Past Events: Department of Economics - Northwestern University

Past Events

View past seminars and other events sponsored by the department of Economics. Events can be viewed by date or filtered by seminar series.

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Date & Time	Seminar Series	Speaker and Title
May 8, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Senior Recruitment Seminar	Michael Best (Columbia): "Greener on the Other Side: Inequity and Tax Compliance"
May 8, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM	Development Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Vageesha Bainwala
May 8, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	HELP Workshop Lunch	Speakers: Seung Hyeong Lee and Sungjin Kim Presenter 1: Seung Hyeong Lee Title: Expanding Financial Frontiers: Welfare Impacts of Alternative Data and Machine Learning Abstract: This paper examines how alternative data and machine learning models can broaden credit access for individuals in developing countries who lack traditional credit scores. Using traditional financial data alongside alternative data, primarily from smartphone SMS messages, we develop an alternative credit scoring system. We demonstrate that incorporating these alternative data sources and machine learning techniques in credit risk assessment allows the system to outperform conventional methods in predictive accuracy. This technological innovation enhances the welfare of both the firm and its users while addressing issues of accessibility and bias. Furthermore, we investigate the effects and welfare implications of short-term loans. The paper's findings are expected to have significant policy implications by contributing to current debates on the efficacy and fairness of algorithmic decision-making, as well as the privacy and usage of alternative data sources. Presenter 2: Sungjin Kim Title: Access to Public Healthcare in Rural India: Complementarities between Physician Incentives and Patient-side Trust Abstract: Although much work has been done in improving healthcare systems in many developing countries, the fundamental problem of access, finding a doctor who is actually present, is difficult. A case in point is the public healthcare system in rural India, where qualified doctors sit idle or absent in public primary clinics while communities rely heavily on informal and untrained providers. Past supply-side pay interventions have produced only modest and impersistent gains. In this study, we hypothesize that the solution requires complementary solutions on both sides of the market: incentives raise physician's effort if patients visit, and patients visit only if they expect providers to be present. To test this, we propose a 2 x 2 RCT of (i) replacing the doctors’ flat salary with service-based performance bonus and (ii) organizing information campaigns providing doctors' attendance rates and relative quality of public clinics. With this approach, we aim to show how aligning provider pay with patient knowledge can restore trust, raise utilization, and put qualified care within reach of the communities who need it most.
May 7, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Economic History	James Feigenbaum (Boston): Fine-Tunable Historical Record Linkage with Transformers: LLMs for Census Linking
May 7, 202512:00 PM - 1:00 PM	Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Gabriel Jardanovski
May 7, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Franco Malpassi (Northwestern University): "Regulating the Levers of Invention? The Effects of Antitrust Action on Firm Innovation”
May 6, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Seminar in Econometrics	Jiaying Gu (Toronton): Empirical Bayes for Compound Adaptive Experiments
May 6, 20252:30 PM - 4:00 PM	Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics	Note seminar room will be KGH 4302. Nathan Hendren (MIT): “A Welfare Analysis of Policies Impacting Climate Change” Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98154392122
May 5, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Industrial Organization	Volker Nocke (Mannheim): Oligopoly, Complementarities, and Transformed Potentials
May 5, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Seminar in Macroeconomics	Christian Bayer (University of Bonn): Unequal Lives — Heterogeneity in income risk and household portfolios
May 5, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Daniela Borja Arriaga (Northwestern University): "Title TBA”
May 2, 20252:00 PM - 3:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Brian Livingston (Northwestern University): "Changes in the Fiscal Response to Deficits”
May 2, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Economic History Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Alex Weinberg Title: Urban Scars: The Persistent Effects of 1960s Civil Unrest Abstract: Why are once-thriving central city neighborhoods today home to few businesses? I study the dynamics of neighborhood decline in the wake of 1964–1969 urban unrest. Using newly digitized telephone directories, I document that census tracts directly impacted by riots experienced a persistent decline in business activity relative to comparable areas. To study mechanisms and understand consequences for efficiency and policy, I develop a dynamic quantitative spatial model of firm location choice.
May 1, 20255:15 PM - 6:15 PM	Environmental Economics Lecture	Join us for an engaging lecture on environmental economics, featuring short presentations by leading scholars in the field. Professor Diego Känzig will explore the intersection of macroeconomics, climate change, and inequality, shedding light on how energy dynamics and economic disparities shape business cycles and policy responses. Professor Mar Reguant will discuss the economics of energy, with a focus on how renewable power is reshaping the economics of electricity markets in various parts of the globe. The event will conclude with a discussion and Q&A session led by Professor Mark Witte, Director of Undergraduate Studies, offering an opportunity to further explore these pressing issues and their broader economic implications.
May 1, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Development Economics	Russell Morton (Yale): Value Creation and Value Capture in Indian Garment Manufacturing
May 1, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM	Development Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Matteo Ruzzante
May 1, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	HELP Workshop Lunch	Speakers: Lydia Cao Title: Step Therapy: Balancing Physician Expertise and Cost Saving Abstract: In this project, I examine the trade-offs involved in insurer interventions in physicians’ prescribing decisions, focusing on a widely used cost-containment protocol known as step therapy (ST), or “fail-first.” ST is typically applied to expensive brand-name drugs, requiring prescribers to first try a generic or lower-cost alternative. Within a principal-agent framework, insurers use ST to (1) align physician behavior with their own preferences and (2) reduce inefficient drug trials, particularly when physicians lack a strong informational advantage. Using data on antidiabetic drugs in Medicare Part D, I show that ST reduces the use of restricted drugs and delays their initiation. These effects are concentrated in early prescribing decisions, highlighting the role of constrained physician experimentation. To quantify the mechanisms of incentive alignment and limited experimentation, I plan to estimate a structural model of physician drug choice and insurer ST policy setting. By recovering the joint distribution of physician ability and preferences, along with insurer incentives, I will assess the welfare implications of alternative ST designs and related policies that govern physician autonomy and insurer behavior.
April 30, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Economic History	Karen Clay (Carnegie Mellon): The social lifecycle impacts of power plant siting in the historical United States
April 30, 202512:30 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 30, 202512:00 PM - 1:00 PM	Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Andrea Ferrara
April 30, 202512:00 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 30, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	James Atkins (Northwestern University): "App Store Competition”
April 29, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Seminar in Econometrics	Mikkel Soelvsten (AU): TBA
April 29, 20252:30 PM - 4:00 PM	Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics	Jon Gruber (MIT): Investing in Mothers? The Long-Run Impact of a Universal Childcare Program on Maternal Work and Income
April 28, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Industrial Organization	Jean-François Houde (UW Madison): TBD
April 28, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Seminar in Macroeconomics	Raghuram Rajan (Chicago Booth): Debt and Assets
April 28, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Aastha Rajan (Northwestern University): "Mail and Mobility: The Economic Impact of Postal Service Employment on Black Families”
April 25, 20258:30 AM - 5:00 PM	Conference in Honor of Bob Gordon	Sponsored by: Center for International Macroeconomics Center for Economic History Please email mariya.acherkan@northwestern.edu to RSVP
April 24, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Development Economics	Jonathan Zinman (Dartmouth): Working it out: Randomized restructuring and entrepreneurial effort in a collateralized debt market
April 24, 202512:15 PM - 1:15 PM	Development Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Johanna Rayl Title: Redistribution with Limited Information: Fuel Subsidies and Cash Transfers in Indonesia Abstract: We study optimal design of cash and in-kind redistribution in a setting with limited information: cash transfers and fuel subsidies in Indonesia. In 2005, the government shifted spending away from a costly and regressive consumer fossil fuel subsidy and towards a targeted cash transfer program, which was hindered by the government’s limited ability to identify low-income households. In our model, a planner with distributional preferences may prefer in-kind over cash mechanisms if the targeting benefits of self-selection over the in-kind good outweigh the inefficiencies associated with subsidization. An optimal in-kind (subsidy) transfer can improve welfare depending on the joint distribution of covariates used for targeting cash transfers with parameters governing consumption of the in-kind good. We take this model to the data in the Indonesian setting, estimating household preferences for fuel by exploiting large exogenous shocks to fuel prices, and solving for the optimal policy given a limited government information set.
April 24, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	HELP Workshop Lunch	Speaker: Johanna Rayl
April 23, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Economic History	Alex Whalley (Calgary): Researchers, Ideas, and Economic Growth: Evidence from Vietnam War Draft Avoidance
April 23, 202512:00 PM - 1:00 PM	Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Kwok Yan Chiu
April 23, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Rosario Cisternas (Northwestern University): "Discrimination Despite Bans: The Role of Limited Awareness and Sales Agents in the Chilean Health Insurance Market”
April 22, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Seminar in Econometrics	Eric Auerbach (Northwestern): Discrepancy-based inference for observational studies.
April 21, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Industrial Organization	Lorenzo Magnolfi (UW Madison): “Market Counterfactuals with Nonparametric Supply: An ML/AI Approach,” joint with Harold Chiang, Jack Collison, and Chris Sullivan Abstract: This paper develops a flexible approach to perform market counterfactuals using machine learning methods and nonparametric structure from economics. While stan- dard structural methods rely on restrictive assumptions about firm conduct and cost, we propose a data-driven framework that relaxes these constraints when rich market data are available. Building on the identification results of Berry and Haile (2014), we develop a nonparametric model of supply that nests traditional conduct specifications while allowing for more complex competitive interactions. We adapt the Variational Method of Moments (VMM) (Bennett and Kallus, 2023) to estimate this flexible model, addressing the endogeneity of market shares and the high dimensionality of the prob- lem. Our approach enables a wide range of counterfactual exercises including tax policy analysis, product regulation, and merger simulation. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that our method substantially outperforms standard approaches; applied to the American Airlines-US Airways merger, our method produces more accurate post-merger price predictions.
April 21, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Seminar in Macroeconomics	Joe Kaboski (Notre Dame): Information Spreads (with Jasmin Xiao and Antonio Falato) Abstract: We propose a financially-driven business cycle propagation mechanism in which firm credit spreads arise from default concerns under incomplete information. Investors learn from public information and adjust expectations about firm creditworthiness downward in response to a deterioration in the profit outlook or increase in uncertainty. Empirically, we show that spreads and real outcomes -- both at the aggregate and firm-level -- respond predictably to the new information summarized in professional forecast revisions. Quantitatively, the model explains the high level and variation of credit spreads and the patterns in responding to public information, and establishes a novel amplification mechanism whereby credit spreads transmit changes in public information and its uncertainty to investment and the real economy.
April 21, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Jialu Sun (Northwestern University): "Regulation, Deregulation, and Leverage: A Historical Look at Intermediary Asset Pricing”
April 18, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Economic History Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Christopher Sims Title: The Origins of the Nitrogen Revolution (joint with Matteo Ruzzante) Abstract: Natural soil endowments have historically constrained agricultural productivity and population growth. The 19th century witnessed technological breakthroughs, such as nitrogenous fertilizers, which alleviated these constraints and paved the way to more intensive farming. In this paper, we examine the introduction and rapid diffusion of guano in 19th century England. We first establish that nitrogen deficiency shaped cropping patterns prior to guano’s arrival. Drawing on newly digitized agricultural census data and leveraging the discovery of Peruvian guano as a natural experiment, we show that nitrogen-poor areas reallocated their production toward nitrogen-demanding, more profitable crops. These same areas also experienced increases in livestock counts, consistent with a shift to “high farming” practices. The effects are driven by (i) areas with heavy soils, where fertilizers complemented a contemporary innovation in drainage, and (ii) regions with initially lower agricultural productivity. Our results are corroborated with analysis using detailed price and sales data covering a panel of English towns over the same period. We conclude by discussing preliminary work on the welfare implications of this shock.
April 17, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	HELP Workshop Lunch	Speaker: Johanna Rayl Title: Redistribution with Limited Information: Fuel Subsidies and Cash Transfers in Indonesia (with Gabriel Jardanovski and Budy Resosudarmo) Abstract: We study optimal design of cash and in-kind redistribution in a setting with limited information: cash transfers and fuel subsidies in Indonesia. In 2005, the government shifted spending away from a costly and regressive consumer fossil fuel subsidy and towards a targeted cash transfer program, which was hindered by the government’s limited ability to identify low-income households. It is well-known that a planner with distributional preferences may prefer in-kind over cash mechanisms if self-selection over the in-kind good aids in overcoming information frictions. We exploit recent tools from mechanism design to ask whether the optimal in-kind (subsidy) transfer could improve welfare in the Indonesian setting, and how this depends on the government information set. We estimate household preferences for fuel, exploiting large exogenous shocks to fuel prices, and apply a mechanism design approach to solve for the optimal policy given a limited government information set.
April 16, 20251:45 PM - 3:00 PM	Joint Seminar in Economic History and Strategy	Eric Chyn (UT Austin): TBA
April 16, 202512:00 PM - 1:00 PM	Macroeconomics Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Pablo Sanchez
April 16, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Ramya Raghavan (Northwestern University): "The Macroeconomic Effects of Supply Chain Shocks: Evidence from Global Shipping Disruptions”
April 15, 20254:00 PM - 5:30 PM	Seminar in Econometrics	Toru Kitagawa (Brown): Dynamic Targeting: Experimental Evidence from Energy Rebate Programs
April 15, 20252:30 PM - 4:00 PM	Seminar in Health/Education/Labor/Public Economics	Jesse Bruhn (Brown): Path Dependence in the Labor Market: The Long-run Effects of Early Career Occupational Experience
April 14, 20253:30 PM - 5:00 PM	Seminar in Industrial Organization	Eric Richert (UChicago): Efficient Grid Search to Solve Static Games with Private Information
April 14, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Seminar in Macroeconomics	John Grigsby (Princeton): “Are Inflationary Shocks Regressive? A Feasible Set Approach,” joint with Felipe del Canto, Eric Qian and Conor Walsh.
April 14, 202511:00 AM - 12:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Seung Hyeong Lee (Northwestern University): "Giving Up": The Impact of Decreasing Housing Affordability on Consumption, Employment, and Investment ”
April 11, 20252:00 PM - 3:00 PM	Economics 501: Graduate Student Seminar	Netanel Ben- Porath (Northwestern University): "From Community to Society: The Factory System’s Disruption of Social Structure”
April 11, 202512:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Economic History Lunch Seminar	Speaker: Leander Heldring Title: The Success of the Informal State in England Abstract: We estimate the effectiveness of the informal state in Britain. Until the late 19th century, the size of the salaried bureaucracy was about 10 percent of the size of the unsalaried, community based, bureaucracy which supplied public goods, maintained order, and staffed the legal sector. In a new dataset of formal and informal local bureaucrats operating in cities we show that informally incentivized bureaucrats do better on a range of public tasks. Higher level bureaucrats, such as mayors, were motivated by a combination of status and threats of punishment. They were selected from the gentry class, which was culturally focused on public service. Boroughs, which typically did not have direct tax revenue, attracted such individuals that could not be hired at market wages. Only after the Industrial Revolution, when the central state acquired sufficient revenue to pay everyone was the British government formalized.

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