Calendrier du mois de mars 2023
Du 31/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
R2-01
LAMBERT Sylvie (INRAE)
“Impact of small farmers’
Since the 1960s, the increased availability of modern seed varieties in developing countries has had large positive effects on households’ well-being. However, the effect of related land use changes on deforestation and biodiversity is ambiguous. This study examines this question through a randomized control trial in a remote area in the Congo Basin rainforest with weak input and output markets. Using plot-level data on land conversion combined with remote sensing data, we find that promotion of modern seed varieties did not lead to an increase in overall deforestation by small farmers. However, farmers cleared more primary forest and less secondary forest. We attribute this to the increased demand for nitrogen required by the use of some modern seed varieties, and to the lack of alternative sources of soil nutrients, which induced farmers to shift towards cultivation of land cleared in primary forest. Unless combined with interventions to maintain soil fertility, policies to promote modern seed varieties may come at the cost of important losses in biodiversity.
Sylvie LAMBERT
PSE Internal Seminar
Du 31/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan
BOZIO Antoine (PSE/EHESS)
Follow the money! Why dividends overreact to flat-tax reforms”, joint with Laurent Bach, Brice Fabre, Arthur Guillouzouic, Claire Leroy and Clement Malgouyres
We estimate behavioral responses to dividend taxation using recent French reforms: a rate hike and, five years later, a cut. Exploiting tax data at household and firm-level, we find very large dividend tax elasticities to both reforms. Individuals who control firms adjust dividend receipts instantaneously, accounting for most of the aggregate dividend reaction. Investment is insensitive to dividend taxation. Dividend adjustments are instead driven by corporate saving, as owner-managers treat firms as tax-free saving vehicles. Small businesses’ profits decline following dividend tax increases, suggesting firms also serve as tax-free consumption vehicles.
Texte intégral
Brown Bag Economics of Innovation Seminar
Du 31/03/2023 de 10:00 à 11:00
https://insead.zoom.us/j/91768711761?pwd=N214Q3MrRHZBRkdua21OajBaWStUQT09
EECKHOUT Jan (UPF Barcelona)
Killer Innovation: The Macroeconomic Implications of Strategic Investment that affects Market Structure, with Renjie Bao (Princeton)
écrit avec Jan Eeckhout (UPF Barcelona)
We propose a theory of innovation where incumbent firms strategically invest excessively in innovation to deter entry and reduce competition. In our quantitative exercise we find that the phenomenon of killer innovation becomes pervasive during the 2000s and remains at a high level until now. We also identify a large efficiency loss from the resulting market power due to killer innovation, in excess of 15% of aggregate output in 2019. Large firms over-invest and small firms under-invest or do not enter the market. Finally, we investigate a set of counterfactual policies and find that a 10% profit tax on incumbents can enhance social welfare by 5.3% in 2019, while a 10% entry subsidy leads to inefficient innovation entrants that harms the economy.
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 30/03/2023 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
BILBIIE Florin (Cambridge)
Inequality and Business Cycles
écrit avec Giorgio Primiceri and Andrea Tambalotti
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 30/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09
HULL Peter (Brown University)
Racial Discrimination in Child Protection
écrit avec E. Jason Baron, Joseph J. Doyle Jr., Natalia Emanuel, and Joseph Ryan
Ten percent of Black children spend time in foster care, twice the rate of white children, with widespread concerns that this disparity is due to racial discrimination. We study the disparate impact of foster care placement decisions, as measured by racial disparities in placement rates among children with the same potential for future maltreatment. We account for the selective observability of future maltreatment potential by leveraging the quasi-random assignment of cases to investigators. Using administrative data from nearly 220,000 maltreatment investigations in Michigan between 2008 and 2016, we find that Black children are 1.7 percentage points (50%) more likely to be placed in foster care than white children with identical potential for future maltreatment. This result is robust to different measures of maltreatment potential and estimation strategies, and is not driven by observable case characteristics. Disparate impact is concentrated among cases where there is high risk of future maltreatment, with Black children twice as likely to be placed in foster care compared to white children (12% vs. 6%). Disparate impact is significantly larger among investigators who are white, who see a lower share of cases involving Black children, who are more experienced, and who have relatively high placement rates.
Histoire des entreprises et de la finance
Du 29/03/2023 de 16:00 à 17:30
R1-14 Campus Jourdan
RUTHERFORD Janette (The Open University)
The forgotten activists: UK and USA shareholder committees of investigation, 1890-1940
Economic History Seminar
Du 29/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:30
Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan
MAGGOR Noam (IEA Paris)
Freights and Rates: Railroad Regulation as American Industrial Policy
This paper examines the controversy over railroad freight rate regulation in the late nineteenth century United States. Did state railroad commissions have the right to dictate shipping rates to the railroad industry - the biggest and most strategically important economic sector in this period - and, if yes, what would be the consequences? It shows that advocates of rate regulation, who mostly hailed from the American periphery, envisioned government control over prices as a form of developmental industrial policy. They sought to avoid American dependence on resource extraction and protect producers on the western frontier. They were remarkably successful, with important implications for the economic geography of the U.S., patterns of regional inequality, and nature of American institutions
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 28/03/2023 de 17:00 à 18:00
R1-13
DIAZ BOTIA Oscar Mauricio (PSE)
School Segregation and Social Cohesion
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 28/03/2023 de 14:30 à 16:00
PSE, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-01
BORUSYAK Kirill (university College London)
Understanding Migration Responses to Local Shocks: Theory and Evidence from the United States
écrit avec R. Dix-Carneiro and B. Kovak
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 28/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.21
MOREAU-KASTLER Ninon (ENS Paris-Saclay)
Due Diligence and Legal Havens: Conflict Minerals Exports in Africa’s Great Lake Region
This paper studies how « conflict minerals » trade flows react to due diligence policies imposing sourcing guidelines for importers, in the presence of legal havens. Dodd-Frank Act Conflict Mineral Rule (2010) imposed sourcing disclosure and name and shame for U.S. importers using 3T (tantalum, tin and tungsten) from conflict areas in Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighbouring countries. Comparing treated 3T trade flows to non-treated products and non-treated exporters within the structural gravity framework, I find that this policy decreased DRC and neighbours 3T exports value, creating a new trade barrier for these exporters. However, 3T flows are diverted to legal havens. Legal havens are countries adopting laws allowing economic agents to « hide illicit activity and to exempt themselves from legal obligations linked to their economic activities ». After the Dodd-Frank Act, D.R.C. and neighboring countries export share of 3T to legal havens increases. 3T trade flows also increase from legal havens to the United States after 2010, which could point to regulation avoidance.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 27/03/2023 de 17:00 à 18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MORRIS Stephen (MIT)
*Screening with Persuasion joint with Dirk Bergemann and Tibor Heumann
We consider a general nonlinear pricing environment with private information. The seller can control both the signal that the buyers receive about their value and the selling mechanism. We characterize the optimal menu and information structure that jointly maximize the seller's profits. The optimal screening mechanism has finitely many items even with a continuum of values. We identify sufficient conditions under which the optimal mechanism has a single item. Thus the seller decreases the variety of items below the efficient level as a by-product of reducing the information rents of the buyer.
Econometrics Seminar
Du 27/03/2023 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE, Campus Jourdan, Salle R1-15
DE CHAISEMARTIN Clément (Sciences Po)
More Robust Estimators for Panel Bartik Designs, With An Application to the Effect of Chinese Imports on US Employment.
écrit avec Ziteng Lei
We show that panel Bartik regressions identify non-convex combinations of location-and-period-specific treatment effects. Thus, those regressions could be biased in the presence of heterogeneous effects. We propose two alternative correlated-random-coefficient (CRC) estimators, that are more robust to heterogeneous effects. We revisit Autor et al. (2013), who use a panel Bartik regression to estimate the effect of imports from China on US employment. Their regression estimates a highly non-convex combination of effects, and our CRC estimators are small and insignificant: without assuming constant effects, one cannot conclude that imports from China had a significantly negative effect on US employment.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 27/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
WAGNER Katherine (UBC)
*Management Practices and Climate Policy in China
"We investigate how management quality moderates the impact of carbon
pricing on Chinese firms. Based on interviews with managers and lead
engineers at manufacturing firms in Hubei and Beijing, we construct a
novel index on climate-change related management practices and link it
to firm data from various sources. We document that well-managed firms
are on average more productive and engage more in green innovation than
the rest. We conduct an event study of the introduction of a regional
cap-and-trade scheme for CO2 in Beijing and find that treated firms
reduced coal consumption more than control firms, but this effect is
statistically significant only for well-managed firms. In the absence of
such firms, our empirical estimates imply that aggregate coal use would
have increased rather than decreased following the introduction of
carbon pricing. This highlights the importance of good management
practices for market-based climate policies to be effective. "
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 24/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
RENK Andréa (PSE and Université de Namur)
Prevalence and reporting of domestic violence: study of a `one-door' system in Nepal
écrit avec Maëlle Stricot (PSE)
EU Tax Observatory Seminar
Du 24/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:00
Salle R1.13
LAFFITTE Sébastien (ECARES ULB)
The Market for tax havens
I investigate the determinants of the development of tax havens using a novel database that
tracks the building of offshore institutions in 48 tax havens. By tracking offshore regulations in
tax havens, this is the first database to identify when tax havens became so. After describing the
development of tax havens in the 20th century and several key empirical patterns, I explore their
causal determinants. Building on a theoretical framework and on the idea that tax havens are the
suppliers in the market for offshore services, I explore two types of market shocks. First, I show
that demand shocks, identified through changes in tax rates in neighboring countries, explain why
countries become tax havens. Second, I find that competition shocks, identified through changes in
the number of tax havens in neighboring countries, explain why tax havens update their regulations.
This reaction is facilitated by the diffusion of legal technologies between tax havens. Finally, I show
that becoming a tax haven generates GDP per capita gains for countries adopting this status. My
results suggest that high-tax countries’ policymakers should anticipate the responses of tax havens
to international tax reforms by making their potential legal innovations costly.
EPCI (Economie politique du changement institutionnel) Seminar
Du 24/03/2023 de 11:00 à 12:30
Salle 1 (rez-de-chaussée), MSE 112 Bd de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris
TASSINARI Arianna (University of Bologna)
Putting wage growth back on the table: Labour incorporation, political exchange and wage boosting policies in semi-peripheral economies
écrit avec with Assaf Bondy (Haifa University) and Erez Maggor (Tel Aviv University).
Growth models scholarship posits that wage-led growth has become increasingly difficult to achieve in advanced capitalist economies since the demise of Fordism. The constraints to the pursuit of policies compatible with a wage-led growth strategy could be expected to be even more stringent in peripheral growth models, which rely on exports, suppression of domestic demand and labour disempowerment to relax their current account constraints and achieve integration into global markets. Yet, empirical experience shows that even peripheral economies embarked on export-led growth strategies can experience occasional boosts in domestic demand fuelled by wage increases and social transfers, which might lead to a change of their growth models. How can we explain the emergence of such wage boosting policies in the context of peripheral export-oriented economies? Drawing on the cases of Israel, Poland and Spain since the Great Recession, we identify one common explanatory mechanism for this unlikely outcome: the contingent political incorporation of organized labour through cross-class political exchange in the coalition supporting a country’s model of accumulation. We identify two scope conditions that enable the implementation of such wage-boosting policies in unlikely contexts. Domestic political instability, coupled with a contingent relaxation of prior economic constraints, leads governing parties of both left and right orientation to activate political exchange with unions, resulting in the implementation of diverse policies boosting both salaries and the social wage. Nonetheless, the depth and durability of such changes remains conditioned and fragile. The findings develop our understanding of the role of, and structural limits to, organized labour agency to achieve wage growth in export-oriented peripheral economies.
Behavior seminar
Du 23/03/2023 de 16:30 à 17:30
Online
BENJAMIN Daniel (Anderson School of Management, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA)
Adjusting for Scale-Use Heterogeneity in Self-Reported Well-Being
Analyses of self-reported-well-being (SWB) survey data may be confounded if people use response scales differently. We use calibration questions, designed to have the same objective answer across respondents, to measure general (i.e., common across questions) scale-use heterogeneity. In a sample of ~3,350 MTurkers, we find substantial such heterogeneity that is correlated with demographics. We develop a theoretical framework and econometric approaches to adjust for this heterogeneity. A key simplifying assumption, motivated by our evidence, is that different respondents’ scale-use functions are linear transformations of each other. We apply our new estimators in several standard SWB applications. Adjusting for general-scale-use heterogeneity changes results in some cases, and our framework predicts when adjustment will matter.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 23/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09
KETEL Nadine (VU)
The (un)importance of school assignment
écrit avec Hessel Oosterbeek, Sandor Sovago and Bas van der Klaauw
We combine data from the Amsterdam secondary-school match with register data and data gathered through in-school surveys of students to estimate the effects of not receiving an offer from one's most-preferred school on academic outcomes and any other outcome that parents and students may care about. Secondary-school assignment in Amsterdam uses the Deferred Acceptance algorithm with ties broken by lottery numbers. Losing the admission lottery for one's most-preferred school affects the characteristics, distance and peers of the school from which an offer is received and, due to high compliance, of the school of placement. Lottery losers report that they would rather have attended another school. This effect is, however, small and only present in the first year after the lottery. Despite the different school environment, we find no effect on school progression. Nor do we find negative effects on a range of other (groups of) outcomes including: time on homework, help with homework, attitudes towards school, awareness of parents, behavior inside school, behavior outside school, school satisfaction, civic engagement, having friends, and students' personality. Estimates are very similar for students assigned to schools ranked second, third or outside top-3. There are also no indications that specific groups of student (gender, etnicity, SES, ability) are harmed by losing the admission lottery.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 23/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-14, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BALLESTER Miguel (Oxford University)
*The Rationalizability of Survey Responses (with Jose Apesteguia)
In this paper we propose and study the notion of survey rationalizability. For the simplest case of dichotomous surveys, rationalizabilitymeans that both questions and ideal views of individuals can be located in the real line in a way that agreed questions correspond to those providing higher utility than a threshold. We show how the relative location of questions can be learnt using a revelation mechanism that involves pairs of individuals and triplets of questions, and that the acyclicity of these revelations suffices for rationalizability. We then show that our analysis readily extends to the cases of non-dichotomous Likert-scales and of probabilistic responses. We further study the identification of the main parameters of the model and show that, in an exponential version of the probabilistic model, even the cardinal locations can be fully determined. We conclude by studying an alternative model of survey responses known as Guttman-scales.
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 23/03/2023
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
Development Economics Seminar
Du 22/03/2023 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan
JAGNANI Maulik (University of Colorado Denver)
Financial Concerns and Sleeplessness
écrit avec Claire Duquennois and Maulik Jagnani*
Do people worried about their personal finances experience lower quality sleep? Using a
regression discontinuity research design, we find that eligible household heads surveyed just
after the disbursement of an unconditional cash transfer in Indonesia report a 0.3 standard
deviation improvement in sleep quality as compared to those surveyed just before the cash
disbursement. The cash transfer appears to have alleviated financial concerns amongst household
heads, who are responsible for satisfying the daily necessities of the household. Immediately
after disbursement, eligible households report an increase in savings, and eligible household
heads report feeling less worried, frustrated, and tired. Consistent with evidence from sleep
medicine, eligible household heads displayed improved performance on memory and attention
tests but not on reasoning or problem-solving tests. These patterns of results are not observed for
household heads ineligible for the cash transfer, which suggests that our results are not driven by
seasonal confounders or aggregate shocks. These results are also not observed for other members
of eligible households, who are not responsible for satisfying the households’ financial needs.
We also argue that nutrition, time in bed, and labor supply cannot explain our results.
Economic History Seminar
Du 22/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1.09, Campus Jourdan
BECK KNUDSEN Anne Sofie (University of Copenhagen)
Those Who Stayed: Selection and Cultural Change in the Age of Mass Migration
This paper studies the cultural determinants and consequences of mass emigration from Scandinavia to North America in the 19th century. I test the hypothesis that people with collectivist traits tended to stay rather than emigrate because they faced higher costs of leaving familiar social networks behind. Exploiting near-complete data on 1.5 million emigrants and 10 million stayers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, I find that children who grew up in households that practiced stronger collectivist norms were less likely to emigrate later in life. I proceed to document that this type of selective emigration generated lasting change in migrant-sending locations. Locations that experienced larger outflows of particularly selected individuals are thus more collectivist today
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 21/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.21, Campus Jourdan
MIHO Antonela ()
Small screen, big echo? Estimating the political persuasion of local television news bias using the Sinclair Broadcasting Group as a natural experiment
This paper investigates the heterogeneous effect of biased local TV news on political outcomes and opinions in the United States, exploiting the timing of the introduction of biased programming of a conservative-leaning broadcasting company, Sinclair Broadcast Group, over the years 1992-2020. First, I document Sinclair's pattern of bias to argue its local news programming exhibits a conservative slant since the 2004 election, though they operate stations since 1971. Using an event study methodology estimated through a two way fixed effect model, I argue that the within county evolution of electoral outcomes would have been the same, absent the change in Sinclair's content. I find that the county-level response to Sinclair bias on electoral outcomes is heterogeneous across time. Exposure to the change in biased content since 2004 corresponds to a 2.5% point increase in the Republican presidential two party vote share during the 2012 election, an effect that doubles during the 2016/2020 election, in addition to Republican gains in Congress in that same period. The associated persuasion rates are 4.7% of its potential audience in 2008-2012, and 14.4% in 2016-2020. Interactions with county characteristics reveal that the effect is concentrated among “isolated” counties, in contrast to economic factors. Individual level survey data reveals a congruent 8% and 10% point increase in the probability to vote for the Republican (presidential and congressional) candidate in 2016. Individual mechanisms suggest educational heterogeneity in the a rise in (self-declared) xenophobic attitudes and tolerance for racial inequality, yet no increases in support for traditionally Republican policy positions or populist rhetoric. A series of robustness checks rule out competing explanations. The totality of our results suggest that political persuasion is a dynamic process that is sensitive to environmental and personal characteristics.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 20/03/2023 de 17:00 à 18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
JULLIEN Bruno (Toulouse School of Economics)
*Communication, Feedback and Repeated Moral Hazard with Short-lived Buyers joint with In-Uck Park (Bristol University)
We show that experience good sellers facing myopic buyers can solve the inherent moral hazard problem by communicating their observation of quality before trade, provided that communication is part of their public track record. Such cheap-talk communication, if trusted, allows market prices to reflect the actual value created, thus providing an immediate reward for the seller’s effort which complements the conventional, reputational incentives. We characterize the conditions for communication to improve efficiency–which requires the moral hazard problem to be acute enough and the seller’s information to be precise enough–and the extent to which it does so.
Paris Migration Economics Seminar
Du 20/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1.14, Campus Jourdan
DéMURGER Sylvie (IAO Lyon/ CNRS)
Migration and financial inclusion - Evidence from rural Chinese households
écrit avec Anna Jolivet (U. of Namur)
This paper assesses the effect of rural-to-urban migration on sending households' financial practices and investigates the various mechanisms possibly driving this effect. China is an attractive case for this study as it combines massive internal migration flows with dramatic changes in financial services over the past 20 years. Using household-level data from rural China in 2018 and applying an instrumental variable approach, we show that the use of financial services by left-behind families is altered by migration. We specifically explore the access to formal savings, the use of digital payments and the types of debts that households take on. We further disaggregate our analysis to investigate any differential impact of migration across various types of households. As far as the mechanisms at stake are concerned, we examine the income effect of remittances on financial practices, as well as changes that may be driven by a transfer of practices and knowledge and/or by a shift in the decision-making power within the household
Régulation et Environnement
Du 20/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KOUSKY Carolyn (Wharton/EDF)
*Can Insurance Help Solve Environmental and Social Challenges?
"Risk management will be central to environmental and social progress in the coming decades as we face the interconnected global challenges of climate change, widespread biodiversity loss, and inequities in the impacts. Households and firms, communities and countries, all face rapidly escalating physical risks, as well as transition risks. To not only persevere through these generation-defining challenges, but transition to a world where people and the planet can thrive, insurance and risk transfer could be critical to enabling economic change, directing capital toward sustainable futures, facilitating needed investments, and providing inclusive and equitable financial protection. Is insurance up to the task? This talk will discuss innovations in insurance products, partnerships, and approaches that are being designed to support environmental and social goals."
Du 17/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
GARCIA CORNEJO Sebastian (PSE)
*
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 17/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
BEHAGHEL Luc (PSE)
Psychological support for Ukrainian refugees in Germany: field experiment proposal
écrit avec Aavdenko (Heidelberg U), Hazard (PSE), Obminski (PSE)
Brown Bag Economics of Innovation Seminar
Du 17/03/2023 de 10:00 à 11:00
écrit avec George Chondrakis (ESADE Business School) ; Rosemarie H. Ziedonis (Imperial College London Business School)
Markets for technology can provide important opportunities for firms to reinforce their competitive position. However, participating in markets for technology can also reveal important information to competitors. In this paper, we study this tension by exploring the strategic disclosure of patent acquisitions and the conditions under which firms will trade the benefits of competitor deterrence for those of secrecy. We develop a model where firms choose their optimal disclosure policy based on the costs of imitation and the effectiveness of competitor deterrence. We test the predictions of the model using data on patent assignments and examining the recording lag between execution date and registration date with the USPTO. We find that the recording lag for patent assignments is high for newer technologies, and when the assignee lacks a reputation for enforcement. Additional analyses reveal that a) an increase in the enforceability of business method and software patents reduces the recording lag for assignments including such patents, and b) regulatory changes increasing patent disclosure, and thus that lower imitation costs, reduce the recording lag in patent assignments.
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 16/03/2023 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
ENGBOM Niklas (New York University)
Misallocative Growth
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 16/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09
NIX Emily (USC)
Dynamics of Abusive Relationships
Policymakers and advocates are beginning to recognize that domestic abuse encompasses a range of damaging behaviors beyond just physical violence, including economic and emotional abuse. In this paper, we provide rigorous evidence on the defining role of coercive control in abusive relationships. Using unique administrative data on cohabitation and domestic violence and a matched control event study design along with a within-individual comparison of outcomes across relationships, we document three new facts. First, women who begin relationships with (eventually) physically abusive men suffer large and significant earnings and employment falls immediately upon cohabiting with the abusive partner. Second, abusive men impose economic costs on all their female partners, even those who do not report physical violence to the police. Third, abusive relationships are associated with decreases in total household income, implying an efficiency loss. To rationalize these key facts, we develop a new dynamic model where women do not perfectly observe their partner's type, and abusive men have an incentive to use coercive control in early periods to sabotage women’s outside options and their ability to exit the relationship. The dynamic model features endogenous break-up, men's coercive control and physical violence, and women's labor supply and learning about the men's underlying types. The model yields a series of empirical predictions which we validate in the data. We further harness the model predictions to revisit some classic results on domestic violence and show that the relationship between domestic violence and women's outside options is linked crucially to break-up dynamics.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 16/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-14, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
VOHRA Rakesh (University of Pennsylvania)
*Contagion and Bailouts in Financial Networks
Diversified cross-shareholding networks are thought to be more resilient to shocks, but diversification also increases the channels by which a shock can spread. To resolve these competing intuitions we introduce a stochastic model of a diversified equity holding network in which a firm's valuation depends on its cash endowment and the shares it owns in other firms. Our stochastic model of holding networks is based on random matrices rather than Erdos-Renyi type random graphs. We show that a concentration of measure phenomenon emerges: almost all realized holding networks instances drawn from any probability distribution in a wide class are resilient to contagion if endowments are sufficiently large. Furthermore, the size of a shock needed to trigger widespread default increases with the exposure of firms to each other. Distributions in this class are characterized by the property that a firm's equity shares owned by others are weakly dependent yet lack ``dominant'' shareholders.
As widespread default involves substantial deadweight costs, to counter them, a regulator can inject capital into failing firms. These injections have positive spillovers that can trigger a repayment cascade. But which firms should the regulator bailout so as to minimize the total injection of capital while ensuring solvency of all firms? While the problem is, in general, NP-hard, for a wide range of networks that arise from a stochastic model of the kind just described, we show that the optimal bailout can be implemented by a simple index policy in which a firm index depends only on its characteristics and its position in the network. Specific examples of the setting include core-periphery networks.
This talk is based on two papers. One joint with Victor Amelkin and Santosh Venkatesh and the other joint with Krishna Dasaratha and Santosh S. Venkatesh.
Development Economics Seminar
Du 15/03/2023 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan
BOBONIS Gustavo (University of Toronto)
Norms of Corruption in Politicians’ Malfeasance
écrit avec Anke Kessler and Xin Zhao
We develop a political agency model in which office holders are motivated by re-election as well as reputation motives, and are incentivized to curb corrupt behavior through elections, formal audits, as well as norms regarding the appropriateness of corruption that prevail in their peer group. The model formalizes the notion that anti-social behavior is governed by both formal and informal rules of conduct. We show that, while the formal institutions of audits and elections have the desired direct effect of reducing corruption, the presence of norms and their interaction with the direct incentives can have unintended effects. We examine the model's predictions in the context of Puerto Rico's anti-corruption municipal audits program over the period 1987-2014. Specifically, using a quasi-experimental design based on the exogenous timing of audits relative to elections, we show that the model helps explain peculiar patters in the data: mayors respond positively to audits in their own community, but negatively to audits - and the corresponding reduction in corruption - in neighboring municipalities. Our estimates suggest a large negative spillover effect: communities where two-thirds of adjacent jurisdictions undergo a (timely) audit experience a 30 percent increase in reported corruption levels.
Economic History Seminar
Du 15/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:30
Annulé
SCHNEIDER Sabine (Oxford University)
International Finance, Bilateral Cooperation and the World Silver Crisis, 1871-1879
Imperial Germany’s monetary union in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71)
necessitated the liquidation of vast quantities of German silver stocks on world markets. Between
1871 and 1879, the German Chancellery engaged an international network of banks and refiners
to acquire gold-backed assets in return for selling its silver in Europe and in South and East Asia.
This paper reconstructs the Chancellery’s network of financial agents and presents the most
comprehensive picture yet of the transcontinental bullion flows that underpinned Germany’s
monetary reforms. Based on a wealth of banking and government records, the paper yields a more
nuanced understanding of the geographic outlets and strategy of Germany’s bullion trade and its
impact on the global silver glut that set in from 1872. The ensuing macroeconomic disruption that
accompanied Germany’s demonetization gave rise to both prolonged uncertainty in bullion
markets and growing diplomatic tensions across Europe.
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 14/03/2023 de 14:30 à 16:00
PSE, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-01
SANTAMARIA Marta (U. Warwick)
Community Networks and Trade
écrit avec Johannes Boken, Lucie Gadenne and Tushar Nandi
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 14/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.21
IRAIZOZ Ander ()
Incidence and Avoidance Effects of Spatial Fuel Tax Differentials: Evidence using Regional Tax Variation in Spain
écrit avec José M. Labeaga
In this paper, we study the effect of spatial tax differentials on fuel tax pass-though and sales responses. We use two-way fixed effects methods to exploit regional variation in diesel excise taxes in Spain. Using a dataset containing daily diesel prices for the universe of petrol stations in Spain, we find that diesel tax pass-through is asymmetric depending on the sign of tax differentials with bordering regions. Petrol stations bordering with lower tax regions pass-through only 56% of fuel taxes, petrol stations bordering with higher tax regions pass-through 120% of fuel taxes. We provide evidence to attribute the asymmetric spatial incidence of fuel taxes to the market power given by the competitive tax advantage relative to competitors. Furthermore, we use diesel sales data aggregated at the province level and we find significant spatial tax avoidance responses to regional fuel tax differentials.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 13/03/2023 de 17:00 à 18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
PAVAN Alessandro (Northwestern University)
*Knowing your Lemon before you Dump It - by Alessandro Pavan and Jean Tirole
In many games of interest (e.g., trade, entry, leadership, warfare, and partnership environments), one player (the leader) covertly acquires information about the state of Nature
before choosing whether to engage with another player (the follower). The friendliness of
the follower’s reaction depends on his beliefs about what motivated the leader’s choice to
engage. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the leader’s value of acquiring
more information to increase with the follower’s expectations. We then derive the economic
implications of this characterization, focusing on three closely related topics (cognitive traps,
disclosure, and cognitive styles), drawing policy implications.
Keywords: Adverse selection, expectation conformity, generalized lemons problem, endogenous information, cognitive traps.
GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar
Du 13/03/2023 de 13:00 à 14:00
Maison des Sciences Economiques, Salle 116
HAZEM Nada (CES - Cairo University)
Environmental provisions in trade agreements and firms’ performance: Evidence from Egyptian Firm-Level Data
This paper examines the effect of environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on firms’ exports, relying on evidence from Egyptian firm-level data during the period 2005-2016. The study relies on a gravity-type model to estimate the effect of environmental provisions in PTAs on the intensive trade margin (measured by the value of exports), using a Poisson-Pseudo Maximum Likelihood technique to account for the large share of zero trade flows. The paper also examines the effect on the extensive margin (measured by firm export probability, number of exported products per firm and destination, as well as entry and exit probabilities). Results show that the inclusion of environmental provisions in PTAs has a significant effect on both the intensive and extensive margins of trade. They increase the value of exports, the firm export participation, the firm entry probability, and the number of exported products by firm. At the same time, they reduce the firm exit probability. The effect of environmental provisions is more pronounced when they are supported by more than one enforcement mechanism. Moreover, the results of the intensive margin indicate that environmental provisions can stimulate exports of green products by Egyptian firms. However, they are not effective in hindering exports of dirty products, as the effect on the value of dirty exports was found to be also positive.
Paris Migration Economics Seminar
Du 13/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1.14, Campus Jourdan
GIUNTELLA Osea (U. Pittsburgh)
Ethnic churches, enclave neighborhoods and immigrant assimilation during the Age of Mass Migration
écrit avec Ran Abramitsky et Leah Boustan
From 1850 to 1913, more than 30 million European immigrants moved to US. Many immigrants lived in segregated enclaves. Did living in immigrant enclaves slow economic and cultural assimilation? To examine this question, we explore variation in the building of ethnic Catholic churches across otherwise similar neighborhoods. We collect data on the universe of Catholic churches in 4 large cities–Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York. We merge with complete-count Census records for detailed information on local residents (1900-1930) and compare residents before and after a new church is constructed to similar neighborhoods using an event-study and a matched difference-in-differences approach. We find that the construction of a new Polish church anchors Polish residents to the neighborhood, slows their cultural assimilation, and reduces their economic assimilation. As a natural placebo, we show that the effects of a construction of a Polish church are not-significant when restricting the analysis to Polish Jews. We instead find little evidence of significant effects among Italians.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 13/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BURLIG Fiona (University of Chicago )
*The value of forecasts: Experimental evidence from developing-country agriculture
Climate risk is a key driver of low agricultural productivity in poor countries. We use a cluster-randomized trial to evaluate a novel risk-mitigation approach: long-range forecasts that provide information about the onset of the Indian summer monsoon well in advance of its arrival. In contrast to traditional ex post risk coping approaches, this novel ex ante technology provides accurate information significantly before the monsoon's arrival, enabling farmers to alter major up front input decisions. Moreover, forecasts have the potential to be disseminated cheaply, even at scale. We assign 250 villages to one of three groups: a control group; a group that receives an opportunity to purchase the forecast; and a group that is offered insurance. We present preliminary results, including on farmers' willingness-to-pay for forecasts; how forecasts affect farmer beliefs and up-front investments; and benchmark these preliminary effects against the canonical ex post loss mitigation tool: index insurance.
Econometrics Seminar
Du 13/03/2023
CHETVERIKOV Denis (UCLA)
Seminar postponed.
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 10/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:00
LEPAULT Claire(PSE)
CORNEJO Andrea(PSE)
Heat stress, hydraulic conditions and child health in India
EU Tax Observatory Seminar
Du 10/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:00
Salle R2.01
TORTAROLO Dario (University of Nottingham)
Revealing 21% of GDP in Hidden Assets: Evidence from Argentina's Tax Amnesties
écrit avec work with Juliana Londoño-Vélez
The paper studies the effectiveness of tax amnesties and their impacts on capital taxation and public spending. We leverage rich policy variation from Argentina, which implemented the world’s most successful program, reportedly revealing assets worth 21% of GDP. First, despite substantial offshore tax evasion, declared foreign assets quadrupled. Second, tax progressivity improved because disclosures were extensive among the wealthiest 0.1%. Third, improving tax compliance has sizable fiscal externalities on capital taxes and social transfers: the wealth and capital income tax bases more than doubled, and the earmarked revenue boosted pension benefits by 15%. We end by discussing the lessons from Argentina.
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 09/03/2023 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
DOUENNE Thomas (Sciences Po)
Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Climate-Economy Model with Heterogeneous Households
écrit avec Albert Jan Hummel and Marcelo Pedroni
We study optimal fiscal policy to address climate change and inequality. We theoretically characterize optimal carbon and income taxes, and quantify them for the U.S. economy with the climate model calibrated to DICE. In contrast to the representative-agent setting, we find that (i) the optimal carbon tax is on average equal to the Pigouvian level, and hardly ever deviates from it; (ii) inequality reduces the Pigouvian level, by 4% in our baseline calibration; (iii) the revenue from carbon taxes is optimally split halfway between reducing tax distortions and increasing transfers. Introducing optimal carbon taxation has progressive welfare effects and low-income households benefit even in the short run.
Du 09/03/2023 de 14:30 à 16:00
PSE, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-01
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 09/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-14, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
TINE Vinicius (UFPE)
*Campaign Spending, Media Capture, and Political Accountability (co-author : Rafael Coutinho Costa Lima)
Campaign spending and media influence are well-known instruments which are intensely utilized by special interest groups to affect political decisions, and the joint utilization of those instruments has been documented and discussed. However, both literatures on campaign spending and on media capture in political economy have developed independently, possibly missing important interconnections and therefore a broader understanding of the behavior of interest groups and their influence on democracy. In that context, we develop a theoretical analysis of the strategical relationship between campaign spending and media influence, as a step towards connecting those literatures. We develop a political agency framework which describes how special interest groups utilize campaign finance and the media to influence voters' information on the political process, in order to extract political rents. We show that when the marginal cost of political campaigns increase, campaign effort and media influence are strategical substitutes, and higher voter welfare is obtained. On the other hand, when the marginal cost of media influence increases, those instruments exhibit complementarity. In that case, higher voter welfare is not necessarily attained, and it might decrease if information levels are already too high. Finally, we analyse the effects of tighter campaign spending caps in the model, showing that higher voter welfare is obtained even when illegal campaign funds are used.
brown bag Travail et Économie Publique
Du 09/03/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09
ASAI Kentaro (PSE)
Working Hour Reform, Labor Demand and Productivity: Evidence from 1996 Portuguese Reform
This paper examines the employment and productivity effects of the working hour reform in Portugal that reduced the standard hours from 44h to 40h in 1996-7. Using the variation across establishments in the intensity of treatment, I find that the establishments that were more treated experienced lower post-reform employment growth, although to a modest degree. Despite the large reduction in the labor hour input, there is no statistically significant negative effect on sales, leading to a large improvement in labor efficiency measured by sales per hour. However, these overall effects mask substantial heterogeneity in responses: establishments in capital intensive sectors reduced employment without decline in sales, while those in labor intensive sectors rather attempted to maintain employment, but their sales were negatively affected. These results provide indirect evidence consistent with the theories that highlight the role of scale effects and capital substitution effects.
Behavior seminar
Du 09/03/2023 de 11:00 à 12:00
Online
FABIAN Mark (University of Tasmania, Institute for Social Change)
What Do Responses to Life Satisfaction Scale Questions Mean? Evidence from Cognitive Interviewing
Statistical analysis of life satisfaction data relies on three fundamental assumptions about the properties of such data:
(1) Individuals perceive the scale as being linear (“cardinality”).
(2) All individuals use the scale in the same way (“interpersonal comparability”).
(3) The way that individuals use the scale does not change over time (“intertemporal comparability”).
Sceptics of life satisfaction scales question the credibility of these assumptions. Advocates respond with evidence of psychometrics validity. For example, that life satisfaction declined markedly during the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic. Yet while this attests to the useability of life satisfaction scale data, it does not clarify the precision of the associated metrics and thus the extent of that useability. Some applications, such as cost-effectiveness analysis using life satisfaction data, may be compromised by especially severe violations of the three assumptions above. We need to better understand these issues of degrees if we are to responsibly apply life satisfaction scale data in policy.
Assessing the credibility of these assumptions requires understanding the life satisfaction ‘reporting function’. This is an affective, cognitive, and linguistic process that subjectively assesses life satisfaction and then maps that assessment to a response category on a life satisfaction scale question. This study explores the reporting function using cognitive interviews: essentially asking respondents to ‘think out loud’ while answering life satisfaction scale and follow up questions. The resulting qualitative data is analysed to explicate the reporting function and evaluate the three assumptions above.
Behavior Working Group
Du 09/03/2023 de 10:00 à 11:00
ANLLO Hernan (ENS)
Outcome context-dependence is not WEIRD: Comparing reinforcement- and description-based economic preferences worldwide
Du 08/03/2023 de 16:30 à 18:00
co-organized with the PEPES seminar. Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan
SVIATSCHI Maria Micaela (Princeton University)
ANNAN Francis(University of California, Berkeley)
TBA
***
Economic History Seminar
Du 08/03/2023 de 13:30 à 16:30
Salle R2.01,Campus Jourdan
Intervenants :
Frederick Cooper (historien New York University)
Christelle Dumas (économiste, Université de Fribourg)
Nadji Safir (sociologue, Université d'Alger)
David Todd (historien, Sciences Po)
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 07/03/2023 de 17:00 à 18:00
R1-13
GIURICKOVIC Enrichetta (PSE)
Does Firms’ Age Affect Employment?
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 06/03/2023 de 17:00 à 18:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BROOKS Benjamin (Department of Economics, University of Chicago)
*On the Structure of Informationally Robust Optimal Mechanisms
We study the design of optimal mechanisms when the designer is uncertain about the information held by the agents and about which equilibrium will be played. The guarantee of a mechanism is the minimum of the designer's welfare across all information structures and equilibria. The potential of an information structure is the maximum welfare across all mechanisms and equilibria. We formulate a pair of linear programs that upper bound the maximum guarantee across all mechanisms and lower bound the minimum potential across all information structures. In applications to public goods, bilateral trade, and optimal auctions, we use the bounding programs to characterize guarantee-maximizing mechanisms and potential-minimizing information structures and show that the max guarantee is equal to the min potential.
GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar
Du 06/03/2023 de 13:00 à 14:00
Maison des Sciences Economiques, Salle 116
MORENO Heddie (PSE)
TBA
Régulation et Environnement
Du 06/03/2023 de 12:00 à 13:15
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BRAUN Thomas (Columbia)
*Cooling Externality of Large-Scale Irrigation
Using a triple-difference estimator based on a 59-year-long panel of weather records paired with irrigation data around the Ogallala aquifer, we provide novel evidence that large-scale irrigation heterogeneously shifts the temperature distribution towards cooler temperatures during months of the growing season.
Cooling-by-irrigation propagates downwind and reduces the upper tail of the temperature distribution by up to 3°C in August, which has positive externalities on downwind crop yields ($120 million/y) and temperature-induced excess mortality ($240 million/y) that are of equal magnitude as the direct benefits of irrigation by enhancing heat tolerance of crops ($440 million/y). The observed cooling helps explain why the US has seen less warming, especially in very hot temperatures, than what climate models project. Our findings also highlight that weather shocks in highly irrigated areas are not exogenous but are influenced by human responses in the form of irrigation.
Brown Bag Economics of Innovation Seminar
Du 03/03/2023 de 10:00 à 11:00
écrit avec Céline Antonin, Luc Paluskiewicz, David Strömberg, Xueping Sun, Raphaël Wargon et Karolina Westin
Launched in November 2018, the China Initiative was meant to protect US intellectual property and technologies against Chinese Economic Espionage. In practice, it made administrative procedures more complicated and funding less accessible for collaborative projects between Chinese and US researchers. In this paper we use information from the Scopus database to analyze how the China Initiative shock affected the volume, quality and direction of Chinese research. We find a negative effect of the Initiative on the average quality of both, the publications and the co-authors of Chinese researchers with prior US collaborations. Moreover, this negative effect has been stronger for Chinese researchers with higher research productivity and/or who worked on US-dominated topics prior to the shock. Finally, we find that Chinese researchers with prior US collaborations reallocated towards European coauthors after the shock, and also towards more basic research.
Development Economics Seminar
Du 01/03/2023 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan
GORAYA Sampreet (Stockholm School of Economics.)
Product Demand, Misallocation and Firm Growth
This paper examines the impact of ethnic networks on product demand and firm growth in rural India. We use changes in regional rainfall intensity as a proxy for local demand shocks and find that demand is segmented along caste lines. We find that consumers in historically disadvantaged communities experience a positive income shock due to good rainfall and that this translates into higher per-capita consumption for them. Further, this demand shock translates into higher revenue for the firms owned by members of the same caste category, relative to others. In terms of input misallocation, LC firms exhibit 16% higher MRPV (marginal revenue product of intermediate input) than HC firms. The demand shock reduces this cross-caste dispersion in MRPV by 5%. We rationalize these observations using a framework of cash-flow based borrowing constraints for firms. The paper suggests, in the short run, that input misallocation and borrowing constraints for firms are caused by limited product demand, rather than the other way around.