UCLouvain Economics Seminar

The UCLouvain Economics Seminars is jointly organized by CORE and IRES.

Organizers: Gonzague Vannoorenberghe

On Thursday, 12:45 - 14:00

Doyens 22 - 1, Place des Doyens, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve

Programme for the academic year 2019 - 2020

October 2019

3 Yair Antler (Tel Aviv University)
Multilevel Marketing: Pyramid-Shaped Schemes or Exploitative Scams

Motivated by the growing discussion on the legitimacy of multilevel marketing schemes and their resemblance to pyramid scams, we compare the two phenomena based on their underlying compensation structures. We identify the conditions on the tendency of agents to spread information by word of mouth, under which a principal can design a pyramid scam to exploit a network of agents whose beliefs are coarse. We find that a pyramid scam is sustainable only if its underlying reward scheme compensates each participant based on at least two levels of recruitment, i.e., the people he recruits and the people they recruit.

10 Luca Fornaro (CREI)
Monetary Union and Financial Integration

Abstract

It is often argued that forming a monetary union increases financial integration and leads to a more efficient allocation of capital across member countries. To investigate this claim, this paper provides a model connecting monetary policy and international capital flows. The key feature of the model is that monetary policy affects the value of collateral that can be repossessed by creditors in case of default. Once a country has accumulated a large stock of external debt, it is optimal for the government to depreciate the exchange rate to expropriate foreign investors. Anticipating this, under flexible exchange rates international investors impose tight borrowing limits on foreign debtors. In a monetary union this source of exchange rate risk is absent, because national governments do not control monetary policy. Forming a monetary union thus increases financial integration by boosting borrowing capacity toward foreign investors. This process, however, does not necessarily lead to higher welfare. Higher financial integration may increase welfare by fostering capital flows from capital-abundant to capital-scarce countries. But a high degree of financial integration may also make episodes of inefficient capital flights out of capital-scarce countries possible.

17 Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt ( Frankfurt School of Finance and Management)
Salience Effects in Portfolio Selection
This seminar will take place at More 57 instead of Doyens 22.

Abstract

Portfolio under-diversification is one of the most pervasive phenomena in household finance. We show that salience theory of choice under risk synthesizes seemingly disparate explanations for under diversification that have been established in the literature: skewness preferences and correlation misperception. On the one hand, we study under-diversification with symmetric assets and find that salience theory can rationalize experimental evidence on naive diversification. On the other hand, we derive predictions on the role of correlation for portfolio selection with skewed assets, which allow us to distinguish between our salience-based explanation of under-diversification and naive decision rules such as the 1/N-heuristic. We plan to test our novel predictions in a lab experiment.

31 Jacques Crémer (Toulouse School of Economics)
Migration Between Platforms

Abstract

We study incumbency advantage in platform industries, where the utility of participating in a platform is increasing in the mass of users participating in that platform. Individuals receive stochastic opportunities to migrate from an incumbent to a new (entrant) platform, which they can accept or wait until the next opportunity arises. Individuals have an incentive to delay migration until enough other users have migrated, which provides a micro-foundation for incumbency advantage. When users obtain more frequent migration opportunities, the cost of delaying migration is reduced, so incumbency advantage increases. Migration technologies that allow for large groups of individuals to migrate in a short period of time (i.e., coordination) are also associated with higher incumbency advantage. There always exists some capacity constraint by the entrant which increases the cost of delaying migration and thereby reduces incumbency advantage. Multi-homing reduces incumbency advantage but does not eliminate it. When individuals have heterogeneous preferences for the two platforms, there can be welfare losses due to excessive segregation of individuals across the platforms.

Link to the paper

November 2019

7 Mark Weder (Aarhus University)
Do We Really Know that Monetary Policy was Destabilizing in the 1970s?

Abstract

The paper re-examines whether the Federal Reserve's monetary policy was a source of instability during the Great Inflation by estimating a sticky-price model with positive trend inflation, commodity price shocks and sluggish real wages. Our estimation provides empirical evidence for substantial wage-rigidity and finds that the Federal Reserve responded aggressively to inflation but negligibly to the output gap. In the presence of non-trivial real imperfections and well-identified commodity price-shocks, U.S. data prefers a determinate version of the New Keynesian model: monetary policy-induced indeterminacy and sunspots were not causes of macroeconomic instability during the pre-Volcker era.

14 Julia Cagé (Sciences-Po)
Heroes and Villains: The Effects of Combat Leadership on Collaboration in War-Time France

Abstract

Do political leaders alter the course of history by changing political preferences and behaviours? We answer this question by showing how World War I combat exposure to Philippe Pétain - a French general officer at the time who later served as the Chief of State of Vichy France from 1940 to 1944 - led people to collaborate with the German occupant and the Vichy regime. Uniquely in the literature, we digitized a newly declassified dataset on nearly 100,000 individuals who collaborated during World War II. We also construct a new dataset of all the location of the regiments that fought during World War I, in particular during the Battle of Verdun Pétain is consider the "victor" of. We find that communes where regiments fought the Battle of Verdun under direct command of Pétain in 1916, compared to similar communes that fought the same Battle under a different general, had 30% more collaborators during WWII. We show that rotation at Verdun under Pétain was as good as randomly assigned. Yet, in those communes, more people joined collaborationist paramilitary groups, militated in collaborationist political organisations, or directly collaborated with the Nazi regime e.g by joining the Gestapo. We also provide evidence that this translated into a durable Left-Right swing in post-War France.
(joint with Anna Dagorret, Pauline Grosjean and Saumitra Jha)

21 Filomena Garcia (Indiana University)
Nationalistic bias in collusion competition

28 Juan Carluccio (Banque de France)
Dissecting the impact of imports from low-wage countries on French consumer prices

Abstract

We provide a quantitative assessment of the impact of imports from low-wage countries (LWCs) on CPI inflation in France during 1994-2014, using detailed micro data on imports and exports. The share of imports from low-wage countries in consumption increased from about 2% to 7%, and resulted in a negative impact on CPI inflation of about 0.17 pp per year on average. This effect decomposes in three channels. 1) The substitution channel, capturing the replacement of domestic production by goods from LWCs, accounts for almost -0.05 pp. 2) The rise in the proportion of LWC goods in total imports weighed down on imported inflation. This channel reduced French CPI inflation by 0.06 pp per year. 3) Instrumental variable estimation of the competition channel at the product level shows that the increase in the market share of LWCs in French expenditures led to a negative effect of 0.06 pp on CPI inflation.

(joint with Erwan Gautier (Banque de France) and Sophie Guilloux-Nefussi (Banque de France))

December 2019

5 Jochen Mankart (Bundesbank)
House Price Expectations and Housing Choice

Abstract

What is the role of heterogeneous house-price expectations for boom-bust cycles in the housing market? We exploit a unique Dutch panel data set on households'house price expectations and their consumption, savings and housing choices for the period 2003-2016. This period was characterized by a pronounced boom-bust cycle in the housing market. Conditioning the sample on household heads who report non-zero house price expectations, we nd that expectations closely track realized house prices. We next develop a structural life-cycle model of the Dutch housing market where we distinguish household types according to their house price expectations. We employ a calibrated model variant to test if observed variations in expectations can account for the housing boom-bust cycle. First results show that our model closely matches the observed fluctuations of the rent-to-price ratio in the data but overshoots the size of the housing boom.

12 Anastasios Karantounias (Fed Atlanta)
Greed versus Fear : Optimal Time-Consistent Taxation with Default

Abstract

This paper studies the optimal time-consistent distortionary taxation when the repay- ment of government debt is not enforceable. The government taxes labor income or issues non-contingent debt in order to finance an exogenous stochastic stream of fiscal shocks. Debt can be repudiated subject to some default costs. Optimal policy is characterized by two opposing incentives: an incentive to postpone taxes by issuing more debt for the future (“Greed”), and an incentive to tax more currently in order to avoid punishing de- fault premia (“Fear”). A Generalized Euler Equation (GEE) captures these two effects and determines the optimal back-loading or front-loading of tax distortions. Even if de- fault risk is small, tax-smoothing is severely limited. The same mechanisms operate also in environments with long-term debt.

February 2020

6 Martin Peitz (University of Mannheim)
Add Clutter, Time Use, and Media Diversity

Abstract

We introduce advertising congestion along with a time-use model of consumer choice among media. Both consumers and advertisers multi-home. Higher equilibrium advertising levels ensue on less popular media platforms because platforms treat consumer attention as a common property resource: smaller platforms internalize less the congestion from advertising and so advertise more. Platform entry raises the ad nuisance “price” to consumers and diminishes the quality of the consumption experience on all platforms. With symmetric platforms, entry still leads to higher consumer benefits. However, entry of less attractive platforms can increase ad nuisance levels so much that consumers are worse off.

13 Alex Armand (Nova School of Business and Economics)
Does Information Break the Political Resource Curse? Experimental Evidence from Mozambique

Abstract

The political resource curse is the idea that natural resources can lead to the deteriorationof public policies through corruption and rent-seeking by those closest to political power. Oneprominent consequence is the emergence of conflict. This paper takes this theory to the datafor the case of Mozambique, where a substantial discovery of natural gas recently took place.Focusing on the anticipation of a resource boom and the behavior of local political structuresand communities, a large-scale field experiment was designed and implemented to follow thedissemination of information about the newly-discovered resources. Two types of treatmentsprovided variation in the degree of dissemination: one with information targeting only localpolitical leaders, the other with information and deliberation activities targeting communitiesat large. A wide variety of theory-driven outcomes is measured through surveys, behavioralactivities, lab-in-the-field experiments, and georeferenced administrative data about local con-flict. Information given only to leaders increases elite capture and rent-seeking, while infor-mation and deliberation targeted at citizens increases mobilization and accountability-relatedoutcomes, and decreases violence. While the political resource curse is likely to be in play,the dissemination of information to communities at large has a countervailing effect.

20 Gabriella Conti (University College London)
Long-Term Health Effects of Prenatal and Infancy Home Visiting: Evidence from a Randomized Trial

Abstract

Home visiting programmes are increasingly being implemented for expectant families and those with young children identified with vulnerabilities or risks for poorer outcomes, however evidence on their long-term impacts is surprisingly scarce. In this paper we study the health impacts at the 18-year follow-up of the Memphis randomized controlled trial of the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP), one of the oldest and most thoroughly evaluated nurse home visitation programs in the United States. We find lower rates of hypertension in the mothers who were visited by the nurses in pregnancy and postnatally, and lower prevalence of obesity in their adolescent children. These effects are mostly concentrated in girls and their mothers, and can be traced back since the prenatal and the birth period. Our results provide importance new evidence on the potential role of prenatal and infancy home visiting in preventing or delaying the onset of costly chronic health conditions.

27 Austin Wright (University of Chicago)
Rebel Capacity and Combat Tactics

Abstract

Classic and modern theories of rebel warfare emphasize the role of unexpected attacks against better equipped government forces. We test implications of a simple model of combat and information-gathering using highly detailed data about Afghan rebel attacks, insurgent-led spy networks, and counterinsurgent operations. Timing of rebel operations responds to changes in the group's access to resources. Results are supplemented with numerous robustness checks as well as a novel IV approach that uses machine learning and high frequency data on local agronomic inputs. Main effects are significantly enhanced in areas where rebels have the capacity to spy on and infiltrate military installations. Consistent with the model, shocks to labor scarcity and government surveillance operations have the opposite effect on attack timing.

March 2020

5 Anandi Mani (Oxford University)
Congnitive Droughts

Abstract

This paper tests whether worryingabout rainfall risk impairsfarmers’ decision-making, through worse cognition. Behavioraltheories predict that worries could impose a psychological tax on farmers, reducing the quality of their decisionsand, in turn,leading to material consequences at all times and across all states of nature –even when negative rainfall shocks do not materialize down the line. Using a novel technology to run lab experiments in the field, we combine survey experiments and recent rainfall shocks to estimate the effects of worryingabout rainfall risk on farmers’ cognition.We find that worries about rainfall increase farmers’ cognitive load and their susceptibility to a variety ofbehavioral biases. In theory, insurance could mitigatethose effects by alleviating the material consequences of rainfall risk. To test this hypothesis, we randomly assignoffers of an index insurance product, and find that it does not affect farmers’ worries about rainfall, cognitive load,or susceptibility to biases. These resultssuggest that farmers’ anxiety might berelatively difficult to alleviate.

12 Day Manoli (University of Texas Austin)
Long-term Effects of Job Search Assistance: Experimental Evidence Using Administrative Tax Data

Abstract

This paper uses administrative tax data to examine the long-term effects of an experimental job-search assistance program operating in Nevada in 2009. The program required randomly-selected unemployed workers who had just started collecting unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to undergo an eligibility review and receive personalized job-counseling services. The program led to substantial short-term reductions in UI receipt, and to persistent, long-term increases in employment and earnings. The program also affected participants’ family outcomes, including total income, tax filing, tax liability, and home ownership. These findings show that job-search assistance programs may produce substantial long-term effects for participants and their families.
(with M. Michaelides and A. Patel)

19 Mine Senses (John's Hopkins)

26 Marc Klemp (Univerity of Copenhagen)

April 2020

2 Dylan Glover (INSEAD)

23 Andrea Guariso (Trinity College)

30 Daniel Yi Xu (Duke University)

May 2020

7 Oriol Carbonell Nicolau (Rutgers University)

14 Elena Esposito (DEEP-HEC)

June 2020

4 Michèle Belot / Philip Kircher (EUI)

11 Marie-Louise Leroux (UQAM)

Archives 2018 -2019

Employment Effects of Payroll Tax SubsidiesThursday October 4, 2018
Valerie Lechene (University College London)
A structural analysis of the decline of home cooked food

Thursday October 11, 2018
Régis Renault (Cergy-Pontoise)
Search Direction: Position Externalities and Position Bias

Thursday October 18, 2018
Gianmarco Ottaviano (LSE/Bologna)
Appropriability of Intellectual Assets and the Organization of Global Supply Chains

Thursday November 8, 2018
Mike Elsby (Uiversity of Edinburgh)
Male joblessness in the United States

Thursday November 15, 2018
Antonio Rosato (Cambridge University)
Projection of Private Values in Auctions

Thurday November 22
Nuno Coimbra (PSE)
Financial Cycles with Heterogeneous Intermediaries

Thursday, November 29, 2018
Maarten Bosker (University of Rotterdam)
Shock propagation in global supply chains. Evidence from the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement

Thursday, December 6, 2018
Michal Kobielarz (KULeuven)
Unstable Monetary Unions – The Role of Expectations and Past Experience

Thurday, December 13, 2018
Seminar on immigration with L. Minale, H. Rapopport and M. Burzynski

2019

Thursday February 7, 2019
Sascha Becker (Warwick)
Effects of Catholic Censorship during the Counter-Reformation

Thursday Febraury14, 2019
Matteo Cervellati (Bologna)
Sovereign Polities and Pre-Industrial Development: Theory and Evidence for Europe 1000-1850

Thurday February 21, 2019
Botond Kőszegi (Central European University)
An Attention-Based Theory of Mental Accounting

Thursday February28, 2019
Sandy Tubeuf (UCLouvain, IRSS)
(In)-equality of opportunity in the allocation of R&D resources for rare diseases

Thursday March 7, 2019
Matthias Doepke (Northwestern)
Employment Protection, Investment in Job-Specific Skills, and Inequality Trends in the United States and Europe

Tuesday March 12, 2019
John Roemer (Yale University)
How we cooperate: A theory of Kantian optimization

Thurdsay March14, 2019
Regina Riphahn Erlangen (Nürnberg)
Employment Effects of Payroll Tax Subsidies

Thursday March 21, 2019
Gianluca Orefice (CEPII)
Immigration and Worker-Firm matching

Thurday March 28, 2019
Ferdinand Vieider (Ghent University)
Environmental Factors Shape Risk Preferences

Thursday April 4, 2019
James Fenske (Warwick)
Pre-Colonial Warfare and Long-Run Development in India

Thursday April 11, 2019
Chiara Farronato (Harvard Business School)
Consumer Protection in an Online World: An Analysis of Occupational Licensing

Thursday May 2, 2019
Alessandro Sommacal (University of Verona)
Flat tax reforms in Italy through the lens of an heterogenous agents OLG model

Thursday May 9, 2019
Day Manoli (University of Texas) !! CANCELLED !!

Thursday May16, 2019
Pietro Biroli (University of Zurich)
Genetics and Health Insurance: How Genes and Insurance Status Affect Smoking Decisions after Health Shocks

Thursday May 23, 2019
Sydney Ludvigson (New York University)
How the Wealth Was Won: Factor Shares as Market Fundamentals

Archives 2017-2018

Thursday September 21, 2017
Peter Dolton (University of Sussex)
The Optimal Length of the Working Day : Evidence from Hawthorne Experiments

Thursday September 28, 2017
Olivier Charlot (University of Cergy)
Taxation of Temporary Jobs: Good Intentions with Bad Outcomes

Thursday October 5, 2017
Catherine Guikinger (Namur University)
Buy as you Need Nutrition and Food Storage Imperfections

Thursday October 19, 2017 - CANCELLED
Katja Kaufmann (University of Mannheim)
Gender Peer effects, non-Cognitive Skills and Marriage Outcomes: Evidence from single-sex schools in the UK

Thursday October 25, 2017
Luis Cabral (New York University)
Standing on the Shoulders of Dwarfs: Dominant Firms and Innovation Incentives

Thursday November 2, 2017
Felix Kübler (University of Zurich)
Self-justified Equilibria in Dynamic Economies with Heterogenous Agent

Thursday, November 9, 2017
Bilal Zia (World Bank)
Learning Business Practices from Peers: Experimental Evidence from Small-Scale Retailers in Jakarta

Thursday, November 16, 2017
Paul Heidhues (University of Dusseldorf)
Unrealistic Expectations and Misguided Learning

Thursday, November 23, 2017
Cheti Nicoletti (University of York)
Do Parental Investment React to Changes in Child's Skills and Health

Thursday, November 30, 2017
Alain Venditti (Aix Marseille, School of Economics)
On Sunspot Fluctuations in Infinite-Horizon Models: A General Analysis

Thursday, December 7, 2017
Heiner Schumacher (KU Leuven)
Equilibrium Contracts and Boundedly Rational Expectations

Thursday, December 14, 2017
Ariell Reshef (PSE)
Techies, Trade and Skill-Biased Productivity: Firm Level Evidence from France

Thursday, February 1, 2018
V. Filipe Martins da Rocha (Université Dauphine)
Self-enforcing Debt Limits and Costly Default in General Equilibrium

Thursday, February 8, 2018
Heiko Karle (University of Frankfurt)
Competition and Information Quality in the Market for News

Thursday, February 15, 2018
Sebastian Krautheim (University of Passau)
The International Organization of Production in the Regulatory Vacuum

Thursday, February 22, 2018
Harris Dellas (University of Bern)
Fiscal Policy with an Informal Sector

Thursday, March 1, 2018
Simon Cornée (University of Rennes)
A Theory of Social Finance

Thursday, March 8, 2018
Grégory Jolivet (University of Bristol)
A Structural Analysis of Health and Labour Market Trajectories

Thursday, March 15, 2018
Ingela Alger (Toulouse School of Economics)
Uninvadable social behaviors and preferences in group- structured populations

Thursday, March 22, 2018
Stefano Gnocchi (Bank of Canada)
Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity Meets the Zero Lower Bound

Thursday, March 29, 2018
Manolis Galenianos (Royal Holloway)
Referral Networks and Inequality

Thursday April 19, 2018
Bernard Sinclair-Desgagné (HEC Montréal)
Measuring Innovation and Innovativeness: A data mining approach

Thursday, April 26, 2018
Simone Bertoli (FERDI)
Migration and co-residence choices: evidence from Mexico

Thursday, May 3, 2018
Hippolyte d'Albis (PSE)
Immigration and Fiscal Balance: Evidence from Western European Countries

Thursday May 17, 2018
Stefania Albanesi (University of Pittsburgh)
Changing Business Cycles: The Role of Women's Employment

Friday June 15, 2018
Melanie Meng Xue (Northwestern University)
High-Value Work and the Rise of the Women: The Cotton Revolution and Gender Equality in China

Archives 2016-2017

Thursday, September 22, 2016 - 12.45
Pedro Teles (Universidade Catolica Portuguesa)
More on the Taxation of Capital

Thursday, September 29, 2016
Valérie Smeets (Aarhus University)
Multi-product firms, import competition and the evolution of firm-product technical efficiencies

Thursday, October 6, 2016
Albert Marcet (CSIC), ICREA, UAB, MOVE, Barcelona GSE & CEPR)
Stock Price Booms and Expected Capital Gains?

Thursday, October 13, 2016
Nuno Palma (European University Institute and University of Groningen)
The existence and persistence of liquidity effects: evidence from a large-scale historical natural experiment

Thursday, October 20, 2016
Sandra McNally (University of Surrey)
Entry Through the Narrow Door: The Costs of Just Failing High Stakes Exams

Thursday, November 3, 2016
Karen Macours (PSE, Paris)
Schooling, Learning, and Earnings: Long-term Effects of a Conditional Cash Transfer Program in Nicaragua

Thursday, November 10, 2016
Shankha Chakraborty (University of Oregon)
Age-Specific Effects of Mortality Shocks and Economic Development

Thursday, November 17, 2016
Fabian Herweg (University of Bayreuth)
Optimal Cost Overruns: Procurement Auctions with Renegotiationv

Thursday, November 24, 2016
Paolo Giordani (LUISS "Guido Carli" University)
Market Frictions in Entrepreneurial Innovation:Theory and Evidence

Thursday, December 1, 2016
Fabrice Collard (University of Bern)
Public Debt as Private Liquidity: Optimal Policy

Thursday, December 8, 2016 - Cancelled
John Earle (Central European University)
Does Higher Productivity Dispersion Imply Greater Misallocation? A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

Thursday, December 15, 2016
Andreas Moxnes (University of Oslo, CEPR & NBER)
Better, Faster, Stronger : Global Innovation and Trade Liberalization

Thursday, February 2, 2017
Piero Gottardi (European University Institute)
A Theory of Repurchase Agreements, Collateral Re-use, and Repo Intermediation

Thursday, February 9, 2017
Pierre Cahuc (Ecole Polytechnique et directeur du laboratoire de macroéconomie du CREST (INSEE))
Short-time Work and Employment in the Great Recession in France

Thursday, February 16, 2017
Kalina Manova (Oxford University)
Managing trade: evidence from China and the US

Thursday, February 23, 2017
Antonio Cabrales (University College London)
What You Know... Can't Hurt You? A Field Experiment on Relative Performance Feedback in Higher Education

Thursday, March 2, 2017
Takeshi Murooka (University of Munich)
The Timing of Choice-Enhancing Policies

Thursday, March 9, 2017
Pedro Vicente (Nova Lisbon)
Introducing Mobile Money in Rural Mozambique: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Thursday, March 16, 2017
Céline Poilly (Aix-Marseille University)
Do Misperceptions about Demand Matter ? Theory and Evidence

Thursday, March 23, 2017
Jose I. Silva (Girona University)
Local labor market effects of public employment

Thursday, March 30, 2017
Arnaud Costinot (MIT)
The More We Die, The More We Sell? A Simple Test of the Home-Market Effect

Thursday, April 20, 2017
Jérôme Pouyet (PSE)
Vertical Mergers in Platform Markets

Thursday, April 27, 2017
Alessandro Tarozzi (U. Pompeu Fabra)
Evaluation of Alternative Strategies to Increase Demand for and Responses to Information on Arsenic-contaminated Tubewell Water in Bangladesh

Thursday, May 4, 2017
David Neumark (University of California Irvine)
Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment

Thursday, May, 11, 2017
Gerard Llobet (CEMFI Madrid)
The Inverse Cournot Effect in Royalty Negotiations with Complementary Patents

Thursday, May 18, 2017
Juan J. Dolaldo (European University Institute)
From Dual to Unified Employment Protection : Transition and Steady State

Thursday, June 15, 2017
Murat Iyigun (University of Colorado - Boulder)
Why Wait? A Century of Education, Marriage Timing and Gender Roles