The NBER Reporter 2012 Number 1: Program and Working Group Meetings

The NBER's Working Group on Entrepreneurship met in Cambridge on December 2, 2011. Working Group Directors Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School and Antoinette Schoar of MIT chose these papers for discussion:

Ola Bengtsson, University of Illinois; Magnus Johannesson, Stockholm School of Economics; and Tino Sanandaji, University of Chicago, "Do Women Have a Less Entrepreneurial Personality?"

Konrad Burchardi, London School of Economics, and Tarek Alexander Hassan, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Economic Impact of Social Ties: Evidence from German Reunification" (NBER Working Paper No. 17186)

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"

Luis Cabral, New York University, "Good Turnover and Bad Turnover: Barriers to Business and Productivity"

Thomas J. Chemmanur, Boston College; Elena Loutskina, University of Virginia; and Xuan Tian, Indiana University, "Corporate Venture Capital, Value Creation, and Innovation"

Deepak Hegde, New York University, and Justin Tumlinson, Ifo Institute at the University of Munich, "Can Birds of a Feather Fly Together? Evidence For the Economic Payoffs of Ethnic Homophily"

The NBER's Program on International Trade and Investment met at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research on December 2 and 3, 2011. Program Director Robert C. Feenstra of the University of California, Davis organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

James Harrigan, University of Virginia and NBER, and Ariell Reshef, University of Virginia, "Skill Biased Heterogeneous Firms, Trade Liberalization, and the Skill Premium" (NBER Working Paper No. 17604)

Thomas Sampson, London School of Economics, "Selection into Trade and Wage Inequality"

Ariel Burstein, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER, and Javier Cravino, University of California at Los Angeles, "Measured Aggregate Gains from International Trade"

Costas Arkolakis, Yale University and NBER; Natalia Ramondo, Arizona State University; Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; and Stephen Yeaple, Pennsylvania State University and NBER, "Innovation and Production in the Global Economy"

Ralph Ossa, University of Chicago and NBER, "Trade Wars and Trade Talks with Data" (NBER Working Paper No. 17347)

Julian di Giovanni, International Monetary Fund; Andrei Levchenko, University of Michigan and NBER; and Jing Zhang, University of Michigan, "The Global Welfare Impact of China: Trade Integration and Technological Change"

Jiandong Ju, University of Oklahoma; Kang Shi, Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Shang-Jin Wei, Columbia University and NBER, "Trade Liberalizations and Global Current Account Imbalances"

Yue Ma, Lingnan University; Heiwai Tang, Tufts University; and Yifan Zhang, Lingnan University, "Factor Intensity, Product Switching, and Productivity: Evidence from Chinese Exporters"

The NBER's Working Group on Household Finance, directed by Brigitte C. Madrian of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Nicholas S. Souleles of University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, met in Cambridge on December 16, 2011. The group discussed these papers:

James J. Choi, Yale University and NBER; Emily Haisley, Barclays Bank PLC; Jennifer Kurkoski, Google, Inc.; and Cade Massey, Yale University, "Small Cues Change Savings Choices"

Victor Stango, University of California at Davis, and Jonathan Zinman, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Borrowing High vs. Borrowing Higher: Sources and Consequences of Dispersion in Individual Borrowing Costs"

Justine S. Hastings, Brown University and NBER, and Ali Hortacsu and Chad Syverson, University of Chicago and NBER, "Advertising and Competition in Privatized Social Security: The Case of Mexico"

Raymond Fisman, Columbia University and NBER; Daniel Paravisini, Columbia University and NBER; and Vikrant Vig, London Business School, "Social Proximity and Loan Outcomes: Evidence from and Indian Bank"

Manuel Adelino, Dartmouth College; Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER; and Felipe Severino, MIT, "Credit Supply and House Prices: Evidence from Mortgage Market Segmentation"

Lee Lockwood, University of Chicago, "Incidental Bequests: Bequest Motives and the Choice to Self-Insure Late-Life Risks"

The NBER's Working Group on Market Microstructure met in Cambridge on December 16, 2011. Tarun Chordia and Amit Goyal, Emory University; Charles Jones, Columbia Business School; Bruce Lehmann, University of California, San Diego and NBER; and Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, University of California, San Diego, organized the program. These papers were discussed:

Albert Menkveld, VU University Amsterdam, "High Frequency Trading and the New-Market Makers"

Paolo Pasquariello, University of Michigan, and Clara Vega, Federal Reserve Board, "Government Intervention and Strategic Trading in the U.S. Treasury Market"

Zhiguo He, University of Chicago, and Konstantin Milbradt, MIT, "Endogenous Liquidity and Defaultable Bonds"

James E. Upson, University of Texas at El Paso, and Thomas H. McInish, University of Memphis, "Strategic Liquidity Supply in a Market with Fast and Slow Traders"

Lawrence Harris, University of Southern California, "The Homogenization of U.S. Equity Trading"

Maureen O'Hara, Cornell University, and Mao Ye and Chen Yao, University of Illinois, "What's Not There: The Odd-Lot Bias in TAQ Data"

The NBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth met at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on February 3, 2012. NBER Research Associates Nir Jaimovich of Duke University and Guido Lorenzoni of MIT organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Gary B. Gorton, Yale University and NBER, and Guillermo Ordonez, Yale University, "Collateral Crises" (NBER Working Paper No. 17771)

Elias Albagli, University of Southern California; Christian Hellwig, Toulouse School of Economics; and Aleh Tsyvinski, Yale University and NBER, "A Theory of Asset Prices based on Heterogeneous Information" (NBER Working Paper No. 17548)

Francisco Buera, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and NBER; Joseph Kaboski, University of Notre Dame and NBER; and Yongseok Shin, Washington University in St. Louis, "The Macroeconomics of Microfinance"

Cosmin Ilut, Duke University, and Martin Schneider, Stanford University and NBER, "Ambiguous Business Cycles"

Ulrike Malmendier, University of California at Berkeley and NBER, and Stefan Nagel, Stanford University and NBER, "Learning from Inflation Experiences"

Greg Kaplan, University of Pennsylvania, and Giovanni L. Violante, New York University and NBER, "A Model of the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments" (NBER Working Paper No. 17338)

The NBER's Program on Industrial Organization, directed by Nancy Rose of MIT, met in Stanford, CA on February 10 and 11, 2012. Timothy F. Bresnahan, Stanford University, and Jakub Kastl, NBER and Stanford University, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Fernando Ferreira, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, and Amil Petrin and Joel Waldfogel, University of Minnesota and NBER, "Trade and Welfare in Motion Pictures"

Jennifer Brown, Northwestern University and NBER, and Dylan B. Minor, Northwestern University "Selecting the Best? Spillover and Shadows in Elimination Tournaments" (NBER Working Paper No. 17639)

Brian Viard, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, and Shihe Fu, "The Effect of Beijing's Driving Restrictions on Pollution and Economic Activity"

Abe Dunn and Adam Hale Shapiro, Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Physician Market Power and Medical-Care Expenditures"

Jason Allen, Bank of Canada; Robert Clark, HEC Montreal; and Jean-Francois Houde, University of Wisconsin, Madison, "Price Negotiation in Differentiated Product Markets: The Case of Insured Mortgages in Canada"

Carlos E. Noton, University of Warwick, "Revealing Bargaining Power through Actual Wholesale Prices"

Liran Einav, Stanford University and NBER; Theresa Kuchler, Stanford University; Jonathan D. Levin, Stanford University and NBER; and Neel Sundaresan, eBay Research Labs, "Learning from Seller Experiments in Online Markets" (NBER Working Paper No. 17385)

The NBER's Program on Law and Economics, directed by Christine Jolls of Yale Law School, met in Cambridge on February 10, 2012. These papers were discussed:

Zhiguo He, University of Chicago, and Gregor Matvos, University of Chicago and NBER, "Debt and Creative Destruction: Why Could Subsidizing Corporate Debt Be Optimal?"

Alberto F. Alesina, Harvard University and NBER; Yann Algan, Sciences Po; Pierre Cahuc, Ecole Polytechnique; and Paola Giuliano, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, "Family Values and the Regulation of Labor" (NBER Working Paper No. 15747)

Ernst Fehr University of Zurich; Oliver D. Hart, Harvard University and NBER; and Christian Zehnder, University of Lausanne, "How Do Informal Agreements and Renegotiation Shape Contractual Reference Points?" (NBER Working Paper No. 17545)

Steven Shavell, Harvard University and NBER, "A Fundamental Enforcement Cost Advantage of the Negligence Rule over Regulation"

Special Session on Consumer Finance

Santosh Anagol, University of Pennsylvania, and Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar, Harvard University, "Understanding the Incentives of Commissions Motivated Agents: Theory and Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market"

Will Dobbie, Harvard University, and Paige M. Skiba, Vanderbilt University, "Information Asymmetries in Consumer Credit Markets: Evidence from Payday Lending"

Dean Karlan, Yale University and NBER, and Jonathan Zinman, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Borrow Less Tomorrow"

The NBER's Program on Labor Studies, directed by David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, met at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on February 24, 2012. These papers were discussed:

Mary Daly and Bart Hobijn, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Theodore Wiles, The Analysis Group, "Aggregate Real Wages: Macro Fluctuations and Micro Drivers"

John M. Abowd, Cornell University and NBER, and Ian M. Schmutte, University of Georgia, "Endogenous Mobility"

Johannes Schmieder, Boston University; Till M. von Wachter, Columbia University and NBER; and Stefan Bender, Institute for Employment Research, "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Extensions on Reemployment Wages"

Gregorio S. Caetano, University of Rochester, and Vikram Maheshri, University of Houston, "School Segregation and the Identification of Tipping Points"

Thomas Buser and Hessel Oosterbeek, University of Amsterdam, and Muriel Niederle, Stanford University and NBER, "Gender, Competition and Career Choices"

Ernesto Dal Bo, University of California at Berkeley and NBER; Frederico Finan, University of California at Berkeley; and Martin Rossi, Universidad de San Andres, "Strengthening State Capabilities: The Role of Financial Incentives in the Call to Public Service"

Eric A. Hanushek, Stanford University and NBER; Ludger Woessmann, University of Munich; and Lei Zhang, Tsinghua University, "General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Life-Cycle" (NBER Working Paper No. 17504)

The NBER's Monetary Economics Program met at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on March 2, 2012. NBER Research Associates Ricardo Reis of Columbia University and Mark W. Watson of Princeton University organized this program:

Markus K. Brunnermeier, Princeton University and NBER, and Yuliy Sannikov, Princeton University, "The I Theory of Money"

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; Pablo A. Guerrón-Quintana, North Carolina State University; Keith Kuester, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; and Juan Rubio-Ramírez, Duke University, "Fiscal Volatility Shocks and Economic Activity"

Emmanuel Farhi and Gita Gopinath, Harvard University and NBER, and Oleg Itskhoki, Princeton University and NBER, "Fiscal Devaluations"

Eric T. Swanson and John Williams, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, "Measuring the Effect of the Zero Lower Bound on Medium- and Longer-Term Interest Rates"

Fernando E. Alvarez, University of Chicago and NBER, and Francesco Lippi, University of Sassari, "Price Setting with Menu Cost for Multi-product Firms"

Carola Frydman, Boston University and NBER, and Eric Hilt, Wellesley College and NBER, "The Panic of 1907: JP Morgan, Trust Companies, and the Impact of the Financial Crisis"

The NBER's Program on International Finance and Macroeconomics met in Cambridge on March 9, 2012. NBER Research Associates Kristin Forbes of MIT and Helene Rey of London Business School organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Jack Favilukis, London School of Economics, and Sydney C. Ludvigson and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, New York University and NBER, "Foreign Ownership of U.S. Safe Assets: Good or Bad?"

Matteo Maggiori, University of California at Berkeley, "Financial Intermediation, International Risk Sharing, and Reserve Currencies"

Gabriel Zucman, Paris School of Economics, "The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. Net Debtors or Net Creditors?"

Marcel Fratzscher, Marco Lo Duca, and Roland Straub, European Central Bank, "Quantitative Easing, Portfolio Choice and International Capital Flows"

Viral V. Acharya, New York University and NBER, and Raghuram Rajan, University of Chicago and NBER, "Sovereign Debt, Government Myopia and the Financial Sector"

Robin Greenwood, Harvard University and NBER; Augustin Landier, Toulouse School of Economics; and David Thesmar, HEC Paris, "Vulnerable Banks"

Meghana Ayyagari, George Washington University; Asli Demirguc-Kunt, The World Bank; and Vojislav Maksimovic, University of Maryland, "Do Phoenix Miracles Exist? Role of Financial Markets in Firm-Level Recovery from Financial Crises"