The NBER Reporter 2010 Number 4: Program and Working Group Meetings


Economic Fluctuations and Growth Research Meeting
Chinese Economy Working Group Meets
The Economics of Household Saving
Market Design Working Group
IFM Program Meeting
Corporate Finance
Labor Studies Program Meeting
Behavioral Finance Meeting
Asset Pricing Program Meeting

Public Economics Program Meeting
Monetary Economics Program Meeting
Education Program Meets
Political Economy Meeting
Entrepreneurship Working Group Meeting
International Trade and Investment
Productivity Program Meeting
Organizational Economics Meeting
Market Microstructure Group Meets

Economic Fluctuations and Growth Research Meeting

The NBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth met at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on October 1, 2010. NBER Research Associates John Haltiwanger, University of Maryland, and Sergio Rebelo, Northwestern University, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Jonathan Parker, Northwestern University and NBER; Nicholas S. Souleles, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; David Johnson, Bureau of the Census; and Robert McClelland, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Consumer Spending and the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008"

    Lubos Pastor and Pietro Veronesi, University of Chicago and NBER, "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices"

    Lutz Kilian and Dan Murphy, University of Michigan, "The Role of Inventories and Speculative Trading in the Global Market for Crude Oil"

    Gadi Barlevy and Jonas Fisher, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, "Mortgage Choices and Housing Speculation"

    Zhiguo He, University of Chicago, and Arvind Krishnamurthy, Northwestern University and NBER, "Intermediary Asset Pricing"

    Francois Gourio, Boston University and NBER, and Leena Rudanko, Boston University, "Customer Capital"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Chinese Economy Working Group Meets

The NBER's Working Group on the Chinese Economy, directed by Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia University, met in Cambridge on October 1 and 2, 2010. Hanming Fang, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, organized the meeting with Wei. These papers were discussed:

    Jun Qian, Boston College; Philip Strahan, Boston College and NBER; and Zhishu Yang, Tsinghua University, "The Impact of Organizational and Incentive Structures on Soft Information: Evidence from Bank Lending"

    Hongbin Cai, Li-An Zhou, and Yuyu Chen, Beijing University; and Hanming Fang, "Microinsurance, Trust, and Economic Development: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Field Experiment"

    Abhijit Banerjee, MIT and NBER; Xin Meng, ANU; and Nancy Qian, Yale University and NBER, "The Life Cycle Model and Household Savings: Micro Evidence from Urban China"

    Loren Brandt, Trevor V. E. Tombe, and Xiaodong Zhu, University of Toronto, "Factor Market Distortion across Time, Space and Sectors in China"

    Qingyuan Du, Columbia University, and Shang-Jin Wei, "A Sexually Unbalanced Model of Current Account Imbalances" (NBER Working Paper No. 16000)

    Ravi Jagannathan, Kellogg Graduate School of Management and NBER; Mudit Kapoor, Indian School of Business; and Ernst Schaumburg, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "Why are we in a Recession? The Financial Crisis is the Symptom not the Disease!"

    Gabriella Conti, University of Chicago; James J. Heckman, University of Chicago and NBER; and Yi Jun Jian and Junsen Zhang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, "Early Health Shocks, Parental Responses, and Child Outcomes"

    Douglas Almond, Columbia University and NBER; Yuyu Chen, Peking University; Avraham Ebenstein, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Michael Greenstone, MIT and NBER; and Hongbin Li, Tsinghua University, "The Long-Run Impact of Air Pollution on Life Expectancy: Evidence from China's Huai River Policy"

    Galina Hale, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Cheryl Long, Colgate University, "If You Try, You'll Get By"

    Peter Zeitz, University of California, Los Angeles, "Short-Run Incentives and Myopic Behavior: Evidence from State-Owned Enterprises in China"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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The Economics of Household Saving

NBER Research Associates and Working Group co-directors Brigitte Madrian of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Nicholas Souleles of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Peter Tufano of the Harvard Business School, organized a meeting of the Household Finance Group in Cambridge on October 8, 2010. These papers were discussed:

    Santosh Anagol, University of Pennsylvania, and Shawn A. Cole and Shayak Sarkar, Harvard University, "Bad Advice: Explaining the Persistence of Whole Life Insurance"

    Sumit Agarwal and Gene Amromin, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Itzhak Ben-David, Ohio State University; Douglas Evanoff, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; and Souphala Chomsisengphet, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, "Market-Based Loss Mitigation Practices for Troubled Mortgages Following the Financial Crisis"

    Daniel Cooper, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, "Home Equity Borrowing and Household Behavior in the 2000s"

    Michael Lovenheim, Cornell University, and C. Lockwood Reynolds, Kent State University, "The Effect of Housing Wealth on College Choice: Evidence from the Housing Boom"

    Santosh Anagol and Hoikwang Kim, University of Pennsylvania, "The Impact of Shrouded Fees: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in the Indian Mutual Funds Market"

Summaries may be found here.

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Market Design Working Group

The NBER's Working Group on Market Design, directed by Susan Athey and Parag A. Pathak of NBER and MIT, met in Cambridge on October 8 and 9, 2010. These papers were discussed:

    Dirk Bergemann and Johannes Horner, Yale University, "Should Auctions Be Transparent?"

    Simon Board, University of California, Los Angeles, and Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford University, "Optimal Dynamic Auctions for Durable Goods: Posted Prices and Fire Sales"

    Mallesh M. Pai, University of Pennsylvania, and Rakesh Vohra, Northwestern University, "Optimal Auctions with Financially Constrained Bidders"

    Lawrence M. Ausubel and Oleg V. Baranov, University of Maryland, "Core-Selecting Auctions with Incomplete Information"

    Sven Seuken and David C. Parkes, Harvard University, and Denis Charles, Max Chickering, Mary Czerwinski, Kamal Jain, Sidd Puri, and Desney Tan, Microsoft Research, "Hidden Market Design: A Peer-to-Peer Backup Market"

    Gary E. Bolton, Penn State University; Ben Greiner, University of New South Wales; and Axel Ockenfels, University of Cologne, "Engineering Trust: Reciprocity in the Production of Reputation Information"

    Soohyung Lee, University of Maryland; Muriel Niederle, Stanford University and NBER, and Hye-Rim Kim and Woo-Keum Kim, Korea Marriage Culture Institute, "Propose with a Rose? Signaling in Internet Dating Markets"

    Yinghua He, Toulouse School of Economics, "Gaming School Choice Mechanisms"

    Federico Echenique, SangMok Lee, and Matthew Shum, California Institute of Technology, "Aggregate Matchings"

    Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University; Parag A. Pathak; and Alvin E. Roth, Harvard University and NBER, "Matching with Couples: Incentives and Stability in Large Markets"

    Itai Ashlagi, MIT, and Alvin Roth, "Participation (versus Free Riding) in Large Scale, Multi-Hospital Kidney Exchange"

    Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford University, and Michael Schwarz, Yahoo! Labs, "Reserve Prices in Internet Advertising Auctions: A Field Experiment"

    Susan Athey; Dominic Coey, Stanford University; and Jonathan D. Levin, Stanford University and NBER, "Subsidies and Set-Asides in Auctions"

    Marek Pycia, University of California, Los Angeles, and Utku Unver, Boston College, "Incentive Compatible Allocation and Exchange of Discrete Resources"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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IFM Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on International Finance and Macroeconomics met in Cambridge on October 22, 2010. NBER Research Associates Charles Engel, University of Wisconsin, and Linda Tesar, University of Michigan, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Laura Alfaro, Harvard University and NBER; Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, University of Houston and NBER; and Vadym Volosovych, Erasmus University Rotterdam, "International Capital Allocation, Sovereign Borrowing, and Growth"

Jonathan Eaton, Pennsylvania State University and NBER; and Samuel S. Kortum, Brent Neiman, and John Romalis, University of Chicago and NBER, "Trade and the Global Recession"

Andrei Levchenko, University of Michigan and NBER, and Jing Zhang, University of Michigan, "The Evolution of Comparative Advantage: Measurement and Welfare Implications"

Nicola Gennaioli and Alberto Martin, CREI, and Stefano Rossi, Imperial College Business School, "Sovereign Default, Domestic Banks, and Financial Institutions"

Christopher Erceg and Jesper Linde, Federal Reserve Board, "Asymmetric Shocks in a Currency Union with Monetary and Fiscal Handcuffs"

Nicola Borri, LUISS, and Adrien Verdelhan, MIT and NBER, "Sovereign Risk Premia

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Corporate Finance

The NBER's Program on Corporate Finance met in Cambridge on October 29. Program Director Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura, University of Michigan, "TARP Investments: Financials and Politics"

    Bernadette Minton, Ohio State University; Jerome P. Taillard, Boston College; and Rohan Williamson, Georgetown University, "Do Independence and Financial Expertise of the Board Matter for Risk Taking and Performance?"

    Kathleen Kahle, University of Arizona, and Rene M. Stulz, Ohio State University and NBER, "Financial Policies and the Financial Crisis: Impaired Credit Channel or Diminished Demand for Capital?"

    Robin Greenwood and Jeremy C. Stein, Harvard University and NBER, and Samuel Hanson, Harvard University, "A Comparative-Advantage Approach to Government Debt Maturity"

    Bruce I. Carlin, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, and David T. Robinson, Duke University and NBER, "What Does Financial Literacy Training Teach Us?"

    Ji-Woong Chung, Berk Sensoy, and Lea H. Stern, Ohio State University, and Michael Weisbach, Ohio State University and NBER, "Pay for Performance from Future Fund Flows: The Case of Private Equity"

    Ashwini Agrawal, New York University, and David Matsa, Northwestern University, "Labor Unemployment Risk and Corporate Financing Decisions"

    Mark Garmaise, University of California, Los Angeles, and Gabriel Natividad, New York University, "Cheap Credit for Financial Institutions: The Case of Global Microfinance"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Labor Studies Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on Labor Studies, directed by David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, met in Cambridge on October 29, 2010. These papers were discussed:

    Hilary W. Hoynes, University of California, Davis and NBER, and Erzo F.P. Luttmer, Dartmouth College and NBER, "The Insurance Value of State Tax-and-Transfer Programs" (NBER Working Paper No. 16280)

    Joshua Kinsler and Ronni Pavan, University of Rochester, "College Quality, Educational Attainment, and Family Income"

    Erling Barth, University of Oslo and NBER; Alex Bryson, London School of Economics; James C. Davis, U.S. Census Bureau and NBER; and Richard Freeman, Harvard University and NBER, "The Contribution of Dispersion across Plants to the Increase in U.S. Earning Dispersion"

    Daron Acemoglu and David Autor, MIT and NBER, "Skills, Task and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings" (NBER Working Paper No. 16082)

    Brigham Frandsen, MIT, "Union Wage Setting and the Distribution of Employees' Earnings: Evidence from Certification Elections"

    Victor Lavy, Hebrew University and NBER, "Does Increasing Mother's Schooling Reduce Fertility and Increase Children's Education: Evidence from a Natural Experiment on Arabs in Israel"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Behavioral Finance Meeting

The Behavioral Economics Working Group held a meeting on Behavioral Finance in Cambridge on October 30, 2010. Organizers Kent D. Daniel, Columbia Business School, and Tano Santos, Columbia Business School and NBER, chose these papers to discuss:

    Kenneth R. Ahern, University of Michigan; Daniele Daminelli, Politecnico di Milano; and Cesare Fracassi, University of Texas at Austin, "Lost in Translation? The Effect of Cultural Values on Mergers around the World"

    Cary Frydman, Peter Bossaerts, and Colin Camerer, California Institute of Technology; Nicholas C. Barberis, Yale University and NBER; and Antonio Rangel, California Institute of Technology and NBER, "Realization Utility and Regret Signals in the Brain are Associated with Suboptimal Stock Market Transactions"

    Camelia M. Kuhnen, Northwestern University, and Brian Knutson and Gregory R. Samanez-Larkin, Stanford University, "Different Affective Learning Systems Contribute to the Accumulation of Assets and Debt"

    Henrik Cronqvist, Claremont McKenna College, and Stephan Siegel, Columbia University, "The Origins of Savings Behavior"

    Andrea Frazzini, AQR Capital Management, and Lasse H. Pedersen, New York University and NBER, "Betting Against Beta"

    Xavier Gabaix, New York University and NBER, "A Sparsity-Based Model of Bounded Rationality"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Asset Pricing Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on Asset Pricing met at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on November 5, 2010. Organizers Sydney Ludvigson and Lasse H. Pedersen, both of New York University and NBER, chose these papers to discuss:

    Snehal Banerjee, Northwestern University, and Jeremy Graveline, University of Minnesota, "The Cost of Short-Selling Liquid Securities"

    Ke Tang, Renmin University of China, and Wei Xiong, Princeton University and NBER, "Index Investment and Financialization of Commodities" (NBER Working Paper No. 16385)

    Robert Novy-Marx, University of Rochester and NBER, "The Other Side of Value: Good Growth and the Gross Profitability Premium" (NBER Working Paper No. 15940)

    Tim Bollerslev, Duke University and NBER, and Viktor Todorov, Northwestern University, "Tails, Fears and Risk Premia"

    Lubos Pastor and Pietro Veronesi, University of Chicago and NBER, "Uncertainty about Government Policy and Stock Prices" (NBER Working Paper No. 16128)

    Alexander Dyck, University of Toronto, and Adair Morse, University of Chicago, "Sovereign Wealth Fund Portfolios"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Public Economics Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on Public Economics (PE) met in Cambridge on November 4 and 5, 2010. The first part of the meeting focused on "Behavioral Responses to Taxation" and was organized by Research Associates Raj Chetty of Harvard University, who co-directs the PE Program, and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley. The PE Program's Co-Director Amy Finkelstein of MIT, and NBER Research Associate Erzo F.P. Luttmer of Dartmouth College, also organized this meeting. The following papers were discussed:

    Jon M. Bakija, Williams College; Adam J. Cole, U.S. Department of the Treasury; and Bradley Heim, Indiana University, "Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data"

    Lisa Schreiber Rosenmerkel, Internal Revenue Service, and Jenny Wahl, Carleton College, "Crossing the Bar: Predicting Wealth from Income and Estate Tax Records"

    Brian Raub, Barry Johnson, and Joseph Newcomb, Internal Revenue Service, "Rich or Richer? Comparing Estimates for the Forbes 400 to IRS Data"

    Atif R. Mian, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Amir Sufi, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Effects of Fiscal Stimulus: Evidence from the 2009 "Cash for Clunkers" Program" (NBER Working Paper No. 16351)

    Emmanuel Farhi, Harvard University and NBER, and Ivan Werning, MIT and NBER, "Insurance and Taxation over the Life Cycle"

    Jesse Cunha, Stanford University, and Giacomo DeGiorgi and Seema Jayachandran, Stanford University and NBER, "The Price Effects of Cash versus In-Kind Transfers"

    Jeffrey B. Liebman, Harvard University and NBER, and Neale Mahoney, Stanford University, "Do Expiring Budgets Lead to Wasteful Year-End Spending? Evidence from Federal Procurement"

    Damon Jones, University of Chicago and NBER, "Inertia and Overwithholding: Explaining the Prevalence of Income Tax Refunds" (NBER Working Paper No. 15963)

    Syngjoo Choi, University College London; Shachar Kariv, University of California, Berkeley; Wieldand Muller, Tilburg University; and Dan Silverman, University of Michigan and NBER, "Who Is (More) Rational"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Monetary Economics Program Meeting

The NBER's Monetary Economics Program met in Cambridge on November 5, 2010. NBER Research Associates Christopher House and Matthew D. Shapiro, University of Michigan, organized this program:

    Alessandro Barattieri and Peter Gottschalk, Boston College, and Susanto Basu, Boston College and NBER, "Some Evidence on the Importance of Sticky Wages" (NBER Working Paper No. 16130)

    Virgiliu Midrigan, New York University and NBER, and Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Bank of Canada, "Inventories, Markups and Real Rigidities in Menu Cost Models" (NBER Working Paper No. 14651)

    Atif R. Mian, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Amir Sufi, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Effects of Fiscal Stimulus: Evidence from the 2009 'Cash for Clunkers' Program" (NBER Working Paper No. 16351)

    Jaime Guajardo, Daniel Leigh, and Andrea Pescatori, International Monetary Fund, "Will It Hurt? Macroeconomics Effects of Fiscal Consolidation"

    Nicola Gennaioli, CREI; Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University and NBER; and Robert W. Vishny, University of Chicago and NBER, "Neglected Risks, Financial Innovation, and Financial Fragility" (NBER Working Paper No. 16068)

    Robert E. Hall, Stanford University and NBER, "Macroeconomics of the Prolonged Slump"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Education Program Meets

The NBER's Program on Education, directed by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford University, met at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on November 11 and 12. The following papers were discussed:

Patrick Wolf and Brian Kisida, University of Arkansas; Babette Gutmann and Lou Rizzo, Westat; Michael Puma, Chesapeake Research Associates; and Nada Eissa, Georgetown University and NBER, "Evaluation of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Experimental Impacts after at Least Four Years"

Karthik Muralidharan, University of California, San Diego and NBER; Jishnu Das and Venkatesh Sundararaman, The World Bank; Stefan Dercon, Oxford University; James Habyarimana, Georgetown University; and Pramila Krishnan, University of Cambridge, "When Can School Inputs Improve Test Scores"

Steven F. Lehrer, Queen's University and NBER, and Weili Ding, Queen's University, "Estimating Context-Independent Treatment Effects in Education Experiments"

Jane Cooley and Jeffrey Traczynski, University of Wisconsin, "Spare the Rod? The Effect of Sanctions on Schools"

Stephanie Riegg Cellini, George Washington University, and Latika Chaudhary, Scripps College, "The Labor Market Returns to a Private Two-Year College Education"

Eric S. Taylor, Stanford University, and John H. Tyler, Brown University and NBER, "The Effect of Evaluation on Teacher Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Student Achievement Data of Mid-career Teachers"

Cristian Pop-Eleches and Miguel Urquiola, Columbia University and NBER, "Going to a Better School: Effects and Behavioral Responses"

C. Kirabo Jackson, Northwestern University and NBER, "Peer Quality or Input Quality? Evidence from Trinidad and Tobago"

Jeffrey Groen, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Time to the Doctorate and the Labor Market for New PhD Recipients"

Pablo Pena, University of Chicago, "Randomness and the Measurement of Intergenerational Mobility"

Pamela Jakiela, Washington University; Edward Miguel, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; and Vera L. te Velde, University of California, Berkeley, "You've Earned It: Combining Field and Lab Experiments to Estimate the Impact of Human Capital on Social Preferences"

Sheetal Sekhri, University of Virginia, "Affirmative Action and Peer Effects: Evidence from Caste-Based Reservation in General Education Colleges in India"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Political Economy Meeting

The NBER's Program on Political Economy met in Cambridge on November 19, 2010. Matthew Gentzkow, NBER and University of Chicago, and Francesco Trebbi, NBER and University of British Columbia, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Sandeep Baliga and Jeffrey Ely, Northwestern University, "Torture"

    Abhijit Banerjee, MIT and NBER; Selvan C. Kumar, Yale University; Rohini Pande, Harvard University and NBER; and Felix Su, Harvard University Department of Economics, "Do Informed Voters Make Better Choices? Experimental Evidence from Urban India"

    Yosh Halberstam, University of Toronto, and Montagnes Pablo, "Information Contagion in Co-election Environments: Theory and Evidence from Entry and Exit of Senators"

    Alessandra Casella, Columbia University and NBER; Aniol Llorente-Saguer, Max Planck Institute; and Thomas Palfrey, California Institute of Technology, "Competitive Equilibrium in Markets for Votes"

    Efraim Benmelech, Harvard University and NBER; and Claude Berrebi and Esteban Klor, Hebrew University, "Counter-Suicide-Terrorism: Evidence from House Demolitions" (NBER Working Paper No. 16493)

    David Jaeger, City University of New York; Esteban Klor, Hebrew University; Sami H. Miaari, University of Haifa; and Daniele Paserman, Boston University and NBER, "The Struggle for Palestinian Hearts and Minds: Violence and Public Opinion in the Second Intifada" (NBER Working Paper No. 13956)

Summaries of these papers can be found here.

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Entrepreneurship Working Group Meeting

The NBER's Entrepreneurship Working Group, co-directed by Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School and Antoinette Schoar of MIT, met in Cambridge on December 3, 2010. These papers were discussed:

    Geraldo Cerqueiro, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, and Maria Fabiana Penas, Tilburg University, "How Does Personal Bankruptcy Law Affect Start-ups?"

    Lee G. Branstetter, Carnegie Mellon University and NBER; Francisco Lima and Ana Venancio, Technical University of Lisbon; and Lowell Taylor, Carnegie Mellon University, "Do Entry Regulations Deter Entrepreneurship and Job Creation? Evidence from Recent Reforms in Portugal"(NBER Working Paper No. 16473)

    John Asker, New York University and NBER, and Joan Farre-Mensa and Alexander Ljungqvist, New York University, "Does the Stock Market Harm Investment Incentives?"

    Marc-Andreas Muendler and James E. Rauch, University of California, San Diego and NBER, "Mobilizing Social Capital through Employee Spinoffs: Evidence from Brazil"

    Annamaria Conti and Frank Rothaermel, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Marie C. Thursby, Georgia Institute of Technology and NBER, "Show Me the Right Stuff: Signals for High-Tech Startups"

Summaries of these papers can be found here.

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International Trade and Investment

The NBER's Program on International Trade and Investment met at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on December 3 and 4, 2010. Program Director Robert C. Feenstra of the University of California, Davis organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

    Kalina Manova, Stanford University and NBER, and Davin Chor, Singapore Management University, "Off the Cliff and Back? Credit Conditions and International Trade During the Global Financial Crisis" (NBER Working Paper No. 16174)

    Robert C. Feenstra; Zhiyuan Li, Shanghai University of Finance & Economics; and Miaojie Yu, Peking University, "Exports and Credit Constraints Under Incomplete Information: Theory and Evidence from China"

    Jessie H. Handbury, Columbia University, and David E. Weinstein, Columbia University and NBER, "Is New Economic Geography Right? Evidence from Price Data"

    James R. Markusen, University of Colorado and NBER, "Putting Per-Capita Income back into Trade Theory"

    A. Kerem Cosar, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business; Nezih Guner, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona; and James R. Tybout, Pennsylvania State University and NBER, "Firm Dynamics, Job Turnover, and Wage Distributions in an Open Economy" (NBER Working Paper No. 16326)

    Ina Simonovska, University of California, Davis and NBER, and Michael Waugh, New York University, "The Elasticity of Trade: Estimates and Evidence"

    James Harrigan, University of Virginia and NBER, and Victor Shlychkov, Columbia University, "Export Prices of U.S. Firms"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Productivity Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on Technological Progress & Productivity Measurement, directed by Ernst R. Berndt of MIT, met in Cambridge on December 10, 2010. These papers were discussed:

    David M. Cutler, Harvard University and NBER, "Where Are the Health Care Entrepreneurs? The Failure of Organizational Innovation in Health Care"(NBER Working Paper No. 16030)

    David Meltzer, University of Chicago and NBER, and Jeanette Chung, University of Chicago, "Coordination, Switching Costs, and the Division of Labor in General Medicine: An Economic Explanation for the Emergence of Hospitalists in the United States" (NBER Working Paper No. 16040)

    Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University and NBER; Carol Propper, University of Bristol; Stephan Seiler, London School of Economics; and John Van Reenen, London School of Economics and NBER, "The Impact of Competition on Management Practices in Public Hospitals" (NBER Working Paper No. 16032)

    Diego A. Comin, Harvard University and NBER, and Bart Hobijn, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, "Technology Diffusion and Postwar Growth" (NBER Working Paper No. 16378)

    Timothy F. Bresnahan, Stanford University and NBER; Shane Greenstein, Northwestern University and NBER; and Rebecca Henderson, Harvard University and NBER, "Schumpeterian Competition and Diseconomies of Scope; Illustrations from the Histories of Microsoft and IBM"

    Alberto Cavallo, MIT, and Roberto Rigobon, MIT and NBER, "The Distribution of the Size of Price Changes"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

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Organizational Economics Meeting

The NBER's Organizational Economics Working Group met in Cambridge on December 10 and 11, 2010. Robert Gibbons, MIT and NBER, organized the meeting, with the assistance of Elizabeth Martinez of Massachusetts General Hospital. These papers were discussed:

    Jonathan S. Skinner and Douglas O. Staiger, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Technology Diffusion and Productivity Growth in Health Care" (NBER Working Paper No. 14865)

    Gadi Barlevy, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Derek Neal, University of Chicago and NBER, "Pay for Percentile"

    Rocco Macchiavello, Harvard University, and Ameet Morjaria, Harvard Kennedy School, "The Value of Relationships: Evidence from a Supply Shock to Kenya Flower Exporters"

    Philippe Jehiel, PSE, and Andrew F. Newman, Boston University, "Loopholes: Social Learning and the Evolution of Contract Form"

    C. Kirabo Jackson, Northwestern University and NBER, and Henry S. Schneider, Cornell University, "Do Social Connections Reduce Moral Hazard? Evidence from the New York City Taxi Industry"

    Kenneth Ayotte, Northwestern University Law School, and Henry Hansmann, Yale University, "A Nexus of Contracts Theory of Legal Entities"

Summaries of the papers can be found here.

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Market Microstructure Group Meets

Members of the NBER's Working Group on Market Microstructure met in Cambridge on December 17, 2010. Organizers Charles M. Jones of Columbia University, Bruce Lehmann of NBER and the University of California, San Diego, and Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, University of California, Los Angeles, chose these papers to discuss:

    Doyne Farmer, Austin Gerig, and Fabrizio Lillo, Santa Fe Institute, and Henri Waelbroeck, Pipeline Financial Group, "How Efficiency Shapes Market Impact"

    Jonathan A. Brogaard, Northwestern University, "High Frequency Trading and Its Impact on Market Quality"

    Joel Hasbrouck, New York University, and Gideon Saar, Cornell University, "Low-Latency Trading"

    Andrei Kirilenko and Mehrdad Samadi, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Albert S. Kyle and Tugkan Tuzun, University of Maryland, "The Flash Crash: The Impact of High Frequency Trading on an Electronic Market"

    Amber Anand, Syracuse University; Paul Irvine, University of Georgia; Andy Puckett, University of Tennessee; and Kumar Venkataraman, Southern Methodist University, "Market Crashes and Institutional Trading"

    Cristina Cella, Stockholm School of Economics; Andrew Ellul, Indiana University; and Mariassunta Giannetti, Stockholm School of Economics, "Investors' Horizons and the Amplification of Market Shocks"

Summaries of these papers can be found here.

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