Industrial Organization
Economic Fluctuations and Growth
Labor Studies
Law and Economics
Monetary Economics
Environment and Energy Economics

The NBER's Program on Industrial Organization met at Stanford on January 27–28. Research Associate Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University and Faculty Research Fellow Robin S. Lee of Harvard University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Ali Hortaçsu, University of Chicago and NBER; Fernando Luco and Dongni Zhu, Texas A&M University; and Steven L. Puller, Texas A&M University and NBER, "Does Strategic Ability Affect Efficiency? Evidence from Electricity Markets"

Avi Goldfarb, University of Toronto and NBER, and Mo Xiao, University of Arizona, "Transitory Shocks, Limited Attention, and a Firm's Decision to Exit"

David Atkin, MIT and NBER, and Dave Donaldson, Stanford University and NBER, "Who's Getting Globalized? The Size and Implications of Intra-National Trade Costs" (NBER Working Paper No. 21439)

Bruce Blonigen, University of Oregon and NBER, and Justin R. Pierce, Federal Reserve Board, "Evidence for the Effects of Mergers on Market Power and Efficiency" (NBER Working Paper No. 22750)

Takuo Sugaya, Stanford University, and Alexander Wolitzky, MIT, "Maintaining Privacy in Cartels"

Adam Kapor, Columbia University; Christopher Neilson, Princeton University and NBER; and Seth Zimmerman, University of Chicago and NBER, "Heterogeneous Beliefs and School Choice Mechanisms"

Pietro Tebaldi, University of Chicago, "Estimating Equilibrium in Health Insurance Exchanges: Price Competition and Subsidy Design under the ACA"

Summaries of these papers are at: http://www.nber.org/confer/2017/IOs17/summary.html

The NBER's Program on Economic Fluctuations and Growth met in New York City on February 24. Research Associates Laura Veldkamp of New York University and Jon Steinsson of Columbia University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Matthias Kehrig, Duke University, and Nicolas Vincent, HEC Montréal, "Do Firms Mitigate or Magnify Capital Misallocation? Evidence from Plant-Level Data"

Daniel Garcia-Macia, International Monetary Fund; Chang-Tai Hsieh, University of Chicago and NBER; and Peter Klenow, Stanford University and NBER, "How Destructive is Innovation?" (NBER Working Paper No. 22953)

George-Marios Angeletos, MIT and NBER, and Chen Lian, MIT, "Forward Guidance without Common Knowledge" (NBER Working Paper No. 22785)

Barney Hartman-Glaser, University of California, Los Angeles; Hanno Lustig, Stanford University and NBER; and Mindy Zhang, University of Texas at Austin, "Capital Share Dynamics When Firms Insure Managers" (NBER Working Paper No. 22651)

Sang Yoon Lee, Toulouse School of Economics, and Yongseok Shin, Washington University in St. Louis and NBER, "Horizontal and Vertical Polarization: Task-Specific Technological Change in a Multi-Sector Economy"

Michael Gelman, University of Michigan; Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Steven Tadelis, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; Shachar Kariv and Dmitri Koustas, University of California, Berkeley; Matthew Shapiro, University of Michigan and NBER; and Dan Silverman, Arizona State University and NBER, "The Response of Consumer Spending to Changes in Gasoline Prices" (NBER Working Paper No. 22969)

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2017/EFGw17/summary.html

The NBER's Program on Labor Studies met in San Francisco on February 24. Program Director David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Raj Chetty, Stanford University and NBER; David Grusky and Maximilian Hell, Stanford University; Nathaniel Hendren, Harvard University and NBER; Robert Manduca, Harvard University; and Jimmy Narang, University of California, Berkeley, "The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940" (NBER Working Paper No. 22910)

Seth D. Zimmerman, University of Chicago and NBER, "Making the One Percent: The Role of Elite Universities and Elite Peers" (NBER Working Paper No. 22900)

Lars Lefgren, David Sims, and Olga B. Stoddard, Brigham Young University, "The Other 1%: Class Leavening, Contamination and Voting for Redistribution"

David Neumark, University of California, Irvine, and NBER; Ian Burn, University of California, Irvine; and Patrick Button, Tulane University, "Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment" (NBER Working Paper No. 21669)

George Bulman, University of California, Santa Cruz; Robert W. Fairlie, University of California, Santa Cruz, and NBER; Sarena Goodman, Federal Reserve Board; and Adam Isen, Department of the Treasury, "Parental Resources and College Attendance: Evidence from Lottery Wins" (NBER Working Paper No. 22679)

Rachel B. Baker, University of California, Irvine; Eric Bettinger, Stanford University and NBER; Brian Jacob, University of Michigan and NBER; and Ioana Marinescu, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Effect of Labor Market Information on Community College Students' Major Choice"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2017/LSs17/summary.html

The NBER's Program on Law and Economics met in Cambridge on March 3. Program Director Christine Jolls of Yale University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

David Arnold, Princeton University; Will S. Dobbie, Princeton University and NBER; and Crystal Yang, Harvard University, "Racial Bias in Bail Decisions"

Mitchell Polinsky, Stanford University and NBER, and Paul N. Riskind, Stanford University, "Deterrence and the Optimal Use of Prison, Parole, and Probation"

Saurabh Bhargava and George Loewenstein, Carnegie Mellon University, and Justin R. Sydnor, University of Wisconsin-Madison and NBER, "Evaluating Health Insurance Decisions: Health Plan Choices from a Menu with Dominated Options"

Tal Gross, Columbia University and NBER; Matthew J. Notowidigdo, Northwestern University and NBER; and Jialan Wang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "The Marginal Propensity to Consume over the Business Cycle" (NBER Working Paper No. 22518)

Andrew Daughety and Jennifer Reinganum, Vanderbilt University, "Information Suppression by Teams and Violations of the Brady Rule"

Albert Choi, University of Virginia, and Eric Talley, Columbia University, "Appraising the 'Merger Price' Appraisal Rule"

Edward L. Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University and NBER, and Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto, Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona)

, "Securing Property Rights" (NBER Working Paper No. 22701)

Justin Marion, University of California, Santa Cruz, "Affirmative Action Exemptions and Capacity Constrained Firms"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2017/LEs17/summary.html

The NBER's Program on Monetary Economics met in Chicago on March 3. Research Associate Yuriy Gorodnichenko of the University of California, Berkeley, and Faculty Research Fellow Kinda Cheryl Hachem of the University of Chicago organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Ernesto Pasten, Central Bank of Chile; Raphael Schoenle, Brandeis University; and Michael Weber, University of Chicago and NBER, "Nominal Rigidities and the Granular Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations"

Andres Drenik, Columbia University, and Diego Perez, New York University, "Price Setting under Uncertainty about Inflation"

Camila Casas, Banco de la República (Colombia); Federico Díez, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; Gita Gopinath, Harvard University and NBER; and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, "Dominant Currency Paradigm" (NBER Working Paper No. 22943)

Juan Antolín-Díaz, Fulcrum Asset Management, and Juan Rubio Ramírez, Emory University, "Narrative Sign Restrictions for SVARs"

Jeffrey W. Huther, Jane Ihrig, and Elizabeth Klee, Federal Reserve Board, "The Federal Reserve's Portfolio and its Effect on Interest Rates"

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2017/MEs17/summary.html

The NBER's Program on Environment and Energy Economics met in Cambridge on March 3–4. Research Associates Christopher R. Knittel of MIT and Paulina Oliva of the University of California, Irvine, 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, "The Incidence of Carbon Taxes in U.S. Manufacturing: Lessons from Energy Cost Pass-Through" (NBER Working Paper No. 22281)

Joshua A. Lewis, Université de Montréal, and Edson R. Severnini, Carnegie Mellon University, "Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Rural Electrification: Evidence from the Historical Rollout of the U.S. Power Grid"

T. Robert Fetter and Andrew L. Steck, Duke University; Christopher Timmins, Duke University and NBER; and Douglas Wrenn, Pennsylvania State University, "Learning by Viewing? Social Learning, Regulatory Disclosure, and Firm Productivity in Shale Gas"

Frank A. Wolak, Stanford University and NBER, "Assessing the Impact of the Diffusion of Shale Oil and Gas Technology on the Global Coal Market"

Nicholas Ryan, Yale University and NBER, "Is There an Energy-Efficiency Gap? Experimental Evidence from Indian Manufacturing Plants"

James E. Archsmith and David Rapson, University of California, Davis; Kenneth Gillingham, Yale University and NBER; and Christopher R. Knittel, "Household Diversification: The Vehicle Portfolio Effect"

Maximilian Auffhammer, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, "Climate Adaptive Response Estimation: Short and Long Run Impacts of Climate Change on Residential Electricity and Natural Gas Consumption Using Big Data"

Solomon M. Hsiang, University of California, Berkeley, and NBER, "Estimating Economic Damage from Climate Change in the United States"

Achyuta Adhvaryu, University of Michigan and NBER; Prashant Bharadwaj, University of California, San Diego, and NBER; James E. Fenske, University of Warwick (England); Anant Nyshadham, Boston College; and Richard Stanley, UNICEF, "Dust and Death: Evidence from the West African Harmattan"

Kelsey Jack, Tufts University and NBER; Seema Jayachandran, Northwestern University and NBER; and Sarojini V. Rao, University of Chicago, "Environmental Externalities and Intrahousehold Inefficiencies"

Gustavo Bobonis and Leonardo Tovar, University of Toronto, and Mark Stabile, INSEAD (Fontainebleau), "Bombs and Babies: U.S. Navy Bombing Activity and Infant Health in Vieques, Puerto Rico" (NBER Working Paper No. 22909)

Summaries of these papers are at:
http://www.nber.org/confer/2017/EEEs17/summary.html