Department Brown Bag Seminars
Wednesday 12:00 noon – 1:05 p.m.
Online
2020-21
Fall 2020
October 21
Hikaru Saijo
"Uncertainty Shocks in Networks"
Abstract:
Existing studies on uncertainty shocks focus on economy-wide shocks that affect all sectors symmetrically and simultaneously. However, as the recent COVID-19 pandemic underscores, a rise in uncertainty often appears to be concentrated in several specific sectors. In this paper, I study how these sector-specific uncertainty shocks propagate and affect aggregate outcomes. First, using sector-level data, I estimate sectoral TFP and demand processes allowing for stochastic volatility. I show that sectoral TFP and demand display nontrivial fluctuations in volatility even after controlling for economy-wide variations. I estimate local projections and find that an increase in sector-specific TFP or demand volatility reduces output in that sector. Second, I use the estimated sectoral TFP and demand processes to simulate the impact of sector-specific volatility shocks in a calibrated multi-sector New Keynesian model that features input-output networks. I find that sectoral volatility shocks generate contractions in aggregate output, hours, consumption, and investment. The key mechanism is the precautionary pricing motive that multiplies and propagates to other sectors.
November 18
Alan Spearot
"Did COVID-19 Market Disruptions Disrupt Food Security? Evidence from Households in Rural Liberia and Malawi"
December 2
Dohyeon Lee
"Selective Accumulation of Ideas: Accounting for the Decline in Entry Rate"
December 9
Galina Hale
"Effective Academic Presentation Part 2: Zoom and Other Platforms"
December 16
Brenda Samaniego
"The Labor Market Effects of Part-Time Contributions to Social Security: Evidence from Colombia"
Winter 2021
February 3
Grace Gu-Steadmon
"Rational Inattention and Asset Pricing", jointed with Dan Friedman
Abstract:
Will public information (e.g., news) affect the attention people pay to their own private information? Our project will investigate by means of a laboratory experiment with human subjects. The results will help us better understand crisis-prone financial markets, where information acquisition and attention play a central role. We cannot directly observe such individual behavior and measure its impact in available financial market data, but we can tease them out in a properly designed lab experiment.
March 10
Lester Lusher
"Is Peer Review Biased Toward Statistical Significance?"
Abstract:
Studies have illustrated how the distribution of test statistics from published manuscripts lump at certain significance thresholds. Little is known about the underlying mechanisms driving these findings: authors may engage in certain behavior to attain “desirable” p-values (p-hacking), and/or the peer review process may favor statistical significance (publication bias). This study is the first to use data from journal submissions to identify these mechanisms. We first find that initial submissions display significant bunching, suggesting prior findings cannot be strictly attributed to a bias in the peer review process. Desk rejected manuscripts display greater heaping than those sent for review, suggesting editors on average “sniff out” marginally significant results. Reviewer recommendations, on the other hand, are swayed significantly by statistical thresholds. Overall, the distribution of test statistics from published manuscripts display slightly less heaping at the 10% significance thresholds than from rejected manuscripts.
March 17
Unay Tamgac
"TBA"
Spring 2021
March 31
Chenyue Hu
"What Explains Equity Home Bias? Theory and Evidence at the Sector Level"
April 28
Dan Hamermesh, University of Texas at Austin
"How does the economics profession work?"
