditions under which the
effect is zero. Furthermore, for both killer and other acquisitions, we identify market conditions under which the innovation effect is small, so that prohibiting acquisitions to enhance competition would be justified.
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 04/12/2020 de 12:45 à 13:45
Using Zoom
VERA Julieta (PSE)
How does parents' perception of children's health influence their labour supply?
écrit avec Eric Maurin
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 03/12/2020 de 14:00 à 15:00
online
GHERSENGORIN Alexis (Oxford)
Reactance: a Freedom-Based Theory of Choice
Prohibitions create the desire they were intended to cure'' (Lawrence Durell). This phenomenon -- often referred to as reactance -- has been recognized for decades by psychologists. Despite numerous economic implications, no theoretical model has been proposed yet. This paper develops axiomatically a revealed preference approach of menu-dependent choices triggered by reactance. The choice model relies on four components: a complete and transitive utilitarian preference; a partition of alternatives into distinct types; a reference set, composed of the alternatives the decision-maker feels entitled to have access to; and a menu-dependent offset function that triggers reactance. The Weak Axiom of Revealed Preference is suitably relaxed. Building on four additional axioms, our representation theorems obtain endogenously the four components along with a uniqueness result. We derive from our representation a preference over menus and argue that our model can be seen as a choice theory counterpart of the freedom of choice literature. Finally, we discuss several applications.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 03/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:45
USING ZOOM
BLUNDELL Richard (UCL)
Wage Progression, Human Capital and Welfare Reform
In this paper we develop a panel data model to examine why the wages of lower educated workers show slower growth over the life-cycle relative to those for the higher educated and investigate role of human capital investments during working life, both learning-by-doing and on-the-job training. Using this framework, we analyse how human capital investments (and children) impact on female earnings and how allowing for human capital changes the way we evaluate (and design) welfare-to-work and tax-credit policies, especially those policies designed to encourage mothers into work. Finally, we take a look at the role of firms and technology and consider what attributes among the lower educated are more likely to generate returns to work experience and wage progression.
Behavior seminar
Du 03/12/2020 de 11:00 à 12:00
online
DUCHENE Sébastien (Université Montpellier)
*
Paris Migration Seminar
Du 02/12/2020 de 17:30 à 18:20
SARDOSCHAU Sulin (Humboldt University)
Do refugees converge to local culture? Evidence from German regions
écrit avec Philipp Jaschke and Marco Tabellini
TBA
Histoire des entreprises et de la finance
Du 02/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:30
Via Zoom
CADOREL Jean-Laurent ()
An international Monetary Explanation of the 1929 Crash of the New York Stock Exchange
Development Economics Seminar
Du 02/12/2020 de 16:30 à 18:00
via ZOOM
KALA Namrata (MIT)
Mechanizing Agriculture: Impacts on Labor and Productivity
The mechanization of production has become a primary feature of modern agriculture and is central to agricultural labor productivity. This paper estimates the returns to mechanization and its impact on labor using a randomized controlled experiment. Treatment farmers were given subsidy vouchers to access agricultural equipment from nearby custom hiring centers(CHC). In addition, a subset of treatment farmers were given cash transfers. The voucher treatment increases overall mechanization hours, with an intent to treatment effect size of about 0.13 standard deviations (a treatment on the treated effect size of 0.36 standard deviations). We find no significant improvements in productivity due to mechanization on average. However, family labor decreases in response to the subsidy in capital, and farmers reduce hired labor in all farming processes, including those not directly affected by mechanization. We document that family labor is mostly occupied in supervision activities, and that their lower engagement in farming is associated with higher non-agricultural income. The decline in supervision labor and the decline in hired labor across farming processes are interpreted as evidence of output standardization, which is beneficial in the presence of contracting frictions. We use key elasticities from the experiment and a structural model of task-replacement to infer the marginal return to mechanizable tasks, which we estimate at 35% per season.
Economic History Seminar
Du 02/12/2020 de 12:30 à 14:00
Via Zoom
LEROUXEL Francois (Univ. Paris-Sorbonne)
ZURBACH Julien(ENS)
Le changement dans les économies antiques
Le changement dans les économies anciennes, rassemble des contributions issues de plusieurs années de travail en groupe. Historiens, archéologues et environnementalistes ont travaillé ensemble sur quelques produits essentiels aux économies antiques. Ils ouvrent un nouveau type de dialogue interdisciplinaire, permettant de dépasser des oppositions anciennes (entre primitivistes et modernistes, partisans de la stagnation et de la croissance).
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 01/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:00
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/97117933045?pwd=VG5oY0RDaWJMbmtSY2o3Y2F5RkZxZz09
ASSEM Hoda (PSE)
Trade and Voting in the UN Security Council: Evidence from the Cold War
écrit avec Anne-Celia Disdier and Pamina Koenig
Virtual Development Economics Seminar
Du 01/12/2020 de 17:00 à 18:15
VOENA Alessandra (Stanford University)
Maternal Mortality Risk and Spousal Differences in Desired Fertility
écrit avec N. Ashraf, E. Field et R Zimparo
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 01/12/2020 de 12:30 à 13:30
via ZOOM
RASTER Tom ()
The Hanseatic League versus its competitors: Evidence from millions of shipments
Long-distance trade has emerged and expanded throughout history despite abundant obstacles. How trade regimes, such as merchant guilds, were able to operate under such circumstances has attracted attention from scholars of institutions and market imperfections. However, whether merchant guilds were conducive to overall growth or only benefited a few members of society remains disputed; as is their use of formal versus informal rules in their internal functioning (e.g. Greif, 1989; Ogilvie, 2011).
To the best of my knowledge, this paper is the first to quantitatively study how the trade of a merchant guild compares to that of their competitors who do not belong to any guild. I focus on the Hanseatic League (1100s-1669), a trade confederation of, at its peak, almost 200 towns in the German Lands and surrounding areas. Newly collected archival data reveals the extent and timing of each town’s participation in the League’s meetings. I combine this information with expansive, novel data of nearly all maritime trade (1.5 million shipments) between the Baltic and North Sea areas from 1497 to 1700. During this crucial period in history, institutions of the First Commercial Revolution gave way to those of the Second, which oversaw the beginning of Atlantic trade.
In the empirical analysis, I exploit features of the trade data to distinguish, for each shipment, whether the trade was conducted by the Hanseatic League, more independent Dutch traders, or by another trading regime. I then compare trade across these regimes along various dimensions, such as trade value, prices (volatility), and type of goods (including new luxuries). In doing so, I test various hypotheses raised in the literature, including the relationship between trade regimes and growth. Preliminary findings suggest marked differences across trade regimes and contribute to our understanding of trade institutions, historical and contemporary, that operate in environments where coordination is difficult.