Meetings: Spring, 2013

Law and Economics

The NBER's Program on Law and Economics, directed by Christine Jolls of Yale Law School, met in Cambridge on February 28 and March 1, 2013. These papers were discussed:

• Alexander Dyck, University of Toronto, and Adair Morse and Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago and NBER, "How Pervasive is Corporate Fraud?"
• Edward Glaeser, Harvard University and NBER, and Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law School, "Why Does Balanced News Produce Unbalanced Views?"(NBER Working Paper No. 18975)
• Scott Baker, Washington University School of Law, and Albert Choi, University of Virginia Law School, "Reputation and Litigation: Using Formal Sanctions to Control Informal Sanctions"
• Louis Kaplow, Harvard Law School and NBER, "Optimal Multistage Adjudication"
• Joshua Fischman, Northwestern University School of Law, "Measuring Inconsistency, Indeterminacy, and Error in Adjudication"
• Steven Shavell, Harvard Law School and NBER, "Risk Aversion and the Optimality of Attenuated Legal Change"
• Special Session on Corporate Governance
• John Matsusaka and Oguzhan Ozbas, University of Southern California, "Managerial Accommodation, Proxy Access, and the Cost of Shareholder Empowerment"
• Martijn Cremers, University of Notre Dame, and Allen Ferrell, Harvard Law School, "Thirty Years of Shareholder Rights and Stock Returns"
• Fabio Braggion, Tilburg University, and Mariassunta Giannetti, Stockholm School of Economics, "At the Origins of the Non-Voting Shares' Discount: Investor Preferences vs. Fundamentals"
• Kose John, New York University, and Dalida Kadyrzhanova, University of Maryland, "Managerial Entrenchment Waves"

Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Meeting

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 15, 2013. These papers were discussed:

• Daniel Paravisini, London School of Economics and NBER, and Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER, "The Information and Agency Effects of Scores: Randomized Evidence from Credit Committees"
• Eric Budish, University of Chicago; Benjamin Roin, Harvard Law School; and Heidi Williams, MIT and NBER, "Do Fixed Patent Terms Distort Innovation? Evidence from Cancer Clinical Trials"
• Pierre Azoulay, MIT and NBER; Jeffrey Furman, Boston University and NBER; and Joshua Krieger and Fiona Murray, MIT, "Retractions" (NBER Working Paper No. 18499)
• Daniel Bradley and Incheol Kim, University of South Florida, and Xuan Tian, Indiana University, "Providing Protection or Encouraging Holdup? The Effects of Labor Unions on Innovation"
• Karthik Krishnan, Northeastern University; Debarshi Nandy, Brandeis University; and Manju Puri, Duke University and NBER, "Increased Access to Financing and Firm Productivity"
• Sharon Belenzon and Aaron Chatterji, Duke University, "Eponymous Entrepreneurs"
• Amitabh Chandra, Harvard University and NBER; Amy Finkelstein, MIT and NBER; Adam Sacarny, MIT; and Chad Syverson, University of Chicago and NBER, "Healthcare Exceptionalism? Productivity and Allocation in the U.S. Healthcare Sector"

International Trade and Investment

The NBER's Program on International Trade and Investment met in Cambridge on March 22 and 23, 2013. Program Director Robert Feenstra of University of California, Davis, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

• Alberto Cavallo, MIT; Brent Neiman, University of Chicago and NBER; and Roberto Rigobon, MIT and NBER, "Product Introduction, Currency Unions, and the Real Exchange Rate" (NBER Working Paper No. 18563)
• JaeBin Ahn, International Monetary Fund, "Estimating the Direct Impact of Bank Liquidity Shocks on the Real Economy: Evidence from Letter-of-Credit Import Transactions in Colombia"
• Dennis Novy, University of Warwick, and Alan Taylor, University of Virginia and NBER, "Trade and Uncertainty"
• Andrei Levchenko, University of Michigan and NBER, and Jing Zhang, University of Michigan, "Ricardian Productivity Differences and the Gains from Trade"
• Robert Johnson, Dartmouth College and NBER, and Andreas Moxnes, Dartmouth College, "Technology, Trade Costs, and the Pattern of Trade with Multi-Stage Production"
• Xue Bai, Pennsylvania State University; Kala Krishna, Pennsylvania State University and NBER; and Hong Ma, Tsinghua University, "How You Export Matters: Export Mode, Learning and Productivity in China"
• Brian Kovak, Carnegie Mellon University; Ryan Michaels, University of Rochester; and David Byrne, Federal Reserve Board, "Price and Quality Dispersion in an Offshoring Market: Evidence from Semiconductor Production Services"

Environmental and Energy Economics

The NBER's Program on Environmental and Energy Economics met in Cambridge on March 28 and 29, 2013. NBER Research Associates Lawrence Goulder of Stanford University and Wolfram Schlenker of the University of California, Berkeley, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

• Maureen Cropper, University of Maryland and NBER; Kabir Malik, University of Maryland; Alexander Limonov, Resources for the Future; and Anoop Singh, Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), "The Impact of Electricity Sector Restructuring on Coal-fired Power Plants in India"
• Martin Weitzman, Harvard University and NBER, "A Primer on Discounting Climate Risks"
• Joshua Graff Zivin, University of California, San Diego and NBER; Matthew Kotchen, Yale University and NBER; and Erin Mansur, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Spatial and Temporal Heterogeneity of Marginal Emissions: Implications for Electric Cars and Other Electricity-Shifting Policies" (NBER Working Paper No. 18462)
• Timothy Beatty, University of Minnesota, and Jay Shimshack, Tulane University, "Air Pollution and Children's Respiratory Health: A Cohort Analysis"
• Cloe Garnache, University of California, Davis, "Fish, Floods and Farmers: The Joint Production of Ecosystem Services on a Working Landscape"
• Christopher Knittel and Robert Pindyck, MIT and NBER, "The Simple Economics of Commodity Price Speculation"
• Mark Jacobsen, University of California, San Diego and NBER, and Arthur van Benthem, University of Pennsylvania, "Vehicle Scrappage and Gasoline Policy"
• Eva Arceo-Gomez, CIDE; Rema Hanna, Harvard University and NBER; and Paulina Oliva, University of California, Santa Barbara and NBER, "Does the Effect of Pollution on Infant Mortality Differ Between Developing and Developed Countries? Evidence from Mexico City" (NBER Working Paper No. 18349)
• Judson Boomhower, University of California, Berkeley, and Lucas Davis, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Free Riders and the High Cost of Energy-Efficiency Subsidies"
• Emanuele Massetti and Robert Mendelsohn, Yale University, and Shun Chonabayashi, Cornell University, "How Does Temperature Affect Land Values in the East of the US?"
• Matthew Kahn, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, and Frank Wolak, Stanford University and NBER, "Using Information to Improve the Effectiveness of Nonlinear Pricing: Evidence from a Field Experiment"

International Finance and Macroeconomics Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on International Finance and Macroeconomics met in Cambridge on March 29, 2013. NBER Research Associates Gita Gopinath, Harvard University, and Hélène Rey, London Business School, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

• Andrew Rose, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "The March of an Economic Idea"
• Alberto Cavallo, MIT; Brent Neiman, University of Chicago and NBER; and Roberto Rigobon, MIT and NBER, "Product Introductions, Currency Unions, and the Real Exchange Rate" (NBER Working Paper No. 18563)
• Javier Bianchi, University of Wisconsin, Madison and NBER; Juan Hatchondo, Indiana University; and Leonardo Martinez, International Monetary Fund, "International Reserves and Rollover Risk" (NBER Working Paper No. 18628)
• Wenxin Du and Jesse Schreger, Harvard University, "Local Currency Sovereign Risk"
• Alessandro Dovis, University of Minnesota, "Efficient Sovereign Default"
• Gianluca Benigno, London School of Economics; Huigang Chen, JD Power; Christopher Otrok, University of Missouri; Alessandro Rebucci, Inter-American Development Bank; and Eric Young, University of Virginia, "Capital Controls or Real Exchange Rate Policy? A Pecuniary Externality Perspective"
• Emmanuel Farhi, Harvard University and NBER, and Ivan Werning, MIT and NBER, "Fiscal Unions" (NBER Working Paper No. 18280)

Public Economics

The NBER's Program on Public Economics met in Cambridge on April 4 and 5, 2013. Program Director Amy Finkelstein of MIT and NBER Research Associate Brian Knight of Brown University organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

• Judith A. Frias, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social; Todd Kumler, Columbia University; and Eric Verhoogen, Columbia University and NBER, "Enlisting Workers in Monitoring Firms: Payroll Tax Compliance in Mexico"
• Patrick Kline, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Melissa Tartari, Yale University, "What Distributional Impacts Mean: Welfare Reform Experiments and Competing Margins of Adjustment"
• Casey Rothschild, Wellesley College, and Florian Scheuer, Stanford University and NBER, "Redistributive Taxation in the Roy Model" (NBER Working Paper No. 18228)
• Mikhail Golosov, Princeton University and NBER; John Hassler, Stockholm University; Per Krusell, Stockholm University and NBER; and Aleh Tsyvinski, Yale University and NBER, "Optimal Taxes on Fossil Fuel in General Equilibrium" (NBER Working Paper No. 17348)
• James Poterba, MIT and NBER; Steven Venti, Dartmouth College and NBER; and David Wise, Harvard University and NBER, "The Drawdown of Personal Retirement Assets: Husbanding or Squandering?"
• Eric Budish, University of Chicago; Benjamin Roin, Harvard Law School; and Heidi Williams, MIT and NBER, "Do Fixed Patent Terms Distort Innovation? Evidence from Cancer Clinical Trials"
• Naoki Aizawa, University of Pennsylvania, and Hanming Fang, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Equilibrium Labor Market Search and Health Insurance Reform" (NBER Working Paper No. 18698)

Insurance Working Group Meets

The NBER's Insurance Working Group, directed by NBER Research Associates Liran Einav of Stanford University and Kenneth Froot of Harvard Business School, met in Cambridge on April 5 and 6, 2013. These papers were discussed:

• Benjamin Handel, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Jonathan Kolstad, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Health Insurance for Humans: Information Frictions, Plan Choice, and Consumer Welfare"
• Keith Ericson, Boston University and NBER, and Amanda Starc, University of Pennsylvania, "How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange"
• Jeffrey Brown, University of Illinois and NBER; Arie Kapteyn, RAND Corporation; Erzo Luttmer, Dartmouth College and NBER; and Olivia Mitchell, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Complexity as a Barrier to Annuitization: Do Consumers Know How to Value Annuities?"
• Levon Barseghyan and Francesca Molinari, Cornell University, and Joshua Teitelbaum, Georgetown Law School, "Inference under Stability of Risk Preferences"
• Tatyana Deryugina, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Reducing the Cost of Ex Post Bailouts with Ex Ante Regulation: Evidence from Building Codes"
• Dwight Jaffee and Johan Walden, University of California, Berkeley, and Rustam Ibragimov, Harvard University, "Equilibrium with Monoline and Multiline Insurers"
• Ralph Koijen, University of Chicago and NBER, and Motohiro Yogo, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, "The Cost of Financial Frictions for Life Insurers"
• Daniel Gottlieb, University of Pennsylvania, and Kent Smetters, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Narrow Framing and Life Insurance" (NBER Working Paper No. 18601)

Political Economy

The NBER's Program on Political Economy, directed by Alberto Alesina of Harvard University, met in Cambridge on April 12, 2013. These papers were discussed:

• Patrick Francois, University of British Columbia; Ilia Rainer, George Mason University; and Francesco Trebbi, University of British Columbia and NBER, "How Is Power Shared in Africa?" (NBER Working Paper No. 18425)
• Francesco Passarelli, Università Bocconi, and Guido Tabellini, IGIER, "Emotions and Political Unrest"
• Christian Dippel, University of California, Los Angeles, "The Transmission of Colonial Institutions: Evidence from the 19th Century Caribbean"
• Eliana La Ferrara, Bocconi University, "Does Interaction Affect Racial Prejudice and Cooperation? Evidence from Randomly Assigned Peers in South Africa"
• Raymond Fisman, Columbia University and NBER, and Yongxiang Wang, University of Southern California, "The Mortality Cost of Political Connections"
• Gergely Ujhelyi, University of Houston, "Civil Service Rules and Policy Choices: Evidence from US State Governments"

Organizational Economics Working Group Meeting

The NBER's Working Group on Organizational Economics met at Stanford University on April 12 and 13, 2013. The program was organized by Working Group Director Robert Gibbons of MIT. The papers discussed were:

• Björn Bartling and Ernst Fehr, University of Zurich, and Klaus Schmidt, University of Munich, "Use and Abuse of Authority: A Behavioral Foundation of the Employment Relation"
• Decio Coviello, HEC Montreal; Andrea Ichino, University of Bologna; and Nicola Persico, Northwestern University and NBER, "The Inefficiency of Worker Time Use"
• Steven Callander, Stanford University, and Niko Matouschek, Northwestern University, "A Simple Theory of Growth in a Complicated World"
• Oriana Bandiera, London School of Economics; Andrea Prat, Columbia University; and Raffaella Sadun, Harvard University and NBER, "Managing Firms in an Emerging Economy: Evidence from the Time Use of Indian CEOs"
• Hongyi Li, University of New South Wales, "Developing Shared Knowledge"
• Luis Garicano, London School of Economics, and Luis Rayo, University of Chicago, "Relational Knowledge Transfers"
• Daniel Paravisini, London School of Economics and NBER, and Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER, "The Information and Agency Effects of Scores: Randomized Evidence from Credit Committees"
• Heikki Rantakari, University of Southern California, "Organizational Structure and Market Competition"

Asset Pricing Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on Asset Pricing met at the University of Chicago on April 19, 2013. Hui Chen and Andrew Lo, NBER and MIT, organized the meeting and chose these papers to discuss:

• Bruce Carlin and Francis Longstaff, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER, and Kyle Matoba, University of California at Los Angeles, "Disagreement and Asset Prices" (NBER Working Paper No. 18619)
• Suleyman Basak and Anna Pavlova, London Business School, "A Model of Financialization of Commodities"
• Nicolae Garleanu, University of California at Berkeley and NBER; Stavros Panageas, University of Chicago and NBER; and Jianfeng Yu, University of Minnesota, "Financial Entanglement: A Theory of Incomplete Integration, Leverage, Crashes, and Contagion"
• Martin Lettau, University of California at Berkeley and NBER; Matteo Maggiori, New York University; and Michael Weber, University of California at Berkeley, "Conditional Risk Premia in Currency Markets and Other Asset Classes" (NBER Working Paper No. 18844)
• Andrea Frazzini, AQR Capital Management; Ronen Israel, AQR Capital; and Tobias Moskowitz, University of Chicago and NBER, "Trading Costs of Asset Pricing Anomalies"
• Leonid Kogan, MIT and NBER; Dimitris Papanikolaou, Northwestern University and NBER; and Noah Stoffman, Indiana University, "Technological Innovation: Winners and Losers" (NBER Working Paper No. 18671)

Corporate Finance

The NBER's Program on Corporate Finance met at the University of Chicago Booth School on April 19, 2013. Philipp Schnabl, NBER and Stern School of Business at New York University, and Zhiguo He, NBER and University of Chicago Booth School, organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

• Rene Stulz, Ohio State University and NBER; Taylor Nadauld and Craig Merrill, Brigham Young University; and Shane Sherlund, Federal Reserve Board, "Why Did Financial Institutions Sell RMBS at Fire Sale Prices During the Financial Crisis?"
• William Fuchs and Aniko Oery, University of California at Berkeley, and Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford University, "Transparency and Distressed Sales under Asymmetric Information"
• Kelly Shue, University of Chicago, and Richard Townsend, Dartmouth College, "Swinging for the Fences: Executive Reactions to Quasi-Random Option Grants"
• Bruno Biais and Augustin Landier, University of Toulouse, "The (Ir)resistible Rise of Agency Rents"
• David Scharfstein, Harvard University and NBER, and Adi Sunderam, Harvard University, "Concentration in Mortgage Lending, Refinancing Activity, and Mortgage Rates"
• Tobias Berg, Humboldt University; Manju Puri, Duke University and NBER; and Jorg Rocholl, ESMT, "Loan Office Incentives and the Limits of Hard Information"
• Daniel Paravisini, London School of Economics and NBER, and Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER, "The Information and Agency Effects of Scores: Randomized Evidence from Credit Committees"

Behavioral Finance

The Behavioral Economics Working Group held a meeting on Behavioral Finance at the University of Chicago on April 20, 2013. NBER Research Associates Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University, and Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago, organized the meeting and chose these papers to discuss:

• N icola Gennaioli, CREI; Andrei Shleifer; and Robert Vishny, University of Chicago and NBER, "Money Doctors" (NBER Working Paper No. 18174)
• John Chalmers, University of Oregon, and Jonathan Reuter, Boston College and NBER, "What is the Impact of Financial Advisors on Retirement Portfolio Choices and Outcomes?" (NBER Working Paper No. 18158)
• Umit Gurun, University of Texas at Dallas, and Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru, University of Chicago and NBER, "Advertising Expensive Mortgages" (NBER Working Paper No. 18910)
• Santosh Anagol, University of Pennsylvania, and Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar, Harvard University, "Understanding the Advice of Commissions Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market"
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• John Campbell, Harvard University and NBER; Tarun Ramadorai, University of Oxford; and Benjamin Ranish, Harvard University, "Getting Better: Learning to Invest in an Emerging Stock Market"
• Luigi Guiso, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance; Paola Sapienza, Northwestern University and NBER; and Luigi Zingales, "Time Varying Risk Aversion"

 Cohort Studies Meeting

The NBER's Working Group on Cohort Studies, directed by Dora Costa of the University of California, Los Angeles, met at the University of Chicago on April 26, 2013. These topics were discussed:

• Douglas Almond, Columbia University and NBER; Hongbin Li, Tsing Hua University; and Shuang Zhang, Stanford University, "Land Reform and Sex Selection in China"
• Shelly Lundberg, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Robert Pollak, Washington University and NBER, "The Uneven Retreat from Marriage in the U.S., 1950-2010"
• Gabriella Conti, University of Chicago and NBER, "Early Life Adversity, Changes in Gene Expression, and Health: Evidence from Rhesus Monkeys"
• Prashant Bharadwaj, University of California, San Diego and NBER, and Petter Lundborg and Dan-Olof Rooth, Lund University, "Fetal Origins in the Long Run"
• Carlos Villarreal, University of Chicago, "Where the Other Half Lives: Evidence on the Origin and Persistence of Poor Neighborhoods from New York City 1830-2011"

Education Program Meets

The NBER's Program on Education, directed by Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University, met in Cambridge on May 9, 2013. The following papers were discussed:

• Katja Kaufmann and Matthias Messner, Bocconi University, and Alex Solis, Uppsala University, "Returns to Elite Higher Education in the Marriage Market: Evidence from Chile"
• Justine Hastings, Brown University and NBER, and Christopher Neilson and Seth Zimmerman, Yale University, "Returns to Postsecondary Education in Chile: Fields, Selectivity, Students and Luck"
• Peter Bergman, University of California at Los Angeles, "Parent-Child Information Frictions and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from a Field Experiment"
• Peter Hinrichs, Georgetown University, "What Kind of Teachers Are Schools Looking For? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment"
• Maria Fitzpatrick, Cornell University and NBER, and Damon Jones, University of Chicago and NBER, "Higher Education, Merit-Based Scholarships, and Post-Baccalaureate Migration" (NBER Working Paper No. 18530)
• Peter Arcidiacono and V. Joseph Hotz, Duke University and NBER, and Esteban Aucejo, London School of Economics, "University Differences in the Graduation of Minorities in STEM Fields: Evidence from California" (NBER Working Paper No. 18799)
• Jason Fletcher, Yale University and NBER; Stephen Ross, University of Connecticut; and Yuxiu Zhang, Yale University, "The Determinants and Consequences of Friendship Composition"

Children's Program Meeting

The NBER's Program on Children, directed by Janet Currie of University of California, Los Angeles, met in Cambridge on May 10, 2013. The following papers were discussed:

• Jason Lindo, University of Oregon and NBER; Jessamyn Schaller, University of Arizona; and Benjamin Hansen, University of Oregon, "Economic Conditions and Child Abuse" (NBER Working Paper No. 18994)
• David Figlio, Northwestern University and NBER, "The Effects of Poor Neonatal Health on Children's Cognitive Development" (NBER Working Paper No. 18446)
• Rukmini Banerji, Pratham; James Berry, Cornell University; and Marc Shotland, MIT, "The Impact of Mother Literacy and Participation Programs on Child Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in India"
• Jorge Aguero and Mindy Marks, University of California at Riverside, and Neha Raykar, Public Health Foundation India, "The Wage Penalty for Motherhood in Developing Countries"