The NBER Reporter 2012 Number 3: Program and Working Group Meetings

The NBER together with the Center on the Japanese Economy and Business, The Center for Advanced Research in Finance, and the Australia-Japan Research Centre held a project meeting on the Japanese economy in Tokyo on June 29 and 30, 2012. The organizers were: Jennifer Corbett, Australia-Japan Research Centre; Charles Horioka, NBER and Osaka University; Anil Kashyap, NBER and the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago; Kazuo Ueda, University of Tokyo; and David Weinstein, NBER and Columbia University. The following papers were discussed:

Takeo Hoshi, University of California at San Diego and NBER, and Takatoshi Ito, University of Tokyo and NBER, "Defying Gravity: How Long Will Japanese Government Bond Prices Remain High?"

Makoto Hazama and Iichiro Uesugi, Hitotsubashi University; Kaoru Hosono, Gakushuin University; Daisuke Miyakawa, Development Bank of Japan; Hirofumi Uchida, Kobe University; Arito Ono, Mizuho Research Institute; and Taisuke Uchino, Daito Bunka University, "Natural Disasters, Bank Lending, and Firm Investment"

David B. Cashin, University of Michigan, and Takashi Unayama, Kobe University, "Measuring Intertemporal Substitution: Evidence from a Consumption Tax Rate Increase in Japan"

Yasushi Hamao, University of Southern California; Kenji Kutsuna, Kobe University; and Joe Peek, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, "Nice to be on the A-List"

Julian Franks, London Business School; Colin Mayer, University of Oxford; and Hideaki Miyajima, Waseda University, "The Ownership of Japanese Corporations in the 20th Century"

Douglas Skinner and Meng Li, University of Chicago, and Kazuo Kato, Osaka University, "Is Japan Really a "Buy"? The Corporate Governance, Cash Holdings, and Economic Performance of Japanese Companies"

Daiji Kawaguchi, Hitotsubashi University, and Soohyung Lee, University of Maryland, "Brides for Sale: Cross-Border Marriages and Female Immigration"

Ryo Kambayashi, Hitotsubashi University, and Takao Kato, Colgate University, "Trends in Long-term Employment and Job Security in Japan and the United States: the Last Twenty-Five Years"

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

The NBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth met in Cambridge on July 14, 2012. NBER Research Associates Varadarajan Chari, University of Minnesota, and Xavier Gabaix, New York University's Stern School of Business, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Alessandra Fogli, University of Minnesota, and Laura Veldkamp, New York University and NBER, "Germs, Social Networks, and Growth"

Ali Shourideh, University of Pennsylvania, "Optimal Taxation of Capital Income: A Mirrleesian Approach to Capital Accumulation"

Atif Mian, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Amir Sufi, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and NBER, " What Explains High Unemployment? The Aggregate Demand Channel"(NBER Working Paper No. 17830)

Arvind Krishnamurthy, Northwestern University and NBER, and Zhiguo He, University of Chicago and NBER, "A Macroeconomic Framework for Quantifying Systemic Risk"

Mikhail Golosov, Princeton University and NBER; Pricila Maziero, University of Pennsylvania; and Guido Menzio, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Taxation and Redistribution of Residual Income Inequality" (NBER Working Paper No. 18151)

Chang-Tai Hsieh, University of Chicago and NBER, and Peter J. Klenow, Stanford University and NBER, "The Life Cycle of Plants in India and Mexico" (NBER Working Paper No. 18133)

Summaries of these papers may be found here.

NBER Research Associate Erik Hurst of the University of Chicago and NBER President James Poterba of MIT, who co-direct an NBER project on "The Economics of Household Saving", organized a meeting of that project on July 21, 2012. The following papers were discussed:

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

Claus Kreiner, David Lassen, and Soren Leth-Petersen, University of Copenhagen, "Consumption Responses to Fiscal Stimulus Policy and the Household Price of Liquidity"

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

Lorenz Kueng, Northwestern University, "Tax News: Identifying the Household Consumption Response to Tax Expectations using Municipal Bond Prices"

William Gale, Brookings Institution; Michal Grinstein-Weiss, Clinton Key, and William M. Rohe, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Mark Schreiner and Michael Sherraden, Washington University in St. Louis, "Long-Term Impacts of Individual Development Accounts on Homeownership among Baseline Renters: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment"

Ralph Koijen, University of Chicago and NBER; Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, New York University and NBER; and Motohiro Yogo, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, "Health and Mortality Delta: Assessing the Welfare Cost of Household Insurance Choice" (NBER Working Paper No. 17325)

Summaries of these papers may be found here.