The NBER Reporter 2014 Number 4: Conferences

The NBER's Workshop on Methods and Applications for Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Models took place at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on October 17-18, 2014. The workshop also serves as a mid-year meeting of the NBER EFSF Workgroup on Methods and Applications for DSGE Models. Alejandro Justiniano and Leonardo Melosi, both of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; NBER Research Associates Jesús Fernández-Villaverde and Frank Schorfheide, both of University of Pennsylvania; and Giorgio Primiceri of Northwestern University organized this year's meeting. These papers were discussed:

Thien Nguyen, Ohio State University, "Bank Capital Requirements: A Quantitative Analysis"

Cosmin Ilut, Duke University and NBER; Matthias Kehrig, University of Texas, Austin; and Martin Schneider, Stanford University and NBER, "Slow to Hire, Quick to Fire: Employment Dynamics with Asymmetric Responses to News"

George-Marios Angeletos, MIT and NBER, and Fabrice Collard and Harris Dellas, University of Bern, "Quantifying Confidence"

Jinill Kim, Korea University, and Francisco Ruge-Murcia, McGill University, "Extreme Events and the Fed"

Nelson Lind, University of California, San Diego, "Regime-Switching Perturbation for Non-Linear Equilibrium Models"

Borağan Aruoba and Pablo Cuba-Borda, Maryland University, and Frank Schorfheide, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, Macroeconomic Dynamics near the ZLB: A Tale of Two Countries"

Mark Bognanni, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and Edward Herbst, Federal Reserve Board, "Estimating (Markov-Switching) VAR Models Without Gibbs Sampling: A Sequential Monte Carlo Approach"

Regis Barnichon, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Christian Matthes, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, "Measuring the Non-Linear Effects of Monetary Policy"

James Cloyne, Bank of England, and Clodomiro Ferreira and Paolo Surico, London Business School, "The Housing Market and Monetary Policy"

This conference was held to promote the findings of the "Sovereign Debt and Financial Crises" project, which held a research meeting in October 2013. The conference began with a summary of each of the research studies from that project. These summaries were provided by project co-organizers Sebnem Kalemli-Özcan of University of Maryland and NBER, and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and NBER.

Presentations were followed by a panel discussion on sovereign debt markets featuring Guillermo Calvo of Columbia University and NBER, Vítor Gaspar of the International Monetary Fund, and project co-organizer Carmen Reinhart of Harvard University and NBER.

A detailed list of these research studies may be found at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2013/SDf13/summary.html

The NBER held a meeting on "Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roles of Development" in Cambridge on October 24-25, 2014. NBER Research Associates Naomi Lamoreaux of Yale University and John Wallis of University of Maryland organized the program. These papers were discussed:

Margaret Levi, Barry Weingast, and Frances Zlotnick, Stanford University, and Tania Melo, University of Washington, "Opening Access, Ending the Violence Trap"

Victoria Johnson, University of Michigan, and Walter Powell, Stanford University, "Poisedness and Propagation: Organizational Emergence and the Transformation of Civic Order in 19th-Century New York City"

Dan Bogart, University of California, Irvine, "Securing the East India Monopoly: Politics, Institutional Change, and the Security of British Property Rights Revisited"

Qian Lu, University of Maryland, and John Wallis, "Banks, Politics, and Political Parties: From Partisan Banking to Open Access in Early Massachusetts"

Eric Hilt, Wellesley College and NBER, "General Incorporation and the Shift toward Open Access in the Nineteenth-Century United States"

Barry Weingast, Stanford University, "From 'The Lowest State of Poverty and Barbarism' to The Opulent Commercial Society: Adam Smith's Theory of Violence and the Political Economics of Development"

Jacob Levy, McGill University, "Corps Intermédiares, Civil Society, and the Art of Association"

Ruth Bloch, University of California, Los Angeles, and Naomi Lamoreaux, Yale University and NBER, "Legal Constraints on the Development of American Non-Profit Groups, 1750–1900"

Richard Brooks, Columbia University, and Timothy Guinnane, Yale University, "The Right to Associate and the Rights of Associations: Civil-Society Organizations in Prussia, 1794-1908"

Summaries of these papers may be found at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2014/CSf14/summary.html

An NBER Conference on "Economics on Health Insurance Exchanges" took place in Cambridge on December 5, 2014. NBER Research Associates Leemore Dafny of Northwestern University and Jonathan Gruber of MIT organized the program. These papers were discussed:

Natalie Cox, University of California, Berkeley; Benjamin Handel, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; Jonathan Kolstad, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; and Neale Mahoney, University of Chicago and NBER, "Messaging and the Mandate: The Impact of Advertising on Health Insurance Enrollment Through Exchanges"

Keith Marzilli Ericson, Boston University and NBER, and Amanda Starc, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Measuring Consumer Valuation of Limited Provider Networks"

Jonathan Gruber, and Robin McKnight, Wellesley College and NBER, "Controlling Health Care Costs through Limited Network Insurance Plans: Evidence from Massachusetts State Employees" (NBER Working Paper No. 20462)

Michael Dickstein and Mark Duggan, Stanford University and NBER, and Joseph Orsini and Pietro Tebaldi, Stanford University, "The Effect of Market Size and Composition on Health Insurance Premiums: Evidence from the First Year of the ACA"

Jean Abraham, Coleman Drake, and Jeffrey McCullough, University of Minnesota, and Kosali Simon, Indiana University and NBER, "Competing under New Rules of the Game: An Analysis of Insurer Entry and Premiums for Exchange-Based Coverage"

Summaries of these papers may be found at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2014/HIEf14/summary.html

The NBER held a conference on "Means-Tested Transfer Programs" in Cambridge on December 5-6, 2014. NBER Research Associate Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

James Ziliak, University of Kentucky, "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families"

Austin Nichols, the Urban Institute, and Jesse Rothstein, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "The Earned Income Tax Credit"

Robert Collinson and Ingrid Gould Ellen, New York University, and Jens Ludwig, University of Chicago and NBER, "Low Income Housing Policy"

Thomas Buchmueller, University of Michigan and NBER; John Ham, University of Maryland; and Lara Shore-Sheppard, Williams College and NBER, "Medicaid"

Hilary Hoynes, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Northwestern University and NBER, "U.S. Food and Nutrition Programs"

James Heckman, University of Chicago and NBER, and Sneha Elango, Jorge Luis García, and Andrés Hojman, University of Chicago, "Early Education Programs in the U.S.: Background and Evaluations"

James Heckman, University of Chicago and NBER, and Stefano Mosso, University of Chicago, "The Economics of Human Development and Social Mobility"

Mark Duggan, Stanford University and NBER; Melissa Kearney, University of Maryland and NBER; and Stephanie Rennane, University of Maryland, "The Supplemental Security Income Program"

Burt Barnow, George Washington University, and Jeffrey Smith, University of Michigan and NBER, "Training Programs"

Summaries of these papers may be found at: http://conference.nber.org/confer/2014/MTTPf14/summary.html

On December 12-14, 2014, the NBER, along with India's National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), sponsored a meeting in Neemrana, India, that included NBER researchers and economists from Indian universities, research institutions, and government departments. NBER Research Associates Abhijit Banerjee of MIT and Gita Gopinath of Harvard University organized the conference jointly with Shekhar Shah of NCAER.

NBER participants, in addition to the organizers, were: Mark Aguiar of Princeton; Arnaud Costinot and Esther Duflo of MIT; Emmanuel Farhi and Martin Feldstein of Harvard University; Erica Field of Duke University; Matthew Gentzkow of the University of Chicago; Anne Krueger and John Lipsky of Johns Hopkins University; Karthik Muralidharan of the University of California, San Diego; James Poterba of MIT; Thomas Sargent of New York University; and Romain Wacziarg of the University of California, Los Angeles. Raghuram Rajan, who is on leave from the University of Chicago and the NBER while serving as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, also participated. The topics discussed included monetary and fiscal policy in the Indian setting, social policy and transfer programs, financial regulation, the role of education in promoting economic growth, the investment climate, and an analysis of factors that could lead to accelerating Indian economic growth in manufacturing as well as other sectors.

The NBER hosted a Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (CRIW) meeting in Washington on "Measuring Entrepreneurial Businesses: Current Knowledge and Challenges" on December 16 and 17, 2014. The organizers were Javier Miranda of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and NBER Research Associates John Haltiwanger of University of Maryland, Erik Hurst of University of Chicago, and Antoinette Schoar of MIT. These papers were discussed:

John Haltiwanger; Ron Jarmin, Bureau of the Census; Robert Kulick, University of Maryland, and Javier Miranda, "High Growth Young Firms: Contribution to Job Growth, Revenue Growth and Productivity"

Jorge Guzmán, MIT, and Scott Stern, MIT and NBER, "Nowcasting and Placecasting Entrepreneurial Quality and Performance"

Christopher Goetz, Henry Hyatt, Erika McEntarfer, and Kristin Sandusky, Bureau of the Census, "New Public Use Data to Study Entrepreneurship from Linked Employer-Employee Data"

Steven Kaplan, University of Chicago and NBER, and Josh Lerner, Harvard University and NBER, "Venture Capital Data: Opportunities and Challenges"

Arthur Kennickell, Federal Reserve Board, and Myron Kwast and Jonathan Pogach, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, "Small Businesses and Small Business Finance during the Financial Crisis and the Great Recession: New Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances"

J. David Brown, Bureau of the Census, and John Earle, George Mason University, "Job Creation, Small vs. Large vs. Young, and the SBA"

Erik Hurst and Benjamin Pugsley, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "Wealth, Tastes, and Entrepreneurial Choice"

Victor Bennett, Duke University; Megan Lawrence, Harvard University; and Raffaella Sadun, Harvard University and NBER, "Are Founder CEOs Good Managers?"

Johan Hombert and David Thesmar, HEC Paris; Antoinette Schoar; and David Sraer, Princeton University and NBER, "Can Unemployment Insurance Change the Selection into Entrepreneurship?"

Rebecca Zarutskie, Federal Reserve Board, and Tiantian Yang, Duke University, "How Did Young Firms Fare During the Great Recession? Evidence from the Kauffman Firm Survey"

Sari Pekkala Kerr, Wellesley College, and William Kerr, Harvard University and NBER, "Immigrant Entrepreneurship"

Hugo Hopenhayn, University of California, Los Angeles, "Theory of Entrepreneurship"

Summaries of these papers may be found at: http://conference.nber.org/confer/2014/CRIWf14/summary.html