Diversity and Institutions: Theory and Evidence from the Spread of Industrialization

Demand and Supply-side Determinants of Manager Compensation (with Eliana Viviano - Bank of Italy)

A Model of Political Campaigns, Lobbying and Marketing over Social Networks: Whom to Target?

Ladders in Post-Secondary Education

Building New Plants or Entering by Acquisition? Estimation of an Entry Model for the US Cement Industry

Heterogeneous Information and Nominal Rigidities

Risk Premia in Executive Compensation: A Life-Cycle Perspective

Endogenous Regime Switching

Sovereign Default under Model Uncertainty

Realized GARCH: A Complete Model of Returns and Realized Measures of Volatility

Financial Reform from First Principles

Tit-for-tat Compensation

Estimating Labor Market Rigidities with Heterogeneous Firms

A Likelihood Analysis of Models with Information Frictions

Global Ownership Patterns

Game Theory and Behavioral Economics

Uncertainty and Leveraged Lucas Trees: The Cross Section of Equilibrium Volatility Risk Premia

No Excuses for Good Behavior: How Social Environment Affects Volunteers

Who Cares About The Great Moderation?

Game Theory and Behavioral Economics

Employment Adjustment and Labor Utilization

Game Theory and Behavioral Economics

Underdevelopment of Financial Markets and Excess Consumption Volatility in Developing Countries

Game Theory and Behavioral Economics

Union Strikes and the Impact of Non-financial Stakeholders on Capital Structure

Forecast Evaluation

Income Shocks and Investments in Human Capital

Game Theory and Behavioral Economics

Fundamentalness, VARs, DSGEs

Forecast Evaluation

The Role of Income in Money Demand During Hyper-inflation: the Case of Yugoslavia

Modeling Earnings Dynamics

Participation

Early Life and Human Capital Development: Human Capital Development Before Age Five

This course will provide an overview of recent literature in Economics linking early life experiences to human capital development and longer term outcomes.

Reading:
Almond, Douglas and Janet Currie. “Human Capital Development Before Age 5,” forthcoming in Handbook of Labor Economics, Orley Ashenfelter and David E. Card (eds.), North Holland, 2011.

Early Life and Human Capital Development: Evidence Regarding the Causal Relationship Between Child Health, Parental SES, and Human Capital Development

Reading:
Currie, Janet, Mark Stabile, Phongsack Manivong, Leslie L. Roos. “Child Health and Young Adult Outcomes,“ forthcoming Journal of Human Resources, Summer 2010.
Currie, Janet. “Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise? Socioeconomic Status, Poor Health in Childhood, and Human Capital Development,” Journal of Economic Literature, 47 #1, March 2009, 87-122.
“Air Pollution and Infant Health: Lessons from New Jersey,” Journal of Health Economics, 28 #3, May 2009, 688-703, with Matthew Neidell and Johannes Schmeider.(NIHMSID 96893)

Early Life and Human Capital Development: Evidence Regarding the Effectiveness of Remediation

Reading:
Almond, Douglas and Janet Currie. “Human Capital Development Before Age 5,” forthcoming in Handbook of Labor Economics, Orley Ashenfelter and David E. Card (eds.), North Holland, 2011.
Currie, Janet and Firouz Gahvari. “Transfers in Cash and In-Kind: Theory Meets the Data,” Journal of Economic Literature, 46 #2, June 2008, 333-383.

Traffic Congestion and Infant Health: Evidence from E-ZPass

Learning from Prices

Anti-Lemons: School Reputation and Educational Quality

A Flying Start? Long Term Consequences of Time Investments in Infants in their First Year of Life

Introduction to Causal Inference without Counterfactuals

Growing like China

Costly Portfolio Adjustment

Time-Dependent Stick-Breaking Processes

Abstract: This paper considers the problem of defining a time-dependent nonparametric prior. A recursive construction allows the definition of priors whose marginals have a general stick-breaking form. The processes with Poisson-Dirichlet and Dirichlet process marginals have interesting interpretations that are further investigated. We develop a general conditional Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for inference in the wide subclass of these models where the parameters of the stick-breaking process form increasing sequences. We derive a P´olya urn scheme type representation of the Dirichlet process construction, which allows us to develop a marginal MCMC method for this case. The results section shows the relative performance of the two MCMC schemes for the Dirichlet process case and contains three real data examples.

Introduction to Causal Inference without Counterfactuals

Cancellation Terms and Consumer Protection (with Marco Ottaviani - Northwestern/Kellogg)

Efficiency in Large Dynamic Panel Models with Common Factors

Online Crowding Out

Social Decision Theory: Choosing Within and Between Groups

Particle Filter-Based On-Line Estimation of Spot Volatility with Nonlinear Market Microstructure Noise Models

The Three Horsemen of Riches: Plague, War, and Urbanization in Early Modern Europe

Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, and Unknown Unknowns. What Fundamental and Nonfundamental Time Series Representations Can and Cannot Tell Us About Structural Models and Predictability

The professor will draw on a few of his recent papers:

Information, Heterogeneity and Market Incompleteness (with Liam Graham, JME March 2010)

Invertible and Non-Invertible Information Sets in Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (with Brad Baxter and Liam Graham)

The Limits to Stock Return Predictability (with Donald Robertson)

Predictability in Predictive Systems (with Donald Robertson)

Sharp Identified Sets for Discrete Variable IV Models

Ownership Structure, Governance, and Innovation: Evidence from Italy

Financial Intermediation and Credit Policy in Business Cycle Analysis

Testing in Vector Autoregressions with the Possibly Seasonally and Non-Seasonally (Co-)Integrated Processes

Calvo vs. Rotemberg in a Trend Inflation World: An Empirical Investigation

Financial Connections and Systemic Risk

Sticky Prices:

New Monetarist Economics: Methods

New Monetarist Economics: Models

Coordination, Time Inconsistency and Benevolent Planners

Monetary Policy and Assets Evaluation

Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India

What Can We Learn from Randomized Controlled Trials

Lecture 1. A Discussion of Techniques and Issues in Development Economics: Intra-household Decision-making and Labor Market Outcomes

Credit Supply: Identifying Balance-Sheet Channels with Loan Applications and Granted Loans

Optimal Dynamic Taxes

Lecture 2. A Discussion of Techniques and Issues in Development Economics: The AIDS Crises in Africa. Part 1. Orphanhood.

Lecture 3. A Discussion of Techniques and Issues in Development Economics: The AIDS Crises in Africa. Part 2. The Impact of the AIDS Pandemic on Health Services and Household Functioning

The long reach of childhood health and circumstance: Evidence from the Whitehall II Study

Loan Securitization and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism

The Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine, 1959-61

The Performance of Different Propensity Score Matching Estimators in a Realistic Monte Carlo Study

Understanding the Size Distribution of Firms. The Role of a Biological Factor

Pivotal Suppliers and Market Power in Experimental Supply Function Competition

A Dynamic General Equilibrium Approach to Asset Pricing Experiments

Full Program

Hylke Vandenbussche, Université Catholique de Louvain and CEPR
Antidumping Hurts Exporters: Firm-level Evidence from France (with Jozef Konings)

Shang-Jin Wei, Columbia University and CEPR
The Comparative Advantage of Multinational Firms in a Comparatively Weak Financial Environment: Evidence from Firm-Product-Destination Level Data on Exports (with Kalina Manova and Zhiwei Zhang)

Maggie Chen, George Washington University
The Global Network of Multinational Firms (with Laura Alfaro)

Ariell Reshef, University of Virginia
Skill-biased Heterogeneous Firms and Trade (with James Harrigan)

Ana Maria Santacreu, INSEAD
Innovation, Diffusion and Trade: Theory and Measurement

Giordano Mion, London School of Economics and CEPR
Managers’ Mobility, Trade Status and Wages (with Luca David Opromolla)

Control Functions in Microeconometric Models

Limits to Rational Expectations and Market Efficiency

Control Functions in Microeconometric Models

Informal Sector, Government Policy and Institutions

How the West ’Invented’ Fertility Restriction

Public Investment and Budget Rules for State vs. Local Governments

Trust and Cheating in the Trust Game

The Political Economy of Public Debt: A General Equilibrium Approach

Laws and Norms (with Jean Tirole)

Abstract:
We develop a model of how private decisions and public policies are shaped by personal and societal preferences (“values”), material or other explicit incentives (“laws”), and social sanctions or rewards (“norms”). It is applicable to both contracts in organizations and public-goods settings and allows to study a wide variety of questions, such as: (i) when incentives undermine or strengthen social norms; (ii) welfare analysis and optimal taxation in the presence of honor and stigma; (iii) norms-based interventions; (iv) societal values and the expressive function of law.

For further details, please see Workshops & Conferences.

For further details, please see Workshops & Conferences.

For further details, please see Workshops & Conferences.

Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices (with Lubos Pastor)

Will There Be Blood? Incentives and Substitution Effects in Pro-Social Behavior

Large Employers Are More Cyclically Sensitive

Information Aggregation and Investment Decisions

Period Length and the Set of Dynamic Equilibria with Commodity Money

Persistent Anti-Market Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement and the Holocaust

Illiquidity Component of Credit Risk

A New Test of Borrowing Constraints for Education (with Meta Brown and Ananth Seshadri)

Imperfect Information and Optimal Monetary Policy

The Empire Is Dead, Long Live the Empire! Values and Human Interactions 90 Years after the Fall of the Habsburg Empire (with Katrin Boeckh, Christa Hainz, Ludger Woessmann)

Abstract:

Do empires affect human values and behavior long after their demise? We hypothesize that the Habsburg Empire, which was characterized by a localized and well-respected administration, increased people’s trust in local state services. In several Eastern European countries, communities on both sides of the long-gone Habsburg border have been sharing common formal institutions for 90 years now. In border specifications that restrict identification to individuals living inside a restricted band around the former border, we find that historical Habsburg affiliation increases current trust and reduces corruption in local public services.
There is some indication that the Habsburg effect is also transmitted in person-state interactions more generally, but not in interpersonal interactions. Past formal institutions can leave a legacy through cultural norms even after generations of common statehood.

Consumers’ Imperfect Information and Nominal Rigidities

Collusion in Average Bid Auctions (with Timothy Conley)

What Ties Return Volatilities to Price Valuations and Fundamentals?

Optimal Dynamic Auctions for Durable Goods: Posted Prices and Fire-sales

Building Reputation for Contract Renewal: Implications for Performance Dynamics and Contract Duration (with Patrick Rey)

Cooperative Strategies in Groups of Strangers: An Experiment

For further details, please see Workshops & Conferences.

For further details, please see Workshops & Conferences.

Equilibrium Default

Nonparametric Rank Tests for Non-stationary Panels

Corporate Control and Executive Selection (with Fabiano Schivardi - University of Cagliari & EIEF)

Firm Default and Aggregate Fluctuations

Crime Networks: Who is the Key Player?

For papers and presentations, please see the Program.

For papers and presentations, please see the Program.

Relational Contracts and Competitive Screening

Energy-Saving Technical Change

Demographics and the Term Structure of Stock Market Risk

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

Inefficient Employment Decisions, Entry Costs, and the Cost of Fluctuations

Educational Choices and Subjective Expectations of Returns: Evidence on Intra-Household Decisions and Gender Differences

The World Trade Network

Screening with an Approximate Type Space

Partial Distributional Policy Effects

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

Refugees and Illegal Arms Flows

Abstract:

Millions of people are killed or wounded by small arms each year. The aim of this study is to enhance our understanding of illegal arms flows across countries. We proceed in two steps. First, we measure the extent of illegal arms flows on the basis of official trade statistics. We construct a measure of illegal arms flows based on the discrepancy between the value of arms exports reported by the exporting country and the value of arms imports recorded by the importing country. Second, we uncover the link between refugee movements and illegal arms flows. Refugee flows, by reducing the ability of the receiving country to patrol its borders and its customs, are found to be correlated with arms smuggling across the border into the importing country.

Income Distribution and Housing Prices: An Assignment Model Approach

The Welfare Effects of Bundling in Multichannel Television Markets

Buying to Sell: Private Equity Buyouts and Industrial Restructuring

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

Social Value of Information in a Levered Economy

Finance and Unemployment

Determinacy, Indeterminacy and Dynamic Misspecification in Linear Rational Expectations Models

Migration Restrictions and Criminal Behavior: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

The Vanishing Procyclicality of Labor Productivity (with Jordi Gali)

The Evolution of Brand Preferences: Evidence from Consumer Migration

Control Motivations and Capital Structure Decisions

Dynamics of Growth and Technology Adoption: 1800-2000 (with Marti Mestieri)

Nonparametric Identification and Estimation of a Binary Choice Model of Loan Approval Using Only Approved Loans

Job Flows in Italian SMEs: A Longitudinal Analysis of Growth, Size and Age

Evaluating Students’ Evaluations

Tying Your Enemy’s Hands in Close Races: The Politics of Federal Transfers in Brazil

Quantile Selection Models (joint with Manuel Arellano)

Consumption Risk Sharing Under Private Information When Earnings Are Persistent

Lemons, Market Shutdowns and Learning

Fiscal Foresight and the Effects of Government Spending

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

Trade, Firm Selection, and Innovation: the Competition Channel (with Omar Licandro)

Using Market Structure to Measure Efficiencies from Merger: the Case of the Commercial Radio Market

European Religions: A Structured Pattern of Behaviour ? Catholics’ Submission to Authority and Protestants’ Internalisation of Norms

Abstract:

Several studies show differences between catholics and protestants in beliefs or behavior. This presentation will aim to show that some of these differences may rely on how people integrate, follow, or violate norms according to one key factor: social control from an authority. The main idea stipulates that catholics internalize norms less and therefore are more sensitive to contextual social control when deciding to follow or violate a particular norm, whereas protestants internalize norms more and are therefore less sensitive to such control. First, the presentation will show that cross-country correlational data suggests this difference. Second, by manipulating social control in a laboratory setting, experimental data will show that social control is indeed a factor explaining differences when following or violating norms.

Common Intraday Periodicity

For further details please see Workshops & Conferences.

Selective Trials: A Principal-Agent Approach to Randomized Controlled Experiments