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Seminars

PEPES - Paris Empirical Political Economics Seminar

The Paris Empirical Political Economics Seminar is a new monthly seminar series co-organized by the Department of Economics at Sciences Po and the Paris School of Economics.
Financial support from the DIMeco project of the Ile-de-France region is kindly acknowledged.
The PEPES seminar series is a forum for front-line research in applied political economics providing top international scholars in the field with the opportunity to present their work.
The seminar also aims to provide a common platform in which researchers working in this field in the Paris area may come together.
Seminars will be held on Thursday from 3:00 to 4:30 PM.
To register for the seminar’s mailing list or to schedule a meeting with one of the speakers, please contact the organizers Katia Zhuravskaya and Ruben Durante.


Location :

  • Fall 2011, Paris School of Economics, Jourdan campus 48 bd. Jourdan
  • Spring 2012, Sciences Po, 28 rue des Saints Pères

Upcoming events

  • Thursday 30 May 2013
    Sciences Po - room Caquot (28 rue des Saints Peres, bottom floor) (15h00-16h30)
    Andrei SHLEIFER (Harvard) : Finance and the Preservation of Wealth
    Co-author(s) : N. Gennaioli and R. Vishny
    full text [pdf]
    Abstract
    We introduce the model of asset management developed in Gennaioli, Shleifer, and Vishny (2012) into a Solow-style neoclassical growth model with diminishing returns to capital. Savers rely on trusted intermediaries to manage their wealth (claims on capital stock), who can charge fees above costs to trusting investors. In this model, the size of the financial sector rises with aggregate wealth, and wealth grows relative to GDP. As a consequence, the ratio of financial income to GDP rises over time, even though fees for given financial services decline. Because the size of the financial sector fluctuates with changes in investor trust, the model can account for the sharp decline of finance in the Great Depression, as well as its slow recovery afterwards. Entry by financial intermediaries as wealth increased in recent years may have further deepened investor trust and encouraged growth of financial income.
  • Thursday 13 June 2013
    Sciences Po (15h00-16h30)
    Alberto ALESINA (MIT) : TBA

Archives

  • Thursday 16 May 2013
    Sciences Po - room Caquot (28 rue des Saints Peres, bottom floor) (15h00-16h30)
    Benjamin A. OLKEN (MIT) : Does Economic Growth Reduce Corruption? Theory and Evidence from Vietnam
    Co-auteurs : Jie Bai, Seema Jayachandran and Edmund J. Malesky
    full text [pdf]
    Abstract
    Government corruption is more prevalent in poor countries than in rich countries. This paper uses cross-industry heterogeneity in growth rates within Vietnam to test whether growth leads to lower corruption. We begin by developing a model of government officials' choice of how much bribe money to extract from firms that is based on the notion of inter-regional tax competition, and consider how officials' choices change as the economy grows. We show that economic growth decreases the rate of bribe extraction under plausible assumptions, with the benefit to officials of demanding a given share of revenue as bribes outweighed by the increased risk that firms will move elsewhere. This logic suggests that growth is less effective at reducing bribes if firms are immobile, for example because they lack property rights over their land. Our empirical analysis uses survey data collected from over 13,000 Vietnamese firms between 2006 and 2010 and an instrumental variables strategy based on industry growth in other provinces. We find that, indeed, faster--growing firms experience more rapid declines in bribe payments. Moreover, this pattern is particularly true for firms with strong land rights that could more easily relocate. Our results suggest that as poor countries grow, corruption could subside "on its own," and they demonstrate one type of positive feedback between economic growth and good institutions.
  • Thursday 25 April 2013
    Sciences Po (15h00-16h30)
    Jim SNYDER (Harvard University) : The Balanced U.S. Press
    Co-auteur : Riccardo Puglisi (Universita degli Studi di Pavia)
    full text [pdf]
    Abstract
    We propose a new method for measuring the relative ideological positions of newspapers, voters, interest groups, and political parties. The method uses data on ballot propositions. We exploit the fact that newspapers, parties, and interest groups take positions on these propositions, and the fact that citizens ultimately vote on them. We fi nd that, on average, newspapers in the U.S. are located almost exactly at the median voter in their states. Newspapers also tend to be centrist relative to interest groups. To complete the picture, we use two existing methods of measuring bias and show that the news and editorial sections of newspapers have almost identical partisan positions.
  • Thursday 4 April 2013
    Sciences Po - room Caquot (28 rue des Saints Peres, bottom floor) (15h00-16h30)
    Guido TABELLINI (Bocconi) : Emotions and Political Unrest
    Co-auteur : Francesco Passarelli
    full text [pdf]
    Abstract
    This paper formulates a general theory of how political unrest influences public policy. Political unrest is motivated by emotions. Individuals engage in protests if they are aggrieved and feel that they have been treated unfairly. This reaction is predictable because individuals have a consistent view of what is fair. This framework yields novel insights about the sources of political influence of different groups in society. Even if the government is benevolent and all groups have access to the same technology for political participation, equilibrium policy can be distorted. Individuals form their view of what is fair taking into account the current state of the world. If fewer aggregate resources are available, individuals accept a lower level of welfare. This resignation effect in turn induces a benevolent government to procrastinate unpleasant policy choices.
  • Thursday 21 March 2013
    Sciences Po (28 rue des Saints Peres) ; room H202A (15h00-16h30)
    Shanker SATYANATH (NYU) : Renewable Resource Shocks and Conflict in India’s Maoist Belt
    full text [pdf]
    Abstract
    Is there a causal relationship between shocks to renewable natural resources, such as agricultural and forest lands, and the intensity of conflict? In this paper we conduct a rigorous econometric analysis of a civil conflict that the Indian Prime Minister has called the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by his country, the so called Maoist conflict. We focus on overtime within-district variation in the intensity of conflict in the states where this conflict is primarily located. Using a novel dataset of killings we find that adverse renewable resource shocks have a robust, significant association with the intensity of conflict. A one standard deviation decrease in our measure of renewable resources increases killings by 12.5% contemporaneously, 9.7% after a year, and 42.2% after two years. Our instrumental variables strategy allows us to interpret these findings in a causal manner.
  • Thursday 24 January 2013
    Sciences po 13 rue de l'université 75007 Paris - salle J211 (15h00-16h30)
    Nicola PERSICO (Kellogg School of Management, Evanston IL) : Time Allocation and Task Juggling
    Co-auteurs : Decio Coviello & Andrea Ichino
    full text [pdf]
    Abstract
    A single worker is assigned a stream of projects over time. We provide a tractable theoretical model in which the worker allocates her time among di?erent projects. When the worker works on too many projects at the same time, the output rate decreases and the time it takes to complete each project grows. We call this phenomenon “task juggling,” and we argue that this phenomenon is pervasive in the workplace. We show that task juggling is a strategic substitute of worker e?ort. We then present an augmented model, in which task juggling is the result of lobbying by clients, or co-workers, each of whom seeks to get the worker to apply e?ort to his project ahead of the others’. We also study how the worker should be incentivized, when the worker can multitask across projects of di?erent complexity: We extend the model to allow for switching costs, where the worker forgets projects which are infrequently worked on. We also model environments, such as triage, where task juggling can in fact be optimal.
  • Thursday 6 December 2012
    Campus Jourdan, bâtiment F, 1er étage, salle de Réunions (15h00-16h30)
    Nancy QIAN (Yale University Department of Economics) : The Institutional Causes of China’s Great Famine, 1959-1961
    Co-auteur : Xin Meng and Pierre Yared
    full text [pdf]
    Abstract
    This paper studies the causes of the largest famine in history, where approximately 30 million individuals died in rural China. We are motivated by the observation that average rural food retention during the famine seems too high to generate a famine without rural inequality in food availability. We document two novel facts. First, there is significant variance in famine mortality rates across rural regions. Second, these rural mortality rates are positively correlated with per capita food production, a surprising pattern that is unique to the famine years. This suggests that government redistributive policy contributed to the spatial variation in famine. To explain these results, we document that the historical grain procurement policy was inflexible – i.e., Chinese central planners had difficulty aggregating and responding to new information. We then argue that the inflexibility of the grain procurement policy together with the drop in production in 1959 can explain the observed variation in famine severity across rural areas.
  • Thursday 22 November 2012
    Campus Jourdan, bâtiment principal, rez-de-chaussée, salle 4 (15h00-16h30)
    Robin BURGESS (LSE) : The value of democracy: evidence from road building in Kenya
    Co-auteurs : Remi Jedwab, Edward Miguel, Ameet Morjaria, Gerard Padro i Miquel.
  • Thursday 25 October 2012
    Campus Jourdan, bâtiment F, 1er étage, salle de Réunions (15h00-16h30)
    Oriana BANDIERA (London School of Economics, London) : Can basic entrepreneurship transform the economic lives of the poor?
  • Thursday 14 June 2012
    Sciences Po in room H405 (28 rue des Saints Pères, 4th floor (15h00-16h30)
    Nathan NUNN (Harvard University) : Commercial Imperialism? Political In?uence and Trade During the Cold War
    Co-auteur : D. Berger, W. Easterly and S. Satyanath
  • Thursday 15 March 2012
    Sciences Po, Salle Jean Monnet (56 rue Jacob) (15h00-00h00)
    Alan GERBER (Yale University) : Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment
  • Monday 16 January 2012
    Sciences Po, 28 rue des Saints Pères - Paris 75007 (00h00-00h00)
    Roberto PEROTTI (Bocconi University, Italy) : *
  • Thursday 15 December 2011
    Campus Jourdan, bâtiment principal, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8 (15h00-00h00)
    Matthew GENTZKOW (Univ. of Chicago) : Competition and Ideological Diversity : Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers
  • Thursday 17 November 2011
    Campus Jourdan, bâtiment principal, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8 (15h00-00h00)
    David STROMBERG (IIES, Stockholm) : Determinants of Media - Capture in China

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