Conferences: Summer, 2017

09/30/2017

Featured in print Reporter

CEPRA/NBER Conference on Aging and Health

The NBER's Conference on Aging and Health, supported by the Center for Performance and Research Analytics, took place in Lugano, Switzerland, on June 1–3. Fabrizio Mazzonna of Università della Svizzera Italiana, NBER Program on Aging Director Jonathan S. Skinner of Dartmouth College, and Massimo Filippini of ETH Zurich and Università della Svizzera Italiana organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Mathilde C.M. Godard, GATE-LSE, CNRS, University of Lyon, and Pierre Koning and Maarten Lindeboom, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, "Screening Disability Insurance Applications and Targeting"
Corina D. Mommaerts, University of Wisconsin at Madison, "Long-Term Care Insurance and the Family"
Fabrizio Mazzonna, and Osea Giuntella, University of Pittsburgh, "Sunset Time and the Economic Effects of Social Jetlag: Evidence from US Time Zone Borders"
Marika Cabral, University of Texas at Austin and NBER, and Mark R. Cullen, Stanford University and NBER, "Estimating the Value of Public Insurance Using Complementary Private Insurance" (NBER Working Paper No. 22583)
Pieter Bakx, Institute of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Bram Wouterse, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis; Eddy Van Doorslaer, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam; and Albert Wong, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, "The Health Effects of a Nursing Home Admission"
Teresa Bago d'Uva and Owen O'Donnell, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Eddy Van Doorslaer, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, "Who Can Predict Their Own Demise? Heterogeneity in the Accuracy of Longevity Expectations"
Itzik Fadlon, University of California at San Diego and NBER, and Torben Heien Nielsen, University of Copenhagen, "Family Health Behaviors"
Nicole Maestas, Harvard University and NBER, and Kathleen Mullen and David Powell, RAND Corporation, "The Effect of Population Aging on Economic Growth, the Labor Force and Productivity" (NBER Working Paper No. 22452)
Amitabh Chandra, Harvard University and NBER, and Douglas Staiger, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Predicting the Impact of Hospital Closures on Patient Outcomes"
Florian Heiss, University of Duesseldorf; Daniel L. McFadden, University of California at Berkeley and NBER; Lauren Scarpati, University of South California; and Joachim Winter and Amelie C. Wuppermann, University of Munich, "The Housing Crisis of the Late 2000s and Causal Paths between Health and Socioeconomic Status"

26th NBER-TCER-CEPR Conference

The 26th NBER-TCER-CEPR Conference, "Corporate Governance," took place in Tokyo on June 22. This meeting was sponsored jointly by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, the NBER, the Tokyo Center for Economic Research, the Center for Advanced Research in Finance, and the Center for International Research on the Japanese Economy. Franklin Allen, of Imperial College London, CEPR, and NBER, Shin-ichi Fukuda of Tokyo University, and Takeo Hoshi of Stanford University and NBER organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Randall Morck, University of Alberta and NBER; M. Deniz Yavuz, Purdue University; and Bernard Yeung, National University of Singapore, "State-run Banks, Money Growth, and the Real Economy"
Franklin Allen, Elena Carletti, Bocconi University and CEPR, and Yaniv Grinstein, IDC Herzliya and ECGI, "International Evidence on Firm Level Decisions in Response to the Crisis: Shareholders vs. Other Stakeholders"
Benjamin E. Hermalin, University of California, "Biased Monitors: Corporate Governance When Managerial Ability is Mis-Assessed"
Naoshi Ikeda, Kotaro Inoue, and Sho Watanabe, Tokyo Institute of Technology, "Enjoying the Quiet Life: Corporate Decision-Making by Entrenched Managers"
Hideaki Miyajima and Ryo Ogawa, Waseda University, and Takuji Saito, Keio University, "Changes in Corporate Governance and President Turnover: The Evidence from Japan"
Takeo Hoshi, "Decline of Bank-Led Restructuring in Japan: 1980-2010"

East Asian Seminar on Economics

The NBER, the Australian National University, the Peking University China Center for Economic Research, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (Taipei), the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Korea Development Institute, the National University of Singapore, the Tokyo Center for Economic Research, and Tsinghua Uni-versity (Beijing) jointly sponsored the NBER's 28th Annual East Asian Seminar on Economics, "Inequality." It took place in Manila, Philippines, on June 29–30. Research Associates Takatoshi Ito of Columbia University and Andrew K. Rose of the University of California, Berkeley, organized the conference. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University and NBER; Fatih Guvenen, University of Minnesota and NBER; David Price, Stanford University; Jae Song, Social Security Administration; and Till M. von Wachter, University of California at Los Angeles and NBER, "Firming up Inequality" (NBER Working Paper No. 21199)
Bo Chen, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; Miaojie Yu, Peking University; and Zhihao Yu, Carleton University, "Measured Skill Premium and Input Trade Liberalization: Evidence from Chinese Firms"
Pi Chen and Suling Peng, CIER, "Wage Inequality in Taiwan and Its Causes"
Masayuki Inui and Nao Sudo, Bank of Japan, and Tomoaki Yamada, Meiji University, "Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks on Inequality in Japan"
Yukinobu Kitamura, Hitotsubashi University; Takeshi Miyazaki, Kyushu University; and Taro Ohno, Shinshu University, "Income Tax Reforms and Intra-Generational Redistribution: Evidence from Japan"
Joshua Aizenman, University of Southern California and NBER, and Yothin Jinjarakand Ilan Noy, Victoria University of Wellington, "Vocational Education, Manufacturing, and Income Distribution: International Evidence and Case Studies"
Ronald Mendoza and Miann Banaag, Ateneo School of Government, "Political and Economic Inequality: Insights from Philippine Data on Political Dynasties"
Dan Liu, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Christopher M. Meissner, University of California at Davis and NBER, "Geography, Income, and Trade when Income Inequality Matters"

International Seminar on Macroeconomics

The NBER's 40th International Seminar on Macroeconomics, hosted by the Bank of Lithuania, took place in Vilnius, Lithuania, on June 30–July 1. The seminar was organized by Research Associates Jeffrey Frankel of Harvard University and Hélène Rey of London Business School. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Thomas Drechsel and Silvana Tenreyro, London School of Economics, "Commodity Booms and Busts in Emerging Economies"
Jonas Heiperz, Paris School of Economics; Amine Ouazad, HEC Montreal; Romain Rancière, University of Southern California and NBER; and Natacha Valla, European Investment Bank and Paris School of Economics, "Balance-Sheet Diversification in General Equilibrium: Identification and Network Effects" (NBER Working Paper No. 23572)
Antonio Fatás, INSEAD, and Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University and NBER, "The Permanent Effects of Fiscal Consolidations" (NBER Working Paper No. 22374)
Wenxin Du and Joanne Im, Federal Reserve Board, and Jesse Schreger, Harvard University and NBER, "The U.S. Treasury Premium"
Cristina Arellano, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and NBER; Yan Bai, University of Rochester and NBER; and Gabriel Mihalache, Stony Brook University, "Default Risk, Sectoral Reallocation, and Persistent Recessions"
Marc Flandreau, University of Pennsylvania, "Sovereign Debt Enforcement: Historical Evidence on the Role of Financial Engineering"
Bartosz Mackowiak, European Central Bank, and Marek Jarocinski, ECB, "Monetary Fiscal Interactions and the Euro Area's Malaise"
Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Bank of England; Andrea Ferrero, University of Oxford; and Alessandro Rebucci, Johns Hopkins University and NBER, "International Credit Supply Shocks"

40th Annual NBER Summer Institute

The NBER hosted its 40th annual Summer Institute during a three-week period in July. The 2,965 registered participants took part in 52 distinct meetings led by more than 100 organizers. About one in six participants — 608 researchers — were at-tending their first Summer Institute. There were 99 graduate student participants. More than two thirds of the participants were not NBER affiliates.

Lord Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England and an NBER research associate, delivered the 2017 Martin Feldstein Lecture on "Uncertainty and Large Swings in Activity." He examined the capacity of standard macroeconomic models to explain sharp declines in economic activity, such as those associated with the Great Depression or the 2008 global financial crisis. He recommended that researchers be open to new models, and that they recognize the inherent uncertainty associated with virtually all modeling exercises in macroeconomics. An edited text of the lecture appears earlier in this issue of The NBER Reporter.

The 2017 Methods Lectures focused on data linking. Research Associates John Abowd of Cornell University and the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Martha Bailey of the University of Michigan, and Joseph Ferrie of Northwestern University described statistical tools and matching algorithms for merging large administrative data sets. They also presented various applications of these tools, describing linkages between decennial Census data files and between firm and employee data sets. In addition, Jonathan Schwabish of the Urban Institute lectured on "Data Visualization," presenting a range of new tools and techniques for the visual display of data.

All of the presentations — the Feldstein Lecture, the Methods Lectures, and the presentation on data visualization — have been videotaped and can be accessed through the NBER Videos tab on the left side of the NBER homepage.

Japan Project

The NBER held a meeting on the Japanese economy in Tokyo on July 31. The seminar was organized by Shiro Armstrong of the Australian National University, Research Associate Charles Horioka of the Asian Growth Research Institute (Kitakyu-shu), Research Associate Takeo Hoshi of Stanford University, Tsutomu Watanabe of the University of Tokyo, and Research Associate David Weinstein of Columbia University. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Koichiro Ito, University of Chicago and NBER; Takanori Ida, Kyoto University; and Makoto Tanaka, GRIPS, "Information Frictions, Inertia, and Selection on Elasticity: A Field Experiment on Electricity Tariff Choice"
J. Mark Ramseyer, Harvard University, and Eric B. Rasmusen, Indiana University, "Outcaste Politics and Organized Crime in Japan: The Effect of Terminating Ethnic Subsidies"
Kozo Ueda, Waseda University; Kota Watanabe, Meiji University; and Tsutomu Watanabe, University of Tokyo, "Product Turnover and Deflation: Evidence from Japan"
Makoto Saito, Hitotsubashi University, "On Large-Scale Money Finance in the Presence of Black Markets: A Case of the Japanese Economy during and Immediately after World War II"
Kentaro Nakajima, Hitotsubashi University, and Kensuke Teshima, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, "Identifying Neighborhood Effects among Firms: Evidence from Location Lotteries of the Tokyo Tsukiji Fish Market"
Wataru Miyamoto, Bank of Canada; Thuy Lan Nguyen, Santa Clara University; and Dmitriy Sergeyev, Bocconi University, "Government Spending Multipliers under the Zero Lower Bound: Evidence from Japan"

Economic Dimensions of Personalized and Precision Medicine

The NBER's Conference on Economic Dimensions of Personalized and Precision Medicine was supported by the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and Columbia University. The conference took place in Santa Monica, CA, on September 13–14. Research Associates Ernst R. Berndt of MIT and Dana Goldman of the University of Southern California, and John Rowe of Columbia University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Ernst R. Berndt, and Mark Trusheim, MIT, "The Information Pharms Race and Competitive Dynamics of Precision Medicine"
Manuel I. Hermosilla, Johns Hopkins University, and Jorge A. Lemus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Therapeutic Translation in the Wake of the Genome"
John A. Graves and Josh Peterson, Vanderbilt University, "Rational Integration of Genomic Health Care Technology: Evidence from PREDICT "
Kristopher Hult, University of Chicago, "Measuring the Potential Health Impact of Personalized Medicine: Evidence from MS Treatments"
Rachel Lu, Chang Gung University, Taiwan; Karen Eggleston, Stanford University and NBER; and Joseph T. Chang, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital , "Economic Dimensions of Personalized and Precision Medicine in Asia: Evidence from Breast Cancer Treatment in Taiwan "
Mark Pauly, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Cost Sharing in Insurance Coverage for Precision Medicine"
Frank R. Lichtenberg, Columbia University and NBER, and Rebecca A. Pulk, Marc S. Williams, and Eric Wright, Geisinger Health System, "The Social Cost of Suboptimal Medication Use and the Value of Pharmacogenomic Information: Evidence from Geisinger"
Amitabh Chandra, Harvard University and NBER; Craig Garthwaite, Northwestern University and NBER; and Ariel Dora Stern, Harvard University, "Characterizing the Drug Development Pipeline for Precision Medicines"
David H. Howard, Emory University; Jason Hockenberry, Emory University and NBER; and Guy David, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Personalized Medicine When Physicians Induce Demand"
Cyril Benoit, Philippe Gorry, Diego Useche, and Martin Zumpe, University of Bordeaux, "Empirical Economic Analysis of Orphan Drug Innovation"

Economics of Artificial Intelligence

The NBER's Conference on Artificial Intelligence took place in Toronto on September 13–14. Research Associates Ajay K. Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb of the University of Toronto organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Iain M. Cockburn, Boston University and NBER; Rebecca Henderson, Harvard University and NBER; and Scott Stern, MIT and NBER, "The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Innovation"
Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT and NBER; Daniel Rock, MIT; and Chad Syverson, University of Chicago and NBER, "Artificial Intelligence and the Modern Productivity Paradox: A Clash of Expectations and Statistics"
Paul Milgrom, Stanford University, and Steven Tadelis, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Market Design"
Susan Athey, Stanford University and NBER, "Impact on Economics"
Ajay K. Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, "Prediction, Judgment, and Complexity"
Catherine Tucker, MIT and NBER, "Privacy"
Daniel Trefler and Avi Goldfarb, University of Toronto and NBER, "Trade"
Colin Camerer, California Institute of Technology, "Behavioral Economics"
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University and NBER, "Income Distribution"
Philippe Aghion, College de France; Benjamin Jones, Northwestern University and NBER; and Charles I. Jones, Stanford University and NBER, "Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth"
Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University, "Historical Context and the Long Run"
Carl Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Hal Varian, University of California, Berkeley, "Machine Learning, Market Structure, and Competition"
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia University and NBER, and Anton Korinek, Johns Hopkins University and NBER, "Artificial Intelligence, Worker-Replacing Technological Change, and Income Distribution"
David Autor, MIT and NBER, and Anna Solomons, Utrecht University, "Robocalypse Now: Does Productivity Growth Threaten Employment?"

Tax Policy and the Economy

The NBER's Conference on Tax Policy and the Economy took place in Washington, DC, on September 14. Research Associate Robert A. Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

Alex Rees-Jones, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, and Dmitry Taubinsky, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Taxing Humans: Normative Implications of Biased Responses to Taxes"
James Andreoni, University of California, San Diego and NBER, "The Benefits and Costs of Donor Advised Funds"
Andrew Samwick, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Means-Testing Federal Health Entitlement Benefits" (NBER Retirement Research Center Paper No. NB 12-16)
Jeffrey Clemens, University of California, San Diego and NBER, and Benedic N. Ippolito, American Enterprise Institute, "Implications of Medicaid Financing Reform for State Government Budgets"
Bruce D. Meyer, University of Chicago and NBER, and Wallace K. C. Mok, Chinese University of Hong Kong, "Disability, Taxes, Transfers, and the Economic Well-Being of Women"
Caroline M. Hoxby, Stanford University and NBER, "Online Postsecondary Education and the Higher Education Tax Benefits: An Analysis with Implications for Tax Administration"