Seminars

Labour and Public Economics

• Upcoming events
• Archives

Upcoming events

• Thursday 29 February 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  CASTELLS-QUINTANA David (UAB) : *

• Thursday 7 March 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  GIUPPONI Giulia (Bocconi University) : *

• Thursday 14 March 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  HELM Ines (LMU Munich) : *

• Thursday 28 March 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  WALDINGER Fabian (LMU Munich) : *

• Thursday 4 April 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  PHILIPPE Arnaud (Bristol University) : *

• Thursday 25 April 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  MACHIN Stephen (London School of Economics) : *

• Thursday 2 May 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  RAUH Christopher (University of Cambridge) : *

• Thursday 16 May 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  ISPHORDING Ingo (IZA) : *

• Thursday 23 May 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-13

  DIEGERT Paul (Duke University) : *

• Thursday 30 May 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  CARLANA Michela (Harvard) : *

• Thursday 6 June 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  PIIL DAMM Anna (Aarhus University) : *

• Thursday 13 June 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-15

  TIAN Lin (INSEAD) : *

• Thursday 20 June 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-15

  EBLE Alex (Columbia University) : *

• Thursday 11 July 2024 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  DUCHINI Emma (University of Essex) : *

Archives

• Thursday 23 November 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  PROFETA Paola (Bocconi University) : Family Culture and Childcare: Individual Preferences and Politicians' Legislative Behavior

  Lorenzo de Masi and Francesca Carta

  Abstract

  We analyze whether historical principles defining the internal organization of the family in the past (i.e., equal inheritance and cohabitation) drive contemporary individual preferences for public childcare of US citizens. Then, we further investigate whether the support of federal politicians for childcare policies reflects the prevailing preferences among their constituents, as shaped by the historical organization of the family in their country of origin, or whether it is more significantly influenced by their own family backgrounds. We find that US citizens whose ancestors' familiar relationships were characterized by equal inheritance rules, which in turn are associated with a traditional financial dependency on parents, are more prone to advocate for government intervention in childcare services; on the contrary, individuals whose forebears traditionally lived in large, cohabiting family units tend to rely less on the government as an external provider of public childcare. Likewise, US representatives elected in districts where equal inheritance rules (or cohabitation principles) are predominant in the population's ancestry tend to sponsor more (or less) childcare-related bills, respectively, regardless of their own family origins. Finally, the prevailing historical family principles also influence the composition of the House of Representatives, thereby increasing (decreasing) the likelihood that a district with an egalitarian (large cohabitation) family background will be represented by a Democratic or a female politician.

• Thursday 16 November 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  ALTONJI Joseph (Yale University) : Returns to Specific Graduate Degrees: Estimates Using Texas Administrative Records

  Abstract

  We estimate causal effects of specific graduate degrees, such as an MBA or an MS in Electrical Engineering, on labor market outcomes. Moreover, we study how college majors and characteristics of students and graduate schools influence the payoff to graduate education. We use alternative fixed effect regression models to control for endogenous selection into graduate programs and in addition use propensity score weighting to construct suitable control groups. We use a version of Dale and Krueger's strategy to estimate differences across schools in the value of specific degrees. Our analysis takes advantage of the size and richness of the Texas School Project (TSP) data, and the fact that it can be used to track students through high school, college, graduate school and the labor market.

• Thursday 2 November 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  ALMUNIA Miguel (Cunef) : Does the Value-Added Tax Add Value in Developing Countries?

  Anne Brockmeyer, Giulia Mascagni, Vedanth Nair, and Mazhar Waseem

  Abstract

  The VAT is a cornerstone of the modern tax system. It has many desirable properties in theory: it does not distort firms' production decisions, it is difficult to evade, and it generates a substantial amount of revenue. Yet, in many countries there are discrepancies between the textbook model of the VAT and its practical implementation. Where the VAT implementation diverges from its textbook model, the tax may lose its desirable properties. We draw on firm-level administrative VAT records from 11 countries at different income levels to examine the functioning of real-world VAT systems. We document four stylized facts that capture departures from the textbook VAT model which are particularly pronounced in lower-income countries. We discuss the effects on VAT performance and simulate a counterfactual retail sales tax and a turnover tax. Despite its shortcomings, we conclude that the real-world VAT is superior to the alternatives.

• Thursday 12 October 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  KOTSADAM Andreas (University of Oslo) : Peer effects on authoritarianism – Evidence from the Norwegian Armed Forces

  Abstract

  We explore the social basis of authoritarian orientations, proposing that attitudes are molded by perceptions of what is adequate in a given social setting. We test this proposition through a pre-registered field and survey experiment in the Norwegian Armed Forces, randomly assigning soldiers to different rooms and finding that assignment to roommates with higher levels of authoritarian orientations increased soldiers' own authoritarianism. Further survey-experimental evidence reveal that learning about others' authoritarianism levels changed both perceptions and attitudes. The findings suggest that authoritarian orientations have a social basis, rather than being a deeply held and stable orientation shaped merely by formative experiences.

• Thursday 29 June 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-15

  CABRAL Marika (University of Texas) : Trauma at School: The Impacts of Shootings on Students’ Human Capital and Economic Outcomes

  Bokyung Kim, Maya Rossin-Slater, Molly Schnell and Hannes Schwandt

  Abstract

  We examine how shootings at schools—an increasingly common form of gun violence in the United States—impact the educational and economic trajectories of students. Using linked schooling and labor market data in Texas from 1992 to 2018, we compare within-student and across-cohort changes in outcomes following a shooting to those experienced by students at matched control schools. We find that school shootings increase absenteeism and grade repetition; reduce high school graduation, college enrollment, and college completion; and reduce employment and earnings at ages 24–26. We further find school-level increases in the number of leadership staff and reductions in retention among teachers and teaching support staff in the years following a shooting. The adverse impacts of shootings span student characteristics, suggesting that the economic costs of school shootings are universal.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 22 June 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-15

  JÄGER Simon (MIT) : Worker Representatives

  Abstract

  We analyze the selection of worker representatives and their impact on worker outcomes, with a focus on German works councils. These elected representatives, with expansive authorities, represent the workforce. We provide a detailed view of representatives' attributes over more than 40 years, using comprehensive administrative panel and survey data. Unlike most areas where blue-collar workers are usually underrepresented, we find they have been proportionally represented on works councils for four decades. While in the 1970s and 1980s, men with vocational training were heavily overrepresented, we note a progressive convergence, culminating in proportional representation today. Our data dismisses theories of adverse selection, suggesting representatives are positively selected based on earnings and personal traits. They are typically more extroverted, open, less neurotic, and politically left-leaning, with a strong interest in politics. Using event study designs and an instrumental variables strategy, we investigate blue-collar representation effects on worker outcomes. Our findings suggest that electing blue-collar representatives helps shield workers from forced layoffs, and slightly increases wages and apprenticeship training. This aligns with the notion that blue-collar representatives emphasize job security, reflecting blue-collar workers' higher concerns about unemployment risks.

• Thursday 1 June 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-14

  HJALMARSSON Randi (University of Gothenburg) : ADHD, Prison Healthcare, and Crime

• Thursday 25 May 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  HUBER Martin (University of Fribourg) : Testing the identification of causal effects in observational data

  Abstract

  This study demonstrates the existence of a testable condition for the identification of the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome in observational data, which relies on two sets of variables: observed covariates to be controlled for and a suspected instrument. Under a causal structure commonly found in empirical applications, the testable conditional independence of the suspected instrument and the outcome given the treatment and the covariates has two implications. First, the instrument is valid, i.e. it does not directly affect the outcome (other than through the treatment) and is unconfounded conditional on the covariates. Second, the treatment is unconfounded conditional on the covariates such that the treatment effect is identified. We suggest tests of this conditional independence based on machine learning methods that account for covariates in a data-driven way and investigate their asymptotic behavior and finite sample performance in a simulation study. We also apply our testing approach to evaluating the impact of fertility on female labor supply when using the sibling sex ratio of the first two children as supposed instrument, which by and large points to a violation of our testable implication for the moderate set of socio-economic covariates considered.

• Thursday 11 May 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  BÜTIKOFER Aline (NHH) : Collective Climate Action: Air Pollution and Child Outcomes

  Abstract

  This paper examines the long-term impacts of early childhood pollution exposure by exploiting the Air Convention (Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution) as a natural experiment using Norwegian administrative data. We use a difference-in-differences design to analyze the outcomes between cohorts born in municipalities before and after significant improvements in acid exposure relative to those same cohorts born in municipalities with no improvements. We find that a higher pollution level is associated with lower academic performance and earnings at age 30. The effects are mainly driven by individuals from municipalities with initial exposure above certain thresholds. The novel Difference-in-Differences movers’ design provides new evidence on age-specific estimates of the pollution-human capital relationship.

• Thursday 6 April 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  HARJU Jarkko (VATT) : Stairway to Heaven? Selection into Entrepreneurship, Income Mobility and Firm Performance

  Abstract

  Using full-population panel data from Finland, we provide evidence on selection into entrepreneurship and the dynamic implications of establishing a new business. Individuals at the very top of the personal income distribution are much more likely to start a new incorporated business compared to others. There is no similar selection based on parental income, but more than half of new entrepreneurs have entrepreneurial parents. Entrepreneurship is associated with similar income gains (on average 20%) over comparable wage earners throughout both personal and parental income distributions. However, key ?rm-level outcomes such as productivity and job creation are positively linked with personal income. This suggests that high-income individuals do not particularly bene?t from entrepreneurship personally, but their businesses are associated with the largest positive spillovers in the society. In contrast, we ?nd no signi?cant di?erences in ?rm outcomes by parental income or parental background in entrepreneurship. Finally, we show that both selection and income gains from entrepreneurship are re?ected in the high share of entrepreneurs at the top of the income distribution.

• Thursday 30 March 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  HULL Peter (Brown University) : Racial Discrimination in Child Protection

  E. Jason Baron, Joseph J. Doyle Jr., Natalia Emanuel, and Joseph Ryan

  Abstract

  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.

• Thursday 23 March 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  KETEL Nadine (VU) : The (un)importance of school assignment

  Hessel Oosterbeek, Sandor Sovago and Bas van der Klaauw

  Abstract

  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.

• Thursday 16 March 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  NIX Emily (USC) : Dynamics of Abusive Relationships

  Abstract

  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.

• Thursday 16 February 2023 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  ZYLBERBERG Yanos (Bristol) : The Distributional Consequences of Trade: Evidence from the Repeal of the Corn Laws

  Heblich and Redding

  Abstract

  We provide new theory and evidence on the distributional consequences of trade using the 1846 Repeal of the Corn Laws and the subsequent New World Grain Invasion. We make use of a newly-created, spatially-disaggregated dataset on population, employment by sector, property values, and poor law payments (welfare transfers) for around 11,000 parishes in England and Wales from 1801--1901. Following this trade shock, we show that locations with high wheat suitability experience a decline in population, rural outmigration, structural transformation away from agriculture, increases in rural poverty, and sizable changes in property values, relative to locations with low wheat suitability. We develop a quantitative spatial model to account for these empirical findings. We show that the model implies substantial income distributional consequences of this trade shock, both across factors of production, and across geographical locations within England and Wales.

• Thursday 15 December 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-13

  MONRAS Joan (Barcelona School of Economics) : Floating population: consumption and location choices of rural migrants in China

  Imbert, Seror and Zylberberg

  Abstract

  This paper provides new theory and evidence on how the consumption patterns of the ``floating population'' of rural migrants affect the distribution of activity across Chinese cities. We first show that: (i) rural migrants sort into cities where wages are high, and rents are also high; (ii) in these cities, they live in poorer housing conditions and without their family; and (iii) they also remit more, especially migrants living without their family. We then develop a quantitative spatial model in which migrants choose whether, how (with or without their family) and where to migrate, and in which they partly consume in their origin location. We estimate the model and compute counterfactual migration flows when local registration restrictions are tightened to make it harder for migrants to settle at destination: there is less migration overall but more in the large, high-wage/high-rents cities.

• Thursday 8 December 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  BAGUES Manuel (U. Warwick) : The Psychological Gains from COVID-19 Vaccination: Who Benefits the Most?

  Velichka Dimitrova

  Abstract

  We estimate the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on psychological well-being using information from a large-scale panel survey representative of the UK population. Exploiting exogenous variation in the timing of vaccinations, we find that vaccination increases psychological well-being (GHQ-12) by 0.12 standard deviations, compensating for one-half of the deterioration in mental health caused by the pandemic. This improvement persists for at least two months, and is linked to higher engagement in social activities and a decrease in the self-reported likelihood of contracting COVID-19. The main beneficiaries are individuals who became mentally distressed during the pandemic, supporting their prioritization in vaccination rollouts.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 1 December 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  MULLER Paul (VU) : Tax incentives for high skilled migrants: evidence from a preferential tax scheme in the Netherlands

  Abstract

  This paper examines how income tax exemptions affect international mobility and wages of skilled migrants. We study a Dutch preferential tax scheme for migrants, which introduced an income threshold for eligibility in 2012 and covers a large share of the migrant income distribution. Using administrative data, we find that migration in the income range closely above the threshold more than doubles, while there is little support for a decrease below the threshold. These effects appear to be driven mainly by additional migration, while wage bargaining responses are limited. We conclude that the tax scheme was effective in attracting more migrants.

• Thursday 24 November 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  GÜÇERI Irem (Oxford) : Tax Policy, Investment and Profit-Shifting

  Abstract

  Multinational firms (MNEs) often pay no tax in high-tax countries because they shift a large fraction of their taxable income to tax havens. We build a model of tax policy and investment that incorporates unobserved heterogeneity in MNEs' profit-shifting capability and different costs of setting up a tax minimization network. The model matches the distribution of taxable profit and investment in detailed UK tax returns data. We use the model to quantify the policy trade-off between raising tax revenue by combating tax avoidance (via, for example, a Global Minimum Tax) and attracting investment. The results solve a longstanding puzzle in the existing profit-shifting literature: our model reconciles the differences between previous micro- and macro-level estimates of profit-shifting elasticities by accounting for extensive margin decisions (to report positive or no taxable profit in a jurisdiction). We test the model's predictions using a reform in Italy that limited the profit-shifting activities of Italian MNEs as a quasi-natural experiment.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 17 November 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  SAGGIO Raffaele (UBC) : Hours Mismatch

  Abstract

  We characterize work hour constraints in the labor market and quantify welfare gains to workers from moving from their current hours to their optimal hours. There is a firm component to work hours that explains approximately 27% of the overall variability in hours. Contrary to predictions from established models of work hours determination, there is virtually no correlation between worker preference for hours and employer hour requirements. Instead, high-wage workers are more likely to sort to firms offering more hours even though they have a preference for fewer hours. Using a revealed preference approach, we find that workers are off their labor supply curve, on average. The typical worker has an inelastic labor supply and prefers firms that offer more hours. Workers are willing to trade off 25% of earnings on average to move from their current employer to an employer that offers the ideal hours, at a given wage level.

• Thursday 27 October 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  ZWICK Eric (Chicago) : Stimulating Durable Purchases

  David Berger, Tianfang Cui, Nicholas Turner

  Abstract

  What determines how durable purchases respond to fiscal and monetary stimulus? Though empirical studies show large responses to temporary subsidies for durable goods, the evidence is inconclusive on these policies’ stimulative effect net of reversal. We build a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium model in which durable takeup and adjustment decisions over the life cycle are lumpy and subject to financial constraints. We calibrate the model to match steady-state durable consumption patterns as well as quasi-experimental moments from homebuying subsidies. We then use the model to explore what drives stimulus reversal, to decompose reduced form responses of consumption to stimulus, and to evaluate the welfare benefits of alternative policies. The model reconciles empirical results on temporary policies’ reversal, emphasizing how aggregate effects depend on the stimulated good’s durability and the timing of stimulus receipt. Heterogeneity affects aggregate responses to policies due to households facing binding financial constraints when buying durables, for whom temporary subsidies shift their medium-run durable purchase decisions. Whether policies precisely target downpayment constraints matters both for the magnitude of policy response and the composition of households that benefit from a given policy. We use data from credit registers to develop out-of-sample tests of the model. The data reveal how different stimulus policies shift the age distribution of households who adjust to take advantage of a given policy. We propose alternative subsidy schedules that increase the level of durable expenditures stimulated per dollar spent. We also use the model to rank housing support policies, ranging from deductibility for mortgage interest to zoning reforms to unconditional cash transfers.

• Thursday 6 October 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  DURANTE Ruben (UPF) : Visual Representation and Stereotypes in News Media

  Elliott Ash, Mariia Grebenshchikova and Carlo Schwarz

  Abstract

  We propose and validate a new method to measure gender and ethnic stereotypes in news reports, using computer vision tools to assess the gender, race and ethnicity of individuals depicted in article images. Applying this approach to 700,000 web articles published in the New York Times and Fox News between 2000 and 2020, we find that males and whites are overrepresented relative to their population share, while women and Hispanics are underrepresented. Relating images to text, we find that news content perpetuates common stereotypes such as associating Blacks and Hispanics with low-skill jobs, crime, and poverty, and Asians with high-skill jobs and science. Analyzing news coverage of specific jobs, we show that racial stereotypes hold even after controlling for the actual share of a group in a given occupation. Finally, we document that group representation in the news is influenced by the gender and ethnic identity of authors and editors.

  Full text [pdf]

• Tuesday 4 October 2022 12:30-13:30

  Salle R2.21, Campus Jourdan

  OZGUZEL Cem (Institut Convergences Migrations) : Trusting Immigrants

  Cevat Giray Aksoy (King’s College London)

  Abstract

  We consider the role of early life experience in shaping political trust. We focus on immigrants encountering different political institutions in their native country and country of immigration. Individuals exposed to higher levels of political corruption before migrating vest more trust in the political institutions of their new country. We interpret this in terms of Kahneman and Tversky’s reference-point thesis, according to which corruption in an immigrant’s home country serves as a reference point for evaluating corruption in the host country. Large differences in levels of income and democracy in the immigrant’s countries of origin and destination amplify the impact of home-country corruption on evaluations of institutional performance in the destination country. Media exposure providing independent information about institutional performance in the destination country diminishes the effect.

• Thursday 15 September 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  OUSS Aurélie (Pennsylvanie U.) : Measuring Effects of Conviction and Incarceration on Recidivism using Multi-Treatment Random Judge Designs

  John Eric Humphries, Megan Stevenson, Kamelia Stavreva and Winnie van Dijk

  Abstract

  This paper examines the effects of conviction without incarceration – a common outcome of criminal court proceedings – and of incarceration on recidivism. We study felony cases in Virginia that are quasi-randomly assigned to judges, and make three contributions. First, we present estimates of the impact of conviction on recidivism based on a 2SLS regression with judge stringency instruments. If given a causal interpretation, our estimates would imply large and sustained increases in recidivism from receiving a conviction relative to dismissal. Using a similar research design, we find that incarceration reduces recidivism in the first year, likely due to incapacitation, with no longer-term effects. These conclusions about incarceration are further supported by analysis based on discontinuities in sentencing guidelines. Second, we discuss how, in multiple-treatment settings, some models of judge decision making facilitate the interpretation of 2SLS estimates as well-defined treatment effects, while others do not. In particular, we consider which models of the judge decision process imply that 2SLS estimates interpretable treatment effects for a particular margin, such as conviction vs dismissal, or incarceration vs conviction. Third, we discuss and implement several methods which allow us to recover margin-specific treatment effects under sets of assumptions where 2SLS estimates do not. Most of these yield conclusions similar in sign and magnitude to those drawn based on the 2SLS estimates, although they are sometimes less precise. We conclude that conviction may be an important and potentially overlooked driver of recidivism, while incarceration mainly has shorter-term incapacitation effects

• Thursday 2 June 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  ZENOU Yves (Monash University) : Towards a General Theory of Peer Effects

  Abstract

  There is substantial empirical evidence showing that peer effects matter in many activities. The workhorse model in empirical work on peer effects is the linear-in-means (LIM) model where it is assumed that agents are \emph{linearly} affected by the \emph{mean} action of their peers. We provide two different theoretical models (based either on spillovers or on conformism behavior) that microfound the LIM model and show that they have very different policy implications. We also develop a new general model of peer effects that relaxes the assumptions of linearity and mean peer behavior and that encompasses the spillover, the conformist model, and the LIM model as special cases. Then, using data on adolescent activities in the U.S., we structurally estimate this model. We find that, for GPA, social clubs, self-esteem, and exercise, the spillover effect strongly dominates while, for risky behavior, study effort, fighting, smoking, and drinking, conformism plays a stronger role. We also find that for many activities, individuals do not behave according to the LIM model. We run some counterfactual policies and show that imposing the mean action as an individual social norm is misleading and leads to incorrect policy implications.

• Thursday 26 May 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  GÜÇERI Irem (Oxford) : ANNULE/CANCELLED

• Thursday 19 May 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  ZIDAR Owen (Princeton) : America's Missing Entrepreneurs

  Raj Chetty, John Van Reenen, and Eric Zwick

  Abstract

  Joint with Macro We use de-identified tax returns to characterize entrepreneurship across the American population since the late 1990s. Our longitudinal data permit an analysis of which new firms end up being highly successful, allowing us to distinguish startups that are destined to remain as small businesses from star job creators. We develop a novel measure of the returns to founding owners using a high-dimensional matching strategy, which tracks total income in the decade following entrepreneurial entry relative to that for a similar matched worker. In the first part of the paper, we document new facts on the lifecycle of star entrepreneurs, including their family backgrounds, where they grew up, and their labor market trajectories prior to entry. Star entrepreneurs are disproportionately white, male, and drawn from high-income families. Entrepreneurship pays at the median and mean for those who choose to enter, though under-represented groups (URGs) consistently earn lower returns than their over-represented counterparts. Higher variance in entrepreneurial returns comes primarily through the outside option in the right tail of the earnings distribution. In the second part of the paper, we develop three research designs to evaluate the role of alternative mechanisms that might account for different entry rates and returns for URGs. First, using a sample of early employees at highly successful startups, we estimate a substantial causal effect of liquid wealth on subsequent entry. However, liquidity appears insufficient to close entry gaps. Second, using local shocks to labor demand early in a person's career, we estimate the causal effect of experience in entrepreneurial industries on subsequent entry. Finally, using a movers research design, we find that children exposed to more entrepreneurs while they are growing up are more likely to start businesses themselves. We use these multiple research designs to decompose the reduced form effects. For example, the effect of labor market experience can be separated into a direct effect and an effect operating through accumulated savings. Our results support the class of explanations that highlight "pipeline" factors as the key supply-side constraints on the number of star URG entrepreneurs. Such factors limit the number of potential entrepreneurs who might be responsive to later-stage interventions. For example, policies that target the point of entry, such as liquidity support or tax incentives, are unlikely to close entry gaps and narrow return differences.

• Thursday 12 May 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  KAPOR Adam (Princeton) : Interdependent Values in Matching Markets: Evidence from Medical Programs in Denmark

  Abstract

  This paper studies interdependent values in a matching market and how market participants strategically adjust to this situation. We study these questions in the market for medical school programs in Denmark, which assigns students to programs based on a centralized assignment mechanism. Using administrative data on student preferences, college priorities, and student outcomes, as well as exploiting an information experiment, we present evidence that students and rival programs hold payoff relevant information that would, if known by the program, allow the program to admit students with lower program dropout rates. Building on these insights, we estimate an empirical model of this matching market that allows for heterogeneous program and student preferences as well as two sources of interdependent values: student self-selection and interdependent program values. Our findings suggest that both sources play a role and that programs benefit from learning information rival programs hold as well as learning about student preferences in identifying students with higher completion rates.

• Thursday 14 April 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  SKANDALIS Daphné (U. Copenhague) : Racial inequality in the U.S. unemployment insurance system

  Ioana Marinescu et Maxim Massenkoff

  Abstract

  While unemployment insurance (UI) could help attenuate racial income disparities in the U.S., Black unemployed workers seem to receive less UI benefits than White ones. To understand why, we analyze administrative data from random audits on UI claims in all U.S. states. We first document a large racial gap in the UI that unemployed workers receive after filing a new claim: Black claimants receive a 18:28% (6:51ppt) lower replacement rate (i.e. benefits relative to prior earnings) than White claimants. In principle, the replacement rate of each claimant mechanically depends on her work history, and on the rules prevailing in her state. Since we observe claimants' UI-relevant work history and state, we are in a unique position to decompose the causes of the racial gap among UI claimants. First, we show that racial differences in work history prior to unemployment create a 10:16% gap (3:62ppt); second, differ- ences in rules across states create an 8:45% gap (3:01ppt); finally, we find no residual racial gap, once we account for state rules and work history differences. Thus, the de- centralized design of the UI system generates new gaps in income between Black and White claimants, even when they have the same work history. Our results highlight that, even in the absence of individual discrimination, institutions can perpetuate racial inequality.

• Thursday 31 March 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  AHLFELDT Gabriel (LSE) : Optimal minimum wages

  Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel

  Abstract

  We develop a quantitative spatial model with heterogeneous firms and a monopsonistic labour market to derive minimum wages that maximize employment or welfare. Quantifying the model for German micro regions, we find that the German minimum wage, set at 48% of the national mean wage, has increased aggregate worker welfare by about 2.1% at the cost or reducing employment by about 0.3%. The welfare-maximizing federal minimum wage, at 60% of the national mean wage, would increase aggregate worker welfare by 4%, but reduce employment by 5.6%. An employment-maximizing regional wage, set at 50% of the regional mean wage, would achieve a similar aggregate welfare effect and increase employment by 1.1%.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 17 March 2022 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  LEUVEN Edwin (U. Oslo) : Sorting, Screening and College Admission

  Abstract

  Quantitative measures of academic preparedness play a key role in college admissions around the world. We study the use of high-school GPA as opposed to the use of alternative objective and subjective criteria in college admission. Our context is the Danish higher education system where most programs admit applicants in two quotas. In a first quota, admission is based on high-school GPA. If rejected, applicants can also compete in a second quota where candidates are ranked on alternative criteria such as the subjective evaluation of CVs, essays and interviews, or specific grades and college entry tests. Applicants in both quotas are ranked and admitted based on their rank priority score. We show conceptually that alternative evaluation can affect admission outcomes through two channels; on the one hand it can affect selection into application, while on the other it will change screening conditional on application. We build on the features of the admission process to implement a regression discontinuity design across the two quotas to estimate how admission affects program and college completion. We investigate the relative importance of sorting and screen, and investigate how admission outcomes depends on the evaluative criteria used.

• Thursday 17 February 2022 16:00-17:00

  Using Zoom

  SCHOEFER Benjamin (Berkeley) : Worker Beliefs About Outside Options

  Simon Jäger MIT, Christopher Roth U Cologne, Nina Roussille LSE

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 10 February 2022 12:30-13:30

  Using zoom

  MOGSTAD Magne (U. Chicago) : How Americans Respond to Idiosyncratic and Exogenous Changes in Household Wealth and Unearned Income

  M. Golosov, M. Graber, and D. Novgorodsky

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 25 November 2021 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-01

  ASKENAZY Philippe (CMH-CNRS-ENS-PSL) : The geography of collective bargaining in multi-establishment companies: a strategic choice of employers?

  Clémentine Cottineau (U Delft and CNRS)

  Abstract

  Despite the growing interest in the firm bargaining process, little research has focused on the structure of bargaining within a multi-establishment firm. This paper explores whether running negotiation at the very decentralized level of the workplaces and/or at a multi-establishment level is an employer's strategic choice to maximise profits. We propose a model where the level chosen for bargaining depends on the geography of the firm. The employer faces a trade-off: workplace level bargaining allows deals that meet local conditions; but a higher level increases the distance between workers and their representatives, weakening their bargaining power. Using a representative survey of French establishments merged with administrative sources, we test this model and find a significant relation between the level of bargaining within a firm and the spatial distribution of its facilities.

• Thursday 18 November 2021 12:30-13:30

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21

  BORUSYAK Kirill (university College London) : Non-Random Exposure to Exogenous Shocks: Theory and Applications

  Peter Hull

  Abstract

  We develop new tools for estimating the causal effects of treatments or instruments that combine multiple sources of variation according to a known formula. Examples include treatments capturing spillovers in social and transportation networks, simulated instruments for policy eligibility, and shift-share instruments. We show how exogenous shocks to some, but not all, determinants of such variables can be leveraged while avoiding omitted variables bias. Our solution involves specifying counterfactual shocks that may as well have been realized and adjusting for a summary measure of non-randomness in shock exposure: the average treatment (or instrument) across such counterfactuals. We further show how to use shock counterfactuals for valid finite-sample inference, and characterize the valid instruments that are asymptotically efficient. We apply this framework to address bias when estimating employment effects of market access growth from Chinese high-speed rail construction, and to boost power when estimating coverage effects of expanded Medicaid eligibility.

• Thursday 21 October 2021 12:30-13:30

  Using zoom

  LOKEN Katrin V. (NHH) : Prison, Mental Health and Family Spillovers

  Laura Khoury and Manudeep Bhuller

  Abstract

  Mental health is known to impact multiple longer run education and labor market outcomes. Correlational evidence has shown that the prevalence of mental health issues is much higher in the inmate population than in the general population, but it remains silent on causality. We exploit the strengths of the Norwegian setting and the richness of the data to accurately measure the impact of incarceration on the health of the defendants and their family members. First, we use an event-study design around the case decision event. The event study is complemented with an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that takes advantage of the random assignment of criminal cases to judges who differ in their leniency. Both methods consistently show that the positive correlation is misleading: incarceration has a negative impact on the prevalence of mental health disorders among defendants as measured by mental-health related visits to health care professionals. We further demonstrate that this effect lasts post release and is unlikely to be fully driven by a shift in health care demand. Family members also experience positive spillovers on their mental health, especially spouses. Assessing mechanisms, we find suggestive evidence of the positive role of in-prison mental health programs and milder prison conditions in improving mental health.

• Monday 21 June 2021 11:00-12:00

  Online

  RENAULT Jérôme (TSE) : Strategic Information transmission with sender’s approval

  Co-author: Françoise Forges

  Abstract

  We consider sender–receiver games in which the sender has finitely many types and the receiver makes a decision in a compact set. The new feature is that, after the cheap talk phase, the receiver makes a proposal to the sender, which the latter can reject in favor of an outside option. We focus on situations in which the sender’s approval is absolutely crucial to the receiver, namely, on equilibria in which the sender does not exit at the approval stage. We show that if the sender has only two types or if the receiver’s preferences over decisions do not depend on the type of the sender, there exists a (perfect Bayesian Nash) partitional equilibrium without exit, in which the sender transmits information by means of a pure strategy. The previous existence results do not extend: we construct a counter-example (with three types for the sender and type-dependent utility functions) in which there is no equilibrium without exit, even if the sender can randomize over messages. Communication equilibria without exit always exist in the three type case, and the question is open for 4 or more types.

• Thursday 27 May 2021 12:30-13:30

  Using Zoom

  SIEGLOCH Sebastian (Manheim) : Direct, Spillover and Welfare Effects of Regional Firm Subsidies

  Nils Wehrhöfer, Tobias Etzel

  Abstract

  We analyze the effects of a large place-based policy, subsidizing up to 50% of investment costs of manufacturing firms in East Germany after reunification. We show that a 1-percentage-point decrease in the subsidy rate leads to a 1% decrease in manufacturing employment. We document important spillovers for untreated sectors in treated counties, untreated counties connected via trade and local taxes, whereas we do not find spillovers on counties in the same local labor market. We show that the policy is at least as efficient as cash transfers to the unemployed, but is more effective in curbing regional inequality.

• Thursday 6 May 2021 12:30-13:30

  Using Zoom

  DRACA Mirko (Warwick) : How Polarised are Citizens? Measuring Ideology from the Ground Up

  Carlo Schwarz

  Abstract

  Strong evidence has been emerging that major democracies have become more politically polarised, at least according to measures based on the ideological positions of political elites. We investigate whether the general public (`citizens') followed the same pattern. To this end, we propose a novel methodology to identify the underlying ideologies of citizens by applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation (an unsupervised machine learning algorithm) to political survey data. This approach indicates that in addition to a left-right scale, confidence in institutions defines another major ideological dimension. Using this framework, we are able to decompose the shift in ideological positions across the population over time and create measures of `citizen slant' and polarisation. Specifically, we find evidence of a `disappearing centre' in a sub-group of countries with citizens shifting away from centrist ideologies into anti-establishment `anarchist' ideologies over time. This trend is especially pronounced for the US.

• Thursday 15 April 2021 12:30-13:30

  Using Zoom

  JENKINS Stephen (LSE) : Reconciling reports: modelling employment earnings using survey and administrative data

  Fernando Rios-Avila

  Abstract

  We contribute new UK evidence about measurement errors in employment earnings to a field dominated by findings about the USA, developing and applying new econometric models linked survey and administrative data on earnings that generalize those of Kapteyn and Ypma (Journal of Labor Economics, 2007). Our models incorporate mean-reverting measurement error in administrative data in addition to linkage mismatch and mean-reverting survey measurement error and 'reference period' error, while also allowing error distributions to vary across individuals. We find no mean-reversion in our survey or administrative data and thence both earnings sources underestimate true annual earnings inequality. Survey earnings are more reliable than administrative data earnings, but hybrid earnings predictors based on both sources are distinctly more reliable than either of them. Our estimates of models with heterogeneous error distributions point to ways in which data quality may be improved. For example, for survey quality, our results highlight the importance of respondents showing payslips to interviewers. For administrative data, our results suggest that greater error is associated with non-standard jobs, private sector jobs, and employers without good payroll systems.

• Thursday 8 April 2021 16:00-17:15

  Using Zoom

  SUÁREZ SERRATO Juan Carlos (Duke University) : Regulating Conglomerates: Evidence from an Energy Conservation Program in China

  Abstract

  How does energy regulation affect production and energy use within conglomerates? We study the effects of a prominent program aimed at reducing the energy use of large Chinese companies. Difference-in-differences analyses show that regulated firms significantly reduced their energy consumption and output but did not increase their energy efficiency. Using detailed business registration data, we link regulated firms to non-regulated firms that are part of the same conglomerate. We estimate large spillovers on cross-owned non-regulated firms, which increased both output and energy use. We then specify and calibrate a model of conglomerate production that fits our setting and the estimated effects of the regulation. The model quantifies the importance of conglomerate reallocation for aggregate outcomes, the shadow cost of the regulation, and the efficiency gains from using public information on business networks to improve the design of energy regulation.

• Thursday 1 April 2021 12:30-13:30

  Using Zoom

  ADDA Jérôme (Bocconi) : There is more to Marriage than Love: The Effect of Legal Status and Cultural Distance on Intermarriages and Separations

  Paolo Pinotti and Giulia Tura

  Abstract

  This paper analyses the marriage decisions of natives and migrants focusing on the role of legal status and cultural distance. We exploit a natural experiment, the successive enlargements of the European Union, that shifted the incentives of some groups of foreigners to marry natives. Using Italian administrative data on the universe of marriages and separations, we show that it profoundly changed the composition of mixed marriages. Access to legal status reduces by half the probability of immigrants intermarrying with natives. Building on this evidence, we develop and structurally estimate a multidimensional equilibrium model of marriage and separation allowing for trade-offs between cultural distance, legal status, and other socio-economic spousal characteristics, where individuals match on observed and unobserved characteristics. We quantify the role of legal status and the strength of cultural affinity and show how it relates to linguistic, religious or genetic distance.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 25 March 2021 16:00-17:00

  Using Zoom

  CHYN Eric (Dartmouth College) : The Long-Run Effects of School Racial Diversity on Political Identity

  Abstract

  How do early-life experiences shape political identity? We examine the end of race-based busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, an event that led to large changes in school racial composition. Using administrative data, we compare party affiliation in adulthood for students who had lived on opposite sides of newly-drawn school boundaries. Consistent with the contact hypothesis, we find that a 10-percentage point increase in the share of minorities in a white student's assigned school decreased their likelihood of registering as a Republican by 2 percentage points (12 percent). Our results suggest that schools in childhood play an important role in shaping partisanship.

• Thursday 18 March 2021 12:30-13:45

  Using Zoom

  CARDOSO Ana Rute (IAE - CSIC) : Collective Bargaining in a Continental European Setting

  David Card (University of California Berkeley)

  Abstract

  Sectoral contracts in many European countries set minimum wage floors for different occupation groups. In addition, employers often pay an extra premium (a wage cushion) to individual workers. We use administrative data from an annual census of employees in Portugal, linked to collective bargaining agreements, to study the interactions between wage floors and wage cushions and assess the impact of wage floors. We show that wages exhibit a spike at the wage floor, but that a typical worker receives a 20% premium over the floor, with wide variation across workers and firms. Flexibility of cushions allows mean wages to respond to firm-specific productivity differences even within the same sectoral agreement. New contract negotiations tend to raise all wage floors proportionally, with increases that reflect average productivity growth among covered firms. As floors rise, however, wage cushions are eroded, leading to an average pass-through rate of only about one-half. We also found no evidence of employment responses to floor increases. Finally, we use a series of counterfactual simulations to show that real wage reductions during the recent financial crisis were facilitated by reductions in real wage floors (-2.2 ppts), reductions in real cushions (-2.5 ppts), and the re-allocation of workers to lower wage floors (-4.8 ppts). Offsetting these effects was a rapid rise in share of workers at higher education levels, which in the absence of other factors would have led to rising real wages.

• Thursday 17 December 2020 12:30-13:30

  USING ZOOM

  GALBIATI Roberto : J'Accuse! Antisemitism and Financial Markets in the Time of the Dreyfus Affair

  Quoc-Anh Do (Northwestern and Sciences Po) Benjamin Marx (Sciences Po) Miguel A. Ortiz Serrano (Sussex)

  Abstract

  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.

• Thursday 3 December 2020 12:30-13:45

  USING ZOOM

  BLUNDELL Richard (UCL) : Wage Progression, Human Capital and Welfare Reform

  Abstract

  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.

• Thursday 19 November 2020 12:30-13:45

  USING ZOOM

  AZMAT Ghazala (Sciences Po) : Gender Promotion Gaps: Career Aspirations and Workplace Discrimination

  Vicente Cunat and Emeric Henry

  Abstract

  Using a representative survey of U.S. lawyers, we document a sizeable gender gap in early partnership aspirations. This explains half of the later gender promotion gap. We propose a model to understand aspirations and empirically test it. We show that aspirations induce higher effort, are correlated with expectations of success, and preference to make partner. Furthermore, aspirations are linked to mentoring, fertility choices and early experiences of discrimination. Facing harassment or demeaning comments affects later promotion, mediated via aspirations. We highlight the importance of accounting for, and managing, aspirations as an early intervention to close gender career gaps.

• Thursday 12 November 2020 12:30-13:45

  USING ZOOM

  RATHELOT Roland (Warwick) : Job Search and the Covid Crisis: Evidence from France

  Lena Hensvik and Thomas Le Barbanchon

  Abstract

  This paper measures the job-search responses to the COVID-19 pandemic using real-time data on vacancy postings and ad views on Pôle emploi, France's largest online job board. We document that vacancy postings drops drastically during the lockdown but before rising over the summer. Job seekers seem to respond by searching less intensively, to the extent that the number of clicks per vacancy initially decreases, before slowly recovering over the summer. We then use a simple model to explain the evolution of the number of vacancies and labour-market tightness by evolutions in the utility of working (vs. non-working) and labour productivity.

• Thursday 15 October 2020 12:30-13:45

  Using zoom

  POSTEL VINAY Fabien (UCL) : A Structural Analysis of Mental Health and Labor Market Trajectories

  Grégory Jolivet (University of Bristol)

  Abstract

  We analyze the joint life-cycle dynamics of labor market and mental health outcomes. We allow for two-way interactions between work and mental health. We model selection into jobs on a labor market with search frictions, accounting for the level of exposure to stress in each job using data on occupational health contents. We estimate our model on British data from Understanding Society combined with information from O*NET. We estimate the impact of job characteristics on health dynamics and of the effects of health and job stress contents on career choices. We use our model to quantify the effects of job loss or health shocks that propagate over the life cycle through both health and work channels. We also estimate the (large) values workers attach to health, employment or non-stressful jobs. Lastly, we investigate the consequences on health, employment and inequality of trend changes in the distribution of job health contents.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 8 October 2020 12:30-13:45

  USING ZOOM

  HAULTFOEUILLE Xavier (CREST) : Difference-in-Differences Estimators of Intertemporal Treatment Effects

  Clément de Chaisemartin

  Abstract

  We consider the estimation of the effect of a policy or treatment, using panel data where different groups of units are exposed to the treatment at different times. We focus on parameters aggregating instantaneous and dynamic treatment effects, with a clear welfare interpretation. We show that under parallel trends conditions, these parameters can be unbiasedly estimated by a weighted average of differences-in-differences, provided that at least one group is always untreated, and another group is always treated. Our estimators are valid if the treatment effect is heterogeneous, contrary to the commonly-used event-study regression.?

• Thursday 11 June 2020 15:30-16:30

  Using ZOOM

  VOENA Alessandra (Standford University) : Marriage, Labor Supply and the Dynamics of the Social Safety Net

  Hamish Low, Costas Meghir and Luigi Pistaferri

  Abstract

  The 1996 PRWORA reform introduced time limits on the receipt of welfare in the United States. We use variation by state and across demographic groups to provide reduced form evidence showing that such limits led to a fall in welfare claims (partly due to banking benefits for future use), a rise in employment, and a decline in divorce rates. We then specify and estimate a life-cycle model of marriage, labor supply and divorce under limited commitment to better understand the mechanisms behind these behavioral responses, carry out counterfactual analysis with longer run impacts and evaluate the welfare effects of the program. Based on the model, which reproduces the reduced form estimates, we show that among low educated women, instead of relying on TANF, single mothers work more, more mothers remain married, some move to relying only on food stamps and, in ex-ante welfare terms, women are worse off.

• Thursday 4 June 2020 11:00-12:00

  Using ZOOM

  LE BARBANCHON Thomas (Bocconi) : Job Search during the COVID-19 Crisis

  Lena Hensvik (Uppsala), Roland Rathelot (Warwick)

  Abstract

  This paper measures the job-search responses to the COVID-19 pandemic using real-time data on vacancy postings and ad views on Sweden's largest online job board. First, vacancy postings drop by 40\%, similar to the US. Second, job seekers respond by searching less intensively, to the extent that effective labour market tightness \textit{increases}. Third, they redirect their search towards less severely hit occupations, beyond what changes in labour demand would predict. Overall, these job search responses have the potential to amplify the labour demand shock.

• Thursday 14 May 2020 11:00-12:00

  Using ZOOM

  PAN Jessica (National University of Singapore) : Gender Differences in Job Search and the Earnings Gap: Evidence from Business Majors

  Patricia Cortes, Laura Pilossoph and Basit Zafar

  Abstract

  To understand gender differences in the job search process, we collect rich information on job offers and acceptances from past and current undergraduates of Boston University's Questrom School of Business. We document two novel empirical facts: (1) there is a clear gender difference in the timing of job offer acceptance, with women accepting jobs substantially earlier than men, and (2) the gender earnings gap in accepted offers narrows in favor of women over the course of the job search period. Using rich survey data on risk preferences and beliefs about anticipated earnings, we present empirical evidence that the patterns in job search are largely driven by higher levels of risk aversion of women and higher levels of overconfidence of men. We next develop and estimate a formal job search model that incorporates these gender differences in risk aversion and degree of (over)confidence about the offer distribution. The estimated model is broadly able to match the survey findings. Our counterfactual exercises show that gender differences in risk preferences and overconfidence have similar quantitative importance in explaining the observed gender gap in accepted earnings. While overconfidence, on average, leads to higher earnings for males, the welfare implications are heterogeneous.

• Thursday 7 May 2020 11:00-12:00

  Using ZOOM

  KIRCHER Philipp (EUI) : Eliciting time preferences under changing background consumption - the case of job search

  Michele Belot and Paul Muller

  Abstract

  We propose a new method of eliciting individual time preference measures in settings where background consumption might vary substantially. The method relies on allocating lottery tickets with low winning probabilities but high rewards. In standard intertemporal choice models, but even in many non-standard ones, the high reward decouples the allocation of lottery tickets from the current and expected future background consumption levels (i.e., from changes in wealth and other income over time). Standard time preference measures elicit the marginal value of money across different periods of time. If consumption remains constant, in standard models this identifies the discount factor. If consumption is volatile, it measures the discount factor and changes in the marginal consumption utility. Consider a hand-to-mouth job seeker who receives unemployment benefits currently but expects to obtain well-paying job next period. Compare him to a similar individual with the only difference that he does not expect to find a job next period. Even with identical discount factor the former has less need of additional money in the second period because he expects to earn well, so will appear more eager to take current payments than future ones compared to the second. Without further controls he appears to have a lower discount factor. Our high-stakes lottery method intends to isolate the pure discount factor effect by offering rewards far outside the current range of consumption. We show within standard theories that this indeed uncovers the true discount factor independently from expectations about the consumption stream. We also show how this extends to environments with non-standard preferences, and with savings, and show that our measure still ordered individuals correctly. We validate our method on experimentally on two student samples drawn from the same pool. They are subjected to a standard time preference elicitation method, and to our method. One set of students is asked about discount factors in December at a time when their current budget is reduced by extraordinary expenditures for Christmas and Saint Nicholas gifts. The other one is asked in February when no such extra constraints exist. Our hypothesis is that both groups share the same true discount factor, but the former have less consumption now then in the future and therefore value current money higher. We expect this not to a?ect our measure, but the standard one. We also expect both measures to correlate well for the second group without income shocks, but not for the first. Finally, we apply our method to elicit discount factors from unemployed job seekers which naturally have varying income streams. We show a low degree of present bias, and are in the process of studying e?ects on job findings, reservation wages and effort over time.

• Thursday 30 April 2020 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  CHYN Eric (Dartmouth College) : POSTPONED

• Thursday 23 April 2020 11:00-12:00

  PSE- Using ZOOM

  BRYSON Alex (University College London) : Are Women Doing It For Themselves? Female Managers and the Gender Wage Gap

  Nikolaos Theodoropoulos (University of Cyprus) and John Forth (City University of London).

  Abstract

  Using matched employer-employee data for Britain from the 2004 and 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Surveys (WERS), we find a raw gender wage gap in hourly wages of around 0.18-0.21 log points. The regression-adjusted gap is around half that. However, the gender wage gap declines substantially with an increasing share of female managers in the workplace. The gap is no longer statistically significant when around 90 percent of workplace managers are women, a scenario that obtains in around one in ten workplaces. The gap closes because women's wages rise with the share of female managers in the workplace while men's wages fall. Instrumental variables estimates suggest the share of female managers in the workplace has a causal impact in reducing the gender wage gap. The role of female managers in closing the gender wage gap is more pronounced when employees are paid for performance, consistent with the proposition that women are more likely to be paid equitably when managers have discretion in the way they reward performance and those managers are women. These findings suggest a stronger presence of women in managerial positions can help tackle the gender wage gap.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 16 April 2020 11:00-12:00

  Using ZOOM

  GERMAIN Gauthier (CREST) : The Yellow Vests - Online and Offline

  Pierre Boyer, Thomas Delemotte, Vincent Rollet and Benoit Schmutz

  Abstract

  This paper studies the Gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement, a series of highly mediatized, large scale protests which emerged in France in 2018. The movement presents two specific features: (i) demonstrations were highly decentralized on the French territory; (ii) social media played a major role in the diffusion and organization of protests. To study both of these dimensions, this paper brings together unique data on the online activities of the yellow vests (Facebook interactions and online petitioning), their physical demonstrations (blockades on roundabouts), and administrative data at the regional level. We first focus on the spatial determinants of the mobilization. Economic precarity, low turn out levels and low spatial fractionalization best characterize highly mobilized regions. We then disentangle the interaction between online and offline mobilization. We show that low commitment online activities - such as signing the petition against taxes on gasoline prior to the movement's formation - signal a latent potential for mobilization. As protests unfold, group formation on Facebook and online demonstrations seem directly linked as complements in a self-reinforcing loop. Finally, to further investigate the movement's motivations and concerns, we analyze a large corpus of 21 million Facebook interactions related to the yellow vests. At the movement's start, Facebook is used as means to organize protests and share demands, but as conflicts with the police intensify, main topics of interest are progressively shifted towards police violence and government critiques.

• Thursday 26 March 2020 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  LE BARBANCHON Thomas (Bocconi University) : POSTPONED

• Thursday 19 March 2020 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  KIRCHER Philipp (European University Institute) : POSTPONED

• Thursday 27 February 2020 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  WEINHARDT Felix (DIW Berlin) : Immigration and the Evolution of Local Cultural Norms

  Sophia Schmitz

  Abstract

  We study the local evolution of cultural norms in West Germany in reaction to the sudden presence of East Germans who migrated to the West after reunification. These migrants grew up with very high rates of maternal employment, whereas West German families followed the traditional breadwinner-housewife model. We find that West German women increase their labor supply and that this holds within household. We provide additional evidence on stated gender norms, West-East friendships, intermarriage, and childcare infrastructure. The dynamic evolution of the local effects on labor supply is best explained by local cultural learning and endogenous childcare infrastructure.

• Thursday 5 December 2019 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-14

  GUGGENBERGER Patrik (Penn State University) : A more powerful subvector Anderson Rubin test in linear instrumental variables regression with conditional heteroskedasticity

  Co-authors: Frank Kleibergen and Sophocles Mavroeidis

  Abstract

  We study subvector inference in the linear instrumental variables model allowing for arbitrary forms of conditional heteroskedasticity and weak instruments. The subvector Anderson and Rubin (1949) test that uses chi square critical values with degrees of freedom reduced by the number of parameters not under test, proposed by Guggenberger, Kleibergen, Mavroeidis, and Chen (2012), has correct asymptotic size under conditional homoskedasticity but is generally conservative. Guggenberger, Kleibergen, Mavroeidis (2019) propose a conditional subvector Anderson and Rubin test that uses data dependent critical values that adapt to the strength of identi?cation of the parameters not under test. This test also has correct asymptotic size under conditional homoskedasticity and strictly higher power than the subvector Anderson and Rubin test by Guggenberger et al. (2012). Here we first generalize the test in Guggenberger at al (2019) to a setting that allows for a general Kronecker product structure which covers conditional homoskedasticity and some forms of conditional heteroskedasticity. To allow for arbitrary forms of conditional heteroskedasticity, we propose a two step testing procedure. The first step, akin to a technique suggested in Andrews and Soares (2010) in a different context, selects a model, namely general Kronecker product structure or arbitrary forms of conditional heteroskedasticty. If the former is selected, then in the second step the generalized version of Guggenberger et al. (2019) is used, otherwise a particular version of a heteroskedasticity robust test suggested in Andrews (2017). We show that the new two step test has correct asymptotic size and is more powerful and quicker to run than several alternative procedures suggested in the recent literature.

• Thursday 21 November 2019 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-14

  SILVA Olmo (London School of Economics) : The Organizational Economics of School Chains

  Co-authors: L. Neri and E. Pasini

  Abstract

  Academics and policy makers are increasingly advocating school autonomy as a way to improve student achievement. At the same time, however, many countries are experiencing a counterbalancing trend: the emergence of chains that bind schools together into institutionalized structures with varying degrees of centralization. Despite their prominence, no evidence exists on the determinants and effects of differences in the organizational set-up of school chains. Our work aims to fill this gap. We use the insights of the incomplete contracts literature to study the internal organization of school chains seen as firms. We match detailed survey information on decentralization decisions of procurement activities regarding 410 chains and 2,000 schools in the England to student, school and market-level administrative records. We find that chains with a larger share of schools whose leadership background is aligned with the chain board’s expertise, younger chains, and chains that are closer to the market value-added (‘productivity’) frontier decentralize more. These patterns are in line with the predictions developed by organizational economics theories that focus on the structure of the firm. However, contrary to the insights from this field, we find no association between the value-added heterogeneity of the markets in which the chains operate and their decision to delegate. We further investigate the link between the structure of school chains and their students’ performance, and find a weak negative association between centralization and average pupil value-added.

• Thursday 14 November 2019 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-14

  BAGGER Jesper (Royal Holloway, University of London) : Income Taxation and Labor Allocation

  Abstract

  We study how income taxation affect workers’ job search behaviour and thereby the allocation of labor across firms. Using comprehensive administrative data from Denmark, the mobility-based long run compensated elasticity of taxable income with respect to the marginal net-of-tax rate is estimated to be 0.17, and we show that this elasticity-estimate is to a large extent driven by a reduction in firms’ monopsony power. When evaluating a series of Danish income tax reforms implemented in the 1990s and 2000s, we find that the reforms reduced long run unemployment by 6-17% and increased long run aggregate productivity by 2-6%, with larger effects at the bottom of the skill distribution.

• Thursday 7 November 2019 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  PETRONGOLO Barbara (Queen Mary University of London) : Economic incentives, home production and gender identity norms

  Co-authors: A. Ichino, M. Olsson, and P. Skogman Thoursie

  Abstract

  We infer the role of gender identity norms from the reallocation of childcare across parents, following changes in their relative wages. By exploiting variation from a Swedish tax reform, we estimate the elasticity of substitution in parental childcare for the whole population and for demographic groups potentially adhering to differently binding norms. We find that immigrant, married and male breadwinner couples, as well as couples with a male first-born, react more strongly to tax changes that induce a more traditional allocation of spouses time, while the respective counterpart couples react more strongly to tax changes that induce a more egalitarian division of labor.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 17 October 2019 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-02

  URZUA Sergio (University of Maryland) : Shooting Stars? Firms and Education as Mediators of the Returns to Skills

  Co-author: F. Saltiel

  Abstract

  In the context of skill-biased technological change, understanding the nature and the mechanisms through which skills result in improved labor market outcomes is of critical importance. In this paper, we take advantage of three administrative data sources to estimate the labor market returns to skills in the labor market. We first test for non-linearities in these returns and find that the returns to mathematical skills are highly non-linear, with math skill ’superstars’ far outearning other high math scorers. Meanwhile, the returns to language skills are largely flat through the early career. We find that high math-skilled workers not only complete more years of education, but graduate from higher quality universities and earn higher-paying degrees. We further examine the role of firms as a mediator of the returns to skills, a dimension not previously explored in the literature. We find that high-skilled workers match to high-paying firms immediately upon labor market entry. We conduct a decomposition to examine the separate contribution of education and firms in mediating the returns to skills, and find that worker-firm matching explains almost half of the estimated returns.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 26 September 2019 12:30-13:45

  PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09

  LAVEST Chloé (CAE) : The Impact of Family Policies on the Dynamics of Gender Inequality

  Co-authors: Henrik Kleven, Johanna Posch, Andreas Steinhauer, and Josef Zweimüller

• Thursday 11 July 2019 12:30-13:45

  CLARK Damon (University of California, Irvine) : What Do Families Want from Schools? Evidence from Real Choices and a Survey of Choosers

  Co-authors: Paco Martorell and Matt Wiswall

  Abstract

  We analyze families' preferences for school characteristics using data from an urban school district in the Western United States. This district operates a public school choice system with a centralized school assignment process. Parents rank the public schools in the district and an algorithm assigns students to schools based on parental preferences, school capacity constraints and district priorities. In Fall 2018 we surveyed parents as they made these rankings. Our survey asked parents for their beliefs about the characteristics of the schools they were choosing and their beliefs about their children’s outcomes were they to attend these schools. The survey also include a discrete choice experiment that asked parents to compare hypothetical schools. We match these survey data to administrative data on parents’ real choices and other information from student records, including ethnicity, proxies for socio-economic status and test scores. We use these matched data to analyse parents' preferences for school characteristics.

• Thursday 20 June 2019 12:30-13:45

  LINDNER Attila (University College London) : Technological Change and Skill Demand in Non-Competitive Labor Markets

  Co-author: Balazs Murakozy // NOTE - Room change: R2-01

  Abstract

  This paper investigates the consequences of technological change in the presence of non-competitive labor markets. We propose a model of technological progress where firms invest in innovation in the hope of developing new technologies. A successful innovation elevates firm-level labor demand, and so firms have to raise wages to hire more workers. Unlike in models where wages are set competitively, in this framework firm-level wage responses reveal information about the nature of technological change. We show that one can infer the extent which technological change is skill biased by jointly investigating the effect of innovation on the firm-level skill ratio and on the skill wage premium. We apply this idea by exploiting unique firm-level innovation surveys linked to employee-employer data from Hungary and Norway. We show that firm-level technological change raises the skill ratio and also the skill premium in both countries. The increase in the skill-premium is not driven by the change in composition of the workforce and, in line with the predictions of the non-competitive labor markets, wages of new entrants are also affected. Both high- (e.g. R&D based) and low-novelty value innovations are equally skill biased. Among low-novelty innovation types, technological innovation are the most skill-biased, while organizational innovation is less so.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 23 May 2019 12:30-13:45

  STANGE Kevin (University of Michigan) : Migration from Sub-National Administrative Data: Problems and Solutions with an Application to Higher Education

  Co-author: Andrew Foote

  Abstract

  Recent research in many fields of social science makes extensive use of subnational administrative data, such as from states, counties, or school districts. Recent work on the labor market consequences of post-secondary education, in particular, have used administrative data from institutions matched with in-state earnings data. However, none of these papers have the ability to follow workers outside of the state, which could bias measured effects on earnings. While most of these papers acknowledge the issue, they are unable to quantify the effect that non-random attrition has on their results. In addition to these academic papers, a number of states have produced and publicized average earnings of graduates to inform students, again using in-state earnings data. Using new data merging college records with both in-state and national earnings from the LEHD, this paper documents how earnings estimates are biased in practice. We also document how this differs by field of study and college selectivity, as well as the extent to which attrition is differential across the earnings distribution. We find that out-of-state migration is particularly problematic for high-earners, flagship graduates, and computer science majors and grows with time since graduation. In our empirical example, we find that the effect of graduating from a flagship university (relative to less selective public 4-year) is 26% higher than one would estimate using in-state earnings exclusively. Various approaches to testing for and bounding this bias are considered.

• Thursday 16 May 2019 12:30-13:45

  WEBER Giacomo (PSE) : Free Mobility of Labor: How are neighboring labor markets affected by the EU Eastern enlargement of 2004?

  Abstract

  In recent years there has been growing public and political opposition against the principle of free movement of labor within the European Union (EU). Concerns are often based on the belief that immigrants hurt residents' labor market opportunities and they are particularly pronounced toward the mobility of nationals from countries that joined the EU since 2004. In this paper, we provide the first evaluation of the labor market effects of an increase in immigration on neighboring markets that resulted from the EU Eastern enlargement of 2004. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that municipalities closer to the border received larger shares of immigrant workers after 2004 due to lower commuting costs. Relying on social security data on the universe of workers in Austrian municipalities within commuting distance to the new EU Member States from 1997 to 2015, we first show that the share of nationals from the new EU Member States among all employees increased by a factor of four over our observation period and that this increase is larger in municipalities closer to the border. Second, comparing changes over time in labor markets closer to the border to those further away within regions, we observe for subgroups of resident workers that their employment decreases relatively faster in municipalities closer to the border after 2004. This negative effect tends to be more pronounced in blue-collar occupations and for non-Austrian workers.

• Thursday 18 April 2019 12:30-13:45

  MARIE Olivier (Erasmus School of Economics) : Risky Moms, Risky Kids: Fertility and Crime after the Fall of the Wall

  Co-author: Arnaud Chevalier

  Abstract

  We study the link between parental selection and children criminality using a natural experiment which dramatically affected fertility decisions. Following the collapse of the communist regime in East Germany in 1989 the number of births more than halved. As well as in size, these cohorts markedly differ in parental composition. We assess whether this resulted in changes in these children’s criminal participation. We find that were almost 30 percent more likely to be arrested, that this huge effect is observed for most offence types, and that it is as strong for both genders. We highlight a new mechanism linking fertility and crime: the inter-generational transmission of risk preferences from mothers to children which was more pronounced for this cohort and especially for ‘risk loving’ moms.

• Thursday 28 March 2019 12:30-13:45

  PELLIZZARI Michele (University of Geneva) : Distance Learning in Higher Education: Evidence from a Randomised Experiment

  Co-authors: P. Cacault, C. Hildebrand, and J. Laurent-Lucchetti

  Abstract

  Using a randomised experiment at the University of Geneva, we study the impact of on-line live streaming of lectures on achievement and attendance. We find that (i) students use the streaming technology only punctually, seemingly when attending in class is too costly; (ii) attending lectures via live streaming lowers achievement for low ability students and improves it for high ability ones and (iii) offering this service reduces in-class attendance only mildly.

• Thursday 21 March 2019 12:30-13:45

  GARROUSTE Manon (University of Lille) : When education and urban policies overlap: Effect on academic achievement

  Abstract

  In this paper, we study the effect on academic achievement of the overlap between urban and education placed-based policies in France. The identification challenge comes from two potential bias due to individual location choices and school choices. To analyze causal effects, we propose to use regression discontinuities at the boundaries of treated zones. We use very precise geocoded data at the neighborhood, school, and individual levels in the Paris municipality to investigate the net effect of each type of programs, as well as potential interaction effects. Preliminary results suggest that the net effect on academic achievement of urban policies is negative and that there is no advantage of benefiting from both types of programs.

• Thursday 13 December 2018 12:30-13:45

  BOUGUEN Adrien (Berkeley) : Heterogeneous Preschool Impact and Close Substitutes: Evidence from a Preschool Construction Program in Cambodia

  Co-author: Jan Berkes

  Abstract

  We study the impact of preschools and the issue of close substitutes in a Cambodian context where newly built formalized preschools are competing with existing alternative early childcare arrangements. In addition to estimating the reduced-form impact of a vast preschool construction program using a random assignment, we implement several empirical techniques to isolate the impact on children who would have stayed at home if they had not been enrolled in the newly built preschools. We argue that this parameter is both critical for the preschool literature and, because it does not depend on the quality of alternative preschool, is often more externally valid than standard treatment parameters. Our results show that after one year of experiment, the average Intention-To-Treat impact on cognitive and socioemotional development measures is significant but small in magnitude (0.05 SD). Our analysis, however, suggests that the impact on the children who would have stayed at home will likely be high and significant, between 0.13 SD and 0.45 SD. In a context where infrastructures are improving in low-income countries, our analysis suggests that accounting for close substitutes is crucial to produce more external valid statements on programs’ performance and make appropriate policy recommendations.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 6 December 2018 12:30-13:45

  SARSONS Heather (University of Toronto) : Interpreting Signals in the Labor Market: Evidence from Medical Referrals

  Abstract

  This paper provides evidence that a person’s gender influences the way others interpret information about his or her ability and documents the implications for gender inequality in labor markets. Using data on physicians’ referrals to surgical specialists, I find that the referring physician views patient outcomes differently depending on the performing surgeon’s gender. Physicians become more pessimistic about a female surgeon’s ability than a male’s after a patient death, indicated by a sharper drop in referrals to the female surgeon. However, physicians become more optimistic about a male surgeon’s ability after a good patient outcome, indicated by a larger increase in the number of referrals the male surgeon receives. After a bad experience with one female surgeon, physicians also become less likely to refer to new female surgeons in the same specialty. There are no such spillovers to other men after a bad experience with one male surgeon. Consistent with learning models, physicians’ reactions to events are strongest when they are beginning to refer to a surgeon. However, the empirical patterns are only consistent with Bayesian learning if physicians do not have rational expectations about the true distribution of surgeon ability.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 15 November 2018 12:30-13:45

  FERNÁNDEZ SIERRA Manuel (University of Essex) : Women’s Labor Force Participation and the Distribution of the Gender Wage Gap

  Co-author: Sonia Bhalotra

  Abstract

  We analyse how the rising labor force participation of women influences the distribution of the gender pay gap and inequality. We formulate an equilibrium model of the labor market in which the elasticity of substitution between male and female labor varies with the task content of occupations. We structurally estimate the parameters using individual data from Mexico between 1989 and 2014, when women's labor force participation increased by fifty percent. We provide novel evidence that male and female labor are closer substitutes in highpaying abstract task-intensive occupations than in lower-paying manual and routine task-intensive occupations. Consistent with this, we find a widening of the gender pay gap at the lower end of the distribution, alongside a narrowing towards the top. We also find that demand side trends favoured women, attenuating the supply-driven negative pressure on their wages, and more so among college-educated workers in abstract-intensive occupations. The paper contributes new evidence on the distribution of the gender wage gap, and contributes to a wider literature on technological change, occupational sorting and wage inequality.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 8 November 2018 12:30-13:45

  VON EHRLICH Maximilian (University of Bern) : Cities and the Structure of Social Interactions: Evidence from Mobile Phone Data

  Co-author: Konstantin Büchel

  Abstract

  Social interactions are considered pivotal to agglomeration economies. We explore a unique dataset on mobile phone calls to examine how distance and population density shape the structure of social interactions. Exploiting an exogenous change in travel times, we show that distance is highly detrimental to interpersonal exchange. Despite distance-related costs, we find no evidence that urban residents benefit from larger networks when spatial sorting is accounted for. Higher density rather generates a more efficient network in terms of matching and clustering. These differences in network structure capitalize into land prices, corroborating the hypothesis that agglomeration economies operate via network efficiency.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 25 October 2018 12:30-13:45

  GLOVER Dylan (INSEAD) : Job Search and Intermediation under Discrimination: Evidence from Terrorist Attacks in France

  Abstract

  Using detailed, high frequency data on potential job matches made through the French Public Employment Service (PES), I present evidence showing that search intensity both by and for minority jobseekers is highly sensitive to a shock that increases bias against their type. On average, minority jobseekers -- defined as having a first name of Arabic origin -- significantly reduce their job search effort in the 10 weeks following the January 2015 "Charlie Hebdo" attacks compared to majority jobseekers, defined as those with classically French sounding first names. Employers also reduce their search effort for minority candidates for their high quality contracts. This drop is offset by a substantial increase in counselor matching effort made for minorities after the shock, but only in areas with low latent levels of discrimination. In addition, this counselor compensatory effect is driven by counselors who are themselves minorities and for majority counselors who specialize in getting the most marginalized jobseekers back to work. Overall, negative employment effects on minorities are only observed in micromarkets outside of the PES' purview. This suggests that labor market intermediaries may play an important role in mitigating adverse shocks that affect labor supply.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 11 October 2018 12:30-13:45

  HENSVIK Lena (Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy) : The Skill-Specific Impact of Past and Projected Occupational Decline

  Co-author: Oskar Nordström Skans

  Abstract

  We show that the occupation-level association between employment growth and worker endowments of cognitive abilities and productive traits is monotonically positive, despite the polarizing relationship to wage ranks. Employment has primarily increased in occupations where workers have larger-than-average endowments of Social maturity and Verbal and Technical abilities. Occupations where workers rely on Psychological energy and Inductive abilities have instead declined. Projections of future occupational decline and automation risks are even more skill-biased but otherwise show similar associations to most of our specific skill-measures. Existing projections thus suggest that the same types of workers will continue to gain and lose in the coming decades.

• Thursday 27 September 2018 12:00-13:30

  FERNANDEZ Raquel (NYU) : Cultural change (joint with Sahar Parsa and Martina Viarengo)

  Joint with Behavior and PEPES - NOTE: Time and room change: 12:00 in R2-01

  Abstract

  The 20th century has witnessed a rapid pace of cultural change. This paper focuses on cultural change in one particular area -- attitudes towards gay people -- and argues that the AIDS crisis was an important propagator of change. We examine this hypothesis empirically in a variety of ways.

• Thursday 20 September 2018 12:30-13:45

  ROBIN Jean-Marc (Sciences Po) : On Worker and Firm Heterogeneity in Wages and Employment Mobility: Evidence from Danish Register Data

  Co-authors: Rasmus Lentz and Suphanit Piyapromdee

  Abstract

  In this paper, we develop a model of wage dynamics and employment mobility with unrestricted interactions between worker and firm unobserved characteristics in both wages and employment mobility. We adopt the finite mixture approach of Bonhomme et al. (2017). The model is estimated on Danish matched employer-employee data for the period 1985-2013. The estimation includes gender, education, age, tenure and time controls. We find significant sorting on wages and it is stable over the period. Sorting is established early in careers, increasing during the first decade after which it declines steadily. Job-to-job mobility displays a “mean-reverting” pattern that maintains correlations between worker and firm types to a stationary level. Counterfactuals demonstrate that sorting is primarily driven by two channels: First, a “preference” channel whereby higher wage workers are more likely to accept jobs in higher wage firms. Second, a job finding channel where the job destination distribution out of non-employment is stochastically increasing in the wage type of the worker.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 21 June 2018 12:30-13:45

  RAUTE Anna (Queen Mary University London) : Can financial incentives reduce the baby gap? Evidence from a reform in maternity leave benefits; IMPORTANT: ROOM CHANGE - R2-01

  Abstract

  In this paper, I assess whether earnings-dependent maternity leave positively impacts fertility and narrows the baby gap between high educated (high earning) and low educated (low earning) women. I exploit a major maternity leave benefit reform in Germany that considerably increased the financial incentives for higher educated and higher earning women to have a child, by up to 21,000 EUR. Using the large differential changes in maternity leave benefits for the child yet to be born across education and income groups in a differences-in-differences design, I estimate the causal impact of the reform on fertility up to 5 years post reform. In addition to demonstrating an up to 22% increase in the fertility of tertiary educated versus low educated women, I find a positive, statistically significant effect of increased benefits on fertility, driven mainly by women at the middle and upper end of the education and income distributions. Overall, the results suggest that earnings-dependent maternity leave benefits, which compensate women commensurate with their opportunity cost of childbearing, could successfully reduce the fertility rate disparity related to mothers' education and earnings.

• Thursday 24 May 2018 12:30-13:30

  SOCIETY OF ECONOMICS OF THE HOUSEHOLD prenom ... (SEHO) : There is no regular seminar scheduled. See link below.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 17 May 2018 12:30-13:45

  DOYLE Joseph (MIT Sloan School of Management) : Measuring Physician Quality: Evidence from Physician Availability

  Abstract

  Measuring physician quality is fundamental to understanding healthcare productivity, yet attempts to estimate the types of physicians that improve survival can be confounded due to patient sorting. This paper aims to overcome this endogeneity problem by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in the mix of physicians available to treat the patient on the particular date of an inpatient admission. One innovation is the use of 100% Medicare claims data to characterize the mix of physicians available including specialty training, medical school quality rankings, patient volume, sex, and years of experience. When heart failure patients enter the hospital when more cardiologists are available, patients receive more intensive treatments and are more likely to survive at one year. The results speak to the debate over the value of treatment intensity and specialists in particular.

• Thursday 3 May 2018 12:30-13:45

  GOUSSÉ Marion (Laval University) : More or Less Unmarried. The Impact of Legal Settings of Cohabitation on Labor Market Outcomes

  Co-author: Marion Leturcq

  Abstract

  We show how the legal settings of unmarried cohabitation affect partners' labor market outcomes. In Canada, cohabiting couples are automatically entitled to certain rights after a few years of cohabitation. In some provinces, ex-cohabiting partners can claim for alimony upon separation, in others they can claim for an equal split of all the assets acquired during the relationship. As legal settings of unmarried cohabitation differ across time, provinces and duration of the relationship, it provides a unique framework to analyze how different levels of commitment affect couples' decision regarding labor market supply. Using cross-provinces variation in the legal settings and minimum duration for eligibility, we show that unmarried cohabiting men increase their labor force supply when they become eligible to a more committed cohabitation regime, whereas women decrease theirs. Higher levels of commitment induce larger effects on labor market outcomes.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 26 April 2018 12:30-13:45

  MAAREK Paul (University of Cergy-Pontoise) : Ethnic Favoritism: Winner Takes All or Power Sharing? Evidence from school constructions in Benin

  Co-authors: Pierre André and Fatoumata Tapo

  Abstract

  Ethnic favoritism often distorts public policies in fractionalized countries, especially in Subsaharan Africa. We estimate the impact of a change in the ethnic group of the education minister and of the president on school construction in Benin. We estimate difference in differences and regression discontinuities based on the dates of the changes, and we find that school constructions are more frequent when the district is coethnic with a new education minister, but less frequent when the district is coethnic with a new president. The effects are very large in magnitude: a coethnic education minister approximately doubles the number of school constructions, a coethnic president approximately divides this number by two. These results suggest that the president does not systematically favor his own ethnic group but has to share power in order to survive. By appointing politicians from other ethnic groups in the government, she redistributes power to these groups, as ministers have the discretionary power to favor their own group. This specific pattern of ethnic favoritism vanishes after the democratization of Benin, in 1991. The checks and balances created by democracy seemingly prevented ethnically targeted public policies.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 19 April 2018 12:30-13:45

  NOTOWIDIGDO Matthew (Northwestern University) : The Effects of Information and Application Assistance: Experimental Evidence from SNAP

  Co-author: Amy Finkelstein

  Abstract

  This paper develops a framework for evaluating the welfare impact of various interventions designed to increase take-up of social safety net programs in the presence of potential behavioral biases. We then calibrate key parameters using a randomized field experiment in which 30,000 elderly individuals not enrolled in - but likely eligible for - the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are either provided with information that they are likely eligible or provided with this information and also offered assistance in applying; a "status quo" control group receives no contact. Only 6 percent of the control group enrolls in SNAP over the next 9 months, compared to 11 percent of the Information Only group and 18 percent of the Information Plus Assistance group. The individuals who apply or enroll in response to either intervention receive lower benefits and are less sick than the average enrollee in the control group. Despite the poor targeting properties of the interventions, our rough calculations suggest that they are nonetheless a cost-effective way to redistribute to low-income individuals relative to other safety net programs.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 12 April 2018 12:30-13:45

  ROCKOFF Jonah (Columbia University) : The Causes and Consequences of Test Score Manipulation: Evidence from the New York Regents Examinations

  Co-authors: Thomas Dee, Will Dobbie, and Brian Jacob

  Abstract

  We show that the design and decentralized scoring of New York's high school exit exams -- the Regents Examinations -- led to systematic manipulation of test scores just below important proficiency cutoffs. Exploiting a series of reforms that eliminated score manipulation, we find heterogeneous effects of test score manipulation on academic outcomes. While inflating a score increases the probability of a student graduating from high school by about 17 percentage points, the probability of taking advanced coursework declines by roughly 10 percentage points. These results are consistent with manipulation helping students on the margin of dropping out but hurting those with greater academic potential who are not pushed to gain a solid understanding of foundational material.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 22 March 2018 12:30-13:45

  ELLISON Sara (MIT) : Dynamics of the Gender Gap in High Math Achievement

  Co-author: Ashley Swanson

  Abstract

  This paper examines the dynamics of the gender gap in high math achievement over the high school years using data from the American Mathematics Competition. A clear gender gap is already present by 9th grade and the gender gap widens over the high school years. High-achieving students must substantially improve their performance from year to year to maintain their within-cohort rank, but there is nonetheless a great deal of persistence in the rankings. Several gender-related differences in the dynamics contribute to the widening of the gender gap, including differences in dropout rates and in the mean and variance of year-to-year improvements among continuing students. A decomposition indicates that the most important difference is that fewer girls make large enough gains to move up substantially in the rankings. An analysis of students on the margin of qualifying for a prestigious second stage exam provides evidence of a discouragement effect: some react to falling just short by dropping out of participating in future years, and this reaction is more common among girls.

• Thursday 15 March 2018 12:30-13:45

  LICHTER Andreas (IZA) : The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

  Co-authors: Max Löffler and Sebastian Siegloch

  Abstract

  We investigate the long-run effects of government surveillance on trust and economic performance. We study the case of the Stasi in socialist East Germany, which implemented one of the largest state surveillance systems of all time. Exploiting regional variation in the number of spies and the specific administrative structure of the system, we combine a border discontinuity design with an instrumental variables approach to estimate the long-term causal effect of government surveillance after the fall of the Iron Curtain. We find that a larger spying density in the population led to persistently lower levels of interpersonal and institutional trust in post-reunification Germany. We also find evidence of substantial and long-lasting economic effects of Stasi spying, resulting in lower income and higher exposure to unemployment.

• Thursday 8 March 2018 12:30-13:45

  BANERJEE Abhijit (MIT) : The Entertaining Way to Behavioral Change

  Co-authors: Eliana La Ferrara and Victor Orozco

  Abstract

  We test the effectiveness of an entertainment education TV series, MTV Shuga, aimed at providing information and changing attitudes and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS. Using a simple model we show that "edutainment" can work through an "information" or through a "conformity" channel. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in urban Nigeria where young viewers were exposed to Shuga or to a non-educational TV series. Among those who watched Shuga, we created additional variation in the "social messages" they received and in the people with whom they watched the show. We find significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes towards HIV and risky sexual behavior. Treated subjects are twice as likely to get tested for HIV 6 to 9 months after the intervention. We also find reductions in STDs among women. Our experimental manipulations of the social norm component did not produce significantly different results from the main treatment. Also, we don't detect significant spillovers on the behavior of friends who did not watch Shuga. The "information" effect of edutainment thus seems to have prevailed in the context of our study.

• Thursday 15 February 2018 12:30-13:45

  PHILIPPE Arnaud (Bristol University) : Incarcerate one to calm the others? Spillover effects of incarceration among criminal groups

  Abstract

  What is the effect of incarcerating a member of a group on her criminal partners? I answer this question using administrative data on all convictions in France between 2003 and 2012. I exploit past joint convictions to identify 34,000 groups. Using a 48-month individual panel that records later criminal activity and sentencing, I find that the incarceration of a peer is associated with a 5% decrease in the conviction rate in groups of two individuals. Exploiting within-group heterogeneity, I show that offenders who have the characteristics of leaders are not affected by their followers but exert influence on them. Lastly, I show that the effect derives from lower criminogenic behavior and not from a loss of criminal human capital or from better information on the risks associated with crime.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 1 February 2018 12:30-13:45

  MELLY Blaise (University of Bern) : Generic Inference on Quantile and Quantile Effect Functions for Discrete Outcomes

  Co-authors: V. Chernozhukov, I. Fernandez-Val, and K. Wuethrich

  Abstract

  Quantile and quantile effect functions are important tools for descriptive and inferential analysis due to their natural and intuitive interpretation. Existing inference methods for these functions do not apply to discrete and mixed continuous-discrete random variables. This paper offers a simple, practical construction of the simultaneous confidence bands for quantile and quantile effect functions. It is based on a natural transformation of simultaneous confidence bands for distribution functions, which are readily available for many problems. The construction is generic and does not depend on the nature of the underlying problem. It works in conjunction with parametric, semiparametric, and nonparametric modeling strategies and does not depend on the sampling scheme. We apply our method to characterize the distributional impact of insurance coverage on health care utilization and obtain the distributional decomposition of the racial test score gap. Our analysis generates new, interesting empirical findings, and complements previous analyses that focused on mean effects only. In both applications, the outcomes of interest are discrete rendering existing inference methods invalid for obtaining uniform confidence bands for quantile and quantile effects functions.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 18 January 2018 12:30-13:45

  MARINESCU Ioana (University of Pennsylvania) : Labor market concentration

  Coauthors: Jose Azar and Marshall Steinbaum

  Abstract

  A product market is concentrated when a few firms dominate the market. Similarly, a labor market is concentrated when a few firms dominate hiring in the market. Using data from the leading employment website CareerBuilder, we calculate labor market concentration for over 8,000 geographic-occupational labor markets in the US. Based on the DOJ-FTC horizontal merger guidelines, the average market is highly concentrated. Using a panel IV regression, we show that going from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile in concentration is associated with a 17% decline in posted wages, suggesting that concentration increases labor market power.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 14 December 2017 12:30-13:45

  BEST Michael (Columbia University) : Individuals and Organizations as Sources of State Effectiveness, and Consequences for Policy Design

  Abstract

  How much of the variation in state effectiveness is due to the individuals and organizations responsible for implementing policy? We investigate this question and its implications for policy design in the context of public procurement, using a text-based product classification method to measure bureaucratic output. We show that effective procurers lower bid preparation/submission costs, and that 60% of within-product purchase-price variation across 16 million purchases in Russia in 2011-2015 is due to the bureaucrats and organizations administering procurement processes. This has dramatic policy consequences. To illustrate these, we study a ubiquitous procurement policy: bid preferences for favored firms (here domestic manufacturers). The policy decreases overall entry and increases prices when procurers are effective, but has the opposite impact with ineffective procurers, as predicted by a simple endogenous-entry model of procurement. Our results imply that the state’s often overlooked bureaucratic tier is critical for effectiveness and the make-up of optimal policies.

• Thursday 30 November 2017 12:30-13:45

  VAN DEN BERG Gerard (University of BRISTOL) : Conditions Early in Life and the Ensuing Shape of the Age-Earnings Profile over the Full Working Life

  Jointly organized with Behavior

  Abstract

  Adverse conditions in utero and around birth are known to exert long-run effects on health and cognitive ability at high ages. We investigate at what ages these effects start to affect individual labor earnings. We distinguish between nutritional shortages early in life and exposure to stress without nutritional components. To this aim we consider various types of adverse contextual conditions in early life and we exploit the variation in temporal and regional exposure to these conditions, among birth cohorts in Germany born in 1935-1950. This includes bombardments on the civilian population and famines. We use population register data covering tens of millions of individuals, providing individual-merged records of birth place, birth date and the individual age-earnings profile over the full working life. These are merged with historical sources of daily bombardments per municipality and local food rations. The data volume as well as the daily recordings of exposure allow us to make precise inference on the ages at which effects on earnings are strongest.

• Thursday 16 November 2017 12:30-13:45

  MAGNAC Thierry (Toulouse School of Economics) : A Pigouvian Approach to Congestion in Matching Markets

  Abstract

  Matching markets often require recruiting agents, "programs," to costly screen "applicants" who are agents on the other side. A market is congested if programs have to screen too many applicants. A cost associated with application submission is a Pigouvian tax to mitigate the negative externality imposed on programs by applicants. A higher cost reduces congestion by discouraging applicants from applying to some programs, which may, however, put match quality in jeopardy. We measure the effects of such Pigouvian taxes by studying variants of the Gale-Shapley Deferred-Acceptance mechanism with differential application costs. Using data collected in a multiple-elicitation experiment conducted in a real-life matching market, we show that a (small) application cost effectively reduces congestion without sacrificing matching quality.

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 9 November 2017 12:30-13:45

  BRYSON Alex (University College London) : Union Density, Productivity, and Wages

  Abstract

  We exploit tax-induced exogenous variance in the price of union membership to identify the effects of changes in firm union density on firm productivity and wages in the population of Norwegian firms over the period 2001 to 2012. Increases in union density lead to substantial increases in firm productivity and wages having accounted for the potential endogeneity of unionization. The wage effect is larger in more productive firms, consistent with rent-sharing models.

• Thursday 26 October 2017 12:30-13:45

  SEIM David (Stockholm University) : Payroll Taxes, Firm Behavior, and Rent Sharing: Evidence from a Young Workers Tax Cut in Sweden

  Abstract

  This paper uses administrative data to analyze a large and long-lasting employer payroll tax rate cut from 31% down to 15% for young workers (aged 26 or less) in Sweden. We find a zero effect on net-of-tax wages of young treated workers relative to slightly older untreated workers, even in the medium run (after six years). Simple graphical cohort analysis shows compelling positive effects on the employment rate of the treated young workers, of about 2--3 percentage points, which arise primarily from fewer separations (rather than more hiring). These employment effects are larger in places with initially higher youth unemployment rates. We also analyze the firm-level effects of the tax cut. We trace out graphically the time series of outcomes of firms by their persistent share of treated young workers just before the reform, to which the tax cut windfall is proportionate. First, heavily treated firms expand after the reform: employment, capital, sales, value added, and profits all increase. These effects appear stronger in credit-constrained firms, consistent with liquidity effects. Second, heavily treated firms increase the wages of all their workers -- young as well as old -- collectively, perhaps through rent sharing. Wages of low paid workers rise more in percentage terms. Rather than canonical market-level adjustment, we uncover a crucial role of firm-level mechanisms in the transmission of payroll tax cuts.

• Thursday 19 October 2017 12:30-13:45

  FORTIN Bernard (Université Laval) : Physicians' Response to Incentives: Evidence on Hours of Work and Multitasking

  Abstract

  We measure the response of physicians to monetary incentives using administrative data on Quebec (Canada) specialists. Our data contain information on the different services provided by individual physicians and their hours worked. These data cover a period during which the Quebec government changed the relative prices paid for medical services. We develop a multitasking model to estimate the manner in which physicians reacted to these price changes. Optimal behaviour within our model implies a wage index that determines the marginal return to clinical hours worked when those hours are optimally distributed across services. This index, in turn, generates an earnings equation which we estimate using both limited and full-information methods. Our results confirm that physicians respond to incentives in predictable ways. The own-price substitution effects of a price change are both economically and statistically significant. Income effects are present, but small for individual services. They are more important in the presence of broad-based fee increases which can lead to physicians reducing the supply of services.

• Thursday 28 September 2017 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan - Salle R1-09

  HANDBURY Jessie (Wharton - University of Pennsylvania) : Is the focus on food deserts fruitless? Retail access and food purchases across the socioeconomic spectrum

  Abstract

  Using comprehensive data describing the healthfulness of household food purchases and the retail landscapes consumers face, we ask whether spatial differences in access are to blame for socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption. We find that differences in access, though significant, are small relative to differences in the nutritional content of sales. Household consumption responds minimally to improvements in local retail environments in the short run, and socioeconomic disparities persist among households with equivalent access. Our results indicate that even in the long run, access-improving policies alone can eliminate at most one fifth of existing disparities in nutritional consumption.

• Thursday 8 June 2017 13:00-14:15

  Salle R1-09, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  MORETTI Enrico (Berkeley) : *Who Benefits From Productivity Growth? The Local and Aggregate Impacts of Local TFP Shocks on Wages, Rents, and Inequality

  Abstract

  Abstract. We estimate who benefits from local productivity growth. We begin by using confidential plant-level data to calculate changes in manufacturing productivity by United States metropolitan areas (MSAs), and then predict changes in MSA productivity based on three alternative exogenous shocks: technological shocks, trade shocks and an MSAs' initial industry shares and subsequent national changes in productivity by industry. We find that local productivity growth benefits local landowners more than local workers, in percentage terms. Workers do benefit directly from local productivity growth, however, as there are positive net effects on real earnings. These local effects of TFP are different for skilled and unskilled workers: consistent with lower geographic mobility among less-educated workers, we estimate that TFP growth generates greater increases in the local number of more-educated workers and larger local wage increases for less-educated workers. Thus, local increases in TFP compress inequality at the local level (and local declines in TFP magnify inequality). Geographic mobility induces general equilibrium effects from local changes in TFP, however, and so we then turn to the aggregate impacts of local changes in TFP. We find that a substantial portion (almost half) of the aggregate wage impacts accrue in cities indirectly affected through out-migration, particularly among more-mobile high-skill workers. By contrast, there is little aggregate impact on housing costs, as increases in cities directly impacted by TFP gains are offset by losses in other cities. Thus, the aggregate economic incidence of local productivity shocks falls entirely on workers. Overall, the aggregate economic incidence of local productivity growth differs importantly from the local incidence, and in a manner more skewed toward more-mobile high-skill workers.

• Thursday 1 June 2017 13:00-14:30

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  NEILSON Christophe NEILSON (Princeton) : Heterogenous Beliefs and School Choice Mechanisms

  Abstract

  Abstract : This paper studies how welfare outcomes in centralized school choice depend on the assignment mechanism when participants are not fully informed. Using a survey of school choice participants in a strategic setting, we show that beliefs about admissions chances differ from rational expectations values and predict choice behavior. To quantify the welfare costs of belief errors, we estimate a model of school choice that incorporates subjective beliefs. We evaluate the equilibrium effects of switching to a strategy-proof deferred acceptance algorithm, and of improving households' belief accuracy. Allowing for belief errors reverses the welfare comparison to favor the deferred acceptance algorithm.

• Thursday 18 May 2017 13:00-14:15

  Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  DURANTON Gilles (Wharton) : Measuring the cost of congestion in a highly congested city: Bogotá

  Prottoy A. Akbar

  Abstract

  We provide a novel approach to estimate the deadweight loss of congestion. We implement it for road travel in the city of Bogotá using information from a travel survey and counterfactual travel data generated from Google Maps. For the supply of travel, we find that the elasticity of the time cost of travel per unit of distance with respect to the number of travellers is on average about 0.06 for our area of study. It is close to zero at low levels of traffic, then reaches a maximum magnitude of about 0.20 as traffic builds up and becomes small again at high levels of traffic. This finding is in sharp contrast with extant results for specific road segments. We explain it by the existence of local streets which remain relatively uncongested and put a floor on the time cost of travel. On the demand side, we estimate an elasticity of the number of travellers with respect to the time cost of travel of 0.40. Although road travel is costly in Bogotá, these findings imply a small daily deadweight loss from congestion, equal to less than 1% of a day’s wage.

• Thursday 4 May 2017 13:00-14:15

  Campus Jourdan, Salle R1-09 (48, blv Jourdan-75014 Paris)

  TRANNOY Alain : Health, Working Time and Growth: The American Puzzle

  T. Lefur

• Thursday 20 April 2017 13:00-14:15

  Salle R2-07, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  GURYAN Jonathan (Northwestern) : Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes Disadvantaged Youth

  Cook, P.J., Dodge, K., Farkas, G., Fryer Jr., J., Ludwig, J., Mayer, S., Pollack, H. and Steinberg, L.

  Abstract

  There is growing concern that improving the academic skills of children in poverty is too difficult and costly once they reach adolescence, and so policymakers should instead focus either on vocationally oriented instruction or else on early childhood education. Yet this conclusion might be premature given that so few previous interventions have targeted a key barrier to school success: “mismatch” between what schools deliver and the needs of youth, particularly those far behind grade level. The researchers report on a randomized controlled trial of a school-based intervention that provides disadvantaged youth with intensive individualized academic instruction. The study sample consists of 2,718 male ninth and tenth graders in 12 public high schools on the south and west sides of Chicago, of whom 95 percent are either black or Hispanic and more than 90 percent are free- or reduced-price lunch eligible. Participation increased math achievement test scores by 0.19 to 0.31 standard deviations (SD), depending on how the researchers standardize, increased math grades by 0.50 SD, and reduced course failures in math by one-half in addition to reducing failures in non math courses. While some questions remain, these impacts on a per-dollar basis—with a cost per participant of around $3,800, or $2,500 if delivered at larger scale—are as large as those of almost any other educational intervention whose effectiveness has been rigorously studied.

• Thursday 30 March 2017 13:00-14:15

  Salle R2-07, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  DOYLE Joseph (MIT Sloan School of Management) : The First 2,000 Days and Child Skills: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment of Home Visiting

  Abstract

  Using a randomized experiment in Ireland, this study investigates the impact of sustained investment in parenting from pregnancy until age five on children’s development. Providing the Preparing for Life program, which incorporates a home visiting program, group parenting classes, and baby massage classes, to disadvantaged families raises children’s cognitive scores by one-third of a standard deviation on average (0.21-0.81) and non-cognitive scores by one-fifth of a standard deviation (0.19-0.41). The sizes of the effects exceed current meta-analytic estimations. Heterogeneous effects by gender and parity indicate few differential effects by gender and stronger gains for firstborns. Results are robust to small sample size, differential attrition, multiple hypothesis testing, and contamination.

• Thursday 23 March 2017 13:00-14:15

  Salle R2-07, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  BELZIL Christian (Ecole polytechnique et ENSAE) : Estimating the Value of Higher Education Financial Aid: Evidence from a Field Experiment

• Thursday 16 March 2017 13:00-14:30

  Salle R2-07, Nouveau Bâtiment, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  STANTCHEVA Stefanie (Harvard University) : A SIMPLER THEORY OF OPTIMAL CAPITAL TAXATION

  Emmanuel SAEZ

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 23 February 2017 13:00-14:15

  Salle 10, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  POP-ELECHES Christian (Columbia University) : INTERACTIONS BETWEEN FAMILY AND SCHOOL ENVIRONMENTS: EVIDENCE OF DYNAMIC COMPLEMENTARITIES?

  Ofer MALAMUD et Miguel URQUIOLA

  Abstract

  This paper explores whether conditions during early childhood affect the productivity of later human capital investments. We use Romanian administrative data to ask if the benefit of access to better schools is larger for children who experienced better family environments because their parents had access to abortion. We combine regression discontinuity and differences-in-differences designs to estimate impacts on a high-stakes school-leaving exam. Although we find that access to abortion and access to better schools each have positive impacts, we do not find evidence of significant interactions between these shocks. While these results suggest the absence of dynamic complementarities in human capital formation, survey data suggest that they may also reflect behavioral responses by students and parents.

• Thursday 2 February 2017 13:00-14:30

  Salle 10, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris

  ZWEIMULLER Josef (University of Zurich) : Job Mobility and Creative Destruction: Flexicurity in the Land of Schumpeter

  Andreas Kettemann (University of Zürich) et Francis Kramarz (CREST-ENSAE)

  Abstract

  This paper studies how a major policy change in Austria – the introduction of mandatory occupational pensions and the abolition of employer-provided severance pay – affects job mobility. The new rules were applied to employment relationships that started on January 1, 2003 or later, whereas jobs having started before that date continued to be subject to the old system. The new rules brought about two major changes. First, under the old system only laid-off workers were subject to a severance payment, whereas under the new system both quitters and laid-off workers are able to transfer their pension account with the associated separation payment to a new employer. Second, the system abolishes a discontinuous payment scheme (with severance payments jumping at tenure thresholds) to a continuous payment scheme (with monthly employer contributions smoothly increasing the balance on one’s pension account). We find that workers subject to the new system are more than 20 percent more likely to leave a distressed firm (where a plant closure or a mass layoff will take place in the near future) than workers subject to the old system in a similar situation. We set up a model of on-the-job-search in which demand shocks to firms generate heterogeneous layoff probabilities, predicting that workers are more likely to leave when their firm is in a bad shape. Estimating the model by Simulated Method of Moments, we study the quantitative response in job mobility when a voluntary quit (but not a layoff) is penalized with loss of a payment upon job separation compared to a situation where this is not the case. We find that the estimated model can fit the mobility response generated through abolishing severance pay and introducing occupations pension under realistic parameter values.

• Thursday 12 January 2017 13:00-14:15

  PROPPER Carol (Imperial College of London) : Management in the Public sector: Evidence from the English NHS

  Katharina Janke et Raffaella Sadun

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 15 December 2016 13:00-14:15

  LALIVE Rafael (Univ. of Lausanne) : How do Pension Wealth Shocks affect Working and Claiming?

  Stefan Staubli, University of Calgary

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 8 December 2016 13:00-14:15

  LINDEBOOM Maarten (VU Amsterdam) : Disability Insurance reforms and employment of impaired workers

  Mathilde Godard, Patrick Hullegie et Pierre Koning

  Abstract

  The Dutch Disability Insurance (DI) system was internationally known for its extremely high enrolment rates that led some researchers even to classify it as the most out of control disability program of OECD countries (Burkhauser et al., 2008). Indeed, expressed as a percentage of the insured working population, DI enrolment increased rapidly to around 12% in the mid-eighties and then remained more or less constant at this unprecedented level until the beginning of the 21th century. From then on some radical reforms were implemented that were very effective in curbing DI inflow and DI enrolment. It has been argued that the introduction of the gatekeepers protocol and the drastic reform of the Dutch DI system in 2006 has been responsible for this huge drop in DI inflow rates. The main goal of these reforms was to reduce DI inflow, to increase employment rates of workers with disabilities and to ensure that benefits were provide to those who really needed them. The latter refers to the issue of targeting efficiency. First evidence suggests that the reforms were indeed very successful in reducing DI inflow. Less clear is whether the reforms did increase employment rates and improved targeting efficiency. Increased stringency of the program may on the one hand reduce the number of false positives, but may also increase false rejections and induced perverse self-screening, meaning that part of the truly sick may not apply. The main objective of this paper is to look at these issues. More specifically, we first use administrative individual level data from Statistics Netherlands and the Dutch National Spcial Insurance Institute (NSII) to examine recent trends in the employment gap of healthy and unhealthy workers. We use individual level hospitalization rates to define the worker’s health status. We next examine the sensitivity of DI application rates to changes in the stringency of the award process. We then look at employment rates of awarded and rejected applicants and examine trends in the mortality rate of these groups. We combine the results of our analyses to infer whether increases in the DI stringency efficiently targeted their incentive effects to the more able individuals.

• Thursday 24 November 2016 12:45-14:00

  GLITZ Albrecht (Humboldt University Berlin) : Industrial Espionage and Productivity

  Abstract

  In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage by linking information from East Germany’s foreign intelligence service to sector-specific gaps in total factor productivity (TFP) between West and East Germany. Based on a data set that comprises the entire flow of information provided by East German informants over the period 1969-1989, we document a significant narrowing of sectoral West-to-East TFP gaps as a result of East Germany’s industrial espionage. This central finding holds across a wide range of specifications and is robust to the inclusion of several alternative proxies for technology transfer. We further demonstrate that the economic returns to industrial espionage are particularly strong in sectors that were closer to the West German technology frontier and – albeit less precisely estimated – in sectors in which constraints to the import of goods and services were particularly pronounced. Finally, our findings show that over the time period considered, industrial espionage crowded out standard overt R&D in East Germany.

• Thursday 3 November 2016 13:00-14:15

  AZMAT Ghazala (Sciences Po) : What you don't know... Can't hurt you? A field experiment on relative performance feedback in higher education

  Manuel Bagues, Antonio Cabrales et Nagore Iriberri

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 6 October 2016 13:00-14:15

  WEBER Andrea (Vienna University) : The Effects of the Early Retirement Age on Retirement Decisions

  Day Manoli

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 22 September 2016 13:00-14:15

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  FRENCH Eric (UCL (University College London)) : The Effect of Disability Insurance Receipt on Labor Supply: a Dynamic Analysis

  Jae Song

  Full text [pdf]

• Thursday 15 September 2016 13:00-14:00

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10

  BOZIO Antoine (PSE/EHESS) : Incidence of Social Security Contribution

  Julien Grenet et Thomas Breda

• Wednesday 8 June 2016 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  FINKELSTEIN Amy : The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions

  Carlos Dobkin, Ray Kluender and Matt Notowidigdo

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 11 May 2016 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  MAS Alexandre : Does Disclosure affect CEO Pay Setting? Evidence from the Passage of the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 20 April 2016

  *

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 16 March 2016 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  OREOPOULOS Phillip (Canadian Institute For Advanced Research - Univerity of Toronto) : Texting Students to Help Achieve Their Goals

  Abstract

  Many social scientists and policy makers express concern over low levels of college completion and poor overall academic performance. One explanation, drawing on recent insights from behavioral science, suggests that youth often overemphasize the present or rely too much on routine. Another, drawing on social-psychology, suggests incoming students with weak academic identities (perhaps due to being a first generational or international student) struggle in transitioning to their new environment. This study explores ways to counter these tendencies using online exercises and electronic messaging. Randomly selected students at a 4-year college are randomized into three treatment groups and a control. The first group is given an online goal-setting exercise to think about their future and what steps to take now to help them achieve their goals. The second group is offered additional electronic messages containing advice, information, motivation, and reminders, with the aim of improving performance, experience, and completion. The third group's online exercise involves reading through past 'testimonials' how previous students struggled with their college transition yet persevered and were successful.

• Wednesday 10 February 2016 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  HASSLER John (Stockholm University) : The fossil episode

  Hans-Werner Sinnz

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 20 January 2016 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  MACHIN Stephen : Cybercrime and Moral Hazard: Evidence From Dark Web Drugs Markets

• Wednesday 2 December 2015 12:30-13:45

  PALLAIS Amanda : Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores.

  William Pariente and Dylan Glover

• Wednesday 4 November 2015 12:30-13:45

  CULLEN Julie (HBS) : Political Alignment and Tax Evasion

  Co-authors : Nicholas Turner (US Treasury) and Ebonya Washington (Yale University).

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 28 October 2015 12:30-13:45

  GRÖNQVIST Hans : Childhood Exposure to Segregation and Long-Run Criminal Involvement: Evidence from the ‘Whole of Sweden’ Strategy”

  Co-auteurs: Susan Niknami (SOFI, Stockholm University) & Per-Olof Robling (SOFI, Stockholm University)

  Full text [pdf]

• Tuesday 6 October 2015 12:30-14:00

  DAHL Gordon : Invité Public Policy Seminar présentation sur le Lunch séminaire d'économie appliquée

• Thursday 1 October 2015 09:46-17:45

• Wednesday 30 September 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  CHANEY Thomas : Tacit Learning and Influence behind Practice Variation: Evidence from Physicians in Training

  Abstract

  Studying physicians in training, I investigate how uncertainty and tacit knowledge may give rise to "weak best practices," which allow for significant practice variation in organizations. Consistent with tacit learning, and empirically exploiting a discontinuity in the formation of teams, I find that relative experience substantially increases the influence of a physician on variation. Learning sufficient to generate convergence occurs for patients on services driven by specialists, a difference unexplained by formal diagnostic codes. In contrast, rich physician characteristics correlated with preferences and ability, and quasi-random assignments to high- or low-spending supervising physicians explain little if any variation.

• Thursday 10 September 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  JACOB Brian : Teacher Hiring and Performance: Evidence from the DC Public Schools

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 17 June 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  JURAJDA Stepan (CERGE-EI) : Comparing Real Wage Rates using McWages

  Co-author : Orley Ashenfelter (Princeton University)

• Wednesday 27 May 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  AIZER Anna (Brown University ) : Environmental Inequalities and Racial Disparities in Test Scores

  Co-authors : Janet Currie, Peter Simon and Patrick Vivier

  Abstract

  We consider a new source of racial disparities in test scores: African American students’ disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins, and, in particular, lead. Using a unique individual-level dataset of children’s preschool lead levels linked with future educational outcomes for children in Rhode Island, we document significant declines in racial disparities in child lead levels since 1997, due in part to state policies aimed at reducing lead hazards in homes. Exploiting the change in child lead levels as a result of the policy, we generate causal estimates of the impact of preschool lead levels on reading and math test scores through grade eight in an IV framework. We find that a 5 ug/dl increase in child lead levels (the threshold at which the CDC recommends intervention) reduces test scores by 49-74 percent of a standard deviation, depending on the specification. The effects are strongest in the lower tail of the test score distribution and do not fade over time. We calculate that the decline in racial disparities in lead explains between 37 and 76% of the decline in racial disparities in test scores witnessed over the past decade in RI.

• Wednesday 6 May 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  DEMING David (Havard Graduate School of Education) : Social Skills and Team Production in the Labor Market

  Abstract

  Employers list teamwork and collaboration as among the most important requirements of a job, yet there exists little understanding of how and why such social skills are priced in the labor market. In this paper, I develop and test a model of team production where workers have both cognitive skill and social skill. Workers produce in teams, “trading tasks” with each other according to comparative advantage. In the model, social skill act as an inverse coordination cost, allowing workers to gain more from task trade. The model generates predictions about skill complementarity and the relative returns to social skill across occupations, which I test using data from the NLSY79. I find a relatively greater return to social skills for workers in occupations with high “nonroutine interactive” task content. My findings are consistent with a wide variety of empirical results on team performance.

• Wednesday 1 April 2015 12:30-13:45

  The session was canceled.

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  *

• Wednesday 11 March 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  JACKSON Kirabo (Northwestern University) : The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms

  Abstract

  Since Coleman (1966), many have questioned whether school spending affects student outcomes. The school finance reforms that began in the early 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s caused some of the most dramatic changes in the structure of K–12 education spending in US history. To study the effect of these school-finance-reform-induced changes in school spending on long-run adult outcomes, we link school spending and school finance reform data to detailed, nationally-representative data on children born between 1955 and 1985 and followed through 2011. We use the timing of the passage of court-mandated reforms, and their associated type of funding formula change, as an exogenous shifter of school spending and we compare the adult outcomes of cohorts that were differentially exposed to school finance reforms, depending on place and year of birth. Event-study and instrumental variable models reveal that a 10 percent increase in per-pupil spending each year for all twelve years of public school leads to 0.27 more completed years of education, 7.25 percent higher wages, and a 3.67 percentage-point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty; effects are much more pronounced for children from low-income families. Exogenous spending increases were associated with sizable improvements in measured school quality, including reductions in student-to-teacher ratios, increases in teacher salaries, and longer school years.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 4 February 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  GOBILLON Laurent (INED and Paris School of Economics) : Regional Policy Evaluation: Interactive Fixed Effects and Synthetic Controls

  Co-author : Thierry Magnac (Toulouse School of Economics)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 14 January 2015 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  LETH-PETERSEN Soren (Department of Economics - University of Copenhagen) : Housing Collateral, Credit Constraints and Entrepreneurship.

  Co-authors : Thais Lærkholm Jensen & Ramana Nanda

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 19 November 2014 12:30-13:45

  DRAGONE Davide (Department of Economics, University of Bologna) : Obesity and Smoking: Can we kill two birds with one tax?

  Co-authors : Francesco Manaressi & Luca Savorelli

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 22 October 2014 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  CORNEO Giacomo (University of Berlin) : Democratic Redistribution and Rule of the Majority

  Co-author : Frank Neher

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 24 September 2014 12:30-13:45

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  FRIJTERS Paul (University of Queensland) : Mental health resilience: which Childhood Circumstances matter?

  Co-auhors : Fabrice Etilé (INRA-ALISS and Paris School of Economics) David Johnston (Centre for Health Economics, Monash University) Michael Shields (Centre for Health Economics, Monash University)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 4 June 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  MOGSTAD Magne (ULC) : Field of Study, Earnings, and Self-Selection

  Co-author(s) : Lars Kirkebøenú & Edwin Leuven

• Wednesday 14 May 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  HAMERMESH Daniel (University of Texas at Austin) : Endophilia or Exophobia : Beyond Discrimination

  Co-author(s) : Jan Feld & Nicolás Salamanca

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 9 April 2014 15:30-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  15:30 - 16:55 Sandra BLACK (University of Texas) Does grief transfer across generations? In-utero deaths and child outcomes Co-author(s) : Paul J. Devereux (University College Dublin),Kjell G. Salvanes (Norwegian School of Economics) 17:05 - 18:30 Tuomas PEKKARINEN (HSE) Educational choice and information on labor market prospects: A randomised field experiment Co-author(s) : Sari Pekkala Kerr, Matti Sarvimäki, and Roope Uusitalo

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 19 March 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ALTONJI Joseph (Yale University) : Sorting on Observable and Unobservable Characteristics: A Control Function Approach

  Co-author: Richard Mansfield (Cornell University)

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 12 February 2014 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  FACK Gabrielle (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) : The Effect of Tax Enforcement on Tax Elasticities: Evidence from Charitable Contributions in France

  Co-author : C. Landais

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 18 December 2013 17:00-18:30

  The session was canceled.

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  MOGSTAD Magne (University College London) : *

• Wednesday 27 November 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  BARGAIN Olivier (Aix-Marseille School of Economics & IZA) : Putting Structure on the RD Design: Social Transfers and Youth Inactivity in France

  Co-author(s): Karina Doorley

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 6 November 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  HJALMARSSON Randi (Queen Mary, University of London ) : Politics and Peer Effects in the Courtroom

• Wednesday 23 October 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  PROTO Eugenio (University of Warwick) : An Exploration into the Idea of Genetically Happy Countries

  Co-author(s): Andrew Oswald

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 2 October 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  PALME Marten (Stockholm School of Economics) : The Effect of Education Policy on Crime: An Intergenerational Perspective

  Co-author(s): Costas Meghir and Marieke Schnabel

  Abstract

  The intergenerational transmission of human capital and the extent to which policy interventions can affect it is an issue of importance. Policies are often evaluated on either short term outcomes or just in terms of their effect on individuals directly targeted. If such policies shift outcomes across generations their benefits may be much larger than originally thought. We provide evidence on the intergenerational impact of policy by showing that educational reform in Sweden reduced crime rates of the targeted generation and their children by comparable amounts. We attribute these outcomes to improved family resources and to better parenting.

  Full text [pdf]

• Wednesday 11 September 2013 17:00-18:30

  Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8

  ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE-EHESS) : Radio and the rise of the Nazis in Pre-War Germany

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 28 June 2013 12:30-13:45

  SAINT-PAUL Gilles (TSE & PSE) : The scope for ideological bias in structural macroeconomic models

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 7 June 2013 12:30-13:45

  The session was canceled.

  BARANKAY Iwan (Wharton School - University of Pennsylvania) : *

• Friday 17 May 2013 12:30-13:45

  LALIVE Rafael (University of Lausanne) : Early Child Care and Child Development: For Whom it Works and Why

  Co-author(s): Christina Felfe

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 19 April 2013 12:30-13:45

  BURCHARDI Konrad (IIES) : The Economic Impact of Social Ties: Evidence from German Reunification

  Co-author(s): Tarek A. Hassan

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 22 March 2013 12:30-13:45

  LANGE Fabian (Yale University) : Duration Dependence and Labor Market Conditions: Evidence from a Field Experiment

  Co-author(s): Kory Kroft & Matthew J. Notowidigdo

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 1 March 2013 12:30-13:45

  ALBOUY David Yves (University of Michigan) : Urban Population and Amenities

  Co-author(s): Bryan Stuart

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 22 February 2013 12:30-13:45

  RATHELOT Roland (CREST) : Organizational Change and Workers' Health

  Co-author(s): Lucile Romanello

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 11 January 2013 12:30-13:45

  MATRAY Adrien (HEC) : Do firm managers properly assess risk? Evidence from US firms proximity to hurricane strikes

• Friday 21 December 2012 12:30-13:45

  LANDAIS Camille (Stanford University) : Market Externalities of Large Unemployment Insurance Extension Programs

  Co-author(s): Rafael Lalive & Josef Zweimuller

  Abstract

  This paper offers quasi experimental evidence of the existence of spillover effects of UI extensions using a unique program that extended unemployment benefits drastically for a subset of workers in selected regions of Austria. We use ineligible unemployed in treated regions, and a difference-in-difference identification strategy to control for preexisting differences across treated and untreated regions. We uncover the presence of important job search externalities: the probability of finding a job increases, while the average unemployment duration and the probability of long term unemployment decrease for untreated workers in treated regions as the search effort of treated workers plummets. These effects are the largest when the program intensity reaches its highest level, then decrease and disappear as the program is scaled down and finally interrupted. We use this evidence to discuss the relevance of different equilibrium search and matching models.

• Friday 30 November 2012 12:30-13:45

  LUTTMER Erzo (Dartmouth College) : The Welfare Cost of Perceived Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from Social Security

  Co-author(s): Andrew A. Samwick

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 16 November 2012 12:30-13:45

  URZUA Sergio (University of Maryland) : Loans for Higher Education: Does the Dream Come True?

  Co-author(s): Tomas Rau & Eugenio Rojas

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 26 October 2012 12:30-13:45

  HENDREN Nathan (MIT) : Private Information and Insurance Rejections

  Abstract

  Across a wide set of non-group insurance markets, applicants are rejected based on observable, often high-risk, characteristics. This paper argues private information, held by the potential applicant pool, explains rejections. I formulate this argument by developing and testing a model in which agents may have private information about their risk. I first derive a new no-trade result that theoretically explains how private information could cause rejections. I then develop a new empirical methodology to test whether this no-trade condition can explain rejections. The methodology uses subjective probability elicitations as noisy measures of agents beliefs. I apply this approach to three non-group markets: long-term care, disability, and life insurance. Consistent with the predictions of the theory, in all three settings I find significant amounts of private information held by those who would be rejected; I find generally more private information for those who would be rejected relative to those who can purchase insurance; and I show it is enough private information to explain a complete absence of trade for those who would be rejected. The results suggest private information prevents the existence of large segments of these three major insurance markets. JEL classification numbers: C51, D82 Keywords: Private Information; Adverse Selection; Insurance

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 12 October 2012 12:30-13:45

  MACHIN Stephen (University College London) : Rising Wage Inequality and Postgraduate Education

  Co-author(s): Joanne Lindley

  Abstract

  This paper documents significant increases in the number of postgraduates working in the United States and Great Britain and reports that their relative wages have significantly risen over time. Postgraduates and college only workers are shown to be imperfect substitutes in production and, amongst graduate workers, relative demand has shifted faster in favour of postgraduates. We study reasons for this and find that postgraduates more highly complement computers and thus have benefited more from their spread than have college only workers. Moreover, the skills sets possessed by postgraduates and the occupations in which they are employed are significantly different to the college only group. Hence, the growing presence of postgraduates in the workplace has been an important factor in explaining rising wage inequality amongst graduates. JEL Keywords: Wage inequality; Postgraduate education; Computers JEL Classifications: J24; J31

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 15 June 2012 12:30-13:45

  FERNANDEZ Raquel (New York University) : The Disappearing Gender Gap: The Impact of Divorce, Wages, and Preferences on Education Choices and Women's Work

  Co-author : Joyce Cheng Wong

  Full text [pdf]

• Tuesday 12 June 2012 12:30-13:45

  OREOPOULOS Philip (University of Toronto) : Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market?

  Séance jointe avec l'Applied Economics Lunch Seminar

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 8 June 2012 12:30-13:45

  KRANTON Rachel (Duke University) : Identity, Group Conflict, and Social Preferences

  Co-auteur(s): Matthew Pease, Seth Sanders, and Scott Huettel

• Friday 1 June 2012 12:30-13:45

  HEFFETZ Ori (Cornell University) : Beyond Happiness and Satisfaction: Towards National Well-Being Indices Based on Stated Preference

  Co-auteurs : Dan Benjamin, Miles Kimball, and Nichole Szembrot

• Friday 25 May 2012 12:30-13:45

  HASTINGS Justine (Brown University) : Advertising and Competition in Privatized Social Security: The Case of Mexico

  Co-author(s): A. Hotaçsu et C. Syerson

• Friday 13 April 2012 12:30-13:45

  OUAZAD Amine (INSEAD) : Students’ Perceptions of Teacher Biases: Experimental Economics in Schools

  Co-author(s): Lionel Page

  Abstract

  We put forward a new experimental economics design with monetary incentives to estimate students’ perceptions of grading discrimination. We use this design in a large field experiment which involved 1,200 British students in grade 8 classrooms across 29 schools. In this design, students are given an endowment they can invest on a task where payoff depends on performance. The task is a written verbal test which is graded non anonymously by their teacher, in a random half of the classrooms, and graded anonymously by an external examiner in the other random half of the classrooms. We find significant evidence that students’ choices reflect perceptions of biases in teachers’ grading practices. Our results show systematic gender interaction effects: male students invest less with female teachers than with male teachers while female students invest more with male teachers than with female teachers. Interestingly, female students’ perceptions are not in line with actual discrimination: Teachers tend to give better grades to students of their own gender. Results do not suggest that ethnicity and socioeconomic status play a role.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 6 April 2012 12:30-13:45

  SPITZ-OENER Alexandra (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) : The Impact of Immigration on Natives' Wages: Heterogeneity resulting from Product and Labor Market Regulation

  Co-author(s): Susanne Prantl

  Abstract

  Does regulation of product and labor markets alter the impact of immigration on wages of competing native workers? We take German reunification as a natural experiment and compare the wage consequences of East Germans migrating into different segments of the West German labor market: one segment without product and labor market regulation, to which standard immigration models best apply, one segment in which product and labor market regulation interact, and one segment covering intermediate groups of workers. We find a negative effect of the large influx of close substitutes in production on the wage growth of competing native West Germans in the segment with almost free firm entry into product markets and weak worker influence on the decision-making of firms. Competing native workers were shielded from such pressure if firm entry regulation interacted with labor market institutions, implying a strong influence of workers on the decision-making of profit-making firms. Keywords: Immigration, Labor Market Regulation, Product Market Regulation JEL Classification: J61, L50, J50

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 23 March 2012 12:30-13:45

  BLAU David (Ohio State University) : Family Structure and Child Outcomes: A Dynamic Analysis

  Co-author(s): Wilbert van der Klaauw

  Abstract

  Children raised in a stable household headed by their married biological parents have higher cognitive achievement and fewer behavior problems on average, compared to children raised by a single parent, cohabiting parents, or one biological and one stepparent. These differences are large, and they have persistent consequences in adulthood. An important question in the large academic literature on this issue is the degree to which a causal interpretation of these associations is warranted. We contribute to this literature by specifying a model in which women sequentially make decisions on union formation, union dissolution, and employment, with the goal of maximizing lifetime utility derived from consumption, leisure, relationship quality, and child development. These choices determine the family structure experiences and transitions of their children, as well as the resources available to the household for investment in child development. Family structure and time and goods invested in child development affect child outcomes via a household production function. We model a broad range of family structure experiences, including marriage, cohabitation, and single parenthood, as well as the identity of the mother’s partner from the perspective of each child: biological father versus stepfather. We follow children from birth to age 18, measuring their entire sequence of childhood family structure experiences. This allows a rich dynamic specification of the effects of family structure. Furthermore, we continue to follow children into adulthood, linking the developmental outcomes experienced during childhood to longer run outcomes such as educational attainment. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort. We do not yet have structural estimates of the model, so we present descriptive evidence suggesting that (1) observed and unobserved heterogeneity account for most of the association between family structure and cognitive development, and (2) divorce and entry of a stepfather into a child’s household at certain ages have negative effects on behavioral outcomes, for which a causal interpretation cannot be ruled out.

• Friday 9 March 2012

  Séance reportée pour ne pas entrer en conflit avec la conférence : Happiness & Economic Growth

• Friday 17 February 2012 12:30-13:45

  ADDA Jérôme (European University Institute) : The Role of Mothers and Fathers in Providing Skills: Evidence from Parental Deaths

  Co-author(s): Anders Björklund & Helena Holmlund

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 3 February 2012 12:30-13:45

  KLEVEN Henrik Jacobsen (London School of Economics) : Behavioral Responses to Notches: Evidence from Administrative Tax Records in Pakistan

  Co-author(s): Mazhar Waseem

  Abstract

  Using administrative tax records from Pakistan, we investigate behavioral responses to income tax notches–discontinuous jumps in tax liability–offering an unusual and compelling source of identifying variation. Notches create regions of strictly dominated choice where the taxpayer can increase consumption and leisure by lowering earnings to the notch point, and therefore produce very strong incentives for bunching. We find evidence of large and sharp bunching at notches, which is used to estimate taxable income responses, real earnings responses, and income shifting. A recent tax reform faciliates a comparison between the response to notches and the response to kinks created by discontinuous jumps in the marginal tax rate, and we find that the effects of notches are much larger and clearer. However, while the overall response to notches is large, it is fairly small in elasticity terms as the tax-price changes created by notches are extremely strong. In fact, we show that elasticities are too small to be consistent with the standard frictionless economic model, pointing to the presence of important optimization frictions. We explore the nature of such frictions and argue that they are likely to reflect a low degree of “tax literacy”–such as misperception and unawareness of tax incentives–in Pakistan.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 20 January 2012 12:30-13:45

  DURANTE Ruben (Sciences Po) : Academic Dynasties: Decentralization and Familism in the Italian Academia

  Co-author(s): Giovanna Labartino & Roberto Perotti

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 6 January 2012 12:30-13:45

  The session was canceled.

  *

• Friday 16 December 2011 12:30-13:45

  The session was canceled.

  OUAZAD Amina (INSEAD) : *

• Friday 25 November 2011 12:30-13:45

  HOFF Karla (The World Bank) : Tastes, Castes, and Culture: The Influence of Society on Preferences

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 18 November 2011 12:30-13:45

  HE Yinghua (Toulouse School of Economics) : Gaming the Boston School Mechanism

• Friday 4 November 2011 12:30-13:45

  APESTEGUIA Jose (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) : Promoting Rule Compliance in Daily-Life: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in the Public Libraries of Barcelona

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 21 October 2011 12:30-13:45

  ETILE Fabrice (INRA, Paris) : Mandatory labelling vs. the fat tax: an empirical evaluation of fat policies in the French fromage blanc and yogurt market

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 7 October 2011 12:30-13:45

  CHEN Daniel (Duke University) : Insiders and Outsiders: Does Forbidding Sexual Harassment Exacerbate Gender Inequality?

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 24 June 2011 13:00-14:00

  QIAN Nancy (Yale University) : Aiding Conflict: The Unintended Consequences of U.S. Food Aid on Civil War

  Co-auteur(s) : Nathan Nunn

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 10 June 2011 12:30-14:00

  WEINBERG Bruce (Ohio State University) : A Framework for Quantifying the Economic Spillovers from Government Activity with an Application to Science

  Abstract

  Governments invest heavily in science and those investments are increasingly being justified in terms of the economic spillovers they generate, such as jobs created. Yet there is not widely-accepted method for quantifying these benefits and their magnitude is widely disputed. We analyze the ways in which science generates economic benefits; lay out how to (and not to) quantify those benefits; and provide a range of estimates. We show that a $1B increase in science spending would likely raise wages by $1.68 Billion or more and that the wage effects are likely to understate the effects on productivity. We also find that a $1B increase in science would generate 92,500 jobs, and that roughly 90% of them would be missed even using the best job creation methods. Our methods can be applied to measure the local productivity spillovers from other government activity as well.

• Friday 27 May 2011 12:30-14:00

  BERRY CULLEN Julie (University of California, San Diego) : RJockeying for position: strategic high school choice under Texas' top ten percent plan

  Co-auteur(s) : Randy Reback & Mark Long

  Abstract

  Beginning in 1998, all students in the state of Texas who graduated in the top ten percent of their high school classes were guaranteed admission to any in-state public higher education institution, including the flagships. While the goal of this policy is to improve college access for disadvantaged and minority students, the use of a school-specific standard to determine eligibility could have unintended consequences. Students may increase their chances of being in the top ten percent by choosing a high school with lower-achieving peers. Our analysis of students’ school transitions between 8th and 10th grade three years before and after the policy change reveals that this incentive influences enrollment choices in the anticipated direction. Among the subset of students with both motive and opportunity for strategic high school choice, as many as 25 percent enroll in a different high school to improve the chances of being in the top ten percent. Strategic students tend to choose the neighborhood high school in lieu of more competitive magnet schools and, regardless of own race, typically displace minority students from the top ten percent pool. The net effect of strategic behavior is to slightly decrease minority students’ representation in the pool.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 13 May 2011 12:30-14:00

  CHETTY Raj (Harvard) : Bounds on Elasticities with Optimization Frictions: A Synthesis of Micro and Macro Evidence on Labor Supply

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 29 April 2011 12:30-14:00

  DE HOOP Jacobus (PSE) : The Stressful Condition: Cash Transfers and Mental Health

  Abstract

  There is little evidence on the wellbeing of adolescent girls. Mental health can be a useful indicator of their wellbeing, because among this demographic group mental health problems constitute the leading component of the global disease burden and can have severe long-run health and socioeconomic consequences. This paper shows that, on average, income shocks administered as part of a randomized cash transfer experiment had a strong beneficial effect on the mental health of school-aged girls in Malawi. However the average impact of the cash transfers hides much heterogeneity. While unconditional transfers had a strong beneficial effect on mental health, money transferred to the parents of a school-aged girl conditional on her school attendance had a pronounced detrimental impact. These findings imply that a beneficial impact of cash transfer interventions on mental health should not be taken for granted. The devil is in the design of the program.

• Friday 1 April 2011 12:30-14:00

  BLUNDELL Richard (IFS et UCL) : Empirical Evidence and Tax Reform: Lessons from the Mirrlees Review

• Friday 18 March 2011 12:30-14:00

  SCHOENBERG Uta (University College London) : The long-term impact of school quality on educational attainment and labor market outcomes

• Friday 4 March 2011 12:30-14:00

  GOTTSCHALK Peter (Boston College) : What Accounts for the Growing Fluctuations in Family Income in the US?

• Friday 11 February 2011 12:30-14:00

  BOZIO Antoine (Institute for Fiscal Studies) : Reforming Disability Insurance in the UK: Evaluation of the Pathways to Work Programme

  Co-auteur(s) : Stuart Adam & Carl Emmerson

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 14 January 2011 12:30-14:00

  LAUNOV Andrey (Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz) : Should long-term unemployed be sanctioned? Evidence from a nonstationary structural job search model

• Friday 10 December 2010 12:30-14:00

  VILLEVAL Marie-Claire (GATE) : Intermittent reinforcement and the persistence of behavior: Experimental Evidence

  avec Robin Hogarth

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 26 November 2010 12:30-14:00

  KRAMARZ Francis (Crest) : Labor Disputes and Labor Flows

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 12 November 2010 12:30-14:00

  BRUNELLO Giorgio (Université de Padoue) : Years of Schooling, Human Capital and the Body Mass Index of European Females

  Co-auteur(s) : Daniele Fabbri & Margherita Fort

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 22 October 2010 12:30-14:00

  KAMBAYASHI Ryo (Université de Hitotsubashi) : The Minimum Wage in a Deflationary Economy: The Japanese Experience, 1994-2003

  Co-auteur(s) : Daiji Kawaguchi & Ken Yamada

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 8 October 2010 12:30-14:00

  RAPOPORT Benoît (Drees et Paris I ) : The Impact of Unemployment Duration on Wages: Evidence from French Panel Data 1984-2001

  Auteurs : Julien Pouget, Benoît Rapoport and Salvatore Serravalle

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 24 September 2010 12:30-14:00

  DOYLE Joe (MIT) : Measuring Returns to Healthcare Spending

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 18 June 2010 12:30-14:00

  JONES Andrew (University of York) : Long-term effects of cognitive skills, social adjustment and schooling on health and lifestyle: evidence from a reform of selective schooling

  Abstract

  Members of the National Child Development Study (NCDS) cohort attended very different types of secondary school, as their schooling lay within the transition period of the comprehensive education reform in England and Wales. This provides a natural setting to explore the impact of educational attainment and of school quality on health and health-related behaviour later in life. We use a combination of matching methods and parametric regressions to deal with selection effects and to evaluate differences in adult health outcomes and health-related behaviour for cohort members exposed to the old selective and to the new comprehensive educational systems.

• Friday 4 June 2010 12:30-14:00

  The session was canceled.

  LINDENBOOM Maarten (Free University of Amsterdam) : Shattered Dreams: The Effects of Changing the Pension System Late in the Game

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 21 May 2010 12:30-14:00

  AUTOR David (MIT) : Housing Market Spillovers : Evidence from The End of Rent Control in Cambridge Massachusetts

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 7 May 2010 12:30-14:00

  HALIASSOS Michael (Goethe University) : Differences in Portfolios across Countries: Economic Environment versus Household Characteristics

  Co-auteur(s) : Dimitris Christelis & Dimitris Georgarakos.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 2 April 2010 12:30-14:00

  PETRONGOLO Barbara (London School of Economics) : Job search and geographic spillovers: A very disaggregated approach

  Co-auteur(s) : Alan Manning

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 19 March 2010 12:30-14:00

  The session was canceled.

  BLACK Sandra (UCLA) : *

• Friday 12 March 2010 12:30-14:00

  LEMIEUX Thomas (University of British) : Occupational Tasks and Changes in the Wage Structure

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 19 February 2010 12:30-14:00

  *

• Friday 5 February 2010 12:30-14:00

  VAN REENEN John (London School of Economics) : Trade induced technical change? The impact of Chinese imports on innovation, diffusion and productivity

  Abstract

  Abstract There is a popular belief that Chinese imports have devastated US and European manufacturing and contributed to rising inequality. Somewhat paradoxically, the consensus amongst empirical economists is that trade has not been a major cause of rising wage inequality (although this is largely based on datasets predating China’s rise). We argue that both views have underestimated the positive impact of Chinese trade on technical change. We examine the impact of the growth of Chinese import competition on technical change (as measured by IT, patent counts and citations, TFP and R&D) using a panel of over to 200,000 European firms through 2007. We correct for endogeneity using quasiexperiments such as China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Chinese import competition led to both within firm technology upgrading and between firm reallocation of employment towards more technologically intensive plants. These effects account for about 15-20% of technology upgrading between 2000-2007 and are growing over time. These results suggest that trade with low wage countries appear to have potentially large beneficial impacts on technical change as recent theories suggest.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 22 January 2010 12:30-14:00

  HAEFKE Christian (Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna) : Wage Rigidity and Job Creation

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 8 January 2010 12:30-14:00

  *

• Friday 11 December 2009 12:30-14:00

  SPINNEWIJN Johannes (London School of Economics) : Unemployed but Optimistic: Optimal Insurance Design with Biased Beliefs

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 27 November 2009 12:30-14:00

  GURGAND Mard (PSE) : Involved parents make a difference

  joint with F. Avvisatti, N. Guyon and E. Maurin

• Friday 13 November 2009 12:30-14:00

  ROUX Sébastien (PSE (Inra) ) : Estimating gender differences in access to jobs: females trapped at the bottom of the ladder.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 16 October 2009 12:30-14:00

  POSTEL-VINAY Fabien (University of Bristol et PSE) : Large Employers Are More Cyclically Sensitive", joint with Giuseppe Moscarini

  avec Giuseppe Moscarini

• Friday 16 October 2009 12:30-14:00

  POSTEL-VINAY Fabien (University of Bristol et PSE) : Large Employers Are More Cyclically Sensitive", joint with Giuseppe Moscarini

  avec Giuseppe Moscarini

• Friday 2 October 2009 12:30-14:00

  ROBIN Jean-Marc (PSE et UCL) : Business Cycle Fluctuations of Wage Inequality and Unemployment

• Friday 2 October 2009 12:30-14:00

  ROBIN Jean-Marc (PSE et UCL) : Business Cycle Fluctuations of Wage Inequality and Unemployment

• Friday 18 September 2009 12:30-14:00

  BLAU David (Ohio State University) : How Do Pensions Affect Household Wealth Accumulation?

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 18 September 2009 12:30-14:00

  BLAU David (Ohio State University) : How Do Pensions Affect Household Wealth Accumulation?

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 29 May 2009 14:00-15:30

  ZWEIMÜLLER Josef (Zurich Univ.) : Do active labour market policies increase the probability of job interviews?

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 15 May 2009 14:00-15:30

  MANACORDA Marco (Queen Mary - Univ. of London) : Government Transfers and Political Support

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 10 April 2009

  The session was canceled.

  *

• Friday 3 April 2009 14:00-15:30

  CAHUC Pierre (Ecole Polytechnique, CREST) : Civil society and the state:The interplay between cooperation and minimum wage regulation

  Co-auteur(s) : P. Aghion & Y. Algan

  Abstract

  In a cross-section of countries, the stringency of state regulation of minimum wages is strongly negatively correlated with union density and with the quality of labor relations. In this paper, we argue that these facts reflect di¤erent ways to regulate labor markets, either through the state or through the civil society, depending on the degree of cooperation in the economy. We rationalize these facts with a model of learning of the quality of labor relations. Distrustful labor relations lead to low unionization and high demand for direct state regulation of wages. In turn, state regulation crowds out the possibility for workers to experiment negotiation and learn about the potential cooperative nature of labor relations. This crowding out e¤ect can give rise to multiple equilibria: a "good" equilibrium characterized by cooperative labor relations and high union density, leading to low state regulation; and a "bad" equilibrium, characterized by distrustful labor relations, low union density and strong state regulation of the minimum wage. JEL Classification: J30, J50, K00. Key words: Quality of labor relations, trade unions, minimum wage,

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 20 March 2009 14:00-15:30

  LALIVE Rafael (HEC – Université de Lausanne) : Does Culture Affect Unemployment? Evidence from the Barrière des Roestis

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 6 March 2009 14:00-15:30

  BRYSON Alex (National Institute for Economic and Social Research) : How Does Innovation Affect Worker Well-being?

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 13 February 2009 14:00-15:30

  ICHINO Andrea (Universita' di Bologna) : College cost and time to complete a degree: Evidence from tuition discontinuities

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 6 February 2009

  Pas de seance pour cause de 'Job Seminars'

• Friday 23 January 2009

  Pas de seance pour cause de 'Job Seminars'

• Friday 9 January 2009 14:00-15:30

  HIJZEN Alexander (OCDE) : Do multinational firms provide better working conditions than their domestic counterparts?

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 12 December 2008 14:00-15:30

  BERTOLA Giuseppe (Universita' di Torino) : Offshoring, immigration, and local labor markets

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 5 December 2008 14:00-15:30

  OSWALD Andrew (Univ. of Warwick) : Happiness and Productivity

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 14 November 2008 14:00-15:30

  GARIBALDI Pietro (Universita' di Torino) : Industry Dynamics and Labor Market Search

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 31 October 2008 14:00-15:30

  CRIFO Patricia ((UHA, Ecole Polytechnique (Dept. d'economie) et Université Catholique ) : The composition of compensation policies: from cash to fringe benefits

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 17 October 2008 14:00-15:30

  MARGOLIS David (CES-Université Paris I et CREST-INSEE) : Managerial Behavior, Takeovers and Employment Duration

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 3 October 2008 14:00-15:30

  DOLADO Juan (Universidad Carlos III) : On gender gaps and self-fulfilling expectations: Theory, policies and some empirical evidence

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 6 June 2008 14:00-15:30

  FALK A. (Univ. Bonn) : Performance Pay and Multi-dimensional Sorting Productivity, Preferences and Gender

  Co-auteur : T. Dohmen

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 23 May 2008 14:00-15:30

  CARRE F. (Univ. of Massachusetts) : Au delà du modèle Wal-Mart: Les emplois de la grande distribution des Etats-Unis en perspective comparative

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 16 May 2008 14:00-15:30

  The session was canceled.

  DOLADO J. (Univ. Carlos III) : *

• Friday 18 April 2008 14:00-15:30

  GIULIANO P. (Harvard Univ.) : Growing up in bad times

• Friday 11 April 2008 14:00-15:30

  KRAMARZ F. (CREST-INSEE) : What Makes a Test Score? The Respective Contributions of Pupils, Schools and Peers in Achievement in English Primary Education

  S. Machin and A. Ouazad

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 28 March 2008 14:00-15:30

  VAN OURS J. (CentER, Tilburg University) : How Interethnic Marriages Affect the Educational Attainment of Children. Evidence from a Natural Experiment

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 14 March 2008 14:00-15:30

  NICKELL S. (Warden of Nuffield College) : The marginal utility of income

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 22 February 2008 14:00-15:30

  WASMER E. (IEP) : A note on the employment effects of 35-hour workweek regulation in France: using Alsace-Moselles « droit local » to build a diff-in-diff

• Friday 8 February 2008 14:00-15:30

  DORMONT B. (Univ. de Paris 9) : Intergenerational Inequalities in GPs’ Earnings: Experience, Time and Cohort Effects

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 25 January 2008 14:00-15:30

  THESMAR D. (HEC) : Fonds de private equity : créateurs ou destructeurs de valeur ? Ce que nous disent les données

• Friday 11 January 2008 14:00-15:30

  ABBRING J. (Tinbergen Institute) : Mixing Hitting-Time Models, with Applications to Holdout and Strike Durations

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 21 December 2007 14:00-15:30

  The session was canceled.

  RAYO L. (Univ. of Chicago) : *

  Séance animée par Claudia Senik

• Friday 7 December 2007 14:00-15:30

  LAVY V. (Hebrew Univ.) : Inside the Black of Box of Ability Peer Effects: Evidence from Variation in High and Low Achievers in the Classroom

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 23 November 2007 14:00-15:30

  PETRONGOLO B. (London School of Economics) : What are the long-term effects of What are the long-term effects of unemployment insurance? Evidence from the UK JSA reform?

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 9 November 2007 14:00-15:30

  BOERI T. (Univ. Bocconi) : The political economy of flexicurity

  Co-auteurs : IJ. Conde-Ruiz & V. Galasso

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 8 June 2007 11:00-12:30

  GROSJEAN P. (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) : Should Market Liberalization precede Democracy ? Causal Relations between Political Preferences and Development

  Co-auteur (s) : C. Senik

  Abstract

  This paper is dedicated to the relation between market development and democracy. We distinguish contexts and preferences and ask whether it is true that the demand for democracy only emerges after a certain degree of market development is reached, and whether, conversely, democratization is likely to be an obstacle to the acceptation of market liberalization. Our study hinges on a new survey rich in attitudinal variables: the Life in Transition Survey (LITS) conducted in 2006 by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank, in 28 post-Transition countries. Our identification strategy consists in relying on the specific situation of frontier-zones; we also use within-country regional variations. We find that democracy enhances the support for market development whereas the reverse is not true. Hence, the relativist argument according to which the preference for democracy is an endogenous by-product of market development is not supported by our data.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 25 May 2007 11:00-12:30

  BLACK S. E. (Univ. of California) : Explaining Women’s Success: Technological Change and the Skill Content of Women’s Work

  Co-auteur (S) : A. Spitz-Oener

  Abstract

  The closing of the gender wage gap is an ongoing phenomenon in industrialized countries. However, research has been limited in its ability to understand the causes of these changes, due in part to an inability to directly compare the work of women to that of men. In this study, we use a new approach for analyzing changes in the gender pay gap that uses direct measures of job tasks and gives a comprehensive characterization of how work for men and women has changed in recent decades. Using data from West Germany, we find that women have witnessed relative increases in non-routine analytic tasks and non-routine interactive tasks, which are associated with higher skill levels. The most notable difference between the genders is, however, the pronounced relative decline in routine task inputs among women with little change for men. These relative task changes explain a substantial fraction of the closing of the gender wage gap. Our evidence suggests that these task changes are driven, at least in part, by technological change. We also show that these task changes are related to the recent polarization of employment between low and high skilled occupations that we observed in the 1990s.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 11 May 2007 11:00-12:30

  CAHUC P. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Social Attitudes and Economic Development: An Epidemiological Approach

  Co-auteur (s) : Y. Algan

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 23 March 2007 11:00-12:30

  RIPHAHN R. T. (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) : New evidence on the complementarity of education and training

  Co-auteur (s) : P. Trübswetter

  Abstract

  We compare the incidence of training and the change in the age gradient of training for high and low skilled German workers between 1996 and 2004. Not only do highly skilled workers receive more training than lower skilled workers at any point in time, also the increase in the provision of training disproportionately benefited those with high skills. Thus education and training appear to be complements and the gap in labor market performance between skill groups widens over time. The share of training provided to older workers, particularly high skilled older workers, increased substantially. This may reflect a response of employers to the fact that workers are now work until they reach higher ages, which increases returns to human capital investments. JEL Classification: J24, J10, M53 Keywords: training and education, complementarity, substitutability, human capital investment, population aging, demographic change

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 9 March 2007 11:00-12:30

  BLANDEN J. (Univ. of Surrey Guildford) : Intergenerational persistence in income and social class

• Friday 26 January 2007 11:00-12:30

  DRACA M. (LSE) : Panic on the Streets of London: Police, Crime and the July 2005 Terror Attacks

  Co-auteur : S. Machin

• Friday 12 January 2007 11:00-12:30

  CAUSA O. (OCDE) : Migrants' integration in OCDE countries : does labour market policy matter ?

  Co-auteur : S. Jean

  Abstract

  This working paper assesses the quality of immigrants’ integration in OECD labour markets by estimating how an immigration background influences the probability of being active or employed and the expected hourly earnings, for given individual characteristics. Based on comparable data and methodologies across 12 OECD countries, immigrants are shown to lag significantly behind natives in terms of employment and/or wages. The differences narrow as years since settlement elapse, witnessing ongoing assimilation, especially as regards wages. Strong differences in immigrant-to-native gaps are also observed across countries, and the paper shows that they may be explained to a significant extent by differences in labour market policies. Given their specificities in terms of unobservable characteristics and behaviour, as well as discrimination, immigrants are indeed more sensitive to policies like unemployment benefits, the tax wedge and the minimum wage. They are in addition shown to be overrepresented among outsiders in the labour market, and as such highly sensitive to the difference in employment protection legislation between temporary and permanent contracts.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 8 December 2006 11:00-12:30

  OREOPOULOS P. (Univ. of Toronto) : Lead them to Water and Pay them to Drink: An Experiment with Services and Incentives for College Achievement

  Co-auteur (s) : J. Angrist & D. Lang

• Friday 24 November 2006 11:00-12:30

  PEROTTI E. (Univ. van Amsterdam) : The Political Origin of Pension Funding

  Co-auteur (s) : A. Schwienbacher

  Abstract

  This paper argues that political preferences on the role of capital markets and redistribution played a major role on the pension funding choice across countries, namely the extent of their reliance on private capitalized funding versus a state guarantee. A political economy model of democratic voting implies when the middle class has a high degree of financial participation, a majority is likely to support investor protection and limited fiscal redistribution. In contrast, high wealth concentration reduces support for investor rights, while it favors redistributive social insurance and a state-funded retirement system. These historical choice became self-reinforcing, since when the population holds financial claims on the private sector it will support investor protection, in turn necessary to rely on market funding. The empirical evidence shows that variation in pension funding in democratic countries is well explained by wealth distribution shocks in the first half of the XX century, which occurred before the establishment of national pension systems. The effect is both economically and statistically very significant: a large shock reduces the stock of private retirement assets by 58% of GDP. The results stand after controlling for complementary explanations, such as legal origin, past and current demographic controls, measures of stock market performance, or other major financial shocks that were not specifically redistributive.

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 10 November 2006 11:00-12:30

  SEABRIGHT P. (Univ. de Toulouse 1) : Where are the Real Bottlenecks? A Lagrangian Approach to Identifying Constraints on Growth from Subjective Survey Data

  Co-auteur (s) : W. Carlin & M. Schaffer

  Abstract

  We use firm-level survey data from over 20,000 firms in about 60 countries to identify constraints on the growth of firms. We develop a Lagrangian approach and measure the cost of different constraints by using managers’ answers to survey questions on what aspects of their external environment inhibit the operation and growth of their firm. Our model reveals that, contrary to the common practice in much of the existing literature on this question, the importance of an obstacle to growth is not, except under very restrictive assumptions, measured by the coefficient on the reported level of the obstacle in a growth regression. This parameter estimate is typically contaminated by the endogeneity of public good supply at a country level (better performing countries have higher levels of supply), and by the endogeneity of demand for public goods at a firm level (better performing firms need higher levels of public good inputs). We illustrate these biases for a number of obstacles to growth, and argue that such biases can account for anomalous findings in the literature. A priori arguments suggest that the subjective evaluation of finance constraints is different from other constraints and this too is reflected in the data. We show how the importance of different constraints varies across countries and how the cost of a constraint depends on the characteristics of the firm. JEL classification: H41, O12, O16, O57 Keywords: public goods, constraints on growth, infrastructure, finance, institutions, subjective data

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 20 October 2006 11:00-12:30

  ATKINSON T. (Nuffield College) : La dispersion des salaires dans les pays de l'OCDE 1930-1980

• Friday 6 October 2006 11:00-12:30

  VANDENBERGHE V. (IRES) : Comment refinancer l'enseignement supérieur en Europe ?

  Co-auteur (s) : O. Debande

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 23 June 2006

  The session was canceled.

  BERTRAND M. (Univ. of Chicago) : Does Corruption Produce Unsafe Drivers?

  Co-auteur(s) : S. Djankov, R. Hanna, S. Mullainathan

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 9 June 2006

  BELL L. (Haverford college) : Women-Led Firms and the Gender Gap in Top Executive Jobs

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 19 May 2006

  BLACK S. E. (Univ. of California) : From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes

  Co-auteurs : P. J. Devereux & K. G. Salvanes

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 12 May 2006

  MORETTI E. (Univ. of California) : Biological Gender Differences, Absenteeism and the Earning Gap

  Co-auteurs : A. Ichino

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 28 April 2006

  DOHMEN T. (IZA) : Individual Risk Attitudes: New Evidence from a Large, Representative; Experimentally-Validated Survey

  Co-auteur(s) : A. Falk, D. Huffman, U. Sunde, J. Schupp et G.Wagner

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 31 March 2006

  VISSER M. (INRA-LEA) : Publish or Peer-rich? The Role of Skills and Networks in Hiring Economics Professors

  Co-auteur(s) : P. P.Combes & L. Linnemer

• Friday 17 March 2006

  The session was canceled.

  OLIVETTI C. (Boston univ.) : *

• Friday 3 March 2006

  VAN DER KLAAUW B. (Timbergen institute) : Disability and work: the role of health shocks and childhood circumstances

  Co-auteur(s) : M. Lindeboom & A. Llena-Nozal

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 24 February 2006

  The session was canceled.

  ICHINO A. (European university institute) : *

• Friday 3 February 2006

  MACHIN S. (Univ. college London) : Crime and Police Resources: the Street Crime Initiative

  Co-auteur : O. Marie

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 20 January 2006

  BLOOM N. (Stanford univ.) : Measuring and explaining management practices across firms and countries : France, Germany, UK and the US

  Co-auteur(s) : J. Van Reenan

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 6 January 2006

  LEUVEN E. (Univ. of Amsterdam) : The responsiveness of training participation to tax deductibility

  Abstract

  To stimulate investment in training by employees, the Dutch tax system allows a deduction of direct training expenditures from taxable income. This paper investigates to what extent the resulting cost reduction encourages training investments. Two different identification strategies are used. The first strategy uses the progressive structure of the income tax scheme and compares groups with taxable income just above or just below kinks. The second strategy takes advantage of the 2001 tax reform, which implied a substantial change in marginal tax rates. These strategies exploit different sources of exogenous variation and are based on different identifying assumptions. Nevertheless, the results point in the same direction: tax incentives increase human capital investment.

• Friday 16 December 2005

  PISCHKE S. (LSE) : Zero Returns to Compulsory Schooling in Germany: Evidence and Interpretation

  Co-auteur(s) : T. von Wachter

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 2 December 2005

  PETRONGOLO B. (LSE) : Unequal pay or unequal employment: a cross-country analysis of gender gaps

  Co-auteur(s) : C. Olivetti

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 18 November 2005

  DUFLO E. (MIT) : Saving incentives for the low and middle income families: evidence from a field experiment

  Co-auteur(s) : W. Gale, J. Liebman, P. Orszag et E.Saez

• Friday 4 November 2005

  FITZENBERGER B. (Johann Wolfgang Goethe Univ.) : Employment effects of the provision of specific professional skills and techniques in Germany

  Co-auteur(s) : S. Speckesserz

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 21 October 2005

  DI TELLA R. (Harvard business school) : Property rights and beliefs : evidence from the allocation of land titles to squatters

  Co-auteur(s) : S. Galiani & E. Schargrodsky

  Full text [pdf]

• Friday 7 October 2005

  PHILIPPON T. (New York univ.) : Concentrated ownership and labor relations

  Co-auteur(s) : H. Mueller

  Full text [pdf]

• 0000

  BAU Natalie (UCLA) : Misallocation and Capital Market Integration: Evidence from India

  Adrien Matray (Princeton)

  Abstract

  Using the staggered liberalization of access to foreign capital across highly disaggregated Indian industries, we show that capital misallocation is an important contributor to low aggregate productivity. The natural policy experiment allows us to credibly identify changes in firms’ input wedges, addressing major challenges in the measurement of misallocation. For domestic firms with initially high marginal revenue products of capital (MRPK), liberalization increased revenues by 18%, physical capital by 60%, wage bills by 26%, and reduced the marginal revenue product of capital by 43%. There were no effects on firms with low MRPK. The effects of liberalization are largest in areas with less developed local banking sectors, indicating that foreign investors may substitute for an efficient banking sector. Finally, we develop a new method to use natural experiments to estimate the lower bound effect of changes in misallocation on manufacturing productivity and conclude that the liberalization increased the aggregate productivity of the Indian manufacturing sector by at least 7.6%.

• 0000

  LINDNER Attila (University College London) : Technological Change and Skill Demand in Non-Competitive Labor Markets

• 0000

  LINDNER Attila (University College London) : Technological Change and Skill Demand in Non-Competitive Labor Markets

  Co-author: Balazs Murakozy // NOTE - Room change: R2-01

  Abstract

  This paper investigates the consequences of technological change in the presence of non-competitive labor markets. We propose a model of technological progress where firms invest in innovation in the hope of developing new technologies. A successful innovation elevates firm-level labor demand, and so firms have to raise wages to hire more workers. Unlike in models where wages are set competitively, in this framework firm-level wage responses reveal information about the nature of technological change. We show that one can infer the extent which technological change is skill biased by jointly investigating the effect of innovation on the firm-level skill ratio and on the skill wage premium. We apply this idea by exploiting unique firm-level innovation surveys linked to employee-employer data from Hungary and Norway. We show that firm-level technological change raises the skill ratio and also the skill premium in both countries. The increase in the skill-premium is not driven by the change in composition of the workforce and, in line with the predictions of the non-competitive labor markets, wages of new entrants are also affected. Both high- (e.g. R&D based) and low-novelty value innovations are equally skill biased. Among low-novelty innovation types, technological innovation are the most skill-biased, while organizational innovation is less so.

  Full text [pdf]

• 0000

  There is no regular seminar scheduled. See link below.

  Full text [pdf]

• 0000

• 0000