The NBER Reporter 2012 Number 2: Program and Working Group Meetings

The NBER's Program on Health Care met in Cambridge on March 8 and 9, 2012. Program Director Jonathan Gruber, NBER and MIT, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Charles J. Courtemanche, University of Louisville and NBER, and Daniela Zapata, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, "Does Universal Coverage Improve Health? The Massachusetts Experience" (NBER Working Paper No. 17893)

Subramaniam Ramanarayanan and Jason Snyder, University of California at Los Angeles, "Reputations and Firm Performance: Evidence from the Dialysis Industry"

Amanda Starc, University of Pennsylvania, "Insurer Pricing and Consumer Welfare: Evidence from Medigap"

Vivian Y. Wu, University of Southern California, and Yu-Chu Shen, Naval Postgraduate School and NBER, "The Long-term Impact of Medicare Payment Reductions on Patient Outcomes" (NBER Working Paper No. 16859)

Jason Abaluck, MIT, and Jonathan Gruber, MIT and NBER, "Dynamics of Plan Choice in Medicare Part D"

Summaries of these papers are available here.

The NBER's Program on Environmental and Energy Economics met in Cambridge on March 9 and 10, 2012. Program Director Don Fullerton and Faculty Research Fellow Nolan H. Miller, both of NBER and the University of Illinois, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Garth Heutel, University of North Carolina, Greensboro and NBER, and Christopher J. Ruhm, University of Virginia and NBER, "Air Pollution and Procyclical Mortality"

Jesse K. Antilla-Hughes, Columbia University, and Solomon M. Hsiang, Princeton University, "Destruction, Disinvestment, and Death: Economic and Human Losses Following Environmental Disaster"

Ester Duflo and Michael Greenstone, MIT and NBER, and Rema Hanna, Harvard University, "Up in Smoke: The Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves" (NBER Working Paper No. 18033)

Christopher R. Knittel, MIT and NBER, and Ryan Sandler, University of California at Davis, “Cleaning the Bathwater with the Baby: The Health Co-Benefits of Carbon Pricing in Transportation” (NBER Working Paper No. 17390)

Prashant Bharadwaj and Joshua S. Graff Zivin, University of California, San Diego, and Christopher Neilson, Yale University, "Temperature and Human Capital Formation"

Hunt Allcott, New York University and NBER; Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University and NBER; and Dmitry Taubinsky, Harvard University, "Externalities, Internalities, and the Targeting of Energy Policy"

Harrison Fell, Resources for the Future; Ian Mackenzie, ETH Zürich; and William A. Pizer, Duke University and NBER, "Prices versus Quantities versus Bankable Quantities" (NBER Working Paper No. 17878)

Summaries of these papers are available here.

The NBER's Program on Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, directed by NBER Research Associates Nick Bloom of Stanford University and Josh Lerner of the Harvard Business School, met in Cambridge on March 16, 2012. These papers were discussed:

Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT and NBER, and Heekyung H. Kim, "CEO Pay and Information Technology"

Ajay K. Agrawal, University of Toronto and NBER; Iain M. Cockburn, Boston University and NBER; Alberto Galasso, University of Toronto; and Alexander Oettl, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Why Are Some Regions More Innovative Than Others? The Role of Firm Size Diversity"

Ufuk Akcigit, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, and William R. Kerr, Harvard University and NBER, "Growth through Heterogeneous Innovations"

Leonid Kogan, MIT and NBER; Dimitris Papanikolaou, Northwestern University; Amit Seru, University of Chicago and NBER; and Noah Stoffman, Indiana University, "Technological Innovation, Resource Allocation, and Growth"

Serguey Braguinsky, Carnegie Mellon University; Sergey V. Mityakov, Clemson University; and Andrei Liskovich, John F. Kennedy School of Government, "Direct Estimation of Hidden Earnings: Evidence from Administrative Data"

Fabian Waldinger, University of Warwick, "Bombs, Brains, and Science - The Role of Human and Physical Capital for the Creation of Scientific Knowledge"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on International Trade and Investment met at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on March 23 and 24, 2012. NBER Research Associate Stephen J. Redding of Princeton University organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Runjuan Liu, University of Alberta, and Daniel Trefler, University of Toronto and NBER, "A Sorted Table of Globalization: White Collar Jobs and the Rise of Service Offshoring" (NBER Working Paper No. 17559)

Kalina Manova, Stanford University and NBER, and Zhiwei Zhang, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, "Multi-Product Firms and Product Quality"

Robert C. Johnson, Dartmouth College, and Guillermo Noguera, Columbia University, "Fragmentation and Trade in Value Added over Four Decades"

Bruce Blonigen, University of Oregon and NBER; Lionel Fontagne and Farid Toubal, Paris School of Economics; and Nicholas Sly, University of Oregon, "Cherries for Sale: The Incidence of Cross-Border M&A"

Natalia Ramondo, Arizona State University; Veronica Rappoport, Columbia University; and Kim J. Ruhl, New York University, "Horizontal vs. Vertical FDI: Revisiting Evidence from U.S. Multinationals"

Fernando Leibovici and Michael Waugh, New York University, "International Trade and Intertemporal Substitution"

Andrew B. Bernard, Dartmouth College and NBER; Emily J. Blanchard, Dartmouth College; Ilke Van Beveren, Lessius University College; and Hylke Y. Vandenbussche, CORE, Université Catholique de Louvain, "Carry-Along Trade"

Doireann Fitzgerald, Stanford University, and Stefanie Haller, ESRI, “Exporters and Shocks”

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Public Economics met in Cambridge on March 29 and 30, 2012. Program Director Amy Finkelstein of MIT and NBER Research Associate Karl Scholz the University of Wisconsin organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Henrik Kleven and Mazhar Waseem, London School of Economics, "Behavioral Responses to Notches: Evidence from Pakistani Tax Records"

Liran Einav and Jonathan D. Levin, Stanford University and NBER; Dan Knoepfle, Stanford University; and Neel Sundaresan, eBay Research Labs, "Sales Taxes and Internet Commerce"

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"

Jonathan T. Kolstad, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, and Amanda E. Kowalski, Yale University and NBER, "Mandate-Based Health Reform and the Labor Market: Evidence from the Massachusetts Reform" (NBER Working Paper No. 17933)

Aviva Aron-Dine, MIT; Liran Einav; Amy Finkelstein; and Mark R. Cullen, Stanford University and NBER, "Moral Hazard in Health Insurance: How Important is Forward Looking Behavior?" (NBER Working Paper No. 17802)

David Albouy, University of Michigan and NBER, "Metropolitan Land Values and Housing Productivity"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Asset Pricing met at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business on April 13, 2012. Jakub W. Jurek and Wei Xiong, both of NBER and Princeton University, organized the meeting and chose these papers to discuss:

Leonid Kogan, MIT and NBER; Dimitris Papanikolaou, Northwestern University; Amit Seru, University of Chicago and NBER; and Noah Stoffman, Indiana University, "Technological Innovation, Resource Allocation, and Growth" (NBER Working Paper No. 17769)

Howard Kung and Lukas Schmid, Duke University, "Innovation, Growth, and Asset Prices"

John Y. Campbell, Harvard University and NBER; Stefano Giglio, University of Chicago; Christopher Polk, London School of Economics; and Robert Turley, Harvard University, "An Intertemporal CAPM with Stochastic Volatility"

Ravi Bansal, Duke University and NBER; Dana Kiku and Ivan Shaliastovich, University of Pennsylvania; and Amir Yaron, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Volatility, the Macroeconomy, and Asset Prices"

Andrea Frazzini, AQR Capital Management, and Lasse H. Pedersen, New York University and NBER, "Embedded Leverage"

Ji Shen, London School of Economics, and Hongjun Yan and Jinfan Zhang, Yale University, "Collateral-Motivated Financial Innovation"

Hanno Lustig, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER; Nikolai Roussanov, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; and Adrien Verdelhan, MIT and NBER, "Countercyclical Currency Risk Premia" (NBER Working Paper No. 16427)

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 in Cambridge on April 13-14, 2012. These topics were discussed:

J. Michael Gaziano, VA Boston Healthcare System and Brigham and Women's Hospital, "Million Veteran Program: A 21st Century Mega Cohort within a Health System"

Frank R. Lichtenberg, Columbia University and NBER, "The Effect of Pharmaceutical Innovation on Longevity: Patient-Level Evidence from the 1996-2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and Linked Mortality Public-Use Files"

Steven Lehrer, Queen's University and NBER; Nicholas Christakis, Harvard University; and James Rosenquist, Massachusetts General Hospital, "The Importance of Genetic Modification of Birth Cohort Environments on Risky Behavior: Evidence from the Framingham Heart Study"

Costas Meghir, Yale University; Mårten Palme, Stockholm School of Economics; and Emilia Simeonova, Princeton University and NBER, "Education, Health and Mortality: Evidence from a Social Experiment" (NBER Working Paper No. 17932)

Chulhee Lee, Seoul National University, "In-Utero Exposure to the Korean War and Its Long-Term Effects on Economic and Health Outcomes"

Martha J. Bailey, University of Michigan and NBER, and Andrew Goodman-Bacon, University of Michigan, "The War on Poverty's Experiment in Public Medicine: Community Health Centers and the Mortality of Older Americans"

Stefania Albanesi, Columbia University and NBER, "Maternal Health and Fertility: An International Perspective"

Richard Hornbeck, Harvard University and NBER, and Suresh Naidu, Columbia University and NBER, "When the Levee Breaks: Labor Mobility and Economic Development in the American South"

Evan Roberts, University of Minnesota, and Pamela Wood, Monash University, "Birth weight and Adult Health in Historical Perspective: Evidence from a New Zealand Cohort, 1907-1922"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Corporate Finance met at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business on April 13, 2012. NBER Research Associates Yael Hochberg, NBER and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and Alexander Ljungqvist, NBER and NYU's Stern School of Business, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

John Hund, Rice University; Donald R. Monk, Rutgers University; and Sheri T. Tice, Tulane University, "Apples to Apples: The Economic Benefits to Diversification"

Geoffrey Tate and Liu Yang, University of California at Los Angeles, "The Bright Side of Corporate Diversification: Evidence from Internal Labor Markets"

Zhiguo He, University of Chicago, and Gregor Matvos, University of Chicago and NBER, "Debt and Creative Destruction: Why Could Subsidizing Corporate Debt be Optimal?" (NBER Working Paper No. 17920)

Dirk Hackbarth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Richmond D. Mathews, University of Maryland; and David T. Robinson, Duke University and NBER, "Capital Structure, Product Market Dynamics, and the Boundaries of the Firm"

Casey Dougal, University of North Carolina; Christopher A. Parsons, University of California at San Diego; and Sheridan Titman, University of Texas, Austin and NBER, "Urban Vibrancy and Corporate Growth"

Moqi Xu, London School of Economics, "The Costs and Benefits of Long-term CEO Contracts"

Erik P. Gilje and Jerome P. Taillard, Boston College, "Do Public Firms Invest Differently than Private Firms? Taking Cues from the Natural Gas Industry"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The Behavioral Economics Working Group held a meeting on Behavioral Finance/Housing Bubbles at the University of Chicago's Booth School on April 14, 2012. NBER Research Associates Christopher J. Mayer of Columbia University, Jose Scheinkman of Princeton University, and Robert Shiller of Yale University organized the meeting and chose these papers to discuss:

Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Anatomy of the Beginning of the Housing Boom: U.S. Neighborhoods and Metropolitan Areas, 1993-2009"

Alex M. Chinco, New York University's Stern School of Business, and Christopher J. Mayer, "Distant Speculators and Asset Bubbles in the Housing Market"

Ing-Haw Cheng and Sahil Raina, University of Michigan, and Wei Xiong, Princeton University and NBER, "Wall Street and the Housing Bubble: Bad Incentives, Bad Models, or Bad Luck?"

Sumit Agarwal, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Itzhak Ben-David, Ohio State University, "Do Loan Officers' Incentives Lead to Lax Lending Standards?"

Elena Loutskina, University of Virginia, and Philip Strahan, Boston College and NBER, "Financial Integration, Housing and Economic Volatility"

These summaries may be found here.

The NBER's Program on the Development of the American Economy, directed by Claudia Goldin of Harvard University, met in Cambridge on April 14, 2012. These papers were discussed:

Elizabeth U. Cascio, Dartmouth College and NBER, and Ebonya L. Washington, Yale University and NBER, "Valuing the Vote: The Redistribution of Voting Rights and State Funds Following the Voting Rights Act of 1965" (NBER Working Paper No. 17776)

Dave Donaldson, MIT and NBER, and Richard Hornbeck, Harvard University and NBER, "Railroads and American Economic Growth: A 'Market Access' Approach"

Tomas Cvrcek, Clemson University and NBER, and Nicholas Laurence, Clemson University, "The Spread of Steam Power: How Neighbors Mattered, 1841 – 1863"

Summaries of these papers are available here.

The NBER's Program on Health Economics met in Cambridge on April 20, 2012. 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:

D. Mark Anderson, Montana State University; Daniel I. Rees, University of Colorado Denver; and Benjamin Hansen, University of Oregon, "Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption"

Tinna Laufey Asgeirsdottir and Porhildur Olafsdottir, University of Iceland; Hope Corman and Kelly Noonan, Rider University and NBER; and Nancy E. Reichman, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, "Are Recessions Good for Your Health Behaviors? Impacts of the Financial Crisis in Iceland"

John Cawley, Cornell University and NBER; David Frisvold, Emory University; and Chad Meyerhoefer, Lehigh University, "The Impact of Physical Education on Obesity among Elementary School Children"

Charles J. Courtemanche, University of Louisville and NBER; Garth Heutel, University of North Carolina, Greensboro and NBER; and Patrick McAlvanah, Federal Trade Commission, "Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity" (NBER Working Paper No. 17483)

Geoffrey Joyce and Dana Goldman, University of Southern California and NBER, and Julie Zissimopoulos, University of Southern California, "Digesting the Doughnut Hole"

Daniel Millimet, Southern Methodist University, and Rusty Tchernis, Georgia State University and NBER, "Estimation of Treatment Effects without an Exclusion Restriction: with an Application to the Analysis of the School Breakfast Program" (NBER Working Paper No. 15539)

Summaries of these papers may be available here.

The NBER's Program on Political Economy, directed by Alberto Alesina of Harvard University, met in Cambridge on April 27, 2012. These papers were discussed:

Sumit Agarwal, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; David Lucca, Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Amit Seru, University of Chicago and NBER; and Francesco Trebbi, University of British Columbia and NBER, "Inconsistent Regulators: Evidence From Banking" (NBER Working Paper No. 17736)

Erik Snowberg, California Institute of Technology and NBER, and Pietro Ortoleva, California Institute of Technology, "Confidence and Overconfidence in Political Economy"

Mathieu Couttenier, Paris School of Economics, and Marc Sangnier, Sciences Po, "Living in the Garden of Eden: Mineral Resources Foster Individualism"

Francesco Caselli, London School of Economics and NBER; Massimo Morelli, Columbia University; and Dominic Rohner, University of Zurich, "The Geography of Inter-State Resource Wars"

Nicola Gennaioli, CREI, and Joachim Voth, CREI, Barcelona, "State Capacity and Military Conflict"

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, MIT and NBER; Daniel Keniston, Yale University; Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, IIM Calcutta; and Nina Singh, Rajasthan Police, "Can Institutions be Reformed from Within? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment with the Rajasthan Police"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Children, directed by Janet Currie of University of California, Los Angeles, met in Cambridge on May 10, 2012. The following papers were discussed:

Elizabeth Ananat, Duke University and NBER, and Anna Gassman-Pines, Dania V. Francis, and Christina M. Gibson-Davis, Duke University, "Children Left Behind: The Effects of Statewide Job Loss on Student Achievement"(NBER Working Paper No. 17104)

Maya Rossin-Slater, Columbia University, "Engaging Absent Fathers: Lessons from Paternity Establishment Programs"

Jorge Aguero and Deolalikar Anil, University of California, Riverside, "Late Bloomers? Identifying Critical Periods in Human Capital Accumulation -- Evidence from the Rwanda Genocide"

Achyuta Adhvaryu and Anant Nyshadham, Yale University, "Endowments and Investments within the Household: Evidence from Iodine Supplementation in Tanzania"

Emla Fitzsimons, Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Marcos Vera-Hernández, University College London, "Breastfeeding and Children's Development"

Sara Borelli, IMPAQ International, and Robert Kaestner, University of Illinois and NBER, "Long Term Effects of Abortion Parental Involvement Laws"

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 11, 2012. The following papers were discussed:

Kalena Cortes, Texas A&M University; Joshua Goodman, Harvard University; and Takako Nomi, University of Chicago, "Doubling Up: The Long Run Impacts of Remedial Algebra on High School Graduation and College Enrollment"

Lesley Turner, Columbia University, "The Incidence of Student Financial Aid: Evidence from the Pell Grant Program"

Brian Jacob, University of Michigan and NBER, and Brian McCall and Kevin M. Stange, University of Michigan, "The Consumption Value of Postsecondary Education"

David Deming, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Steve Billings, Harvard University; and Jonah E. Rockoff, Columbia University and NBER, " School Segregation Educational Attainment and Crime: Evidence from the End of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg"

Matthew Wiswall, New York University, and Basit Zafar, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification using an Information Experiment"

Dan Goldhaber, University of Washington, and Duncan Chaplin, Mathematica Policy Research, "Assessing the 'Rothstein Test' Does It Really Show Teacher Value-Added Models Are Biased?"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Working Group on Organizational Economics met in Cambridge on May 18 and 19, 2012. The program was organized by Working Group Director Robert S. Gibbons of MIT. The papers discussed were:

Canice Prendergast, University of Chicago, "The Economics of Wild Goose Chases"

Eric Van den Steen, Harvard University, "A Theory of Explicitly Formulated Strategy"

Marina Halac, Navin Kartik, and Qingmin Liu, Columbia University, "Optimal Contracts for Experimentation"

Heski Bar-Isaac and Joyee Deb, New York University, "Reputation for a Servant of Two Masters"

Rajkamal Iyer, MIT, and Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER, "Ex Post (In)efficient Negotiation and the Breakdown of Trade"

Raghuram Rajan, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Corporation in Finance"

Guido Friebel, Universite de Toulouse, and Michael Raith, University of Rochester, "Silo or Market: Internal Labor Markets in Multi-divisional Firms"

Birger Wernerfelt, MIT, "The Equilibrium Organization of Labor"

Sylvain Chassang, Princeton University, and Christian Zehnder, University of Lausanne, "A Theory of Informal Justice"

Supreet Kaur, Harvard University, and Michael Kremer and Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard University and NBER, "Self-Control at Work: Evidence from a Field Experiment"

Valerie Smeets and Frederic Warzynski, Aarhus University, and Michael Waldman, Cornell University, "Performance, Career Dynamics, and Span of Control"

Camelia M. Kuhnen, Northwestern University, and Paul Oyer, Stanford University and NBER, "Exploration for Human Capital: Theory and Evidence from the MBA Labor Market"

Summaries of these papers are available here.