| October 17, 20268:00 AM - 5:00 PM | 250 Years of American Capitalism, 1776-2026 | Details TBA |
| October 16, 20268:00 AM - 5:00 PM | 250 Years of American Capitalism, 1776-2026 | Details TBA |
| October 15, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Aaron Wolf (NU): Global Employers, Local Effects: How Multinationals Change Domestic Training Investment |
| October 15, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Economics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Tanguy Bernard
Title: Targeting Social Returns: Non-linear Subsidies and Food Safety in Smallholder Agriculture (Tanguy Bernard, Jérémy Do Nascimento Miguel, Yanyan Liu, Tesfamichael Wossen)
Abstract: Price subsidies are among the most common public policies for raising adoption of agricultural technologies in Africa, but their design is almost always reduced to a single question: how deep a discount to offer. We ask instead whether the structure of a subsidy schedule, holding fiscal cost fixed, can steer adoption toward specific adoption margins, and in particular those that generate positive externalities. We study Aflasafe, a biological control that cuts aflatoxin contamination in maize by over 80%: because contamination is invisible to buyers and can only be tested at high fixed cost, smallholder farmers treating market-bound maize are typically not rewarded for the health benefits their treatment confers on others. In the second of a two-season randomized experiment with 2,121 smallholders across 92 villages in Niger State, Nigeria, we compare a flat 50% subsidy to a fiscally equivalent non-linear (“buy half, get half free”) schedule. The non-linear schedule raises full-field adoption by 15.2 percentage points while the equally generous flat subsidy moves it essentially to zero; a cash transfer amplifies the non-linear effect by a further 15.4 pp but has no comparable effect under flat pricing, so liquidity and schedule structure are complements for the externality-generating margin. A simple framework in which farmers value their own health above anonymous others’ rationalizes the pattern, and among cash recipients baseline altruism is associated with externality-margin adoption. A cost-benefit and targeting analysis favors the non-linear schedule on that margin. |
| October 14, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Evan Majic
Title: The Importance of Inter Vivos Transfers: Insuring and Investing in Children
Abstract: We argue that inter vivos transfers from parents to children are much more important than previously thought for the cross-sectional dispersion of income and wealth as well as the inter-generational persistence of those quantities. We document two common features of transfers, front-loading and insurance, that account for their power. We also show how the size and type of transfers made to children vary across the wealth distribution and develop micro-level estimates of the effects of different types of transfers on children’s choices. We establish the importance of these features for macroeconomic outcomes by embedding them in a quantitative overlapping generations (OLG) model with incomplete markets, education choice, and human capital accumulation. |
| October 14, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Russell Miles (Northwestern University): Title TBA |
| October 14, 20268:00 AM - 5:00 PM | REStud North America Tour 2026 | The REStud North American Tour recognizes the most promising graduating doctoral students in economics and finance from European universities and showcases them and their research to audiences in North America.
The 2026 REStud North America Tour will take place at Northwestern University (October 14), UC San Diego (October 16), and Penn State University (October 19).
The tourists this year are Adrien Couturier (LSE), Bjoern Höppner (Bonn), Amen Jalal (LSE), Ananya Kotia (LSE), and Haoyuan Zeng (Zurich).
Stay tuned for more details & registration information. |
| October 13, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Matt Masten (Duke): "Finite Population Identification and Design-Based Sensitivity Analysis" (with Brendan Kline)
Abstract: We develop a new approach for quantifying uncertainty in finite populations, by using design distributions to calibrate sensitivity parameters in finite population identified sets. This yields uncertainty intervals that can be interpreted as identified sets, robust Bayesian credible sets, or uniform frequentist design-based confidence sets. We focus on quantifying uncertainty about the average treatment effect, where our approach (1) yields design-based confidence intervals which allow for heterogeneous treatment effects without using asymptotics, (2) provides a new motivation for examining covariate balance, and (3) gives a new formal analysis of the role of randomization. We illustrate our approach in three empirical applications. |
| October 13, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Giacomo Marcolin (NU): Fertility-Based Discrimination (with Andrea Di Giovan Paolo)
Abstract: We study employer discrimination based on expectations about women’s future fertility. The identification challenge is that expectations about fertility cannot be varied independently of the characteristics from which employers infer them. We show that discrimination can be identified from variation in employers’ cost of future fertility, without requiring variation in fertility expectations. We exploit the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, which first provided federal employment protection to pregnant workers, thereby raising firms’ expected costs of employing women more likely to become pregnant. Using a difference-in-differences design comparing newly affected states with states that already had comparable protections, we find that the PDA reduced employment among women of childbearing age by 6.6%, primarily through lower hiring. The decline is concentrated among women with higher predicted future fertility, while employment of men and older women is largely unaffected. Our estimates imply that expected-fertility discrimination accounts for at least 27% of the observed gender employment gap. |
| October 13, 20261:30 PM - 2:30 PM | AI Seminar Series | Andrew Hall: The Political Economy of Multi-Agent Alignment |
| October 12, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Daniel Lewis (UCL): The Investment Channel of Monetary Policy: Disentangling Firm Heterogeneity
Abstract: To study monetary policy transmission at the firm level, researchers typically consider heterogeneity along a small number of firm characteristics, such as firm size or leverage. We instead estimate the full distribution of firms’ investment responses to changes in monetary policy, using a clustering regression framework. Our new approach can capture multidimensional and unobservable heterogeneity across firms and time. We find that investment by most firms in most time periods responds little to monetary policy. Only about 5% of firm-time observations are associated with a strong response. In those cases, a 25 basis point interest rate hike lowers the quarterly growth rate of firm capital by about 1 percentage point on average. We then correlate our investment sensitivity estimates to observable firm characteristics. While typical characteristics studied in the literature predict sensitivity, we also uncover novel correlates. In general, the responsiveness of investment cannot easily be explained with a small number of typical firm-level observables. We demonstrate that our empirical estimates provide new and critical targets for disciplining structural models of firm heterogeneity and monetary policy. |
| October 12, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Jingze Dong (Northwestern University): Title TBA |
| October 9, 20263:00 PM - 4:00 PM | Conversations with the Dean: Nobel Laureate Joel Mokyr | The Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences presents a special live edition of its signature series, Conversations with the Dean, featuring Dean Adrian Randolph and Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of economics and history, who was the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Join us to learn about Mokyr’s 50-year history at Northwestern, his research on economic growth and progress, and his tremendous year. Discover more about Professor Mokyr and the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
This event will be livestreamed. |
| October 9, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Yifan Zhang |
| October 8, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Emily Breza (Harvard): Evidence aggregation with ignorance in mind: learning what we do (not) know for archetypes discovery
Abstract: When evaluating policy interventions, researchers often pursue two related goals: identifying which individuals or contexts benefit most, and determining whether patterns of treatment effect heterogeneity can be used to aggregate evidence across environments. We develop a framework that aggregates treatment effect heterogeneity, defined over individual and environmental characteristics, into interpretable summaries while setting aside contexts in which extrapolation is unreliable and further evidence is needed. The procedure therefore learns both how to summarize heterogeneous effects and when researchers should admit ignorance. We derive finite-sample regret guarantees, provide data-driven guarantees for selecting the complexity of the summary class, and inference procedures that quantify the value of follow-up data collection. We illustrate the approach by reanalyzing a multifaceted anti-poverty program implemented in six countries. |
| October 8, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Economics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Sean Higgins
Title: Mental Accounting for Credit: Evidence from a Large-Scale Credit-Limit Experiment
Abstract: We develop a model of mental accounting for credit, in which consumers budget according to non-fungible spending categories that govern their borrowing behavior. We test our model in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with Cashea, Venezuela's largest consumer credit provider. Cashea provides two distinct credit lines to all of its borrowers: one for grocery stores and pharmacies, and one for all other retail merchants. We randomized 0%, 50%, or 100% credit-limit increases on one or both credit lines for 210,000 active users. We estimate large, symmetric same-category monthly marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) out of credit-limit increases of 8-10 cents per $1 of additional credit, with near-zero cross-category MPCs, consistent with mental accounting. We present five additional supporting results: (1) the results persist in every post-treatment month; (2) the same-category MPCs represent an increase in total consumption; (3) the results hold separately for both constrained and unconstrained borrowers; (4) there are no subgroups who treat the relaxation of the budget constraint fungibly; and (5) the results hold separately for each sub-category of consumption within each credit line. We conclude that consumers mentally account for credit, with economically large effects on borrowing and the allocation of spending across categories, as well as important implications for the regulation of financial technology and the effects of monetary policy. |
| October 8, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Dalton Zhang |
| October 7, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Joint Seminar in Economic History and HELP Economics | Myera Rashid (NU): How Occupations Become Gendered: Social Learning and the Long-Run Evolution of Women's Labor
Abstract: Women’s labor force participation in the US grew steadily over the past century and a half. Yet some occupations remained predominantly male while others shifted to become predominantly female. This paper argues that social learning about non-wage amenities helped shape occupations’ long-term gender composition. I propose an equilibrium model of occupational choice in which women learn about occupational amenities through work experience and social learning. The model shows how temporary shocks that induce women to enter previously untested occupations can permanently change their gender composition when entrants discover favorable amenities and transmit that information to subsequent cohorts. I test the implications of the model using variation in mass mobilization rates of men across local occupations during World War II. Occupation-by-county cells that lost more men to the draft had greater employment of women concentrated in occupations with higher female-valued amenities, including low physical demands and greater schedule flexibility. Consistent with the role of social learning, women too young to respond directly to wartime labor demand sorted into occupations with greater female-valued amenities in which their older sisters and female neighbors remained employed. |
| October 7, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Nguyen Lam (Northwestern University): Title TBA |
| October 6, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Sid Kankanala (UChicago Booth): Compound decisions and empirical Bayes via Bayesian Nonparametrics |
| October 6, 20261:30 PM - 2:30 PM | AI Seminar Series | Jon Kleinberg: AI's Models of the World, and Ours |
| October 5, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Joint Seminar in Industrial Organization and Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Sebastian Poblete (NU): Multi-unit Bargaining in the Presence of Labor Market Power |
| October 5, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | George Evans (UOregon): Adaptive Learning and Cognitive Discounting: Depressions, Bottleneck Inflation and Policy |
| October 5, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Andrew Hinchberger (Northwestern University): Title TBA |
| October 2, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Sergio Lopez Araiza Bezar
Title: The Hidden Cost of Mass Deportations: Early-Life Consequences of the 1930s Mexican Repatriation
Abstract: Nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment have been a common thread throughout US history, leading to exclusionary policies and deportation campaigns designed to expel immigrant groups. From 1928 to 1935, the US government implemented a deportation campaign based on fear and pushed between 330,000 and one million Mexicans to leave the country. We study the effect of this campaign on early-life mortality and educational attainment of children born to Mexican-immigrant families that remained in the US. In order to study the impact of this repatriation campaign on health, we overcome the lack of disaggregated stillbirth and infant mortality data by leveraging the fact that, in utero and in infancy, males are more frail than females. We proxy early-life mortality using childhood sex ratios and leverage the rollout of the campaign, which started in Texas in 1928 and didn't move to the rest of the country until 1931. Using a triple-differences estimator, we find a large increase in the childhood sex ratio for Mexican-immigrant households in Texas in 1930, equivalent to moving from the early-life mortality rates of the white population in 1931 to those of the Black population. We also study the effects of the campaign on educational attainment for children of Mexican-immigrant households and find a $16\%-20\%$ reduction in years of schooling. Finally, we find evidence that the deportation campaign led to lower healthcare utilization and public services more broadly, which helps explain our results on health and human capital accumulation. |
| October 1, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | [Cancelled] Development Economics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Sean Higgins
Title: Mental Accounting for Credit: Evidence from a Large-Scale Credit-Limit Experiment
Abstract: We develop a model of mental accounting for credit, in which consumers budget according to non-fungible spending categories that govern their borrowing behavior. We test our model in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with Cashea, Venezuela's largest consumer credit provider. Cashea provides two distinct credit lines to all of its borrowers: one for grocery stores and pharmacies, and one for all other retail merchants. We randomized 0%, 50%, or 100% credit-limit increases on one or both credit lines for 210,000 active users. We estimate large, symmetric same-category monthly marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) out of credit-limit increases of 8-10 cents per $1 of additional credit, with near-zero cross-category MPCs, consistent with mental accounting. We present five additional supporting results: (1) the results persist in every post-treatment month; (2) the same-category MPCs represent an increase in total consumption; (3) the results hold separately for both constrained and unconstrained borrowers; (4) there are no subgroups who treat the relaxation of the budget constraint fungibly; and (5) the results hold separately for each sub-category of consumption within each credit line. We conclude that consumers mentally account for credit, with economically large effects on borrowing and the allocation of spending across categories, as well as important implications for the regulation of financial technology and the effects of monetary policy. |
| September 30, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Daniela Vidart (UConn): Managing the Great Depression
Abstract: We study how managers shaped the trajectory of their first major recession, the Great Depression. Our empirical analysis combines plant and worker microdata with a shift-share instrument to identify how pre-Depression managerial employment affected 1930s firm and employment dynamics. Managers reduced establishment exit by stabilizing business relationships, which preserved local employment and consumption but lowered productivity. Embedding these findings in a firm dynamics model where managers lower fixed costs reveals that managers help marginal establishments survive. The ensuing employment and demand benefits outweigh muted cleansing, lessening the crisis. Without managers, employment and output would have fallen 10pp more over 1930-1935. |
| September 30, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Takaaki Sagawa
Title: The Macroeconomics of Regulatory Safe Asset Demand
Abstract: The U.S. government borrows more cheaply than other issuers of comparable risk, supported in part by regulations that direct bank portfolios toward public safe assets. These regulations can lower the government's funding cost, but they may also crowd out lending to the private sector. This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of this regulatory safe asset demand. I construct a narrative series of plausibly exogenous changes in regulatory safe asset demand using announcements by regulatory agencies and quarterly bank-level data. Using this series as an instrument, I identify a regulatory safe asset demand shock. Regulations that increase safe asset demand raise banks' safe asset holdings persistently, increase the government funding advantage on impact, and tighten financial conditions temporarily before easing them in the long run. Output falls as banks shift away from lending to the private sector. A model with a regulatory portfolio constraint and funding costs that decrease in portfolio safety accounts for these responses. Counterfactuals imply that reforms permanently increasing banks' safe asset demand raise the funding advantage only temporarily. Varying the regulatory incentive to hold safe assets generates a Laffer curve in the government's interest savings, with current regulation near the peak of the curve. |
| September 30, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Jason Adams (Northwestern University): Title TBA |
| September 29, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Julia Turner (NU): Degrees within Reach: Who Benefits when Community Colleges Offer Bachelor's Degrees?
Abstract: Twenty-four states currently allow community colleges to award bachelor's degrees (BAs), but there is little causal evidence as to whether these programs expand access to the BA or simply shift enrollment across institutions. Using longitudinal administrative data and the staggered rollout of programs across Washington state, I estimate the effect of community college baccalaureate (CCB) introduction on degree attainment and earnings. CCB introduction increases overall BA completion, but this aggregate effect masks substantial heterogeneity in who benefits and which programs work. Students predicted to otherwise enroll in two-year colleges see gains in bachelor's and graduate degree attainment with suggestively positive effects on earnings, while those likely to attend four-year institutions absent CCB introduction see null to negative effects on the same outcomes. Openings in fields such as nursing and computer science, where seats at four-year institutions are rationed through competitive major admissions, drive these completion and earnings gains, while openings in effectively open-access fields generate null effects. Taken together, these results suggest that CCB programs generate the largest benefits where existing constraints on bachelor's degree attainment bind, whether at the student or the program level. |
| September 28, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | Mathias Reynaert (TSE): Equilibrium Effects in Complementary Markets: Electric Vehicle Adoption and Electricity Pricing |
| September 28, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Shinnosuke Kikuchi (UCSD): Does Skill Abundance Still Matter? The Evolution of Comparative Advantage in the 21st Century
Abstract: This paper documents that skill-abundant countries no longer have a comparative advantage in skill-intensive sectors. While this empirical relationship was strong in the 1980s, it weakened in the 1990s and disappeared by the 2000s. Using a quantitative trade model incorporating automation, I find that lower trade costs and automation are the key factors. Trade costs contribute via market access, while automation changes comparative advantage through task reassignment. Lower trade costs and automation increase skill premia primarily by reassigning tasks to capital rather than reallocating factors across sectors. Lower trade costs also amplify automation’s effects on skill premia and welfare. |
| September 28, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Sanchez Pena (Northwestern University): Title TBA |
| September 26, 2026 | NU-TSE IO Conference | 2026 Northwester-Toulouse IO Conference
Program |
| September 25, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Myera Rashid
Title: How Occupations Become Gendered: Social Learning and the Long-Run Evolution of Women's Work
Abstract: This paper studies how social learning about non-wage amenities shapes occupational gender segregation. I develop an equilibrium model of occupational choice in which women are imperfectly informed about occupational amenities and learn from their own work experience and that of earlier cohorts. Temporary shocks to the demand for women’s labor induce entry into new occupations. Entrants who discover favorable amenities and remain employed transmit information to subsequent cohorts, allowing occupations to continue to feminize. I test the implications of the model using variation in exposure to the World War II draft across local occupations in the US. Occupation-by-county cells that lost more men to the draft had greater employment of women concentrated in occupations with higher female-valued amenities, including low physical demands and greater schedule flexibility. Consistent with the role of social learning, women too young to respond directly to wartime labor demand sorted into occupations with greater female-valued amenities in which their older sisters and female neighbors remained employed. Model simulations show that, absent temporary shocks that induce women’s entry into untested occupations, occupational gendering would proceed more slowly as beliefs take longer to converge to true values of non-wage amenities. |
| September 25, 2026 | NU-TSE IO Conference | 2026 Northwester-Toulouse IO Conference
Program |
| September 24, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics and Senior Job Talk | Lauren Falcao Bergquist (Yale): Search Costs, Intermediation, and Trade: Experimental Evidence from Ugandan Agricultural Markets (with Craig McIntosh and Meredith Startz)
Abstract: We study the large-scale experimental rollout of a platform that reduced search and matching frictions in Ugandan agricultural markets by connecting buyers and sellers. Market integration improved substantially: trade increased and price gaps fell. Interpreting the experiment through a trade model, we estimate treatment effects accounting for equilibrium changes that impact control markets. The intervention reduced fixed trade costs by 20% and increased trade flows between treated markets by 7% and across all markets by 1%. Scale economies shaped engagement: few farmers used the platform, but equilibrium price convergence from improved arbitrage by larger traders passed through to farm revenue. |
| September 24, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Economics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: TBA |
| September 23, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Brian Livingston
Title: The Price of Silence: Learning from Fiscal Inaction
Abstract: This paper develops a model of sovereign debt pricing in which the government has a latent fiscal corrective capacity. Bayesian investors learn about corrective capacity by observing fiscal policy choices. I show that deterioration in fiscal beliefs following spells of fiscal inaction increase government borrowing costs and term premia, particularly when initial beliefs are held with greater uncertainty. Pricing effects are much larger at longer maturities.
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| September 23, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Hiroaki Endo (Northwestern University): Title TBA |
| September 21, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | Volker Nocke (UMA): Merger Control in a Changing World
Abstract: How should merger control account for future changes in market conditions? We study horizontal merger policy in the presence of industry-wide cost and demand shocks, under both homogeneous-goods Cournot competition and differentiated-products price competition with CES and multinomial logit demand. We obtain two main results. First, adverse deterministic shocks increase industry concentration but nevertheless call for more permissive merger policy. Second, uncertainty has markedly different policy implications depending on the decision criterion. Under a cautious maxmin approach, greater uncertainty calls for more lenient merger control. Under a risk-neutral expected consumer-surplus criterion, by contrast, greater uncertainty tends to demand stricter merger control |
| August 26, 20269:00 AM - 3:30 PM | Northwestern Economics-Kellogg Summer School in Economic Theory Workshop 2026 | Northwestern Economics-Kellogg Summer School in Economic Theory Workshop 2026 |
| August 26, 20268:30 AM - 6:00 PM | Northwestern Economics-Kellogg Summer School in Economic Theory Workshop 2026 | Northwestern Economics-Kellogg Summer School in Economic Theory Workshop 2026 |
| August 25, 20268:30 AM - 6:00 PM | Northwestern Economics-Kellogg Summer School in Economic Theory Workshop 2026 | Northwestern Economics-Kellogg Summer School in Economic Theory Workshop 2026 |
| June 12, 202612:45 PM - 2:00 PM | Senior Celebration and Awards | Every year the department holds a senior awards celebration to honor the students who were granted honors for their senior theses, students who received the Coen, Deibler, or Eisner Awards, and students who completed the BA/MA degree.
We are excited to welcome the class of 2026 and their guests to this year's Senior Celebration & Awards Ceremony.
Dessert reception from 12:45-1:15 PM
Awards ceremony from 1:15-2:00 PM
Attendance is by invitation only. Please contact Samantha Westlake-Hart (samantha.westlakehart@northwestern.edu) with any questions. |
| June 10, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Luca Zanotti |
| June 8, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Thomas Drechsel (UMD): The macroeconomic effects of bank regulation: New evidence from a high-frequency approach
Abstract: Bank regulation supports financial stability, but might constrain economic activity. This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of bank regulation using a high-frequency identification approach. We measure market surprises in a bank stock price index during a narrow time window around Federal Reserve speeches that discuss the US banking system and its regulation. We then develop a sign restriction procedure to elicit the variation in these market surprises that can be interpreted as news about bank regulation. News that bank regulation will be tighter than expected mitigates risk in the banking sector, but reduces economic activity by increasing banks’ funding costs and tightening loan supply. A 10 basis point regulation-induced peak reduction in bank risk premiums is accompanied by a 15 basis point peak increase in the unemployment rate. Compared to previous studies, these magnitudes suggest a relatively high macroeconomic cost of tightening bank regulation, at least in the short run. |
| June 5, 20262:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Luis Mota Freitas (Northwestern University): "A Chicken in Every Pot: World War II Food Policy and the Rise of the Broiler Industry" |
| June 5, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Rafael Torres
Title: Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the Mongol Empire and the Great Reversal
Abstract: This project examines the long-run effects of the rise, expansion, and collapse of the Mongol Empire. We demonstrate how the widespread violence and new trade opportunities introduced by the Mongol Empire contributed to Western Europe's ability to bridge and reverse the income and technological gaps with the advanced Asian civilizations. Furthermore, our findings preliminarily reveal that the effects of the Mongol Conquests persisted and intensified well into the 18th century. Consequently, we argue that the Mongol Invasions of the 13th century can be considered a fundamental cause behind the ascent of Europe and the decline of Asia, the Great Reversal. Moreover, the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire hold significant importance in understanding the transition from a Malthusian world characterized by limited economic growth to a world marked by sustained economic expansion and inter-regional inequalities. This research agenda sheds light on the mechanisms driving long-term economic growth and the emergence of global economic disparities. By examining the historical context of the Mongol Empire, we provide a new perspective on the factors that propelled Europe's advancement and Asia's relative stagnation beginning in the Late Middle-Ages. This agenda aims not only to deepen our understanding of the forces shaping the global economy but also contribute to ongoing debates surrounding the roots of the Great Divergence. |
| June 4, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Daniel Cohen
Title: Sticky Spending: Evidence from Mexican Credit Cards
Abstract: Standard switching-cost models focus on “extensive-margin” frictions in exclusive markets that affect a consumer’s binary decision to switch. I propose that in non-exclusive markets with multi-homing, such as credit cards, a switch has both an “extensive-margin” component (opening a new card) and an “intensive-margin” component (shifting balances, consumption, and payments to the new card). Leveraging universal administrative data on Mexican formal-sector loans and a linked repeated cross-section from Mexico’s two credit bureaus, I document this intensive-margin friction (“sticky spending”) in the Mexican credit card market. First, I note that discrete switches are uncommon, and borrowers are more likely to accumulate cards. Second, I show that, conditional on accumulating, borrowers rarely reduce their balances, consumption, or payments on old cards. Third, I demonstrate that this stickiness is not driven by borrowers with abnormally high utilization or future consumption. Finally, I show that this friction persists even in increasingly irrational circumstances: for example, when a borrower’s new card has richer features, a higher credit limit, or a lower interest rate than their old card(s). I aim to eventually show that banks internalize this intensive-margin friction the same way they internalize traditional switching costs, thereby exacerbating market power in the credit card market. |
| June 4, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Aastha Rajan
Title: The Public Sector Advantage - Short and Long-Run Impacts of Government Employment
Abstract: This paper studies the role of public-sector employment in shaping economic mobility and racial inequality in the United States, focusing on Black workers. The public sector has historically provided relatively stable jobs, merit-based employment opportunities, and has served as a key occupational niche for Black workers in the presence of persistent discrimination in the private sector. This paper asks whether public-sector employment differentially improves outcomes for Black workers and whether it narrows racial gaps in both short-run and intergenerational outcomes. Estimating causal and intergenerational effects is complicated by non-random selection into sectors and limited data linking parents and children over time. To address these challenges, I construct a longitudinal dataset linking individuals and their children across decennial U.S. Censuses from 1900 to 1940. This framework enables explicit characterization of selection into public employment and allows for the estimation of both within-generation and intergenerational effects. The empirical strategy combines complementary approaches - a job-switcher design comparing workers transitioning from private to public employment with those switching within the private sector in similar local labor markets, and a household fixed-effects design comparing siblings who sort into different sectors. I also exploit variation in the timing of entry into public employment. The findings indicate that public-sector employment generates substantial economic gains for Black workers and contributes to improved outcomes for their children. These results highlight the public sector as an important channel for both contemporaneous and intergenerational mobility, with implications for re-evaluating ongoing reductions in public employment. |
| June 3, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Rui Sousa |
| June 3, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Marcos Campos (Northwestern University): "Community Enforcement with Endogenous Matching" |
| June 1, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Anmol Bhandari (UofM Twin Cities): Efficiency, Insurance, and Redistribution Effects of Government Policies (joint with David Evans, Mikhail Golosov, and Thomas Sargent)
Abstract: This paper decomposes welfare measures of policy reforms into parts attributable to redistribution and parts due to efficiency. We further decompose efficiency into subcomponents such as gains from better insurance against idiosyncratic and aggregate risk. Our decomposition of welfare measures associated with alternative feasible allocations is cast in terms of a coordinate system that uses generalized Pareto–Negishi weights to capture inequality and production and consumption wedges to capture distortions. Our decomposition has several desirable properties. It attributes welfare changes from movements along a Pareto frontier to redistribution; it attributes negative efficiency changes to movements away from the Pareto frontier; and it produces subcomponent shares of welfare changes that are numeraire-invariant and symmetric with respect to the direction of the reform. Our decomposition can be explained in terms of an implicit tax-and-transfer system in which redistribution captures real income changes, efficiency captures deadweight losses and output costs. |
| June 1, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Yuejun Chen (Northwestern University): "Treatment, Early Release, and Recidivism" |
| May 30, 20268:00 AM - 1:30 PM | Conference to Celebrate Joel Mokyr | Conference to Celebrate Joel Mokyr |
| May 29, 20268:00 AM - 5:00 PM | Conference to Celebrate Joel Mokyr | Conference to Celebrate Joel Mokyr |
| May 28, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Silvia Prina (Northeastern): From Default to Second Chances: Rehabilitating Delinquent Digital Borrowers
Abstract: Digital credit products in low- and middle-income countries are typically unsecured and feature limited enforcement. How can lenders in such markets recover value from delinquent borrowers? We run a randomized experiment with a digital lender in sub-Saharan Africa, testing two interventions: payment plans and restoration of credit eligibility conditional on repayment. Payment plans increase repayments by 57% and loan settlement by 48%. Eligibility restoration notices have little effect, and combining both interventions undermines the effect of payment plans alone. Our findings suggest that in digital credit markets, reducing repayment frictions is more effective than strengthening dynamic incentives for borrower rehabilitation. |
| May 28, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Mansa Saxena
Title: Information Sharing Frictions in Informal Labor Markets (with Vasu Chaudhary)
Abstract: In informal labor markets, workers regularly exchange information about employers and job opportunities with peers. But sharing can be costly: if information leads to a bad outcome for the peer, the person who shared it may face blame, loss of trust, or economic consequences. Using survey data from workers and employers at Delhi labor stands, we document facts about spot labor markets such as the role of repeated relationships in hiring, how workers screen employers, and patterns of information exchange between workers. We propose the design of a field experiment that tests whether uncertainty about a peer's expected job experience suppresses workers' willingness to share job information. If social liability suppresses information flow, it may slow employer reputation formation and sustain costly contracting frictions in markets where workers already face significant payment risk. |
| May 28, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Giacomo Marcolin
Title: The Role of Pregnancy in Gender Discrimination: Evidence from the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (with Andrea Di Giovan Paolo)
Abstract: Identifying the role of expected fertility as a driver of gender discrimination is crucial to guide policy solutions, but is hindered by the fact that pregnancy discrimination is typically addressed by broader gender-discrimination policies. This was not the case in the U.S., where before the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) pregnancy constituted a legal exception to existing gender discrimination laws. Exploiting states’ staggered adoption of laws similar to the PDA, we use difference-in-differences estimates based on survey data to show that the PDA reduced employment and hiring of women of fertile age, while having no detectable effect on dismissals. Our estimates imply that nearly 30% of the gender employment gap at the time was due to potential fertility. A simple search-and-matching model explains these results: by raising firing costs for discriminating employers, the PDA discouraged hiring but was not enforced strongly enough to prevent dismissals of pregnant employees. Finally, we show that pre-existing equal pay laws limited wage adjustments, exacerbating the negative effect on employment. |
| May 27, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Joachim Voth (Zurich): Image(s)
Abstract: From clothes and hairstyles to fashion accessories, humans use a great range of stylistic elements to express themselves, impress others, demonstrate their individualism, or show that they belong to a group. We present new methods to use images as a high-frequency, granular source for the analysis of cultural change. Despite its central importance as a form of social interaction and self-expression, and a rich body of theoretical work, empirical work on style choices is rare. We measure similarity over time and space, tracking the timing and location of influential style innovations. To illustrate our methods, we systematically exploit data from more than 14 million high school yearbook pictures of graduating US seniors to analyze persistence and change in style. We detect the collapse of high conformity as well as persistence across generations in the late 1960s. Style polarization increases sharply across commuting zones from the 1970s onwards. We also develop a novel measure of style innovation and show that it predicts patenting by cohorts later in life, suggestive of broader societal trends facilitating innovation across a range of domains. Overall, our results highlight the usefulness of images as a source for cultural economics.: |
| May 27, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Dalton Zhang |
| May 27, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Vitor von Ungern-Sternberg (Northwestern University): "Redistribution and Interest Rate Responses to Supply Shocks in HANK" |
| May 22, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speakers: Davis Kedrosky and Eli Locke
Speaker: Eli Locke
Title: Intergenerational Occupational Transmission
Abstract: How do parent's occupations influence the occupational choice of their children? Using 1910-1940 linked United States census data containing millions of father-son pairs, I characterize the complete father-son occupational transition matrix at a highly granular level. Having a father in a given occupation makes his son 230% more likely to choose that occupation, and 25-60% more likely to choose an occupation similar to his father's. This does not vary between second-generation immigrants and the sons of natives, although it masks substantial heterogeneity across occupations. However, second-generation immigrants are more likely to follow their father's occupation. Identifying the causal impact of parental occupational following on wages is complicated by selection, especially along the margin of sons who do not leave their birth county. |
| May 21, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Vittorio Bassi (USC): Causes and Consequences of Labor Utilization: Evidence from Ugandan Firms (joint with Imran Rasul, Ottavia Veroux and Anna Vitali)
Abstract: Labor underutilization is pervasive in small firms in developing countries, yet its causes and consequences remain poorly understood. Using a novel five-year panel of over 1,000 firms in Uganda, we document that firms face substantial and hard-to-predict demand volatility, that capital and labor adjustment costs are large, and that labor utilization is low. Firms with more volatile demand exhibit lower utilization and invest less in training. Guided by these facts, we develop a model of firm input and training choices under demand uncertainty. A key mechanism highlighted is that training requires up-front fixed investment while workers are paid piece-rates per unit of output, so higher volatility lowers expected utilization and reduces the returns to training. We estimate the model, identifying key parameters via a field experiment offering firms a substantial wage subsidy to recruit an additional worker. Counterfactual simulations show that reducing demand volatility raises hiring and training nearly as much as lowering training costs directly, and that the effectiveness of typical development policies to stimulate firm size, productivity and growth -- such as capital grants, management training, and market access interventions -- all depend critically on the volatility of demand firms face. Our findings highlight a novel demand-side mechanism limiting human capital accumulation, firm size and the effectiveness of firm-targeted policies in low-income settings. |
| May 21, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Sorenie Gudissa
Title: Internet Shutdowns and Political Coordination
Abstract: Autocratic regimes increasingly use internet shutdowns during periods of unrest as a tool of political control. Yet shutdowns do not simply reduce communication; they reshape the information environment through which citizens form beliefs about political conditions and others’ willingness to act. I study this mechanism using a global games framework in which online political information serves as a public signal for coordination. By pushing domestic producers offline while leaving lower-cost diaspora producers active, shutdowns alter the composition of the public signal citizens use to form beliefs. Using Facebook data from Ethiopia’s 2020 nationwide shutdown, I document that domestic engagement collapsed during the blackout, diaspora accounts came to dominate online political engagement, and this dominance persisted after reconnection. I further show that diaspora content was systematically more inflammatory and semantically cohesive than domestic content. These findings suggest that shutdowns can reshape the information environment in ways that may undermine the regime’s goal of suppressing coordination. I conclude by outlining a field experiment to test whether exposure to this shifted information environment affects citizens’ willingness to coordinate. |
| May 21, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Rosario Cisternas
Abstract: This project studies how market complexity shapes the effects of Chile's 2020 Single Table Factor (STF) policy, which bans gender-based pricing in private health insurance. Despite the policy, some gender gaps in premiums and coverage at childbearing ages remained—and descriptive evidence shows these gaps go beyond preferences. Using administrative microdata from the Chilean health regulator (2016–2025), I document patterns consistent with market complexity enabling direct cream-skimming: sales agents appear to shape consumers' consideration sets, letting firms circumvent the regulation through demand frictions rather than prices. I develop a model in which firms first choose whether to obfuscate, then set prices and targeting, shaping the plans consumers actually see. The demand identification strategy combines preference and choice-set shifters to recover demand primitives and reduced-form parameters of the firms' marketing technology (obfuscation and targeted advertising). The two main proposed counterfactuals are a naive full-awareness version of the gender-pricing ban and a single-plan policy that removes the demand frictions enabled by plan complexity. |
| May 20, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | CANCELLED
Kelsey Carlston (Gonzaga): TBA |
| May 20, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Takaaki Sagawa |
| May 20, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Sarah Bui (Northwestern University): "Payments for Ecosystem Services and Land Use Decisions" |
| May 19, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | CANCELLED Seminar in Econometrics | CANCELLED
Koen Jochmans (Toulouse): TBA |
| May 19, 202611:30 AM - 1:00 PM | Senior Recruitment Seminar in Macro Economics | Chen Lian (Berkeley): Sophisticated Borrowing Constraints and Macroeconomic Dynamics
Abstract: In traditional macro-finance models, firms’ debt contracts impose hard borrowing constraints, which require indiscriminate reductions of borrowing and investment when adverse shocks tighten these limits, giving rise to financial acceleration. We study the macroeconomic implications of “sophisticated borrowing constraints” akin to financial covenants among large U.S. nonfinancial firms, commonly specified based on firms’ debt relative to operating earnings. We model these constraints as debt thresholds that trigger a transfer of control rights to creditors when they are violated, in which case creditors influence firms’ decisions to maximize their value instead of cutting credit unconditionally to adhere to fixed ratios. At the micro level, our model is quantitatively consistent with empirical patterns of investment and earnings around covenant violations. At the macro level, sophisticated borrowing constraints do not generate financial acceleration, because constraint tightening and violations do not induce creditors to downscale firms indiscriminately. |
| May 18, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Joint Seminar in IO and Strategy | Ali Hortaçsu (UChicago): TBA |
| May 18, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Nicholas Bloom (Stanford): How curvy is the Phillips curve?
Abstract: Macro data suggest a convex relationship between inflation and economic slack, but identifying causality is challenging. Using micro data from large panel surveys of UK and US firms, we show that the response of prices to demand shocks is also convex at the firm level. We obtain similar results using three different empirical exercises examining: hypothetical shocks from a survey exercise, the response to sales shocks, and the impact of COVID demand shocks. This convexity is strongest in firms and industries with higher inflation, disappears at horizons beyond two years, and is also present in response to cost shocks. Taking non-linearities into account helps explain around one-fourth of the increase in firm price growth in 2022. We rationalize these findings in a menu cost model with positive trend inflation and decreasing returns at the firm level, which replicates firm and aggregate Phillips curve convexity. The non-linearity emerges from trend inflation pushing firms closer to their price increase thresholds. |
| May 18, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Hongchang Guo (Northwestern University): "Identification and Inference in Bipartite Experiments" |
| May 15, 20262:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Siye Bae (Northwestern University): "From Global to Domestic: The Changing Nature of Exorbitant Privilege" |
| May 15, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Francisco Pino (University of Chile)/Alex Weinberg (UChicago) |
| May 14, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Aaron Wolf |
| May 14, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Max Pienkny |
| May 13, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Munir Squires (UBC): Industrialization and the Making of an Integrated Society: Evidence from US Marriage Networks
Abstract: This paper shows that industrialization led Americans to form relationships spanning broader social circles, and that this was largely the consequence of weaker incentives to invest in strong family and community ties due to the availability of wage labor. We measure this change using marital distance, a metric that captures whether marriages reinforced existing ties or bridged previously separate social networks. Using data on millions of marriages from 1750-1950, we show that manufacturing employment increased this network distance between spouses. Crucially, we find that the economic incentives offered by impersonal wage employment were central to this transformation. The availability of these jobs to rural workers, independent of any local changes in employment or migration, was the primary driver of increasing marital distance. |
| May 13, 20261:15 PM - 2:30 PM | Joint Seminar in IO and Strategy | Zarek Brot (UChicago): Privatizing Government-Sponsored Health Insurance: Medicare Advantage vs. Traditional Medicare
Abstract: We study the consequences of enrollment in private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. We longitudinally link claims data from public Medicare (FFS), MA, and commercial insurance. We compare those who initially enroll in MA to those who enroll in FFS, just before and after they qualify for Medicare at age 65. MA reduces health care use by 6% in the first year of enrollment relative to FFS, but raises Medicare's fiscal costs by 15% (4% net of additional benefit generosity). Managed care policies matter: HMO plans generate sizable utilization reductions and fiscal savings, while PPO plans generate sizable fiscal costs.
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| May 13, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Pablo Sánchez |
| May 13, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Hellary Zhang (Northwestern University): "Deinstitutionalization or Nowhere to Go? Federal Policy, Psychiatric Hospital Capacity and Long-Run Outcomes" |
| May 12, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Andres Santos (UCLA): Identification and Estimation in a Class of Potential Outcomes Models
Abstract: This paper develops a class of potential outcomes models characterized by three main features: (i) Unobserved heterogeneity can be represented by a vector of potential outcomes and a “type” describing the manner in which an instrument determines the choice of treatment; (ii) The availability of an instrumental variable that is conditionally independent of unobserved heterogeneity; and (iii) The imposition of convex restrictions on the distribution of unobserved heterogeneity. The proposed class of models encompasses multiple classical and novel research designs, yet possesses a common structure that permits a unifying analysis of identification and estimation. In particular, we establish that these models share a common necessary and sufficient condition for identifying certain causal parameters. Our identification results are constructive in that they yield estimating moment conditions for the parameters of interest. Focusing on a leading special case of our framework, we further show how these estimating moment conditions may be modified to be doubly robust. The corresponding double robust estimators are shown to be asymptotically normally distributed, bootstrap based inference is shown to be asymptotically valid, and the semi-parametric efficiency bound is derived for those parameters that are root-n estimable. We illustrate the usefulness of our results for developing, identifying, and estimating causal models through an empirical evaluation of the role of mental health as a mediating variable in the Moving To Opportunity experiment. |
| May 12, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Emily Cuddy (Duke): Quality in the Generic Drug Market
Abstract: This paper examines whether generic drug quality differs across manufacturers in ways that matter for patient outcomes. We leverage pharmacy-level inventory dynamics as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in manufacturer assignment and compare outcomes (i) across patients who initiate the same drug but receive it from different manufacturers and (ii) within patients who switch manufacturers of the same drug when refilling at the same pharmacy. Using administrative medical and pharmacy claims from a large national insurer between 2011 and 2019 and focusing on antidepressants, preliminary evidence suggests economically meaningful differences across manufacturers in early treatment adherence, as well as in subsequent health care utilization and spending. These findings highlight potential limits of current regulatory standards in ensuring generic drug quality. |
| May 11, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Joel Flynn (Yale): Resilience vs. Fragility: Global Properties of Economies with Endogenous Production Networks
Abstract: We study a canonical static production-network economy in which sectors combine labor and intermediate inputs using constant-returns-to-scale technologies and adjust their supplier mix endogenously. First, we show that any such economy can be represented as one in which firms choose among Leontief technologies with heterogeneous productivities. Second, we leverage this to characterize equilibrium prices: the log-price vector is a min-max over pairs of networks of an affine function of log-productivity shocks. Economically, the two operators capture the forces of resilience and fragility: the “min” reflects gains from changing suppliers or technologies when prices move, while the “max” reflects amplification created by rigid input requirements. Third, specifications such as endogenous Cobb-Douglas and task-based technologies impose resilience or fragility, ruling out non-monotone effects of volatility on GDP. Fourth, we generalize Hulten’s theorem to environments with technology switching and non-differentiability. Fifth, we derive upper and lower bounds on the contribution of productivity shocks to GDP volatility. Methodologically, these results provide a tractable global theory of endogenous production networks beyond local approximations and specific functional forms. |
| May 11, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Yeshaya Nussbaum (Northwestern University): "Local Network Competition: Evidence from the Early US Telephone Industry" |
| May 8, 20262:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Charlie Hanzel (Northwestern University): "Political Polarization and Marriage Markets" |
| May 8, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: LT Zhang
Title: Out of Time but Not Out of Work: Technological Displacement and Occupational Mobility among late 19th Century Watchmakers
Abstract: New technologies often displace incumbent workers. Most evidence focuses on workers performing relatively narrow tasks and finds that displacement leads to higher unemployment and worse subsequent outcomes. This study shows that such patterns need not hold more generally. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, watch factories displaced traditional artisanal watchmakers. Using hand-collected data on watch companies linked to U.S. historical census records, we find that displaced watchmakers did not experience higher unemployment or occupational downgrading. Instead, many moved into related crafts such as jewelry, engraving, and machining. The findings suggest that technological change can destroy an occupation without imposing large penalties on workers whose skills have nearby alternative uses. |
| May 7, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Maria Sviatschi (Princeton): Can Debiasing Law Enforcement Officers Improve Performance? Evidence from an Expressive Arts Intervention in India
Abstract: Biases among state agents can undermine the quality of public service delivery and restrict access to justice, particularly for marginalized groups. We study whether reshaping police officers’ attitudes toward gender-based violence (GBV) improves real-world policing performance. We partner with the Government of Bihar, India, to implement a clustered randomized controlled trial covering 419 police stations and approximately 2,500 senior officers serving 42 million citizens. The novel intervention builds on an expressive arts–based pedagogy that uses role play, perspective-taking, and experiential learning to address gender norms, empathy, and technical skills related to GBV. Six months after the intervention, treated officers exhibit significant improvements in attitudes toward GBV, reduced victim-blaming, higher empathy, and greater legal knowledge. These improvements translate into meaningful changes in workplace environment and job performance. Eight months after the intervention, junior female officers in treated stations report significantly lower levels of workplace anxiety and harassment. One year later, standardized victim audits reveal substantial improvements in officers’ responses to women seeking help, including lower rates of case dismissal and more appropriate guidance. Exploring the random allocation of officer transfers, we show that even when treated officers move, individual attitudes toward GBV improve in relation to their control peers. We also find evidence of positive spillovers among officers who are only exposed to the treatment via interaction with treated officers. Together, these findings demonstrate that implicit biases among frontline state agents are malleable and that immersive behavioral training can generate persistent improvements in institutional performance and workplace culture. |
| May 7, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Gonzalo Moromizato |
| May 7, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Tessa Bonomo |
| May 6, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Melanie Meng Xue (LSE): British Industrialization and Cultural Change: Evidence from the Use of Proverbs
Abstract: This paper examines how industrialization transformed cultural values by analyzing changes in the historical usage of proverbs in printed texts from Great Britain between 1550 and 1900. Because proverbs reflect shared moral and social values, tracking their use over time allows us to measure patterns of cultural change. Drawing on historical proverb dictionaries, we classify proverbs into thematic dimensions in two ways: through targeted hypotheses, and through data-driven topics derived from unsupervised clustering. We then track their presence in books and newspapers over time. Using a panel dataset organized in 50-year intervals, we estimate how these proverb-based indicators of cultural attitudes shifted after 1750 in regions exposed to more intensive industrialization, focusing on dimensions such as punctuality, innovation, and individualism. We extend the analysis inductively by using the full set of clustered topics to examine additional patterns of cultural change and regional variation not covered by existing hypotheses. The paper contributes to research on cultural transformation during the Industrial Revolution and introduces a novel empirical framework for tracing long-run shifts in values and beliefs. |
| May 6, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Senior Recruitment Seminar in "HELP" Economics | Cormac O'Dea (Yale): "Surveying Counterfactuals: Improving 401(k) Matches Using Hypothetical Choices", with Guillermo Carranza, Taha Choukhmane, Fiona Greig, & Lawrence Schmidt |
| May 6, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Jacob Gosselin |
| May 6, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Jesse LaBelle (Northwestern University): "Public Signals, Private Filters: Optimal Monetary Policy Communication Under Intermediary Distortion" |
| May 5, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Peter Hull (Brown): Robust Signal Maximization in Spillover Experiment
Abstract: We study how to optimally design and analyze experiments when estimating spillover effects. Assuming a linear exposure model, we characterize the treatment-assignment distribution and recentered instrument that minimize asymptotic variance under weak assumptions on error dependence. The design problem yields a minimax solution in which the planner trades off instrument strength against diffusion of the induced spillover variation. Our framework yields sharp solutions in several benchmark cases—such as clustered exposure—and suggests computationally tractable approximations for general networks, including bipartite settings. We illustrate these new tools in semi-synthetic experiments based on two applications from development economics. |
| May 5, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Elisa Facchetti (Tor Vergata): "Police organisation and police performance" with Arianna Ornaghi (Hertie School) and Eddy Zou (LSE)
Abstract: Can internal organization improve police performance? We study this question in the London Metropolitan Police Service, focusing on Borough Commanders, middle managers who lead territorial divisions. We build a panel of Borough Commander careers from 2005 to 2019 and link manager assignments to division-by-month outcomes from police records, investigation outcomes, and workforce data. Exploiting manager mobility across divisions in an AKM-style framework, we estimate that middle managers account for about one quarter of the variance in log clearances per worker. Higher-performing managers raise clearances across offense types, increase police-issued sanctions and court convictions, substantially expand drug detections, while using fewer back-office staff. They also mitigate the negative effects of police station closures, suggesting that managerial quality is especially valuable when organizations respond to negative shocks. Finally, we examine how managerial effectiveness interacts with lower-level teams, showing how managerial talent operates across layers of the police hierarchy. |
| May 4, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | Panle Barwick (UW-Madison): Range Anxiety
Abstract: Range anxiety, the fear of depleting battery before reaching a charging station, is often cited as a major barrier to electric vehicle (EV) adoption, yet there has been limited formal economic analysis to quantify its magnitude and examine the policy implications. We develop a continuous-time dynamic model of EV usage and charging decisions to micro-found range anxiety as the utility loss from feasible yet unrealized trips due to perceived range constraints. Using high-frequency data of 188,000 EV trips and 26,000 charging events among 8,000 EVs in Shanghai, we recover model parameters governing consumer driving and charging decisions. We estimate that average range anxiety fell from $1,900 per vehicle in 2021 to $1,200 in 2024 — a 37% reduction driven primarily by longer driving ranges and, to a lesser extent, by the expansion of the charging network. Policy simulations underscore the importance of coordinating investments in driving range and charging infrastructure to address range anxiety. Relative to socially optimal levels, Shanghai’s EV market has underinvested in driving range but overinvested in charging infrastructure. |
| May 4, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Erik Hurst (Chicago Booth): Automation, Learning and Career Dynamics with Hassan Afrouzi, Andres Blanco and Andres Drenik
Abstract: We study how an automating technology affects career dynamics, human capital, and welfare in an economy where workers acquire skill through the tasks they perform. In a continuous-time general equilibrium model, learning-by-doing is determined jointly with the share of tasks automated, the frontier of tasks managers maintain, and the worker-to- manager career transition. Economies with high learning capacity admit pairs of stationary equilibria strictly ranked by the aggregate learning rate. Cheaper technology has opposite effects across the two: in the high-learning equilibrium, it raises welfare through the learning channel itself, in the low-learning equilibrium, it tips the economy into a human-capital trap. The planner's first-best combines a tax on automation profits with a subsidy on frontier- maintenance expenditures at a common rate. |
| May 4, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Aidan Goth (Northwestern University): "What Should AI Learn From? Training Data Composition and Proxy Misalignment" |
| May 1, 20262:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Kyra Carmichael (Northwestern University): "The Housing Debt Puzzle" |
| May 1, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Sergio Lopez
Title: The Hidden Cost of Terror-Driven repatriations: Maternal-Infant Health and the Mexican Repatriation Campaign in Texas” (with Jesse McDevitt-Irwin)
Abstract: In this paper we study how the fierce deportation campaigns against Mexicans in Texas in 1929 and 1930 affected the maternal-infant health of Mexicans that were not deported. We use Childhood Sex Ratios (CSR) as a proxy for maternal-infant health, which makes use of the fact that male kids are more frail than female up until 2 years of age. We use individual level data to estimate the probability that a kid is female depending on the year and whether their parents are of Mexican heritage and whether they lived in Texas. Our preliminary results suggest an increase in the likelihood of being female by almost 0.37 percentage points, which represents almost twice the infant-maternal health gap faced by Mexicans before the deportation campaign. |
| April 30, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Jeremy Magruder (Berkeley): Social Networks and Factor Misallocation in Agriculture
Abstract: When active, agricultural factor markets in developing countries should reduce misallocation, but do not; factor trade must be between the “wrong” farmers. We use a novel transaction-level panel dataset to examine who trades with whom in Rwandan villages. Within villages, physical distance and social connections are more important than productivity in predicting factor trade. We develop and estimate a model of factor trade in networks to characterize the frictions resolved by physical and social distance. We find social connections increase the elasticity of land rentals by reducing the cost of sustaining productive trades. In all we estimate that 56% of the gains from trade are from trade between connections, 69% of which are generated by this mechanism. Evidence from an RCT suggests the land market frictions alleviated by social connections are not easily resolved through policy |
| April 30, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Nathalie Basto |
| April 30, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Daniela Borja Arriaga |
| April 29, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Omer Ali (Pitt): The Distribution of Federally-Insured Mortgages: 1935-1975, Evidence from Local Land Records
Abstract: This project develops a novel dataset of federally-insured mortgages from 1935 to 1975 by digitizing local land records from county recorders of deeds across a geographically diverse set of U.S. counties. Despite the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) programs accounting for up to 50% of all mortgages for some years during this period, systematic borrower-level data has been unavailable due to a lack of federal records and decentralized county recording systems. Using a new pipeline that deploys large language models to digitize scanned mortgages, we identify and extract information from FHA-insured and VA-guaranteed mortgages, geolocate properties, and link borrowers to full-count Census data from 1940 and 1950. This produces the first comprehensive address- and borrower-level dataset beyond 1940. We investigate the share of Black borrowers among FHA and VA mortgage recipients, characterize the spatial distribution of mortgages across neighborhoods that vary in racial composition and HOLC ratings, and examine the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of borrowers. The analysis enhances our understanding of how federal housing policy shaped metropolitan development and racial inequality during the New Deal and Civil Rights eras. |
| April 29, 20261:15 PM - 2:30 PM | Joint Seminar in IO and Strategy | Victoria Marone (Yale): TBA |
| April 29, 202612:30 PM - 1:00 PM | Town Hall Meeting for Second Year Economics Graduate Students | DGS Federico Bugni and Associate Chair Ian Savage will cover important deadlines, degree requirements, and good-progress milestones. They will also answer your questions. |
| April 29, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Evan Majic |
| April 29, 202612:00 PM - 12:30 PM | Town Hall Meeting for Third Year Economics Graduate Students | DGS Federico Bugni and Associate Chair Ian Savage will cover important deadlines, degree requirements, and good-progress milestones. They will also answer your questions. |
| April 29, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Luca Zanotti (Northwestern University): "The Treasury Policy Rule and Macroeconomic Effects of Debt Maturity Shocks" |
| April 28, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | CANCELLED Seminar in Econometrics | CANCELLED
Vira Semenova (UC Berkeley): TBA |
| April 28, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Eric Auerbach (Northwestern): Post-selection confidence intervals for network structure |
| April 28, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Victoria Baranov (Melbourne): Masculinity around the world
Abstract: We examine the role of masculinity norms — social norms about how men should behave — in shaping economic, health, and political outcomes. We collected new evidence from nationally representative face-to-face and online surveys of 125,000 individuals across 70 countries. Economically, men who adhere more strictly to masculinity norms supply more labor, are more competitive, and sort into traditionally masculine occupations. In terms of health, they take greater risks and report poorer mental health. Politically, they express stronger support for anti-democratic values. These patterns have substantial implications for gender inequalities: differences between men and women in adherence to masculinity norms explain 20–57% of the gender gaps in competitiveness, willingness to work longer hours, risk aversion, and support for liberal democracy. Investigating origins, we provide evidence linking masculinity norms to individuals’ early-life exposure to conflict. |
| April 27, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Francesca Bastianello (Chicago): Mental Models and Financial Forecasts
Abstract: We uncover the mental models financial professionals use to explain their quantitative forecasts, and show how they shape beliefs and return predictability. Using the near-universe of 2.1 million equity analyst reports, we collect the valuation methods analysts adopt to compute their price targets, together with their reasoning, measured as attention to topics, and their associated valuation channels, time horizons, and sentiments. To validate the reliability of our output, we introduce a multi-step LLM prompting strategy and new diagnostic tools. Consistent with a model of top-down and bottom-up attention, we then uncover three sets of facts. First, analysts’ mental models are sparse and rigid, and the choice of attention allocation and valuation methods are jointly determined by both analyst- and firm-characteristics. Second, analysts’ reasoning translates into their quantitative forecasts. Both attention and valuation methods contribute to differences in valuations over time and across analysts, but variation in attention plays a bigger role. Third, we study the extent to which different topics contribute to over and underreaction to information, and show how biases in analysts’ reasoning are reflected in asset prices. Analysts underreact to macroeconomic topics, and overreact to firm-related topics, and this contributes to return predictability. |
| April 27, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Johannes Hirvonen (Northwestern University): "Rater Composition and Inflation in Platform Ratings" |
| April 24, 20262:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Yifan Mao (Northwestern University): "Policy Backlash in Autocracies: How Family Planning Reduced Patriotism in 1970s China" |
| April 24, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Benedikt Marxer (University of Lucerne)
Title: Opposition to New Technologies: The Effects of Substitutes, Exposure, and Political Cues
Abstract: This paper studies why opposition to new technologies declines over time. We examine the automobile ban in the Swiss canton of Grisons, where voters repeatedly decided whether to maintain or lift restrictions in popular votes between 1907 and 1925. This unique setting provides municipal-level panel variation in political attitudes toward a transformative technology during its diffusion in the rest of the world. We combine archival data on popular votes with newspaper evidence and municipal characteristics. Our empirical strategy exploits three sources of variation: the staggered expansion of railways, which increased access to a substitute technology; road openings, which generated direct exposure to automobile use; and changes in cantonal executive and legislative representation, which created variation in exposure to political cues. Difference-in-differences and event-study estimates show that access to railways reduced support for automobiles, while exposure to pro-automobile political leaders increased it. Direct exposure to automobile use had little effect. Newspaper evidence shows that the debate shifted from concerns about local disturbances and costs for incumbent transport providers to concerns that restrictions caused the region to miss broader economic opportunities. |
| April 23, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Rachid Laajaj (Uniandes): Development as Skills and Altruism
Abstract: This paper emphasizes the central role of skill and altruism in development, defined as an increase in social welfare. In the basic model, skills expand the set of feasible payoffs, while altruism guides the decision maker’s choice. Greater skills need not increase social welfare, because such expansions combine a positive frontier effect with an ambiguous substitution effect, potentially toward actions that are privately attractive but socially harmful. This ambiguous effect of skills on development is referred to as the “lottery of the technology” and disappears when altruism is high enough to ensure that new opportunities created by skills are used only when they raise social welfare. Extensions of the model show that 1) endogenous technological change makes altruism even more influential in the long run 2) the effect of stronger institutions is subject to a “lottery of alignment of interests” between policymakers’ private gains and social welfare, unless policymakers’ altruism is high enough to ensure the good use of institutional power, making institutions a lever of altruism rather than a substitute and 3) allowing altruism to be group-specific shows that only universal altruism guarantees the effective use of skill improvements. This framework speaks to many contemporary and historical events and leads to the conclusion that ensuring long-term development requires both the selection of altruistic leaders and a population shift in the distribution of altruism. |
| April 23, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Mercy Salami
Title: Integrating Mental Health and Disaster Preparedness Interventions for Enhanced Household Resilience: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Flood-Affected Communities in Nigeria
Abstract: Flooding is a recurrent and devastating disaster in Nigeria, disproportionately affecting low-income communities and causing severe physical, economic, and mental health challenges. Yet, most disaster responses focus primarily on physical relief, with limited attention to psychological recovery and preparedness. This study examines whether integrating mental health support with disaster preparedness training can improve household resilience through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to be implemented in flood-affected communities in Nigeria. By combining these two complementary interventions, the study introduces a novel approach to strengthening household resilience. Communities will be stratified based on flood exposure severity and randomly assigned to treatment conditions. The research addresses a critical gap at the intersection of mental health and disaster preparedness in Nigeria. |
| April 23, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Eleni Packis |
| April 22, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Sarah Quincy (Vanderbilt): Regulation in Crisis: Bank Failures and Entry Barriers
Abstract: This paper uncovers and rationalizes a significant, previously overlooked shift in U.S. bank entry regulation during the interwar period. Using a newly constructed granular database of state banking laws, we document a striking countercyclical pattern: states systematically tightened entry barriers during the 1920s boom and loosened them during the Great Depression. The post-crisis reversal was driven by the severity of local banking distress: places more exposed to failures were more likely to relax entry restrictions. We argue that the crisis destroyed the incumbent rents that had sustained political support for high barriers, thereby transforming defenders of local banking monopolies into advocates for the entry deregulation they had previously opposed. |
| April 22, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Aaron Amburgey |
| April 22, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Camille Baker (Northwestern University): "Title TBA" |
| April 21, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | CANCELLED Seminar in Econometrics | CANCELLED
Sid Kankanala (UChicago Booth): TBA |
| April 21, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Chuck Manski (Northwestern): Regret in Treatment Choice when Welfare varies with an Uncertain Event: The Prediction-Threshold Problem |
| April 21, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Leemore Dafny (Harvard): The Employers Strike Back (against Pharmaceutical Drug Prices): Rent-Seeking and the Case of Copay Maximizers
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| April 20, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | Alon Rubinstein (Wharton): How Do Insurers Set Premiums and Coverage? Evidence from the Commercial Auto Insurance Industry
Abstract: I study how insurers price and ration coverage in unregulated selection markets. Using proprietary records from a large auto insurer together with competitor quotes, I document a sharp asymmetry: premiums respond modestly to expected costs, while denials are frequent and cost sensitive. I develop a model with imperfect competition and fixed costs in which demand rises less than proportionally with risk, compressing markups as costs increase, shifting adjustment to the extensive margin. Netting out demand-driven markups restores near-unit cost pass-through into premiums, while denials reflect fixed costs and overweighting of noisy loss signals. This rationing disproportionately harms high-cost, small clients. |
| April 20, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | George Nikolakoudis (UChicago ): Pricing and Production Without The Invisible Hand
Abstract: Modern theories of the business cycle do not allow for the simultaneous rational choice of both prices and quantities, instead assuming that an “invisible hand” determines one of these variables to clear markets. In this paper, we develop a macroeconomic framework in which both prices and quantities are chosen directly by firms, and exchange is both voluntary and efficient. Because of uncertainty about demand and productivity, individual product markets can be in excess supply or rationed. The absence of market-clearing changes pricing and production in qualitatively important ways: markups are no longer determined solely by the elasticity of demand, and higher uncertainty reduces production and increases markups. In equilibrium, production in rationed markets has a negative aggregate demand externality on demand in slack markets. Differently from New Keynesian economies, monetary shocks propagate by reducing economic slack, raising aggregate labor productivity and consumption, while uncertainty shocks act as stagflationary cost-push shocks. We integrate our theory of disequilibrium in a dynamic, rational-expectations “New Old Keynesian Model” and demonstrate its implications for the business cycle. |
| April 20, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Tamar den Besten (Northwestern University): "U.S. Trade Policy and Euro Area Bank Lending" |
| April 17, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Netanel Ben-Porath
Title: Disruptive Regulation: The Safety-Productivity Frontier in Technological Sectors
Abstract: Governments often impose safety standards on new technologies to protect society from potential harms. How do such regulations shape the quality of technological products? We examine this question in the pesticide industry, where products face an inherent trade-off between the range of pests they target and their toxicity to non-target organisms. Between 1990 and 2009, the EPA issued hundreds of Reregistration Eligibility Decisions on a staggered, substance-by-substance basis, generating sharp shifts in safety standards across different parts of the industry. We find that regulation stimulated innovation in affected markets, increasing the total number of products. Newly introduced products became safer and more effective at controlling target pests, but each targeted a narrower range of pests. Regulation also redirected innovation toward large domestic markets and away from smaller and international ones. |
| April 17, 20268:00 AM - 5:00 PM | Conference on Gender and Household Economics | Conference on Gender and Household Economics |
| April 16, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | MOVED TO KGH 4101
David Atkin (MIT): The Incidence of Distortions
Abstract: Economic distortions—such as market power, taxes, credit constraints, etc.—are
fundamental in understanding income differences across countries. Recent work has
documented the pervasive extent of economic distortions and how they lead to substantial aggregate productivity loss. Far less well understood is how these phenomena
affect members of society differently. In this paper we combine unique datasets from
Chile, linking workers and owners to firms, firms to each other, firms to consumers,
and firms and consumers to the government, in order to quantify the incidence of
distortions for the first time |
| April 16, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Thu Tran
Title: Promoting Medical Testing Among the Wishful
Abstract: People frequently avoid medical testing even when it is free and highly valuable. This problem is especially critical for poor households in developing countries, where vulnerability to illness is greatest yet demand for health information remains far below optimal levels. We propose and evaluate a coupled testing mechanism in Uttar Pradesh, India. Leveraging spousal altruism, this design induces higher testing uptake than standard individual offers: a spouse who fears their partner may be ill has a strong incentive to consent, effectively counteracting the other's avoidance. We explore the range of behavioral mechanisms through which the intervention may operate. |
| April 16, 20268:30 AM - 5:00 PM | Conference on Gender and Household Economics | Conference on Gender and Household Economics |
| April 15, 20266:30 PM - 8:30 PM | Chicagoland Friends of Economic History Dinner Spring 2026 | Bob Gordon (Northwestern University): "The Economics of the Two World Wars: A Battle of Whys and Ifs" |
| April 15, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Tamri Matiashvili (Stanford): Talent, Trust, and Health: The Effects of the First Female Physicians
Abstract: How did the entry of women into high-skill occupations shape the productivity of those professions? This paper examines the large-scale entry of female physicians into the medical profession following the opening of the world’s first full-length medical school for women in the Russian Empire in 1872. I digitize novel annual data on physician employment and vital statistics in more than 330 districts from 1876 to 1910, as well as data on direct healthcare provision metrics from 1876 to 1888. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design based on quasi-random timing of replacement hires of general practitioners in the rural public healthcare system of the Russian Empire, I find that the first female physician entry led to large and persistent declines in infant mortality (7%) and in young adult mortality of both sexes (7-13%), resulting in faster population growth (11%) and increased life expectancy (4-5%). The first female physicians improved hospital care and drew more female patients to formal medical care, as suggested by their displacement of midwives. I construct physician-level estimates of medical value added and develop a conceptual framework to disentangle productivity differences from demand-side concordance-preference mechanisms. The evidence indicates that the observed mortality declines reflect both the greater effectiveness of the earliest female physicians relative to incumbent male doctors and increased care-seeking among women. I then test the long-run implications of this framework using modern data. |
| April 15, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Yudan Ying |
| April 15, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Vaidehi Parameswaran (Northwestern University): "Newspapers and Gender Gaps in Local Labor Markets " |
| April 14, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Jaume Vives-i-Bastida (Stanford GSB): Synthetic IV Estimation in Panels
Abstract: We propose a Synthetic Instrumental Variables (SIV) estimator for panel data that combines the strengths of instrumental variables and synthetic controls to address unmeasured confounding. We derive conditions under which SIV is consistent and asymptotically normal, even when the standard IV estimator is not. Motivated by the finite sample properties of our estimator, we introduce an ensemble estimator that simultaneously addresses multiple sources of bias and provide a permutation-based inference procedure. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods through a calibrated simulation exercise, two shift-share empirical applications, and an application in digital economics that includes both observational data and data from a randomized control trial. In our primary empirical application, we examine the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on Turkish labor markets. Here, the SIV estimator reveals significant effects that the standard IV does not capture. Similarly, in our digital economics application, the SIV estimator successfully recovers the experimental estimates, whereas the standard IV does not. |
| April 13, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | Jorge Lemus (UIUC): Who Gets a Patent? The role of examiners and applicants
Abstract: Small firms obtain patents at significantly lower rates than large firms. To investigate the mechanisms behind this patent-grant gap and their implications for patent policy, we develop and estimate a dynamic structural model of patent examination. We measure claim novelty using PatentBERT embeddings—computing the minimum textual distance to a corpus of 23.5 million prior art documents, including both granted patents and pre-grant publication—and identify examiner behavior by observing the specific prior art cited in rejections. We find that the patent-grant gap is driven primarily by examiners applying stricter novelty standards to small-firm applications and by small firms’ lower potential for improvement upon amendment, rather than by differences in underlying novelty, revision costs, or search intensity. Counterfactual simulations show that equalizing novelty standards or improvement potential each closes roughly half the abandonment gap, whereas reducing prosecution costs has a modest impact. Notably, AI-assisted prior art search—a recent de facto policy shift at the USPTO—raises rejection rates for both firm types and further widens the gap. |
| April 13, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Martin Beraja (UC Berkeley): The Value of Organizational Learning Technologies
Abstract: Organizations learn over time. They build organizational capital and form beliefs about their fundamentals. Motivated by recent advances in AI, we study organizational learning technologies that accelerate both processes. We show that, in a large class of models of firm dynamics, the value of organizational learning technologies (VOLT) is governed by two simple statistics: the relative size and lifespan of mature firms. In the United States, VOLT is on the order of one GDP — implying that organizational learning technologies like AI have the potential to double aggregate output. Much of VOLT reflects increases in average firm lifespans rather than productivity. Across industries, VOLT varies widely and is orthogonal to existing AI exposure measures. Overall, our results point to faster organizational learning as a meaningful and distinct channel of AI’s transformative potential, beyond production automation and scientific discovery. |
| April 13, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Davis Kedrosky (Northwestern University): "Title TBA" |
| April 10, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Lavar Edmonds (Stanford)
Title: Losing Recipes: Black Teachers and the Long-Run Effects of Occupational Displacement
Abstract: This project examines the long-run effects of school desegregation on Black teacher employment and Black college students' occupational choices. Using an event-study framework and variation in the timing and location of desegregation court orders, I find that desegregation substantially and persistently reduced the Black share of teachers in affected areas, with no comparable effects on White or Hispanic teachers. I tie this result to college degree production: Southern HBCUs exposed to local desegregation orders in the 1960s-1980s produced markedly fewer teaching degree graduates 40+ years later. Suggestive evidence from college freshmen survey data further points to a shift in student preferences: Black college freshmen from desegregated districts — particularly those with a substantial pre-order Black teacher presence — expressed significantly less interest in teaching careers and education majors. Together, these results suggest that desegregation-induced teacher displacements discouraged subsequent generations of Black students from entering the teaching profession. |
| April 9, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Nathalie Basto (30 mins) / Chuqiao Nan (30 mins) |
| April 8, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Patrick Testa (Tulane): Elections and Political Investment
Abstract: Elections select officeholders and policies, but they also signal to political actors where to invest their time and money. This paper presents a framework for understanding these effects, in which political investors (e.g., donors, activists) allocate resources where expected political fundamentals favor their party. Investors possess idiosyncratic local knowledge but also public information in the form of recent election results. These signals are complementary: where local knowledge is good, even the narrowest vote-share majorities can align beliefs and concentrate investment. I apply this framework to the changing political geography of the United States between 1940 and 1972, when urban and minority areas came into play for the Democratic Party. A regression discontinuity design based on close presidential elections shows that counties narrowly won by Democrats saw pronounced increases in Democratic local officeholding and voter support in subsequent election periods. This does not reflect direct impacts of presidential elections on local offices, but rather indirect shifts through political investment, including heightened activity in newspaper advertising, phone banking, and civil rights mobilization. Effects are concentrated in urban, Black, and union areas where dense organizational networks enhanced local political knowledge. Together, the findings show how elections organize political actors not only at the ballot box but through the information they convey. |
| April 8, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Ramya Raghavan |
| April 8, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | (Northwestern University): "Title TBA" |
| April 7, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Xu Cheng (UPenn): Optimal Estimation of Two-Way Effects under Limited Mobility
Abstract: We propose an empirical Bayes estimator for two-way effects in linked data sets
based on a novel prior that leverages patterns of assortative matching observed in
the data. To capture limited mobility we model the bipartite graph associated with
the matched data in an asymptotic framework where its Laplacian matrix has small
eigenvalues that converge to zero. The prior hyperparameters that control the shrinkage
are determined by minimizing an unbiased risk estimate. We show the proposed
empirical Bayes estimator is asymptotically optimal in compound loss, despite the weak
connectivity of the bipartite graph and the potential misspecification of the prior. We
estimate teacher values-added from a linked North Carolina Education Research Data
Center student-teacher data set. |
| April 7, 20262:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Sara Heller (UMich): Using Network Data to Measure Social Returns and Improve Targeting of Crime-Reduction Interventions with Ashley Craig, Kenneth Hofmeister & Nikhil Rao |
| April 6, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | The Susan Bies Lecture on Economics and Public Policy | Speaker: Michael Kremer (UChicago)
Title: Narrative, Ritual, and Identity
Abstract: Some scholars argue that exposure to historical narrative, ritual, and collective experiences can shape national, religious, and personal identity. Do such experiences affect participants? Do they strengthen a sense of collective identity and encourage pro-social behavior? Do they create antipathy toward outsiders? This talk examines these questions through two different collective experiences: the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and a Mexican government heritage program built around the state-promoted narrative of mestizaje. In the Hajj setting, participation strengthens a shared Islamic identity, decreases sectarian separation, and increases tolerance and peaceful attitudes, without generating greater hostility toward non-Muslims. In the Mexican case, guided visits that bring disadvantaged secondary school students from areas that were once indigenous villages to historical sites strengthen national identity, shift how students perceive themselves in terms of ancestry and skin color, and increase pro-social behaviors, with little evidence of adverse effects on attitudes toward outsiders or democratic values. Taken together, these results complement an emerging literature on nation-building by showing that collective experiences and inclusive narratives can reshape how people understand themselves as part of larger collectives or a nation, and that stronger in-group attachment need not come at the expense of outgroups. |
| April 6, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Christian Hellwig (TSE): “Consumption, Wealth and Income Inequality: a Tale of Tails”, with Alexandre Gaillard (Brown), Philipp Wangner (Mannheim) and Nicolas Werquin (Chicago Fed).
Abstract: We argue that canonical heterogeneous-agent economies are unable to jointly account for the observed concentration of consumption, labor income, wealth, and capital income at the top. We first provide empirical evidence that the distributions of these four variables exhibit asymptotic power-law behavior with a strict ranking of upper tail inequality in that order, from least to most unequal. This finding directly contradicts a central implication of precautionary savings models, in which consumption and capital income are asymptotically linear in, and therefore as concentrated at the top as, wealth. Mechanisms addressing the wealth concentration puzzle through return heterogeneity thus lead to a mirror consumption concentration puzzle. We show analytically and quantitatively that accounting simultaneously for the observed concentration of consumption, wealth, and capital income requires a combination of non-homothetic wealth-dependent preferences and scale-dependent returns to capital, and we identify the strength of these two mechanisms from the values of the Pareto tail coefficients. Finally, matching all four tails matters for determining the long-run elasticity of savings that governs the revenue-maximizing capital tax rate. |
| April 6, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Eisho Takatsuji (Northwestern University): "Selecting Proportional Juries" |
| April 3, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Alison Doxey (UChicago)
Title: The Long-Run Effects of Access to Social Insurance: Evidence from the Introduction of Workers' Compensation (with Michael McKelligott)
Abstract: Workers’ compensation was the first widespread social insurance program in the United States (Fishback & Kantor, 2000), but its long-run effects on injured workers and their families are not well understood. We examine this by leveraging quasi-random variation in both mining accidents and access to workers’ compensation for families in the early-20th-century United States. Matching detailed individual-level data on coal mining accidents with linked Census data, we study how access to workers’ compensation payments may have narrowed income and education gaps between children whose father died in a work accident and similar children whose father survived. To illuminate possible mechanisms, we also examine effects of access to workers’ compensation on deceased miners’ surviving spouses. |
| April 2, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Julia Turner |
| April 1, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Thomas Helgerman (Minnesota): Women in Law and the Draft
Abstract: Between 1964 and 1973, women’s representation in full-time law school programs rose fivefold, from 3.7% to 20.1%. This paper examines whether Vietnam War draft policy contributed to this increase. In 1968, men enrolled in law school lost eligibility for 2-S student deferments, threatening law schools’ tuition revenues and incentivizing schools to admit more women to stabilize enrollment. To test this mechanism, we construct a school-by-year dataset of enrollment counts split by women/men and full-time/part-time status. Using a uniform adoption difference-in-differences design, we find that women’s representation rises by 2 percentage points in full-time programs relative to part-time programs (which were far less exposed to draft risk). This effect represents a 44% increase over women’s baseline representation of 4.5% in 1967. This one-time draft-driven shock was immediately followed by a sustained demand-driven trend shift. We document this by showing that after the draft, law schools more connected to undergraduate institutions transitioning from all-male to coeducational experienced larger increases in women’s enrollment. A shift-share analysis indicates that a one-standard-deviation increase in exposure to these coeducation transitions raised women’s first-year enrollment shares by 1-2 percentage points, highlighting the joint role of draft policy and expanding educational opportunity in accelerating women’s entry into law. |
| April 1, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Seung Hyeong Lee
Title: Disagreement, Subjective Uncertainty, and the Stock Market
Abstract: We propose a new method to separately quantify investor disagreement and subjective uncertainty at the firm level using equity analyst forecasts. Our approach exploits heterogeneity in how forecast dispersion responds to the arrival of signals that are widely perceived as informative and interpreted homogeneously across agents. Intuitively, for a given level of disagreement in point forecasts, a larger post-signal compression in dispersion indicates greater ex-ante subjective uncertainty in investors’ beliefs. Using these measures, we document differences in the economic roles of disagreement and uncertainty. Subjective uncertainty rises sharply prior to crises, while disagreement peaks during and immediately after crises. In the cross-section, stocks with higher disagreement earn lower subsequent returns and exhibit higher trading volume. These effects are significantly attenuated when uncertainty is high. In contrast, higher uncertainty is associated with higher expected returns and lower trading volume. Stock return volatility is strongly related to disagreement but only weakly related to uncertainty. Finally, firm characteristics are more closely linked to disagreement than to uncertainty: Smaller firms, firms with lower profitability, and firms with higher R&D intensity exhibit systematically higher levels of disagreement. |
| April 1, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Benjamin Krueger (Northwestern University): "Shrinkage vs Omission for Estimation in the Presence of Medium Parameters" |
| March 31, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Fredrik Savje (Uppsala): “Coupling Designs for Randomized Experiments with Complex Treatments”, joint work with Max Cytrynbaum.
Abstract: In this paper we introduce a new family of coupling designs, which extend the basic principle of stratified randomization to experiments with continuous, constrained multivariate, text/image and other irregular treatment spaces. Our approach is to first match units into homogeneous groups, then use Monte Carlo coupling techniques to assign within-group treatments that are highly dispersed over the treatment space. We show how ensuring similar experimental units receive highly dissimilar treatments generically improves estimation efficiency. In particular, the efficiency gains from coupling design randomization are proportional to dispersion times match quality, where dispersion measures how spread out the samples are under a given coupling relative to iid randomization. We develop a novel spectral analysis, which shows that estimator efficiency depends on a suitable match between the smoothness and shape of the estimator's influence function and the “principal directions” of a given coupling. We apply this analysis to compare various coupling choices, including Latin hypercube sampling, randomly shifted lattice designs, and the Gaussian copula. We also show how coupling designs can be used to randomize efficiently in cash transfer experiments in development economics, as well as discrete-choice experiments in two-sided marketplaces. |
| March 31, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Saam Zahedian (Northwestern University): "Dynamic Concerns in Roadway Procurement" |
| March 30, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | David Byrne (Melbourne): Negotiating Coordination: A Study in Retail Gasoline
Abstract: We examine a unique five-year equilibrium transition in the retail gasoline industry using hourly station-level price data. In an attempt to increase profit margins under a focal pricing structure, price leaders alter asymmetrically sized retailers' incentives to coordinate on prices, spurring bargaining over transfers that support coordination. Such bargaining occurs in near real-time through platform-enabled, price-based communication under strategic uncertainty. After three turbulent years of bargaining without resolution, which entail multiple price wars and experimentation that enable firms to reveal their pricing strategies and learn rivals', price leaders gradually adapt to a new price-signaling structure that ultimately yields stable, shared long-run profit growth. We discuss implications for the theory of collusion and for antitrust policies aimed at limiting the anticompetitive effects of digital information-sharing and pricing algorithms. |
| March 20, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Pedro Aldighieri
Title: Technological Breakthroughs and the Progress of Science: Evidence from Early Computers (joint with Franco Malpassi)
Abstract: This paper examines how major technological shocks transform scientific research by studying the diffusion and impact of early digital computers at U.S. universities through 1970. We construct a novel database of 2,200 installations across 184 universities, linked to publication records, to trace when, where, and how computers entered the scientific record. Publications referencing computers appear immediately after campus installations, and adoption follows predictable patterns: subjects that relied heavily on manual calculation before computers adopt them earlier and more extensively. Conditional on observables, computer-related papers are 20% more cited and more novel. To identify causal effects, we leverage staggered university adoption and pre-computer differences in subjects' computational intensity in a triple-difference design. Computers shift research toward numerically intensive areas. These areas expand in output and citations per paper within a decade of installation, and methods tilt toward numerical computation, simulation, and statistical analysis. Contrary to accounts of general-purpose technologies with delayed gains, impacts materialize within years where computational constraints previously bound, with no quantity-quality trade-off. |
| March 19, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Justina Onumah
Title: Do Bundled Agricultural Services Improve Smallholder Productivity and Welfare? Evidence from Ghana
Abstract: This study proposes to evaluate whether bundling complementary digital services with improved seeds can enhance the productivity and welfare of smallholder maize farmers in Ghana. While seed subsidies are central to existing agricultural policies, their impact remains constrained by limited access to timely complementary agronomic information and weak market linkages. The study will implement a cluster randomized controlled trial in maize-producing districts in Northern and Ashanti regions. Farmers will be assigned to one of three treatment arms: improved seeds only; improved seeds combined with digital extension services; and improved seeds combined with both digital extension and digital market access. By experimentally varying these intervention bundles, the study will estimate the incremental value of information and market support beyond seed provision. The findings will generate policy-relevant evidence on how integrated, digitally enabled service delivery can improve productivity, strengthen market participation, and enhance resilience among smallholder farmers. |
| March 13, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Sergio Lopez
Title: The Hidden Cost of Terror-Driven Repatriations: Infant Mortality and the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Campaign
Abstract: In the 1930s, the US government started a campaign to push millions of Mexican Americans (including citizens) to leave the country. This ‘repatriation’ campaign worked by creating a deliberate climate of fear in the Mexican-American community. Because of a lack of health measures, the effect of this repatriation campaign on the health of the Mexican-American population has remained largely unknown. Building on recent work, we use childhood sex ratios from the US census as indicators of infant mortality. We find that the repatriation campaign was associated with a roughly 50% increase in infant mortality among the Mexican-American population who remained in the US. |
| March 12, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Vasu Chaudhary
Title: Diffusion of Rival Information
Abstract: Social networks shape access to opportunities such as jobs, government programs, and new technologies, yet most existing work treats information sharing as frictionless. I study how rivalry over scarce opportunities changes the incentive to share information. I develop a framework in which sharing reflects a tradeoff between social motives, the competitive costs of creating another informed rival, and the surrounding information environment. The framework highlights how greater saturation or broader seeding can affect sharing through multiple channels. The presentation will discuss pilot experimental evidence and a broader experimental agenda designed to isolate these mechanisms, including a complementary field experiment in a labor market setting. |
| March 12, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Giacomo Marcolin |
| March 11, 20261:15 PM - 2:30 PM | Joint Seminar in Economic History and Strategy | Fabian Waldinger (LMU Munich): Dictators, Democracies, and Discoveries: Political Institutions and the Creation of Ideas
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| March 9, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Jose Lara |
| March 6, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Ben Chabot
Title: The Cost and Benefits of Bank Capital in a World Without Too Big to Fail
Abstract: Modern bank capital regulation seeks to balance the tradeoffs between the costs of increased capital and the benefits of financial stability. Confounding this analysis is the question of how costly bank capital would be, and how banks would behave, in the absence of implicit government guarantees. We look to an historical period where banks and their creditors did not expect even large, systemically important banks to be bailed out. During the pre-Fed National Banking Era, bank creditors did not enjoy implicit or explicit government insurance, and bank rationally expected to fail should they be unable to meet their obligations. Furthermore, the bank regulation at the time focused on liquidity and allowed banks considerable leeway in selecting their capital ratios.
Stock returns and balance sheet data from this era provide us with a natural laboratory to examine the tradeoffs between bank capital, systemic risk, and liquidity production. |
| March 5, 20263:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Eliana La Ferrara (Harvard): Wearing Your Religion: Labor Market Consequences in Indonesia (with S. Fiorin and N. Shofia)
Abstract: We study the effects of displaying gendered religious identity –headscarf for women and Islamic beard for men– on labor market outcomes in Indonesia. In collaboration with a large job portal we implement a series of experiments with a pool of over 1,200 employers and 1,800 job seekers. Using a modified version of the Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR) method, we find that displaying religious identity reduces the rating received from employers and the probability of being interviewed. The penalties for candidates with headscarf and beard are generally similar in magnitude, and do not vary across job levels, or contact with customers. Administrative data from the job portal confirm the existence of a penalty for profiles wearing religious symbols, measured in terms of download rates of candidates’ files. In a belief elicitation exercise with employers, we find that candidates with a headscarf or a beard are ranked lower in a number of personality traits potentially important in the workplace. Finally, we elicit beliefs of job seekers and find that they are largely unaware of the penalties associated with displaying religious identity. |
| March 5, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Max Pienkny |
| March 3, 20265:00 PM - 6:30 PM | Ask Him Anything: Undergraduate Event with 2025 Nobel Laureate Professor Joel Mokyr | Northwestern University's Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Department of Economics, and the Department of History invite all undergraduate students to a special event with 2025 Nobel Laureate Joel Mokyr, Robert H. Strotz Professor of Economics. This wide-ranging discussion is an opportunity for students to engage with Professor Mokyr. The conversation will be moderated by Amy Stanley, Orrington Lunt Professor of History and Director of the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern. |
| March 3, 20261:30 PM - 3:00 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Daniel Wilhelm (LMU Munich): “The Causal Interpretation of the AKM Estimand” (with X. Huang, T. Lamadon, M. Mogstad, A. Shaikh)
Abstract: The Abowd–Kramarz–Margolis (AKM) regression is widely used to analyze firm wage premia. We derive a general potential outcome decomposition of the AKM estimand and show that it is a worker-weighted average of causal effects of moving between pairs of firms. Under strong assumptions, this decomposition collapses so that the AKM estimand for a specific firm equals the causal effect of moving from the left-out firm to that firm. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the AKM estimand to have this causal interpretation and propose tests for the sufficient conditions. In an application to Italian administrative data we document that the standard AKM estimator can be severely biased when these conditions fail. We propose a matched-AKM estimator that consistently estimates causal firm effects under weaker and more realistic assumptions. |
| March 2, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Seung Hyeong Lee
Title: "Giving Up": The Impact of Decreasing Housing Affordability on Consumption, Work Effort, and Investment
Abstract: Housing affordability has declined sharply in recent decades, leading many younger generations to give up on homeownership. Using a calibrated life-cycle model matched to U.S. data, we project that the cohort born in the 1990s will reach retirement with a homeownership rate roughly 9.6 percentage points lower than that of their parents’ generation. The model also shows that as households’ perceived probability of attaining homeownership falls, they systematically shift their behavior: they consume more relative to their wealth, reduce labor effort, and take on riskier investments. We show empirically that renters with relatively low wealth exhibit the same patterns. These responses compound over the life cycle, producing substantially greater wealth dispersion between those who retain hope of homeownership and those who give up. We propose a targeted subsidy that lifts the largest number of young renters above the "giving-up threshold." This policy yields welfare gains of 3.2 times greater than a uniform transfer and 10.3 times greater than a transfer targeted to the bottom 10% of the wealth distribution, while also improving homeownership rate, labor effort, and reducing social safety net reliance.
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| February 27, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Hyunseob Kim
Title: Executive Mobility in the United States, 1920–2023
Abstract: This paper studies the evolution of U.S. public-firm executive mobility from 1920 to 2023. Executive mobility exhibits a secular increase from the 1920s through the turn of the century. After peaking in the late-1990s, it declined sharply and stabilized at a lower level: chief executive mobility in the 2010s was less than half its late-1990s peak, returning to levels last seen in the 1960s and 1970s. Finance-chief mobility shows a stronger secular rise over the century. We argue that changes in the size of the executive labor market and the redeployability of managerial skills explain these trends. Using a shift-share instruments approach, we show that the mobility impacts executive pay. |
| February 26, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Paula Gonzalez
Title: Distinct Economic Pathways: Cash Transfers and Multifaceted Livelihoods Programs in Nigeria
Abstract: Do anti-poverty programs simply increase economic activity, or do they create different types of local economies? I study a multi-arm intervention that combines a structural livelihoods program with unconditional cash transfers, allowing me to separate structural support from liquidity. All programs increase activity relative to pure control. But adding cash does not merely scale up what the structural program achieves. Instead, liquidity reshapes how households organize production and allocate labor across spouses. In both nonfarm enterprise and agriculture, the effects of cash depend critically on the institutional environment created by the structural program. The results suggest that structural programs shape the direction of economic activity, while cash changes scale and intra-household allocation, producing a distinct economic equilibrium rather than a simple additive effect. |
| February 26, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Kazuaki Sano
Title: Vertical Integration and Performance Pay in Health Care
Abstract: Performance pay has been widely adopted in health care policy, linking provider reimbursement to performance measures. Because post-discharge outcomes are affected by care coordination between hospitals and post-acute care (PAC) providers, organizational structure may influence providers' behaviors under performance pay. This project will examine how vertically integrated providers respond to performance pay in health care. The Affordable Care Act introduced the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP), which penalizes hospitals whose risk-adjusted 30-day readmission rates are worse than the national mean for certain target conditions. I will test whether HRRP increases self-referral to hospital-based PAC providers, whether HRRP improves patient outcomes more in vertically integrated care, and whether vertical integration leads to gaming behaviors. |
| February 23, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Pablo Sanchez |
| February 20, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speakers: Yifan Mao and Zohal Barsi
Speaker: Zohal Barsi
Title: Mail-Ordered Mobility? Intergenerational Impacts of Homeownership
Abstract: This paper studies how an exogenous expansion in access to homeownership shaped the geography of economic opportunity in the U.S. in the 20th century. We examine the rise of mail-order kit housing in the United States between 1910 and 1930, an innovation that lowered construction costs, standardized designs, and tied housing to railroads. Using newly digitized data on kit-housing firms’ mill locations and full-count census records, we exploit spatial variation in transportation costs as a source of exogenous variation in town-level homeownership access. We estimate the contemporaneous effects of increased homeownership on residential tenure, educational attainment, and housing values, and examine long-run impacts on intergenerational educational and occupational mobility. To complement the town-level analysis, we link novel person-level purchase records from a leading kit-housing firm to census data to study the characteristics of adopters and validate our identification strategy.
Speaker: Yifan Mao
Title: Policy Backlash in Autocracies: How Family Planning Reduced Patriotism in 1970s China
Abstract: What shapes political sentiments in authoritarian regimes? A large literature documents the role of propaganda and political persuasion, but far less is known about to what extent citizens respond to concrete state policies. This paper introduces patriotic naming—a behavior-based measure of political sentiment—to study this question. Exploiting the staggered provincial rollout of China's "Later, Longer, Fewer" family planning campaign in the 1970s, I find that the policy reduced patriotic naming among newborn boys by 2.7 percentage points, a 13% decline from peak levels. This shift preceded both Mao's death and China's economic reforms. The effect is driven by families who lost the option of trying for an additional son and by compositional shifts, as the policy disproportionately reduced fertility among patriotic families. I find no evidence of a broad backlash against the state: first-born boys, whose births were unaffected by the policy, show no decline in patriotic naming. Using a novel behavioral measure linked to a clear policy shock, this paper uncovers state–citizen dynamics in a data-limited authoritarian setting. |
| February 19, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Sarah Bui
Title: Dual Objectives of Payment for Ecosystem Services
Abstract: To address global deforestation, Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) has been promoted as a policy instrument capable of jointly advancing environmental protection and economic development, yet rigorous long‑term evidence remains limited. Vietnam’s national PES program, launched in 2011, provides a valuable empirical setting to assess these dual impacts. Leveraging temporal and spatial variation in PES coverage and per‑hectare payment levels, I implement a difference‑in‑differences design combining satellite‑based measures of deforestation with data from the Vietnam Rural and Agricultural Census. Preliminary results confirm that PES reduces deforestation and increases household participation in the forestry sector. Further socioeconomic analysis is ongoing, and feedback on these next steps is welcome. |
| February 19, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speakers: Seung Hyeong Lee
Title: "Giving Up": The Impact of Decreasing Housing Affordability on Consumption, Work Effort, and Investment
Abstract: Housing affordability has declined sharply in recent decades, leading many younger generations to give up on homeownership. Using a calibrated life-cycle model matched to U.S. data, we project that the cohort born in the 1990s will reach retirement with a homeownership rate roughly 9.6 percentage points lower than that of their parents’ generation. The model also shows that as households’ perceived probability of attaining homeownership falls, they systematically shift their behavior: they consume more relative to their wealth, reduce labor effort, and take on riskier investments. We show empirically that renters with relatively low wealth exhibit the same patterns. These responses compound over the life cycle, producing substantially greater wealth dispersion between those who retain hope of homeownership and those who give up. We propose a targeted subsidy that lifts the largest number of young renters above the "giving-up threshold." This policy yields welfare gains of 3.2 times greater than a uniform transfer and 10.3 times greater than a transfer targeted to the bottom 10% of the wealth distribution, while also improving homeownership rate, labor effort, and reducing social safety net reliance. |
| February 18, 20261:15 PM - 2:30 PM | Joint Seminar in IO and Strategy | Nick Buchholz (Princeton): Rigidities in Decentralized Spot Markets: Evidence from the U.S. Freight Network
Abstract: We study equilibrium market structure and pricing across the nationwide freight trucking network, a pillar of the U.S. economy responsible for moving 75% of the nation's goods. Despite its size and competitiveness, the industry exhibits significant rigidities in the face of demand shocks, leading to chronic vulnerability to disruptions and concerns about supply chain resilience. Using detailed auction data from the U.S. freight spot market, we analyze the effectiveness of recent federal policies targeting the aggregate labor supply of truck drivers. We document significant spatial dispersion in both per-mile prices and drivers' responsiveness to demand shocks across 170 U.S. cities. Our descriptive analysis highlights several important frictions, including geographic labor supply preferences, search costs, and imperfect competition. To quantify their impact, we incorporate these frictions into a micro-founded model of carrier bidding behavior and spatial equilibrium dynamics. In counterfactuals, we explore how the freight market adjusts to local and regional demand shocks and analyze how these frictions inhibit efficient capacity reallocation. Our analysis reveals that capacity constraints can arise in highly local contexts, suggesting that policies targeting local-level frictions may be more effective at enhancing supply-chain resilience than policies seeking to expand nationwide supply. |
| February 16, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Chase Williamson |
| February 13, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Davis Kedrosky
Title: The Origins of Bureaucratic Reform: Evidence from the British Civil Service
Abstract: A meritocratic civil service is considered a critical institution for successful governance, enabling competent officials to implement policy more efficiently and without political interference. Despite the potential benefits of reform, however, most historical states did not adopt 'Weberian' institutions until late in the process of economic development, if at all. Why? To answer this question, I study one of the first modern bureaucratic reforms: the 1870 Order in Council, which replaced patronage with competitive examination as the predominant mode of appointment for clerkships in the British Civil Service. Using new datasets on 40,000 British bureaucrats and over 27,000 government appointments, I show that the reform substantially changed recruitment: patronage appointments declined from nearly 80 percent in 1870 to fewer than 40 percent by 1880, while the share hired through open competition rose from zero to 50 percent. Competitive recruits were less likely to be politically connected than patronage appointments. Larger departments with more complex, specialized organizations were more likely to adopt meritocratic recruitment. I offer preliminary evidence for one explanation of bureaucratic reform: that changes in the scale and scope of government led bureaucratic managers to select applicants with more legible qualifications. |
| February 12, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Sorenie Gudissa
Title: Internet Shutdowns and Political Coordination
Abstract: Autocratic regimes increasingly rely on internet shutdowns during periods of political unrest. This paper studies internet shutdowns through the lens of global games, where collective action depends on the information environment that allows individuals to form beliefs about each other’s behavior. I model a shutdown as an exogenous disruption to shared political information and derive testable implications for how changes in public signal precision affect coordination. I test these implications using high-frequency Facebook data surrounding Ethiopia’s nationwide internet shutdown from June 28 to July 23, 2020, tracking political engagement before, during, and after the disruption. Preliminary evidence shows that the shutdown sharply alters the information environment, shifting engagement away from locally connected users toward external and diaspora sources. The paper uses these patterns to study how disruptions to shared information affect signal precision and coordinated political behavior under authoritarian rule. |
| February 12, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Tessa Bonomo |
| February 10, 20261:30 PM - 3:00 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Phillip Heiler (Aarhus): (Generalized) LATE: Identification and Inference under Weak and Non-Monotonic Treatment Choice
Abstract: Instrumental-variables (IV) analyses with heterogeneous treatment effects are routinely interpreted through a local ATE lens under the strong assumption of monotonic treatment choice. This paper studies identification and inference for the ATE among units whose treatment status responds to the instrument (switchers) when treatment choice is only weakly monotonic or fully non-monotonic. We first establish a sharp impossibility result: absent weak monotonicity, no generally untestable restriction on latent compliance types can point-identify the switcher ATE. Under weak monotonicity, the switcher ATE is a re-ordered IV estimand that can be estimated semiparametrically efficiently. By contrast, textbook IV, saturated IV, or fully nonparametric IV specifications target distinct weighted averages of switcher effects when treatment effects and first stages are heterogeneous. Moving beyond weak monotonicity, we develop a sharp partial identification approach for the switcher average treatment effect without restricting effect heterogeneity. Our approach combines observed first-stage information with agnostic bounds on the prevalence of switchers and exploits mixture restrictions implied by the IV design. The resulting bounds admit a clear economic interpretation and can be further tightened in terms of restrictions on the variance of the structural treatment choice probability effects, i.e. unobserved interaction effects. |
| February 9, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | IPR Colloq.: L. Beaman (IPR/Econ.) - Sexual Harassment in Urban India: Prevalence and an Intervention | Title: Sexual Harassment in Urban India: Prevalence and an Intervention
Abstract: Sexual harassment is pervasive across public spaces in India. Drawing on three interconnected research projects, Beaman will describe new data on how prevalent the problem is in three cities in India. Second, she will discuss how workers place substantial value on workplace safety, yet nearly half of surveyed firms fail to comply with India's 2013 Women’s Safety Act. This compliance gap persists despite clear legal mandates, and providing information alone does not close it. Finally, Beaman will discuss an ongoing randomized controlled trial with 5,000 firms in Delhi testing the effectiveness of sexual harassment training, and how best to induce firms to do the training.
By Lori Beaman, Professor of Economics and IPR Fellow
This event is part of the Fay Lomax Cook Winter 2026 Colloquium Series, where our researchers from around the University share their latest policy-relevant research.
Please note all colloquia this quarter will be held in-person only. |
| February 9, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Takaaki Sagawa |
| February 6, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Pietro Buri |
| February 5, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Aaron Wolf
Title: Global Employers, Local Effects: How Multinationals Change Domestic Training Investment
Abstract: Foreign multinational entry and expansion often reshape domestic labor markets by changing the competitive landscape for local firms. While existing work documents wage premia and spillovers, it provides limited evidence on how foreign competitors affect domestic firms’ training decisions, especially how it changes the composition of training across general (portable) and firm-specific (non-portable) programs. We fill this gap by connecting foreign-driven changes in outside options directly to domestic firms' wage and training incentives. We develop a tractable on-the-job search model in which foreign expansion improves outside offers, inducing domestic firms to raise retention wages that crowd out training under limited liquidity. This framework generates predictions for wages, worker flows, and human capital investment, which we test using rich South African administrative data. The results show that higher exposure to foreign multinationals raises domestic wage bills and reduces turnover, yet leads to a contraction in training. We observe economically meaningful declines in total training, driven primarily by firm-specific programs on both the extensive and intensive margins. These findings provide new evidence that globalization shapes domestic human capital accumulation through talent competition, and offers a mechanism that explains why investment can fall even as firms successfully retain their workers. |
| February 5, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | CANCELLED |
| February 2, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Brian Livingston |
| January 30, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speakers: Tomer Novikov and Mariya Sarkhova
Speaker: Tomer Novikov
Title: The lack of use of violence in the 1936 Spanish military coup: Bayesian updates and polarization.
Abstract: Military coups have been a prominent method for changing governments. However, despite the capacity for violence in the military, its coercive power, and the high stakes involved, violence is relatively rare during the crucial first hours of a coup when success is determined. This is especially prominent in the case of the 1936 Spanish military coup, in which a relatively bloodless and decentralized coup ignited a civil war characterized by atrocities. First we construct a simple mathematical model for military coups. Then, after removing complete information, we observe that the effects on military officers’ Bayesian updates from the use of violence cause it to be relegated to a desperation play, since it signals weakness. We then observe the effects of ideology on both the use of violence and the outcomes in the 1936 coup using available secondary sources.
Speaker: Mariya Sarkhova
Title: Victory over Vodka? The Consequences of the Russian Empire’s Spirits Monopoly (joint with Tom Raster)
Abstract: Alcohol imposes high economic and social costs, yet how to regulate it effectively is subject to an ongoing debate in the face of bootlegging as well as other illegal procurement and consumption practices. This paper studies the impact of the Russian Empire's state alcohol monopoly (1895–1914) on public health, crime, productivity, and state revenues. Exploiting the staggered introduction of the monopoly that replaced excise taxes, we document adverse effects on health and crime (both likely through bootlegging), while state revenues increased. These findings illustrate the dilemma faced by weak states that often rely heavily on revenues from harmful substances. |
| January 29, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Aastha Rajan
Title: The Public Sector Advantage: Short and Long-Run Impacts of Government Employment
Abstract: The public sector is a significant employer in the United States, particularly for workers of minority groups. This study analyzes whether public sector employment differentially impacts economic outcomes for families of Black workers and their children. Using decennial Censuses and job switchers design, I examine how employment in the public sector shapes household economic stability and intergenerational outcomes relative to private sector employment. The analysis highlights the continued importance of public sector employment as a source of economic opportunity and provides new evidence relevant to ongoing policy debates over government downsizing. |
| January 28, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Buffett Graduate Student Colloquium with Sebastián Poblete Coddou | The Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs hosts running colloquia for graduate students to present their research to globally engaged faculty and fellow students. In January's first graduate colloquium, Economics PhD candidate Sebastián Poblete Coddou will present on his doctoral research, which lies at the intersection of applied microeconomic questions and empirical industrial organization.
Q&A and discussion will follow; Lunch will be served.
New Economic Perspectives on Collective Bargaining
Despite a declining trend in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in coverage and especially union membership, a large share of formal workers around the world is still covered by collective bargaining agreements. In this talk, Sebastián will address the recent literature on the economic effects of different schemes of collective bargaining around the (mainly Western) world and discuss its particular importance as a tool to counteract increasing market power in the labor market. Determining when collective bargaining can counteract labor market power (and to what extent) is a core element of his dissertation research.
Learn more about the Buffett Institute's programming for graduate students >>
Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated. |
| January 26, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Jana Obradovic
Title: Consumption Commitments and the Marginal Propensity to Consume
Abstract: I study how consumption commitments shape households’ marginal propensity to consume out of transitory income shocks. Using transaction data for roughly 60,000 U.S. households from 2014–2021, I exploit mortgage rate-refinancing episodes that mechanically lower required monthly payments and compare MPCs for the same households before and after refinancing. I find that the quarterly MPC falls by about five percentage points after refinancing. I develop a quantitative model with income risk, borrowing constraints, and costly commitment adjustment; in the baseline calibration, higher commitments are associated with larger liquid buffers and lower MPCs, highlighting a tension between the model’s predictions and the empirical evidence. |
| January 23, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | CANCELED: Economic History Lunch | THIS EVENT IS CANCELED.
Speaker: Tomer Novikov
Title: The lack of use of violence in the 1936 Spanish military coup: Bayesian updates and polarization
Abstract: Military coups have been a prominent method for changing governments. However, despite the capacity for violence in the military, its coercive power, and the high stakes involved, violence is relatively rare during the crucial first hours of a coup when success is determined. This is especially prominent in the case of the 1936 Spanish military coup, in which a relatively bloodless and decentralized coup ignited a civil war characterized by atrocities. First we construct a simple mathematical model for military coups. Then, after removing complete information, we observe that the effects on military officers’ Bayesian updates from the use of violence cause it to be relegated to a desperation play, since it signals weakness. We then observe the effects of ideology on both the use of violence and the outcomes in the 1936 coup using available secondary sources. |
| January 22, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Sebastian Poblete Coddou
Title: Union Bargaining Schemes in The Presence of Labor Market Power
Abstract: There is increasing concern for the exercise of monopsony power in different industries and countries. In this project, I study the role of union bargaining schemes in potentially counteracting wage markdowns using data on firms, unions, and collective agreements on the Chilean tradable sector. I study the mentioned issue through a bargaining model that nests the case of a full monopsony in a local labor market, and where bargaining power of the union relative to the firm can both counteract market power but also potentially worsen the position of the workers in terms of employment. Moreover, the model also allows for multiunit bargaining, allowing unions to bargain with several firms simultaneously, generating externalities in the local labor market where unions bargain. I plan to use this model to separately quantify the components of wages explained by marginal productivity, monopsony power of the firm, bargaining power of the union and the externality generated in the case of multiunit bargaining. Second, I also plan to use the model to study the role of counterfactual bargaining schemes and policies, in particular comparing single firm and union bargaining with unions representing a number of workers across firms, and minimum wage policies. The counterfactual analysis should allow for wage, employment, and welfare effects on workers of the different policies. |
| January 21, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Dalton Zhang
Title: Monopoly and Monopsony in General Equilibrium
Abstract: We study the general equilibrium effects of labor market power and their implications for secular macroeconomic trends, including declining interest rates and labor shares, and rising profits and inequality. We show that wage markdowns are largely neutral for aggregate output in general equilibrium under inelastic factor supply, contradicting partial-equilibrium intuition, whereas markups are highly distortionary. Markdowns instead act as redistribution shocks from wages to profits. With imperfectly elastic asset demand, this redistribution feeds back through portfolio choice, decreasing interest rates, increasing inequality, and generating large welfare consequences despite possibly modest effects on output. |
| January 16, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Artyom Lipin
Title: Popular Support in Autocracies: How Soviet Industrial Workers Turned Away from Communists (with Andrei Markevich and Timur Natkhov)
Abstract: Autocratic regimes depend on support groups, but the reasons why support groups would ever withdraw their backing remain understudied. We address this question in the context of Soviet Russia in a panel setting, combining disaggregated district-level vote shares from the 1917 Constituent Assembly election and competitive presidential elections in 1991 and 1996, and exploring how voting for the communists was related to the spread of the proletariat. In 1917, more industrialized districts exhibited higher Communist vote shares, while in the 1990s, more industrialized districts displayed lower Communist vote shares. To address potential endogeneity of industrialization, we employ instrumental variables based on mineral endowments, WWII evacuation exposure, and a shift-share design constructed from pre-period industry composition. We show that the reversal is weaker in districts where Soviet workers earned higher relative wages and where the industrial workforce was concentrated in more privileged sectors, such as defense-related production and heavy industry. We do not find that higher exposure to state repression is associated with a stronger reversal. The results suggest that economic conditions, rather than state coercion, explain changes in the loyalty of key regime supporters in autocracies. |
| January 15, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Speaker: Sean Higgins
Title: Persistent Employment Effects of Easing Liquidity Constraints during a Temporary Shock
Abstract: Economic shocks coupled with contractions in credit supply cause firms to fire workers and explain a substantial portion of unemployment during crises. Does easing liquidity constraints during such shocks prevent firms from firing workers, and does liquidity have a persistent effect on employment even after the temporary shock has ended? In collaboration with a commercial bank in Chile, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in which half of 10,072 eligible firms were randomly approved for credit. Using employer-employee data, we track effects on employment four years after treatment. When faced with a shock from their municipality going into lockdown, control firms fire employees while treatment firms do not, resulting in an intent-to-treat effect of 0.27 additional employees per treated firm over the first year after treatment, compared to a control mean of 4.4 employees. This effect persists for several months after the shock ends (i.e., after firms permanently exit lockdown). In survey data, treatment causes a 22% increase in sales and 27% increase in profits. |
| January 15, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Rosario Cisternas
Title: The Role of Limited Awareness and Targeted advertising in the Chilean Health Insurance Market
Abstract: This presentation examines how limited awareness and targeted advertising shape the effects of Chile's 2020 Single Table Factor (STF), which bans gender-based pricing and restricts age-based pricing in private health insurance. Using administrative data from the health regulator and a planned survey on search and choice frictions, I study how sales agents and market complexity influence which options consumers actually consider, allowing firms to circumvent regulation. I develop a structural model in which firms choose prices and whether to use a "marketing" technology—via complex plan design and sales effort—to steer consumers. Building on Agarwal and Somaini's identification framework for demand analysis under latent choice constraints, the analysis uses choice shifters and preference shifters on the demand side, together with inequality-based restrictions on firm behavior on the supply side, to evaluate the welfare effects of banning demographic pricing and potential market-simplification policies.
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| January 12, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Evan Majic |
| January 9, 202612:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch | Speaker: Walker Hanlon
Title: Innovation Networks in the Industrial Revolution
Abstract: We offer a new approach to understanding technological progress and economic growth during the Industrial Revolution using modern growth theory combined with detailed micro-data. We develop a multi-sector endogenous growth model featuring knowledge spillovers across-technologies within countries, spillovers across countries, and cross-country adoption of new technologies. We apply our model to patent data from the UK and France in order to estimate key parameters, including vectors of country and technology-specific knowledge access costs. We validate our parameter estimates and then use the model to study their implications during the transition to modern economic growth. We show that, relative to France, U.K. inventors faced lower knowledge access barriers, a difference that generated substantial growth rate differences on the transition path, even when accounting for cross-country knowledge and technology flows. |
| January 8, 202612:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch | Chinese Economy Master Lecture |
| January 8, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Lunch | Speaker: Luis Gustavo de Azevedo Gomes
Title: Outside Options and Collective Bargaining Spillovers (joint with Guilherme Neri)
Abstract: When labor markets are imperfectly competitive, better compensation at some firms may improve workers' outside options and affect outcomes throughout the market. This paper studies how an increase in union bargaining power within a subset of firms affects both their own employees and workers at other locally connected firms. We define connections using cross-firm worker movements, which proxy for firm-specific outside options. We show that directly treated firms experience higher wages and more collectively-bargained amenities, with negligible changes in employment. Workers at firms more highly connected to treated firms also experience wage gains, with magnitudes implying a cross-firm wage elasticity of 0.23. Spillover effects are not accompanied by changes in collectively-bargained amenities and persist when controlling for union representation at spillover firms, suggesting that collective bargaining increases individual bargaining power in the broader labor market. |
| January 7, 202612:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch | Speaker: Jacob Gosselin |
| December 12, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Chris Sims |
| December 11, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Sebastian Sardon
Title: Trade, Land Consolidation, and Agricultural Productivity
Abstract: The agricultural sector features a large productivity gap between rich and developing countries, as well as substantial barriers inhibiting trade between them. In this paper, I assess whether removing such barriers can boost productivity in the developing world, and if so, through which channels. I study a 1997 USDA ban lift on avocado exports from the Mexican state of Michoacan to the U.S. Using a triple difference strategy and newly linked confidential census microdata (1970--2022), I find that the value of output per hectare increases by around 50% in treated areas suitable for avocado cultivation. Consistent with a model of agricultural production with heterogeneous farms, farms larger than 100 hectares roughly double their share of total land in treated areas. In the model, land consolidates because only large farms can afford the fixed costs of switching into avocados, which, unlike maize and other seasonal staples grown at baseline, require large amounts of water year-round. I use remote sensing to build a georeferenced dataset of irrigation investments and find a large investment response in suitable treated areas, on the order of 58% of Michoacan's baseline agricultural GDP. Finally, I find that these gains only occur in treated areas where land markets are not too frictional. In areas dominated by collective land tenure (ejidos), the effects of trade on investment, consolidation, and productivity all fail to materialize. |
| December 5, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Myera Rashid
Title: Occupational Gender Segregation
Abstract: Historically and today, one of the most pronounced differences between men and women’s labor market outcomes is their participation in different occupations. While this occupational segregation evolves over time with occupations becoming desegregated and resegregated, the dynamics underlying the shifts in segregation are not well understood. I develop an occupation choice model in which workers have gendered preferences over the observed gender share of an occupation and perceived non-wage amenities. In this model, exogenous shocks to demand for labor allow for changes in the initial gender composition which serves as a public signal allowing future generations of workers to update their beliefs about the occupation amenities. In my reduced form application, I build shocks to demand for labor across occupations using mass mobilization of male workers during World War II. Combining information from enlistment records and census data, preliminary results show that enlistment of workers led to increases in the participation of women in those labor markets. Consistent with the role of non-wage amenities, these effects varied by occupational characteristics. |
| December 4, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM | *Cancelled* Development Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Nathalie Basto |
| December 4, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Workshop Lunch | Speaker: Myera Rashid
Title: Occupational Gender Segregation
Abstract: Historically and today, one of the most pronounced differences between men and women’s labor market outcomes is their participation in different occupations. While this occupational segregation evolves over time with occupations becoming desegregated and resegregated, the dynamics underlying the shifts in segregation are not well understood. I develop an occupation choice model in which workers have gendered preferences over the observed gender share of an occupation and perceived non-wage amenities. In this model, exogenous shocks to demand for labor allow for changes in the initial gender composition which serves as a public signal allowing future generations of workers to update their beliefs about the occupation amenities. In my reduced form application, I build shocks to demand for labor across occupations using mass mobilization of male workers during World War II. Combining information from enlistment records and census data, preliminary results show that enlistment of workers led to increases in the participation of women in those labor markets. Consistent with the role of non-wage amenities, these effects varied by occupational characteristics. |
| December 3, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Gabriel Leon-Ablan (King's College): Slave Revolts and Emancipation: Evidence from the British Empire
Abstract: The abolition of slavery in the British empire is usually attributed to the actions of the abolitionist movement. The part played by enslaved people is often ignored. This article shows that slave revolts in the Caribbean helped secure parliamentary support for abolition. Members of parliament were more likely to back a plan that emancipated enslaved people and compensated slave owners when they had more constituents who owned slaves in colonies with revolts. The cross-constituency variation in this exposure to slave revolts was plausibly exogenous and the main results are robust to using several identification strategies. Using data from colonial archives, I show that the mechanism behind this finding is economic: slave revolts reduced the financial value of slaves in the affected colonies, inducing slave owners to support the abolition plan. The article's main conclusion is that enslaved people in the Caribbean were active agents in their own emancipation. |
| December 3, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Pablo Sanchez |
| December 3, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Saam Zahedian (Northwestern University): "Non-FIRE Beliefs in Housing Development" |
| December 1, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Joint Seminar in Industrial Organization and Econometrics | Magne Mogstad (University of Chicago) |
| December 1, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Luca Zanotti (Northwestern University): "Debt Management meets Monetary Policy: The Rise of the Long End" |
| November 26, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Dalton Zhang |
| November 24, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Tamar den Besten (Northwestern University): "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tariffs: Evidence From U.S. Historical Data" |
| November 21, 20252:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Luis Freitas (Northwestern University): "Valuing the Cage-Free Transition: A Voting-and-Markets Approach" |
| November 21, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Matteo Ruzzante
Title: "Price Regulation and the Adoption–Innovation Trade-off" (with Felipe Berrutti)
Abstract: Regulating the price of existing technologies can spur their adoption yet deter subsequent innovation. In India, price controls on genetically engineered (GE) cotton seeds induced this trade-off. Leveraging the policy's differential timing across states, we show that mandated price reductions accelerated adoption of GE seeds by farmers. Although seed supply kept pace, innovation subsequently stalled: fewer new varieties were introduced. Using newly assembled data from experimental field trials across India, we show that agronomic yields of new varieties fell in price-controlled states. To quantify the welfare implications of price and yield effects, we develop and estimate a structural model of demand and supply for seeds with endogenous product attributes. While the policy raised farmers' surplus, especially among the poor, ignoring innovation responses in equilibrium vastly overstates their welfare gains. We use the estimated model to assess alternative policies that better balance adoption and innovation incentives. For a given public budget, incentives for seed developers tied to the productivity of new varieties achieve the highest welfare for farmers. |
| November 20, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Christina Brown (Chicago): Subjective versus Objective Incentives and Employee Productivity
Abstract: A central challenge facing firms is how to incentivize employees. While objective incentives may be theoretically ideal, in practice they may lead employees to reduce effort on non-incentivized outcomes and may fail in settings where effort is weakly tied to outcomes. Subjective (manager-discretionary) incentives are hence the norm for the vast majority of employees. However, whether manager discretion is able to overcome this noise and distortion problem is unclear and may even perform worse than objective incentives if managers are inaccurate in their evaluations. We study the effect of subjective incentives (manager-discretionary performance evaluation) and objective incentives (test score-based) relative to no incentives for teachers using an RCT in over 200 Pakistani schools. First, we show that subjective and objective incentives both increase test scores and have similar magnitude effects. However, objective incentives decrease non-test score student outcomes relative to subjective incentives. Second, we show that teachers' effort response is very different under each scheme, with attendance increasing under subjective and teaching quality decreasing under objective. Finally, we rationalize these effects through the lens of a moral hazard model with multi-tasking. We show teachers believe objective incentives are a noisier function of their effort than subjective incentives, and objective incentives distort effort toward narrow aspects of student learning. Then we use within-treatment variation to isolate the causal effect of contract noise and distortion. We show that noisier incentive schemes lead to a smaller effort response and distorted incentives shift teacher effort to certain actions. Combined, differences in the perceived noise and distortion of subjective versus objective incentives can explain a majority of the difference in reduced form effects between the two contract types. |
| November 20, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Daniel Cohen
Title: Switching Costs in Credit Markets: Evidence from Mexican Credit Cards
Abstract: Commercial credit cards are an important source of consumer credit, but imperfect competition and high switching costs can cause cardholders to pay excess interest. In this paper, I estimate the consequences of imperfect switching in the Mexican credit card market using universal administrative data. I begin by documenting that the market is ripe for high-consequence failures: interest rates are high and dispersed; card openings are infrequent among borrowers; and there is little correlation between risk and interest rate. Taken together, these facts imply that even the riskiest borrowers often have low-interest alternatives available. Next, I show that switching has a meaningful effect on outcomes: those who switch cards pay less interest and receive lower interest rates, especially compared to those who accumulate cards. Finally, I use matched credit bureau data to estimate borrowers' credit card choice sets and quantify how much money (in excess interest) they leave on the table by failing to switch. I show that 62% of cardholders fail to choose the lowest-rate card in their choice set, and the median borrower barely manages to pick their median card. The average balance-carrying borrower pays MX$4,977 (US$271) annually in excess interest compared to the cheapest card in their choice set. This amount represents 18 days of work at Mexico's minimum daily wage or 8 days of work at Mexico's average formal-sector daily wage. My results reinforce the importance of switching behavior in credit markets and demonstrate that, for regulators, improving the ease of switching would meaningfully increase consumer surplus in the credit card market. |
| November 20, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Workshop Lunch | Speaker: Giacomo Marcolin
Title: Tax Administration Quality and Firm Outcomes: Evidence from Tax Litigation
Abstract: This paper studies how the quality of local tax administration affects firms’ performance in a setting where the statutory tax system is common nationwide but enforcement is delegated to heterogeneous local offices. Using Italian data, we construct a measure of Tax Administration Quality (TAQ) based on the share of litigated tax cases won by each office, controlling for firm characteristics, case features, and court fixed effects. We document substantial dispersion in TAQ across local offices and, after a centralization reform, across provincial offices. To identify the effects of tax administration quality on firms, we compare firms located in municipalities at the borders of different local tax offices within a province, before and after a 2010 reform that merged local offices into provincial tax agencies. Linking TAQ to firm-level balance sheet data, we find that improvements in the quality of the assigned tax office lead to higher firm growth in assets and revenues. |
| November 19, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Mallory Hope (UW-Madison): Measuring Maritime Risk from the Notary’s Office: Marine Insurance Markets in Marseille,1687-1827
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| November 19, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Short Course | Michael Woodford (Columbia University and Nemmers Prize Holder):
"Cognitive Imprecision and Economic Behavior"
Lecture 4 of 4 |
| November 19, 202512:15 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Jana Obradovic |
| November 19, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Jesse LaBelle (Northwestern University): "Taxing the Untaxable: Ramsey Policy with Mobile Intangible Capital" |
| November 18, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Richard Blundell (UCL): Nonlinear Micro Income Processes with Macro Shocks
Abstract: We propose a nonlinear framework that exploits both macro and micro data to study the dynamic transmission of aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks to household income. We develop identification arguments and estimation methods that combine macro time series and time series of panels. Using U.S. aggregate data and the PSID, we find that business-cycle fluctuations modulate the persistence of heterogeneous individual histories and the risk faced by households. We document how aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks propagate over time for households in different macro and micro states. Lastly, we quantify the welfare cost of aggregate and idiosyncratic risk. |
| November 17, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Short Course | Michael Woodford (Columbia University and Nemmers Prize Holder):
"Cognitive Imprecision and Economic Behavior"
Lecture 3 of 4 |
| November 17, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Sasha Indarte (Wharton): The Impact of Social Insurance on Household Debt
Abstract: This paper investigates how the expansion of social insurance affects households’ accumulation of debt. Insurance can reduce reliance on debt by lessening the financial impact of adverse events such as illness and job loss. But it can also weaken the motive to self-insure through savings, and households’ improved financial resilience can increase access to credit. Using data on 10 million people and a quasi-experimental research design, we estimate the causal effect of expanded insurance on household debt, exploiting ZIP-code level heterogeneity in exposure to the staggered expansions of one of the largest US social insurance programs: Medicaid. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in a ZIP code’s Medicaid-eligible population increases credit card borrowing by 0.46%. Decomposing this effect in a model of household borrowing, we show that increased credit supply in response to households’ improved financial resilience drives the rise in borrowing and contributed 32% of the net welfare gains of expanding Medicaid. |
| November 17, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Hongchang Guo (Northwestern University): "A Two-Step Method for Subvector Inference in Partially Identified Models Defined by Moment Inequalities" |
| November 14, 20252:00 PM - 3:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Yuejun Chen (Northwestern University): "Privatization, Foster Care, and Child Welfare" |
| November 14, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Matteo Ruzzante
Title: "Price Regulation and the Adoption–Innovation Trade-off" (with Felipe Berrutti)
Abstract: Regulating the price of existing technologies can spur their adoption yet deter subsequent innovation. In India, price controls on genetically engineered (GE) cotton seeds induced this trade-off. Leveraging the policy's differential timing across states, we show that mandated price reductions accelerated adoption of GE seeds by farmers. Although seed supply kept pace, innovation subsequently stalled: fewer new varieties were introduced. Using newly assembled data from experimental field trials across India, we show that agronomic yields of new varieties fell in price-controlled states. To quantify the welfare implications of price and yield effects, we develop and estimate a structural model of demand and supply for seeds with endogenous product attributes. While the policy raised farmers' surplus, especially among the poor, ignoring innovation responses in equilibrium vastly overstates their welfare gains. We use the estimated model to assess alternative policies that better balance adoption and innovation incentives. For a given public budget, incentives for seed developers tied to the productivity of new varieties achieve the highest welfare for farmers. |
| November 13, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | CANCELLED Seminar in Development Economics | CANCELLED
Rossella Calvi (Rice University) : The Perceived Marital Returns to Education and the
Demand for Girls’ Schooling
Abstract: We study how marriage market considerations influence parental investments in daughters’ education in Pakistan. Using a hypothetical choice methodology, we estimate parents’ preferences and willingness-to-pay for marital customs and daughters’ marital and post-marital outcomes. Our findings highlight considerable heterogeneity between mothers and fathers, even within the same family. On average, fathers prioritize adherence to traditional customs, while mothers emphasize daughters’ post-marital agency. Using a model of schooling decisions that incorporates these preferences, perceived costs, and parental beliefs about marital returns to education, we examine educational investments. Counterfactual simulations show that belief-targeting campaigns and policies boosting mothers’ decision-power could significantly improve girls’ education. |
| November 13, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Vasu Chaudhary
Title: Diffusion of Rival Information
Abstract: Social networks shape access to opportunities, such as new technologies or government programs, yet existing research assumes information sharing is costless. I study how rivalry over scarce opportunities affects information sharing behavior. When sharing creates competition, three forces emerge: dilution effects (competitive costs decrease with saturation), value-scaled altruism (benefits to recipients decrease with saturation), and social capital returns. These generate ambiguous predictions with critical policy implications: can programs use broad seeding with common knowledge to increase sharing behavior. I propose experiments that systematically vary saturation, competition structure, and pivotality to isolate each mechanism. A complementary field experiment will test seeding strategies in a real labor market context with consequential stakes. |
| November 13, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Workshop Lunch | Speaker: Guilherme Neri |
| November 12, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Caterina Chiopris (Columbia): The Diffusion of Ideas
Abstract: The diffusion of innovation and new ideas is fundamental for economic growth, cultural shifts, and institutional change. How are new ideas created, and how do they diffuse? Specifically, how do spatial connections affect the generation and diffusion of ideas? Intuitively, a denser network should increase the number of novel ideas and augment their diffusion. I study knowledge production in Germany in the 19th century, relying on several novel large-scale datasets, including the universe of bibliographic records and detailed railway statistics. New ideas are measured as novel concepts, new combinations of existing ideas, as well as new topics and fields. I show that the railroad network increased the creation of new ideas, but decreased their average diffusion. This was a by-product of specialization: with a more integrated knowledge market, groups of scholars started focusing on narrower topics and were more likely to co-locate with similar professionals; they adopted ideas from similar groups, but became disconnected from dissimilar ones. These patterns paved the way for modern knowledge production; qualitative evidence suggests that this has important consequences not only for scientific breakthroughs, but also for state institutions, bureaucratic specialization and the exhaustiveness of legislation. |
| November 12, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Short Course | Michael Woodford (Columbia University and Nemmers Prize Holder):
"Cognitive Imprecision and Economic Behavior"
Lecture 2 of 4 |
| November 12, 202512:30 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Takaaki Sagawa
Title: The Macroeconomics of the US Funding Advantage
Abstract: I study the macroeconomic effects and transmission channels of shocks to the U.S. funding advantage, defined as the spread between private safe-asset yields and Treasuries. Using a max-share identification approach, I find that increases in the funding advantage raise U.S. debt levels and output. The effects operate through a gradual balance-sheet reallocation toward Treasuries and a decline in Treasury beta, consistent with a bank-regulation and safe-asset demand channel that sustains low government funding costs. |
| November 12, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Charles Hanzel (Northwestern University): "(Mis)Trust, Polarization, and the Demand for Health Care" |
| November 11, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Xinran Li (University of Chicago): Randomization inference for distributions of individual treatment effects
Abstract: Understanding treatment effect heterogeneity is a central problem in causal inference. In this talk, I will present a randomization-based inference framework for distributions and quantiles of individual treatment effects. It builds upon the classical Fisher randomization test for sharp null hypotheses, and considers the worst-case randomization p-value for composite null hypotheses. In particular, we utilize distribution-free rank statistics to overcome the computational challenge, where the optimization of p-value often permits simple and intuitive solutions. By standard test inversion, we can further construct simultaneous confidence bands for the entire distribution of individual treatment effects.
During the talk, I will first describe this finite-sample valid inference along with strategies for improving power, and eventually show the asymptotic sharpness of the inference. I will then extend the methodology to observational studies, where we perform sensitivity analysis for unmeasured confounding. I will finally consider sample attrition with informative missingness, and show that structural assumptions on missingness mechanisms can substantially improve inference power. The proposed methods will be illustrated with applications in education, public health, and social programs. |
| November 11, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Joint Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics and Strategy | Zincy Wei (Northwestern): The Economics of Choosing Traditional Medicine: Theory and Evidence from India
Abstract: Why do patients reject clinically superior treatments even when they are accessible and affordable? This phenomenon is particularly acute in India, where half of urban households rely on traditional practitioners for chronic conditions such as hypertension, despite modern medicines being more effective and cheaper. I conduct a randomized controlled trial with 1,819 adults at high risk of hypertension who primarily use traditional medicine. I randomly vary only the institutional sources of clinical evidence about modern medicine’s efficacy. I find four main results: (i) the messenger matters more than the message—attributing evidence to India’s traditional medicine authority (AYUSH) increases modern medicine spending by 26%, while attribution to international medical journals has modest, insignificant effects; (ii) patients can simultaneously adopt superior treatments while preserving confidence in traditional institutions when information comes from trusted sources; (iii) effects fade within two months without reinforcement; and (iv) cross-domain belief spillovers depend critically on source credibility rather than content alone. I formalize these patterns in a Bayesian persuasion model in which source identity determines whether information creates competitive or complementary updating across treatment domains. I show that trusted sources enable trust-mediated belief decoupling: patients update their beliefs about modern medicine without mechanically reducing their confidence in traditional alternatives. The results demonstrate that institutional credibility is a first-order determinant of healthcare decision-making, with implications for any domain where multiple authorities compete for legitimacy.
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| November 10, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | Matthew Weinberg (Ohio State University): Oligopsony and Collective Bargaining
Abstract: Employers facing limited labor market competition may suppress wages below socially optimal levels. Unions can counteract this wage suppression through collective bargaining, though they may also push wages above the socially optimal level. To assess these forces, we estimate a structural model of labor supply, labor demand, and Nash-in-Nash bargaining over wages between teacher unions and school districts in Pennsylvania’s K-12 public school system from 2013 to 2020. Using the estimated parameters, we compare negotiated equilibrium wages and employment to the pure oligopsony scenario and the social planner scenario. On average, pure oligopsony reduces wages 16 percent below the social optimum, while collective bargaining raises wages by 9 percent above the optimum. This average masks substantial district-level heterogeneity driven by variation in bargaining power. Twenty-seven percent of schools have negotiated salaries below the social optimum due to cross-district externalities, where high salaries at one school lead to hiring reductions, which increase labor supply in competing districts. |
| November 10, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Short Course | Michael Woodford (Columbia University and Nemmers Prize Holder):
"Cognitive Imprecision and Economic Behavior"
Lecture 1 of 4 |
| November 10, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Ester Faia (Frankfurt): “The Innovation Race: Experimental Evidence on Advanced Technologies”, joint with Zoe Cullen (HBS), Elisa Guglielminetti (BoI), Ricardo Perez-Truglia (UCLA) and Concetta Rondinelli (BoI)
Abstract: We present the first large-scale field experiment test of strategic complementarities in firms' technology adoption. Our experiment was embedded in a Bank of Italy survey covering more than 3,000 firms. We elicited firms' beliefs about competitors' adoption of two advanced technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. We randomly provided half of the sample with accurate information about adoption rates. Most firms substantially underestimated competitors' past adoption, and when provided with information, they updated their expectations about competitors' future adoption. The information increased firms' own intended future adoption of robotics, although we do not observe a significant effect on AI adoption. Our findings provide causal evidence on coordination in innovation and illustrate how information frictions shape technology diffusion. |
| November 10, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Johannes Hirvonen (Northwestern University): "Optimal Rating Memory: Evidence from a Food-Delivery Platform" |
| November 8, 20259:00 AM - 1:30 PM | Nemmers Prize in Economics: Conference | Nemmers Conference. This is associated with the awarding of the Nemmers Prize in Economics to Michael Woodford. Day 2 of 2. Free registration required. |
| November 7, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speakers: Tomer Novikov & Franco Malpassi
Speaker: Franco Malpassi
Title: Unbundled Innovation: Competition and the Rise of the Software Industry
Abstract: The effect of competition on innovation remains ambiguous and of first-order importance to antitrust policy. I study this question in the context of the early US software industry and the unbundling of software from computer hardware due to antitrust action in 1969. In the decade that followed, the packaged software industry went from a $75 million industry to a $2 billion one. Using newly digitized data and exploiting variation in unbundling by software segments, I study whether innovation activity and quality changed in segments that experienced a change in competition. Preliminary descriptive evidence suggests that innovation activity increased as a result of software unbundling.
Speaker: Tomer Novikov
Title: Research proposal: Water Power Saturation and the Adoption of Iron Wheels and Steam in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Abstract: This paper explores how local conditions can induce technological leapfrogging. In nineteenth-century Britain, the saturation of water power along rivers forced industrialists to choose between upgrading to iron water wheels or moving directly to steam, depending on local characteristics. By adding data from the Mills Archive Trust, combined with other historical sources, the paper will construct a probabilistic model for estimating the prevalence of non-textile water mills and the partial adoption of the iron water wheel. |
| November 7, 20259:00 AM - 5:00 PM | Nemmers Prize in Economics: Conference | Nemmers Conference. This is associated with the awarding of the Nemmers Prize in Economics to Michael Woodford. Includes Professor Woodford's Nemmers lecture at 4pm. Day 1 of 2. Free registration required. |
| November 6, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM | Development Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Alvis Tang
Title: Demand-Induced Reallocation? Evidence from Household Cash Transfers (Joint with Kyra Carmichael)
Abstract: Mounting evidence suggests that unconditional cash transfers are effective policy instruments in the developing world. This has caused some to call for scaling them up, with ambitions to cover entire countries. We study the reallocation induced by large-scale cash transfers in two RCT settings: Kenya (Egger et al, 2022) and an ongoing trial in Malawi. Implementing a modified Hsieh and Klenow (2009) approach in Kenya, we find that non-agricultural enterprises in both control and treatment villages grow in TFPR. Furthermore, the variance of TFPR of non-agricultural firms in treated villages is lower than that in control villages. We outline a stylized model highlighting the role of liquidity frictions in allocative consequences and discuss future research directions. |
| November 6, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Workshop Lunch | Speaker: Tessa Bonomo
Title: Vendor Incentives and Access to In-Kind Transfer Programs: Evidence from the WIC Program
Abstract: The WIC program is an important source of nutrition assistance for low-income women and children in the U.S. However, the number of grocery stores that accept WIC vouchers has declined substantially over time, potentially limiting access to benefits for eligible households. In this project, I assess the role of local cost shocks in driving vendor exit from the WIC program using a matched difference-in-differences design. I find a 5% decline in the number of WIC vendors in the 12 months following minimum wage increases, which is driven by a 13% decline among independent stores (with no change among chain stores). At the same time, I find minimal change in the presence of grocery stores overall and in the number of stores accepting SNAP benefits, suggesting this decline is specific to the structure of the WIC program. I then explore how these declines in vendor presence impact WIC beneficiaries, finding a 5% decline in the number of families redeeming WIC benefits, concentrated in ZIP codes with the largest decline in WIC vendors. |
| November 5, 20257:30 PM - 9:00 PM | Leon N. Moses Distinguished Lecture in Transportation | Richard Hornbeck (University of Chicago): "Amplified Gains from Transportation Infrastructure Investments" |
| November 5, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Micah Villarreal (Northwestern University): Black Gold: The Effect of Wealth on Descendants of the Enslaved
Abstract: This paper examines how short-term wealth shocks affected the economic trajectories of descendants of the enslaved in the early twentieth-century United States. I exploit a natural experiment in which Creek Freedmen allottees—Black landholders in Oklahoma—received quasi-random windfalls when producing oil wells were drilled on their land allotments. By constructing and linking microdata from the Dawes Rolls, allotment maps, oil drilling records, and U.S. censuses from 1910 to 1940, I show that oil discoveries were as-good-as-random with respect to pre-treatment characteristics. The wealth shocks had modest direct effects on asset accumulation, but large and persistent impacts on human capital. Treated youths were less likely to work, more likely to remain in school, and ultimately attained higher levels of education. Over subsequent decades, they shifted toward white-collar occupations, urban residence, and—by 1940—higher rates of homeownership. These findings provide the first causal evidence on the long-run effects of wealth shocks for descendants of the enslaved. They suggest that wealth enabled strategic investments in education and mobility, generating lasting socioeconomic gains despite ongoing racial barriers. |
| November 5, 202512:15 PM - 1:45 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Cristoforo Pizzimenti |
| November 5, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Eisho Takatsuji (Northwestern University): "Legislative Limits on Prosecutorial Discretion During Plea Bargaining" |
| November 4, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM | *Cancelled* The Susan Bies Lecture on Economics and Public Policy | This event has been postponed. New date: Monday, April 6. |
| November 4, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Danil Fedchenko (Northwestern):
The Treatment Effect on a Summary Index: Interpretation, Inference, Power (paper attached)
Abstract: This paper examines the common practice of combining multiple outcomes into summary indices to estimate the effect of an intervention. While the interpretation of such estimates is often intuitive – a weighted average of component-level effects – the weights used by procedures more complex than the simple average can be problematic. Correct inference requires accounting for data-dependent weights when computing standard errors. The resulting correction depends on the variability of the weighting scheme and the magnitude of the true treatment effect, and disappears when either is zero. Since none of the commonly used summary index procedures incorporate sources of variability relevant to the estimator’s variance, the resulting estimates do not exhibit the high power often attributed to them. Common data manipulations, such as imputing missing values in index components, often produce indices that differ from what they are intended to represent. In such cases, the interpretation of the resulting estimates is no longer that of a weighted sum; instead, it depends on the specific estimation method and the approach used to handle missing data. This study aims to help applied researchers better understand the econometric procedures they use and to assist readers of these studies in interpreting the results. |
| November 3, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Industrial Organization | Nicholas Vreugdenhil (Arizona State University): Endogenous Rigidities and Capital Misallocation: Evidence from Containerships
Abstract: We investigate how endogenous rigidities inhibit physical capital reallocation. We focus on the role of contract duration - a classic example of an adjustment rigidity. We argue when agents sign longer contracts in booms when markets are thin, they generate a contracting externality which further amplifies thinness and impedes the adjustment of markets to shocks. We develop a framework with booms and busts where agents search and choose match duration. Applying the framework to the containership leasing market, we find substantial misallocation from endogenous rigidities, particularly in the transition after a crash. We also quantify implications for designing industrial policy. |
| November 3, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Veronica Guerrieri (Chicago Booth): “Global Price Shocks and International Monetary Coordination” (with Guido Lorenzoni and Ivan Werning)
Abstract: When the central bank of an individual country is trying to contain domestic inflation it mostly takes as given global supply conditions—which determine oil prices, shipping costs, the prices of tradable intermediate goods, bottlenecks in global supply chains, and so on. However, the combined actions of all the world central banks matter for global demand, which matters for how global supply conditions translate into price and non-price pressures on global inflation. This suggests the possibility that, following a negative world supply shock, uncoordinated monetary policy may deliver excessively loose policy from a global perspective: an expansionary bias. We investigate this possibility in some simple models of a world economy with an integrated global commodity market and derive sufficient conditions for an expansionary bias to emerge. |
| November 3, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Vaidehi Parameswaran (Northwestern University): "Title TBA" |
| October 31, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Michael Giordano
Title: Natural Monopoly and Economies in Rail: Evidence from the U.S., 1888-1940
Abstract: I study the characterization of railways as a natural monopoly using a novel dataset of U.S. company-year accounting records between 1888-1940. Through Instrumental Variable (IV) and Event-Study analysis, I find that rail firms experience economies of density, where a network's costs rise more slowly than traffic, and diseconomies of size, where costs rise more rapidly than increases in network size. By examining shocks to network length, I help explain why past studies have found constant returns to size. Using a new empirical approach to test natural monopoly conditions, I find that the U.S. rail industry was not consistent with the concept of natural monopoly over this period. |
| October 30, 202512:00 PM - 1:00 PM | Development Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Vageesha Bainwala
Title: Branching Out: How Bank Expansion Shapes Household Credit Portfolios
Abstract: This paper investigates the interaction between formal and informal credit markets by analyzing the effects of a large-scale bank expansion policy in India. Using a regression discontinuity design based on the Reserve Bank of India's 2005 initiative to increase banking in underserved districts, the study finds that greater bank presence led to a 17 percentage point increase in the probability of households taking informal loans, an effect concentrated in rural areas. Furthermore, the share of formal loans in household portfolios was lower in treated districts. These results suggest a vertical interaction between the two credit sectors, with evidence found in the loan terms: informal moneylenders in newly banked districts charged significantly lower interest rates to the households. The findings suggest that informal lenders may act as intermediaries, channeling the increased supply of formal credit to households and demonstrating their adaptive role within the financial ecosystem. |
| October 30, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Workshop Lunch | Speaker: Max Pienkny
Title: The Safety Cost of Footprint-Based Fuel-Economy Standards
Abstract: U.S. corporate average fuel economy standards (CAFE) increasingly tie regulatory stringency to a vehicle’s “footprint”—the area between its wheels—granting larger vehicles more lenient fuel economy targets. This paper shows that this design unintentionally encourages automakers to increase vehicle size, with substantial consequences for road safety. I construct model-level measures of upsizing incentives that combine each model’s position on the footprint schedule with changes to the schedule over time, and I exploit variation in these incentives to estimate the causal effect of footprint-based standards on vehicle size. Models facing stronger incentives upsize more, and this expansion contributes disproportionately to motor-vehicle fatalities, generating large negative safety externalities. Moving forward, I propose a structural framework with endogenous vehicle size to quantify the welfare consequences of footprint-based regulation and evaluate alternative policy designs. |
| October 29, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Massimiliano Onorato (University of Bologna): “Roads to Fascism? State Capacity and the Spreadof Political Violence”
Abstract: We investigate the role of state capacity and political violence in fa- voring regime changes. Specifically, we examine the role of road networks in spreading fascist violence in the early 1920s in Italy. Using novel and detailed data on fascist violence, along with digitized maps of the Italian road network, we investigate the impact of road accessibility on the location and intensity of political violence. We address endogeneity issues by means of an instrumental variable approach based on the least-cost path network connecting local administrative centers. We find that proximity to the road network increased a municipality’s exposure to violence and that both the extensive margin and the intensive margin were affected. We discuss the impact of fascist violence on the stability of local political institutions and the link with the establishment of new branches of the Fascist Party. Our conclusions suggest that incumbents may have strategic incentives to limit the development of infrastructures when they fear for their hold on political power. |
| October 29, 202512:30 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Jacob Gosselin
Title:
Negative Earnings, Market Power, and Demand vs. Supply Shifting Investment
Abstract: We document the rise in reported losses among public firms in the United States, and show that this rise is driven by changes in investment composition: firms invest less in physical capital and more in intangible “brand” capital than they used to. We provide evidence linking this phenomena to the rise in mark-ups over the same period. We rationalize these empirical results with a GE model of heterogenous, monopolistically competitive firms investing in supply-shifting and demand-shifting capital stocks. We derive the relative returns to both types of investment in our model, and show that it is linear in the mark-up. We conclude with a quantitative exercise, solving for the stationary distribution of firms in our model (calibrated to Compustat data) under different mark-ups, to emphasize that this mechanism means our model can qualitatively match the data. |
| October 29, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Yifan Mao (Northwestern University): "Cultural Changes in 20th Century China: Evidence from Given Names" |
| October 28, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Federico Crippa (Northwestern): "Identification, Estimation, and Inference in Two-Sided Interaction Models"
Abstract: This paper studies a class of models for two-sided interactions, where outcomes depend on latent characteristics of two distinct agent types. Models in this class have two core elements: the matching network, which records which agent pairs interact, and the interaction function, which maps latent characteristics of these agents to outcomes and determines the role of complementarities. I introduce the Tukey model, which captures complementarities with a single interaction parameter, along with two extensions that allow richer complementarity patterns. First, I establish an identification trade-off between the flexibility of the interaction function and the density of the matching network: the Tukey model is identified under mild conditions, whereas the more flexible extensions require dense networks that are rarely observed in applications. Second, I propose a cycle-based estimator for the Tukey interaction parameter and show that it is consistent and asymptotically normal even when the network is sparse. Third, I use its asymptotic distribution to construct a formal test of no complementarities. Finally, an empirical illustration shows that the Tukey model recovers economically meaningful complementarities. |
| October 28, 20252:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics | Linh To (Boston University): The Child Penalty and an Age-Old Problem
Abstract: In this paper, we explicitly formulate the estimation of child penalties as an age-period-cohort identification problem, clarifying that the fundamental challenge is the non-identifiability of linear trends in the three sets of fixed effects. We derive the number of restrictions required for identification, showing that precisely one additional restriction suffices in contexts typically used for child penalty estimation. Using this framework, we empirically test, and reject, the common practice of omitting cohort fixed effects. We demonstrate that biases from omitting cohort effects can be substantial and can vary across data structure and empirical settings. |
| October 27, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Joint Seminar in Industrial Organization and HELP | Naoki Aizawa (University of Wisconsin-Madison): Intermediaries and Market Competition in Health Insurance (joint with Honglin Li, Lorenzo Magnolfi, and Christopher Sullivan)
Abstract: We study how private and public intermediaries affect consumer demand and market competition in a market-based public program. We use administrative enrollment data from California’s health insurance marketplace linked with intermediary identifiers, containing information on individual characteristics, plan choices, and choices of intermediaries. We develop and estimate a model of consumer demand with search frictions where consumers decide whether to use an intermediary and which plan to purchase. Our estimates suggest that private agents steer consumers toward plans with higher commission fees and away from dominant insurers, while public assisters direct consumers toward lower-premium plans. Then, by estimating an equilibrium model with insurer price competition, we find that private-agent steering increases the dispersion of insurer markups, reflecting market power created through intermediary behavior. We then examine how changes in access to public assisters affect equilibrium prices and enrollment, and discuss implications for the design of the size of public intermediaries. |
| October 27, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Ernest Liu (Princeton): International Trade in an Uncertain World
Abstract:
We develop a tractable approach to characterize the distributions of the endogenous vari-ables in quantitative trade models under aggregate uncertainty and incomplete markets. Weallow agents to makeex anteinvestments in import and export capacity that determine re-silience in the face of this aggregate uncertainty. Equilibriumex anteinvestments affectexpostbilateral trade shares, and theseex anteinvestments depend not only on the expectedcosts of sourcing goods, but also on the variance and covariance of these costs across coun-tries. Therefore a country’s risk profile becomes a key determinant of its comparative ad-vantage, terms of trade, and welfare. Trade liberalization affects welfare through both firstmoments (expected real income) and second moments (the variance of real income), withendogenous adjustments inex anteinvestments playing a key role in mediating these ef-fects. Changes in the covariance structure of global shocks have heterogeneous effects acrosscountries, depending on the extent to which they raise or reduce countries’ abilities to hedgeagainst aggregate uncertainty through theirex anteinvestments |
| October 27, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Marcos Campos (Northwestern University): "Self-Enforcing Social Insurance" |
| October 24, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Economic History Lunch Seminar | Speakers: Davis Kedrosky & Eli Locke
(Kedrosky) Title: Expropriation, Reallocation, and Political Selection: Evidence from the Rise of the English Gentry
Abstract: We study the political effects of a large-scale land redistribution—the Dissolution of the English Monasteries—to test the ‘Tawney thesis’ on the origins of parliamentary democracy in England. We argue that the expropriation and sale of monastic property, at a time when landownership was prerequisite for office, allowed non-landed elites to buy holdings and attain political standing. In this context, a shock to the distribution of landed assets could directly shift the distribution of political power. Using newly-collected biographical data on English MPs from 1509-1640, we show that residents of parishes with expropriated Church properties were more likely to enter Parliament after the Dissolution. We also present evidence that new MPs who bought monastic land were less likely to be from old landowning families and established political dynasties. Secondly, we argue that the shift in political power caused by the Dissolution led to downstream changes to institutions. One famous explanation of the emergence of English ‘inclusive institutions’ holds that the emergence of a new gentry class independent of Crown patronage facilitated Parliament's victory in the English Civil War and the creation of a constitutional monarchy (Tawney 1941). Consistent with this view, we show that constituencies with more monastic land tended to side with Parliament against the Crown during the English Civil War.
(Locke) Title: Our Crowd? Intra-Ethnic Frictions in Immigrant Assimilation (with Sara Benetti and Ross Mattheis)
Abstract: Immigrant assimilation is a salient topic in the global economy today. But little is known about how intra-ethnic frictions between waves of a given immigrant group shape assimilation. We investigate this in the context of historical Jewish immigration to the United States in the early 20th century, which was comprised of two key waves that differed dramatically along cultural dimensions. To identify likely Jews in the full-count historical US censuses, we develop a novel methodology to classify distinctively Jewish names. Combining existing data on Jewish relocation programs with 7,000 newly digitized Jewish institutions, we find preliminary evidence that in places that received immigrants from the second wave, incumbent (first wave) Jewish immigrants did not move out but did construct more social clubs and mutual benefit funds. |
| October 23, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Development Economics | Sebastian Sardon (Northwestern): Trade, Land Consolidation, and Agricultural Productivity
Abstract: The agricultural sector features a large productivity gap between rich and developing countries, as well as substantial trade barriers inhibiting trade between them. I assess whether removing such barriers can boost productivity in the developing world, and if so, through which channels. Guided by a model of agricultural production with heterogeneous farms, I study a 1997 USDA ban lift on avocado exports from the Mexican state of Michoacan to the US. Using a triple-difference strategy and newly linked confidential census micro data (1971–2022), I find that the value of output per hectare increases by around 50% in treated areas suitable for avocado cultivation. Consistent with the model, large farms (those over 100 hectares) roughly double their share of total land in treated areas. In the model, land consolidates because large farms are the only ones who can afford the fixed costs of switching into avocados, which unlike the seasonal staples grown at baseline (mostly maize) require large amounts of water year-round. I use remote sensing to build a georeferenced dataset of irrigation investment. My results indicate that investment is concentrated in areas experiencing both productivity growth and land consolidation. Finally, I find that these gains only occur in localities where land markets are not too frictional. In areas dominated by collective land tenure (ejidos), trade's effects on investment, consolidation, and productivity all fail to materialize. |
| October 23, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | HELP Workshop Lunch | Speaker: Chuqiao Nan
Title: Novel Drugs or Novel Firms? The Costs of Exploration in Pharmaceutical R&D
Abstract: Novel drugs are often viewed as riskier to develop, but the sources of this correlation remain unclear. Novelty may stem from both new scientific domains and new organizational exposure. This project examines how pharmaceutical firms perform when they explore unfamiliar technological areas, either by developing new targets (scientific pivots) or by redeploying existing molecules to new indications (repurposing). Using molecule-indication-level data, I study how these forms of exploration relate to firms' prior experience and how to distinguish risks arising from scientific uncertainty versus organizational unfamiliarity. The analysis connects research on novelty and risk with theories of organizational learning and exploration in innovation-intensive industries. |
| October 23, 20259:30 AM - 11:00 AM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Luxi Han |
| October 22, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM | Seminar in Economic History | Christopher Sims (Northwestern University):"The Origins of the Nitrogen Revolution" (joint with Matteo Ruzzante)
Abstract: Many important technologies throughout history have been spatial, in the sense that their local benefits depend on the natural endowments present in a location. This paper studies one such spatial technology -- nitrogen fertilizer -- that revolutionized agricultural practices starting in the 19th century. We leverage natural variation in level of nitrogen deficiency with the introduction of guano and nitrate fertilizers to document several patterns in the distribution of economic activity across space in England. Firstly, we find that nitrogen-deficient places were constrained in their cropping choices to disproportionately plant crops that require little nitrogen to grow. Secondly, we use a difference-in-differences design to show that these nitrogen-deficient places substantially reallocated their crop choice after fertilizer is introduced, indicating that this spatial technology drove convergence across locations. These effects are entirely concentrated in places that (i) had low productivity at baseline and (ii) are located far from major urban centers. We embed this technology into a quantitative spatial model of the English agricultural sector with realistic geography. Fertilizer raised welfare substantially, but the converging nature of the technology shock meant that it was most beneficial under conditions of low market integration. |
| October 22, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar | Speaker: Valerio Di Tommaso |
| October 22, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Siye Bae (Northwestern University): "The Global Financial Cycle and International Trade" |
| October 21, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Seminar in Econometrics | Bruno Fava (Northwestern): A Central Limit Theorem for Split-Sample Estimators
Abstract: As artificial intelligence grows in popularity an increasing number of researchers policymakers and industry practitioners are tasked with using the same dataset to both train a model and evaluate some of its properties such as accuracy or fairness. Conducting each task with separate random splits of the data facilitates inference but comes at the cost of using fewer data at each step. Averaging over multiple splits such as with cross-fitting uses more data for each task and leads to better reproducibility properties but inference is challenging due to the statistical dependence among splits. I address this challenge by proving a new Central Limit Theorem for a large class of split-sample estimators under arguably mild and general conditions. Importantly I make no restriction on the model complexity convergence rate or rate of algorithmic stability. I show that inference based on the normal approximation may be invalid if any moment equation converges at a rate faster than sqrt(n) and provide an adaptive test that is asymptotically valid in both situations. Moreover I provide a measure of reproducibility for p-values obtained from split-sample estimators and show its asymptotic validity. |
| October 21, 20252:30 PM - 4:00 PM | Joint Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics and Industrial Organization | Maria Polyakova (Stanford University): "Health Insurance as Economic Stimulus? Evidence from Long-Term Care"
Abstract: We examine the aggregate economic effects of health insurance expansions using Germany’s 1995 introduction of public long-term-care insurance. Taking advantage of administrative labor market data and regional variation in coverage, we find that insurance expanded the long-term-care sector, raised economy-wide labor force participation, and lowered unemployment, especially benefiting lower-skilled workers. A marginal value of public funds analysis suggests that these labor market gains generated large positive returns. Embedding our estimates in a general equilibrium model, we show that the welfare effects of expanding public health insurance depend on labor market frictions, highlighting the broader economic stakes of health policy
design. |
| October 20, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM | Seminar in Macroeconomics | Joe Hazell (LSE): Why Do Workers Dislike Inflation? Wage Erosion and Conflict Costs
Abstract: How costly is inflation to workers? Answers to this question have focused on the path of real wages during inflationary periods. We argue that workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not fall as inflation rises. We study a menu-cost style model, where workers choose whether to engage in conflict with employers to secure a wage increase. We show that, following a rise in inflation, wage catch-up resulting from more frequent conflict does not raise welfare. Instead, the impact of inflation on worker welfare is determined by what we call “wage erosion”—how inflation would lower real wages if workers’ conflict decisions did not respond to inflation. As a result, using observed wage growth to measure worker welfare understates the costs of inflation. We conduct a survey showing that workers are willing to sacrifice around 1.75% of their wages to avoid conflict. Calibrating the model to survey data, we find that incorporating conflict significantly raises the costs of inflation for workers. |
| October 20, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM | Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar | Aidan Goth (Northwestern University): "Rationally Inattentive Mechanism Design" |
