The NBER Reporter 2011 Number 2: Program and Working Group Meetings

The NBER's Program on Law and Economics, directed by Christine Jolls of Yale Law School, met in Cambridge on March 25, 2011. These papers were discussed:

Jonathan B. Cohn and Jay C. Hartzell, University of Texas at Austin, and Stuart L. Gillan, Texas Tech University, "On the Optimality of Shareholder Control: Evidence from the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act"

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

Kathryn E. Spier, Harvard University and NBER, and Albert Choi, University of Virginia, "Should Consumers be Permitted to Waive Products Liability? Product Safety, Private Contracts, and Adverse Selection"

Joel Waldfogel, University of Minnesota and NBER, "Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music Since Napster" (NBER Working Paper No. 16882)

Howard F. Chang, University of Pennsylvania, and Hilary Sigman, Rutgers University and NBER, "An Empirical Analysis of Cost Recovery in Superfund Cases: Implications for Brownfields and Joint and Several Liability" (NBER Working Paper No. 16209)

Special Session on Corporate Governance

Robin Greenwood and C. Fritz Foley, Harvard Business School and NBER, and Sergey Chernenko, Harvard Business School, "Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure" (NBER Working Paper No. 15910)

Alex Edmans, University of Pennsylvania; Xavier Gabaix, New York University and NBER; Tomasz Sadzik, New York University; and Yuliy Sannikov, Princeton University, "Dynamic CEO Compensation"

Viral V. Acharya, New York University and NBER, and Marc Gabarro and Paolo Volpin, London Business School, "Competition for Managers, Corporate Governance and Incentive Compensation"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Public Economics (PE) met at Stanford University on April 7 and 8, 2011. The PE Program's Co-Director Amy Finkelstein of MIT, and NBER Research Associate Julie Berry Cullen of University of California, San Diego, organized this meeting. The following papers were discussed:

Johannes Schmieder, Boston University; Till M. von Wachter, Columbia University and NBER; and Stefan Bender, Institut fur Abreitsmartk – und Berufsforschung, "The Effects of Extended Unemployment Insurance over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Regression Discontinuity Estimates over Twenty Years"

Kory Kroft, Yale University, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo, MIT, "Should Unemployment Insurance Vary With the Unemployment Rate? Theory and Evidence"

Camille Landais, Stanford University; Pascal Michaillat, London School of Economics; and Emmanuel Saez, University of California at Berkeley and NBER, "Optimal Unemployment Insurance over the Business Cycle" (NBER Working Paper No. 16526)

Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, University of California at Berkeley and NBER, "The Effects of Marginal Tax Rates: Evidence from the Interwar Era"

Matias Busso, Inter-American Development Bank; Jesse Gregory, University of Michigan; and Patrick M. Kline, University of California at Berkeley and NBER, "Assessing the Incidence and Efficiency of a Prominent Place Based Policy" (NBER Working Paper No. 16096)

Nicole Maestas and Kathleen Mullen, RAND Corporation, and Alexander Strand, Social Security Administration, "Does Disability Insurance Receipt Discourage Work? Using Examiner Assignment to Estimate Causal Effects of SSDI Receipt"

Lex Borghans, Maastricht University; Anne Gielen, IZA; and Erzo F.P. Luttmer, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Social Support Shopping: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity in Disability Insurance Reform"

Liran Einav and Mark R. Cullen, Stanford University and NBER; Amy Finkelstein and Stephen P. Ryan, MIT and NBER; and Paul Schrimpf, MIT, "Selection on Moral Hazard in Health Insurance"

Paul Niehaus, University of California, San Diego, and Sandip Sukhtankar, Dartmouth College, "The Marginal Rate of Corruption in Public Program"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Working Group on Cohort Studies, directed by Dora Costa of the University of California, Los Angeles, met there on April 8, 2011. These topics were discussed:

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

Reynaldo Martorell, Emory University, "Early Growth and Adult Health and Human Capital: A Pooled Analysis from Five Cohorts from Developing Countries"

Laura Carstensen, Stanford University, "Shifting Temporal Horizons Influence Motivation across Adulthood"

Moshe Buchinsky, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER, and Nicole Maestas, RAND Corporation, "The Evolution of Self-Reported Health"

Anne R. Pebley, University of California, Los Angeles, "Capturing Residential Mobility and Choice in a Longitudinal Survey"

Janice Compton, University of Manitoba, and Robert Pollak, Washington University and NBER, "Family Proximity, Childcare, and Women's Labor Force Attachment"

Paola Giuliano, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER, and Alberto F. Alesina and Nathan Nunn, Harvard University and NBER, "On the Origin of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough" (NBER Working Paper No. 16718)

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Environmental and Energy Economics met at Stanford University on April 8 and 9, 2011. NBER Faculty Research Fellow Lucas W. Davis of the University of Calfornia, Berkeley and NBER Research Associate Lawrence H. Goulder of Stanford University organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

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"

H. Spencer Banzhaf, Georgia State University and NBER, and B. Andrew Chupp, Illinois State University, "Heterogeneous Harm vs. Spatial Spillovers: Environmental Federalism and U.S. Air Pollution" (NBER Working Paper No. 15666)

Michael Anderson, University of California, Berkeley, and Maximilian Auffhammer, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Vehicle Weight, Highway Safety, and Energy Policy"

Stephen P. Holland, University of North Carolina, Greensboro and NBER; Jonathan E. Hughes, University of Colorado, Boulder; Christopher R. Knittel, University of California, Davis and NBER; and Nathan C. Parker, University of California, Davis, "Some Inconvenient Truths about Climate Change Policy"

Reed Walker, Columbia University, "The Transitional Costs of Policy: Evidence from the Clean Air Act and the Workforce”"

Robert Deacon, University of California, Santa Barbara; Dominic Parker, Montana State; and Christopher Costello, University of California, Santa Barbara and NBER, "The Efficiency Gains from Coordinating Use of a Shared Resource: Evidence from a Self-Selected Fishery Coop"

Hunt Allcott, MIT, and Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University and NBER, "External Validity and Partner Selection Bias"

Summaries of these papers are available here.

The NBER's Program on Political Economy, directed by Alberto Alesina of Harvard University, met in Cambridge on April 15, 2011. These papers were discussed:

Stelios Michalopoulos, Tufts University, and Elias Papaioannou, Dartmouth College, "The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa"

Roland Benabou, Princeton University and NBER, and Jean Tirole, Institut d'Economie Industrielle, "Laws and Norms"

Nicola Gennaioli, CREI; Rafael La Porta, Dartmouth College and NBER; Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, EDHEC Business School and NBER; and Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University and NBER, "Human Capital and Regional Development"

Alberto Alesina and Nathan Nunn, and Paola Giuliano, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, "On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough"(NBER Working Paper No. 16718)

Irena Grosfeld and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Paris School of Economics, and Alexander Rodnyansky, CEFIR, "Persistent Anti-Market Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement and of the Holocaust"

Daron Acemoglu, MIT and NBER; Aleh Tsyvinski, Yale University and NBER; and Pierre Yared, Columbia University, "A Dynamic Theory of Resource Wars"(NBER Working Paper No. 16682)

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Asset Pricing met at the University of Chicago's Booth School on April 29, 2011. NBER Research Associates Arvind Krishnamurthy and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, both of Northwestern University, organized the meeting and chose these papers to discuss:

Anna Cieslak, Northwestern University, and Pavol Povala, University of Lugano, "Understanding Bond Risk Premia"

Matthias Fleckenstein, Francis A. Longstaff, and Hanno Lustig, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER, "Why Does the Treasury Issue TIPS? The TIPS-Treasury Bond Puzzle" (NBER Working Paper No. 16358)

Michael Johannes, Lars Lochstoer, and Yiqun Mou, Columbia University, "Learning About Consumption Dynamics"

Xing Hu, Princeton University, and Jun Pan and Jiang Wang, MIT and NBER, "Noise" (NBER Working Paper No. 16468)

Jack Favilukis, London School of Economics, and Sydney C. Ludvigson and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, New York University and NBER, "The Macroeconomic Effects of Housing Wealth, Housing Finance, and Limited Risk-Sharing in General Equilibrium" (NBER Working Paper No. 15988)

Harrison Hong, Princeton University and NBER, and David Sraer, Princeton University, "Quiet Bubbles"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The Behavioral Economics Working Group held a meeting on Behavioral Finance in Chicago on April 30, 2011. NBER Research Associates Stefano DellaVigna and Ulrike Malmendier, both of the University of California, Berkeley, organized the meeting and chose these papers to discuss:

Robert F. Stambaugh, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; Jianfeng Yu, University of Minnesota; and Yu Yuan, University of Pennsylvania, "The Short of It: Investor Sentiment and Anomalies"

Matti Keloharju, Aalto University; Samuli Knupfer, London Business School; and Juhani Linnainmaa, University of Chicago, "From Customers to Shareholders: The Effect of Product Market Choices on Investment Decisions"

Aydogan Alti, University of Texas, and Paul C. Tetlock, Columbia University, "How Important Is Mispricing?"

Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University and NBER; Markus Noeth, Hamburg University; and Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER, "The Market for Financial Advice: An Audit Study"

Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, Northwestern University and NBER, "Consumer Credit: Learning Your Customer's Default Risk from What (S)he Buys"

Philipp Krueger, University of Geneva; Augustin Landier, Toulouse School of Economics; and David Thesmar, HEC Paris, "The WACC Fallacy: The Real Effects of Using a Unique Discount Rate"

These summaries may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Corporate Finance met in Chicago on April 30, 2011. Program Director Malcolm Baker of Harvard Business School organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Pol Antras and C. Fritz Foley, Harvard University and NBER, "Poultry in Motion: A Study of International Trade Finance Practices"

Daniel Paravisini and Daniel Wolfenzon, Columbia University and NBER; Veronica Rappoport, Columbia University; and Philipp Schnabl, New York University, "Dissecting the Effect of Credit Supply on Trade: Evidence from Matched Credit-Export Data" (NBER Working Paper No. 16975)

Anat Admati, Peter M. DeMarzo, and Paul Pfleiderer, Stanford University, and Martin F. Hellwig, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, "Fallacies, Irrelevant Facts, and Myths in the Discussion of Capital Regulation: Why Bank Equity is Not Expensive"

Robert L. McDonald, Northwestern University, "Contingent Capital with a Dual Price Trigger"

Oliver Hart, Harvard University and NBER, and Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago and NBER, "A New Capital Regulation for Large Financial Institutions"

Adam Copeland, Antoine Martin, and Michael Walker, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "The Tri-Party Repo Market before the 2010 Reforms"

Jakub W. Jurek, Princeton University and NBER; and Erik Stafford, Harvard University, "Crashes and Collateralized Lending"

Casey Dougal, Joseph Engelberg, Christopher A. Parsons, and Edward D. Van Wesep, University of North Carolina, "Anchoring and the Cost of Capital"

Patrick Bolton and Neng Wang, Columbia University and NBER, and Hui Chen, MIT and NBER, "Market Timing, Investment, and Risk Management"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Education, directed by Caroline M. Hoxby of Stanford University, met in Cambridge on May 5, 2011. The following papers were discussed:

Elizabeth U. Cascio and Douglas O. Staiger, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Skill, Standardized Tests, and Fadeout in Educational Interventions"

Aaron Sojourner, Kristine L. West, and Elton Mykerezi, University of Minnesota, "When Does Teacher Incentive Pay Raise Student Achievement? Evidence from Minnesota's Q-Comp Program"

Ran Abramitzky, Stanford University and NBER, and Victor Lavy, Hebrew University and NBER, "How Responsive is Investment in Schooling to Changes in Returns? Evidence from an Unusual Pay Reform in Israel's Kibbutzim"

Brian Cadena, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Benjamin Keys, Federal Reserve Board, "Human Capital and the Lifetime Costs of Impatience"

Guido Schwerdt, Ifo Institute for Economic Research, and Martin West, Harvard University, "The Road Less Traveled: Impacts of Alternative Grade Configurations through Middle and High School"

Elizabeth Cascio, Dartmouth College and NBER; Nora Gordon, Georgetown University and NBER; and Sarah Reber, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, "The War on Poverty and Educational Opportunity in the South"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Children, directed by Janet Currie of Princeton University, met in Cambridge on May 6, 2011. The following papers were discussed:

Alan Barreca, Tulane University; Melanie E. Guldi, Mount Holyoke College; Jason M. Lindo, University of Oregon and NBER; and Glen Waddell, University of Oregon, "Running and Jumping Variables in Regression Discontinuity Designs"

Prashant Bharadwaj, University of California, San Diego, and Christopher Andre Neilson, Yale University, "Early Life Health Interventions and Academic Achievement"

Sonia R. Bhalotra, University of Bristol, and Atheendar S. Venkataramani, Yale University, "The Long-Run Effects of Early Life Pneumonia: Evidence from the Arrival of Sulfa Drugs in America"

Douglas Almond, Columbia University and NBER; Hilary W. Hoynes, University of California at Davis and NBER; and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Northwestern University and NBER, "Childhood Exposure to the Food Stamp Program: Long-run Health and Economic Outcomes"

David Frisvold, Emory University, "Nutrition and Cognitive Achievement: An Evaluation of the School Breakfast Program"

Nicholas J. Sanders, Stanford University, and Charles F. Stoecker, University of California at Davis, "Where Have all the Young Men Gone? Using Gender Ratios to Measure the Effect of Pollution on Fetal Death Rates"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Health Economics met in Cambridge on May 6, 2011. Program Director Michael Grossman of City University of New York's Graduate Center and Research Associate Theodore J. Joyce of Baruch College organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Dean Lillard and Eamon Molloy, Cornell University, and Andrew Sfekas, Temple University, "Smoking Initiation and the Iron Law of Demand"

George Wehby, University of Iowa, and Jason Hockenberry, University of Iowa and NBER, "Impact of Child Health and Disability on Subsequent Maternal Fertility"

Pinar Karaca-Mandic, University of Minnesota and NBER, and Dana P. Goldman and Geoffrey F. Joyce, University of Southern California and NBER, "Private Insurance and Outcomes for Children with Asthma"

Marah A. Curtis, Boston University; Hope Corman and Kelly Noonan, Rider University and NBER; and Nancy Reichman, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, "Life Shocks and Homelessness"

Robert Kaestner, University of Illinois at Chicago and NBER, and Sara Borelli, University Of Illinois At Chicago, "Effects Of Parental Involvement Laws On Fertility And Socioeconomic Outcomes Of Women Ages 21 To 32"

Andrew M. Francis, Hugo Mialon, and Handie Peng, Emory University, "The Effects of Same-Sex Marriage Laws on Public Health and Welfare"

Summaries of these papers may be available here.

The NBER's Working Group on Organizational Economics met in Cambridge on May 13 and 14, 2011. The following papers were discussed:

Luis Garicano, London School of Economics; Claire LeLarge, SESSI; and John Van Reenen, London School of Economics and NBER, "Firm Size Distortions and the Productivity Distribution: Evidence from France"

Chang-Tai Hsieh, University of Chicago and NBER, and Peter Klenow, Stanford University and NBER, "The Life-Cycle of Plants in Mexico and India"

Lorenzo Caliendo, Yale University, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Princeton University and NBER, "The Effect of Trade on Organization and Productivity"

Yeon-Koo Che, Wouter Dessein, and Navin Kartik, Columbia University, "Pandering to Persuade"

Heikki Rantakari, University of Southern California, "Employee Initiative and Managerial Control"

Florian Ederer, University of California at Los Angeles, and Johannes Spinnewijn, London School of Economics, "Information Search and Revelation in Groups"

Maria Guadalupe, Columbia University and NBER, and Catherine Thomas and Olga Kuzmina, Columbia University, "Innovation and Foreign Ownership"

Ian Larkin, Harvard University, "Paying $30,000 for a Gold Star: An Empirical Investigation into the Value of Peer Recognition to Software Salespeople"

Jin Li and Niko Matouschek, Northwestern University, "The Burden of Past Promises"

Mrinal Ghosh, University of Arizona; Francine Lafontaine, University of Michigan; and Desmond Lo, Santa Clara University, "Delegation and Pay-for-Performance: Evidence from Industrial Sales Force"

Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University and NBER; Benn Eifert, Overland Advisors LLC; Aprajit Mahajan and John Roberts, Stanford University; and David McKenzie, The World Bank, "Does Management Matter. Evidence from India"

Timothy F. Bresnahan, Stanford University and NBER; Rebecca Henderson, Harvard University and NBER; and Shane Greenstein, Northwestern University and NBER, "Schumpeterian competition and diseconomies of scope: illustrations from the histories of Microsoft and IBM"

Summaries of these papers are available here.