Economics of Culture and Institutions
Capital Flows and Debt in Emerging Markets
The Economics of Energy Markets
31st Macroeconomics Annual Conference

State Taxation of Business Income
New Developments in Long-Term Asset Management
Women Working Longer
International Comparisons of Income, Prices, and Production
Productivity in Higher Education

An NBER conference, "Economics of Culture and Institutions," took place in Cambridge on April 9. Research Associate Alberto Bisin of New York University and Faculty Research Fellow Paola Giuliano of the University of California, Los Angeles, organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Alberto F. Alesina, Harvard University and NBER; Salvatore Piccolo, Catholic University of Milan; and Paolo Pinotti, Bocconi University (Milan), "Organized Crime, Violence, and Politics" (NBER Working Paper No. 22093)

Jeremiah Dittmar, London School of Economics, and Ralf Meisenzahl, Federal Reserve Board, "State Capacity and Public Goods: Institutional Change, Human Capital, and Growth in Early Modern Germany"

Christian Dippel, University of California, Los Angeles, and NBER; Stephan Heblich, University of Bristol; and Robert Gold, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, "Globalization and Its (Dis-)Content: Trade Shocks and Voting Behavior" (NBER Working Paper No. 21812)

Sara Lowes, Harvard University; Nathan Nunn, Harvard University and NBER; James A. Robinson, University of Chicago and NBER; and Jonathan Weigel, Harvard University, "The Evolution of Culture and Institutions: Evidence from the Kuba Kingdom" (NBER Working Paper No. 21798)

Enrico Spolaore, Tufts University and NBER, and Romain Wacziarg, University of California, Los Angeles, and NBER, "Fertility and Modernity"

Konrad B. Burchardi, Stockholm University; Thomas Chaney, University of Chicago; and Tarek A. Hassan, University of Chicago and NBER, "Migrants, Ancestors, and Investments" (NBER Working Paper No. 21847)

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/CIs16/summary.html

An NBER conference, "Capital Flows and Debt in Emerging Markets," took place in Washington, D.C., on April 11–12. Research Associates Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan of the University of Maryland and Carmen Reinhart of Harvard University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Laura Alfaro, Harvard University and NBER; Gonzalo Asis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Anusha Chari, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and NBER; and Ugo Panizza, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva), "Lessons Unlearned? Corporate Debt in Emerging Markets"

Vladimir Asriyan, Luca Fornaro, and Alberto Martin, CREI (Barcelona), and Jaume Ventura, CREI and NBER, "Monetary Policy for a Bubbly World"

Serkan Arslanalp, International Monetary Fund, and Takahiro Tsuda, Ministry of Finance Japan, "Tracking Global Demand for Emerging Market Sovereign Debt"

Benjamin Hébert, Stanford University, and Jesse Schreger, Princeton University and NBER, "The Costs of Sovereign Default: Evidence from Argentina" (NBER Working Paper No. 22270)

Carmen Reinhart; Vincent Reinhart, American Enterprise Institute; and Christoph Trebesch, University of Munich, "Global Cycles: Capital Flows, Commodities, and Sovereign Defaults, 1815-2015" (NBER Working Paper No. 21958)



Jaume Ventura, and Hans-Joachim Voth, University of Zurich, "Debt into Growth: How Sovereign Debt Accelerated the First Industrial Revolution"

Gita Gopinath, Harvard University and NBER; Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan; Loukas Karabarbounis, University of Chicago and NBER; and Carolina Villegas-Sanchez, ESADE (Barcelona), "Capital Allocation and Productivity in South Europe" (NBER Working Paper No. 21453)

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/DEMs16/summary.html

An NBER preconference, "The Economics of Energy Markets," took place in Cambridge on April 13. Research Associates Richard G. Newell of Duke University, Meredith Fowlie of the University of California, Berkeley, and Christopher R. Knittel and James M. Poterba, both of MIT, organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Sharat Ganapati, Yale University; Joseph S. Shapiro, Yale University and NBER; and Reed Walker, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, "Energy Prices, Pass-Through, and Incidence in U.S. Manufacturing" (NBER Working Paper No. 22281)

Karen Clay, Carnegie Mellon University and NBER; Akshaya Jha, Carnegie Mellon University; Nicholas Muller, Middlebury College and NBER; and Randall Walsh, University of Pittsburgh and NBER, "External Economies of Shipping Energy Fuels"

Gabriel E. Lade and Ivan J. Rudik, Iowa State University, "Prices, Quantities, and Gas Capture Infrastructure: Reducing Flaring in North Dakota"

Christiane Baumeister, University of Notre Dame; Reinhard Ellwanger, Bank of Canada; and Lutz Kilian, University of Michigan, "Did the Renewable Fuel Standard Shift Market Expectations of the Price of Ethanol?"

Richard G. Newell and Brian C. Prest, Duke University, "Informing SPR Drawdown Policy Using Futures Strips"

Joseph E. Aldy, Harvard University and NBER, "Boutique Fuel Markets and Security-Environment-Economic Trade-offs"

Frank A. Wolak, Stanford University and NBER, "Managing Reliability Risk and the Consumer and Producer Cost of Intermittent Renewables Integration"

Steven E. Sexton and Bryan Bollinger, Duke University, and Kenneth Gillingham, Yale University and NBER, "Household Demand for Solar PV and Price Discriminating Subsidies"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/EEMs16/summary.html

The NBER's 31th Annual Conference on Macroeconomics took place in Cambridge on April 15–16. Research Associates Martin Eichenbaum of Northwestern University and Jonathan Parker of MIT organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Jeffrey R. Campbell, Jonas Fisher, Alejandro Justiniano, and Leonardo Melosi, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, "Forward Guidance and Macroeconomic Outcomes Since the Financial Crisis"

Fernando E. Alvarez, University of Chicago and NBER, and Francesco Lippi and Juan Passadore, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (Rome), "Are State and Time Dependent Models Really Different?"

Paul Beaudry, University of British Columbia and NBER; Dana S. Galizia, Carleton University; and Franck Portier, Toulouse School of Economics, "Is the Macroeconomy Locally Unstable and Why Should We Care?" (NBER Working Paper No. 22275)

Òscar Jordà, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Moritz Schularick, University of Bonn; and Alan M. Taylor, University of California, Davis, and NBER, "Macrofinancial History and the New Business Cycle Facts"

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; Thomas Philippon, New York University and NBER; and Dimitri Vayanos, London School of Economics and NBER, "The Analytics of the Greek Crisis"

Olivier J. Blanchard, Peterson Institute for International Economics and NBER; Christopher J. Erceg, Federal Reserve Board; and Jesper Lindé, Sveriges Riksbank (Stockholm), "Jump-Starting the Euro Area Recovery: Would a Rise in Core Fiscal Spending Help the Periphery?" (NBER Working Paper No. 21426)

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/Macro16/summary.html
and video presentations are at http://www.nber.org/macroannualconference2016/macroannual_2016.html

An NBER conference, "State Taxation of Business Income," took place in Cambridge on May 5–6. Research Associate Joshua Rauh of Stanford University organized the conference. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

William F. Fox, University of Tennessee, and Zhou Yang, Robert Morris University, "Destination Taxation: Road to Economic Success?"

Jason DeBacker, Middle Tennessee State University; Bradley Heim and Justin Ross, Indiana University; and Shanthi Ramnath, Department of the Treasury, "The Impact of State Taxes on Pass-Through Businesses: Evidence from the 2012 Kansas Income Tax Reform"

David R. Agrawal, University of Kentucky, "The Internet as a Tax Haven? The Effect of the Internet on Tax Competition"

Enrico Moretti, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, and Daniel Wilson, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, "The Effect of State Taxes on the Geographical Location of Top Earners: Evidence from Star Scientists" (NBER Working Paper No. 21120)

Justin Marion, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Erich Muehlegger, University of California, Davis, and NBER, "Tax Compliance and Fiscal Externalities: Evidence from U.S. Diesel Taxation"

Brian Baugh and Hoonsuk Park, Ohio State University, and Itzhak Ben-David, Ohio State University and NBER, "Can Taxes Shape an Industry? Evidence from the Implementation of the 'Amazon Tax'"



Alexander Ljungqvist, New York University and NBER, and Michael Smolyansky, Federal Reserve Board, "To Cut or Not to Cut? On the Impact of Corporate Taxes on Employment and Income" (NBER Working Paper No. 20753)

Eric C. Ohrn, Grinnell College, "Investment and Employment Responses to State Adoption of Federal Accelerated Depreciation Policies"

Adele C. Morris, Brookings Institution; David Bookbinder, Niskanen Center; and Yoram Bauman, Carbon Washington, "State-Level Carbon Taxes: Options and Opportunities for Policymakers"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/URCs16/summary.html

An NBER conference, "New Developments in Long-Term Asset Management," supported by the Norwegian Finance Initiative, took place in Cambridge on May 19–20. Research Associates Monika Piazzesi of Stanford University and Luis M. Viceira of Harvard University organized the conference. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Assaf Hamdani, Eugene Kandel, Yevgeny Mugerman, and Yishay Yafeh, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Incentive Fees and Competition in Pension Funds: Evidence from a Regulatory Experiment"

Joseph J. Gerakos, University of Chicago; Juhani T. Linnainmaa, University of Chicago and NBER; and Adair Morse, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, "Asset Manager Funds"

Ralph Koijen, London Business School, and Motohiro Yogo, Princeton University and NBER, "An Equilibrium Model of Institutional Demand and Asset Prices" (NBER Working Paper No. 21749)

Ian R. Appel, Boston College, and Todd Gormley and Donald Keim, University of Pennsylvania, "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Effect of Passive Investors on Activism"

Oleg Chuprinin, University of New South Wales, and Denis Sosyura, University of Michigan, "Family Descent as a Signal of Managerial Quality: Evidence from Mutual Funds"

Alan Moreira, Yale University, and Tyler Muir, Yale University and NBER, "Volatility Managed Portfolios" (NBER Working Paper No. 22208)

Andrea Eisfeldt, University of California, Los Angeles, and NBER; Hanno Lustig, Stanford University and NBER; and Lei Zhang, University of California, Los Angeles, "Risk and Return in Segmented Markets with Expertise"

Nathan Foley-Fisher, Borghan Narajabad, and Stephane Verani, Federal Reserve Board, "Securities Lending as Wholesale Funding: Evidence from the U.S. Life Insurance Industry"

Sergey Chernenko, Ohio State University, and Adi Sunderam, Harvard University and NBER, "Liquidity Transformation in Asset Management: Evidence from the Cash Holdings of Mutual Funds"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/LTAMs16/summary.html

An NBER conference, "Women Working Longer," took place in Cambridge on May 21–22. Research Associates Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz of Harvard University organized the conference. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, "Women Working Longer: Facts and Some Explanations"

Nicole Maestas, Harvard University and NBER, "The Return to Work and Women's Employment Decisions"

Sean Fahle, State University of New York at Buffalo, and Kathleen McGarry, University of California, Los Angeles, and NBER, "Women Working Longer: Labor Market Implications of Providing Family Care"

Annamaria Lusardi, George Washington University and NBER, and Olivia Mitchell, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Older Women's Labor Market Attachment, Retirement Planning, and Household Debt"

Alexander Gelber, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; Adam Isen, Department of the Treasury; and Jae Song, Social Security Administration, "The Role of Social Security Benefits in the Increase of Older Women's Labor Force Participation: Evidence from the Notch Cohorts"

Joshua Mitchell and Adam Bee, Bureau of the Census, "The Evolution of Women's Total Income near Retirement: Evidence from Matched Survey-Administrative Data"

Maria Fitzpatrick, Cornell University and NBER, "Teaching, Teachers Pension, and Retirement across Recent Cohorts of College Graduate Women"

Janice Compton, University of Manitoba, and Robert Pollak, Washington University in St. Louis and NBER, "What about the Surviving Spouse? Life Expectancy and Retirement"

Claudia Olivetti, Boston College and NBER, and Dana Rotz, Mathematica Policy Research, "Changes in Marriage and Divorce as Drivers of Employment and Retirement of Older Women"

Joanna Lahey, Texas A&M University and NBER, "Why Aren't Black Women Working Longer?"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/WWLs16/summary.html

An NBER conference, "International Comparisons of Income, Prices, and Production," took place in Cambridge on May 27–28. Research Associate Robert Feenstra of the University of California, Davis, and Faculty Research Fellow Alberto Cavallo of MIT organized the conference. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Robert C. Allen, New York University Abu Dhabi, "Absolute Poverty: When Necessity Displaces Desire"

Stephen J. Redding, Princeton University and NBER, and David Weinstein, Columbia University and NBER, "A Unified Approach to Estimating Demand and Welfare"

Ingvild Almås, IIES Stockholm University; Timothy Beatty, University of California, Davis; and Thomas Crossley, University of Essex, "Lost in Translation: What do Engel Curves Tell Us About the Cost of Living?"

Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; Viacheslav Sheremirov, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; and Oleksandr Talavera, University of Sheffield, "Price Setting in Online Markets: Does IT Click?" (NBER Working Paper No. 20819)

Robert C. Feenstra; Mingzhi Xu, University of California, Davis; Alexis Antoniades, Georgetown University; and John Romalis, University of Sydney and NBER, "What is the Price of Tea in China? Towards the Relative Cost of Living in Chinese and U.S. Cities"

Jonathan Eaton, Pennsylvania State University and NBER; Brent Neiman, University of Chicago and NBER; and Samuel Kortum, Yale University and NBER, "Obstfeld and Rogoff's International Macro Puzzles: A Quantitative Assessment" (NBER Working Paper No. 21774)

Gholamreza Hajargasht, University of Melbourne, and Prasada Rao, University of Queensland, "Computation of Standard Errors for Purchasing Power Parity Exchange Rates from the International Comparison Program"

Mario J. Crucini, Vanderbilt University and NBER, "Globalization Boom and Bust: A Study of U.S. Automobile Exports from 1913 to 1940"

Robert C. Feenstra, and Robert Inklaar and Marcel Timmer, University of Groningen, "Penn World Table: Version 9.0 and Beyond"

Joel David, University of Southern California; Espen Henriksen, University of California, Davis; and Ina Simonovska, University of California, Davis, and NBER, "The Risky Capital of Emerging Markets" (NBER Working Paper No. 20769)

Robert Inklaar, and W. Erwin Diewert, University of British Columbia and NBER, "Measuring Industry Produc-tivity across Time and Space and Cross Country Convergence"

Robert Hill, Miriam Steurer, Sofie Waltl, and Michael Scholz, University of Graz, "The Treatment of Owner Occupied Housing in the CPI and its Implications for Monetary Policy"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/ICs16/summary.html

An NBER conference, "Productivity in Higher Education," took place in Cambridge on May 31–June 1. Research Associate Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University and Faculty Research Fellow Kevin M. Stange of the University of Michigan organized the conference. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Caroline Hoxby, "Estimating the Productivity of U.S. Postsecondary Institutions"

Evan Riehl, Columbia University; Juan Saavedra, University of Southern California and NBER; and Miguel Urquiola, Columbia University and NBER, "Learning and Earning: An Approximation to College Value Added in Two Dimensions"

Pieter De Vlieger, University of Michigan, and Brian Jacob and Kevin M. Stange, University of Michigan and NBER, "Measuring Instructor Effectiveness in Higher Education"

Paul Courant, University of Michigan, and Sarah Turner, University of Virginia and NBER, "Faculty Deployment in Research Universities"

Veronica Minaya, Columbia University, and Judith Scott-Clayton, Columbia University and NBER, "Labor Market Outcomes and Postsecondary Accountability: Are Imperfect Metrics Better than None?"

Scott Carrell, University of California, Davis, and NBER, and Michal Kurlaender, University of California, Davis, "Estimating the Productivity of Community Colleges in Paving the Road to Four-Year College Success"

Joseph Altonji, Yale University and NBER, and Seth Zimmerman, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Costs of and Net Returns to College Major"

David J. Deming, Harvard University and NBER; Michael Lovenheim, Cornell University and NBER; and Richard W. Patterson, United States Military Academy, "The Competitive Effects of Online Education"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2016/PHEs16/summary.html