Program and Working Group Meetings: Winter, 2019

Industrial Organization

Members of the NBER's Industrial Organization Program met February 8–9 at Stanford. Research Associates Eric Budish of the University of Chicago and Jean-François Houde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Thomas G. Wollmann, University of Chicago and NBER, "How to Get Away with Merger: Stealth Consolidation and Its Effects on U.S. Healthcare"
• Sumit Agarwal, Georgetown University; John Grigsby, University of Chicago; Ali Hortaçsu, University of Chicago and NBER; Gregor Matvos, University of Texas at Austin and NBER; Amit Seru, Stanford University and NBER; and Vincent Yao, Georgia State University, "Searching for Approval"
• Panle Jia Barwick, Cornell University and NBER; Myrto Kalouptsidi, Harvard University and NBER; and Nahim B. Zahur, Cornell University, "China's Industrial Policy: An Empirical Evaluation"
• Daniel Bjorkegren, Brown University, "Competition in Network Industries: Evidence from Mobile Telecommunications in Rwanda"
• Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford University and NBER, and Michael Schwarz, Microsoft, "Carpooling and the Economics of Self-Driving Cars"(NBER Working Paper 24349) 
• Pietro Tebaldi and Alexander Torgovitsky, University of Chicago, and Hanbin V. Yang, Harvard University, "Nonparametric Estimates of Demand in the California Health Insurance Exchange"
• Gaston Illanes, Northwestern University, and Manisha Padi, University of Chicago, "Competition, Asymmetric Information, and the Annuity Puzzle: Evidence from a Government-run Exchange in Chile"
• Yuyu Chen, Peking University; Mitsuru Igami and Masayuki Sawada, Yale University; and Mo Xiao, University of Arizona, "Privatization and Productivity in China"
• Guangyu Cao, Peking University and Guanghua-ofo Center for Sharing Economy Research; Ginger Zhe Jin, University of Maryland and NBER; and Xi Weng and Li-An Zhou, Peking University, "Market Expanding or Market Stealing? Competition with Network Effects in Bike-Sharing"(NBER Working Paper 24938)
• Keaton S. Miller, University of Oregon; Amil Petrin, University of Minnesota and NBER; Robert Town, University of Texas at Austin and NBER; and Michael Chernew, Harvard University and NBER, "Optimal Managed Competition Subsidies"
• Rebecca Diamond and Petra Persson, Stanford University and NBER; Michael J. Dickstein, New York University and NBER; and Timothy McQuade, Stanford University, "Take-Up, Drop-Out, and Spending in ACA Marketplaces"(NBER Working Paper 24668)
• Mark L. Egan, Harvard University; Gregor Matvos, University of Texas at Austin and NBER; and Amit Seru, Stanford University and NBER, "Arbitration with Uninformed Consumers" (NBER Working Paper 25150)

Insurance

Members of the NBER's Insurance Working Group met February 8–9 at Stanford. Research Associates Benjamin R. Handel of the University of California, Berkeley and Motohiro Yogo of Princeton University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Gaston Illanes, Northwestern University, and Manisha Padi, University of Chicago, "Competition, Asymmetric Information, and the Annuity Puzzle: Evidence from a Government-run Exchange in Chile"
• Radek Paluszynski, University of Houston, and Pei Cheng Yu, University of New South Wales, "Pay What Your Dad Paid: Commitment and Price Rigidity in the Market for Life Insurance"
• Robin Greenwood, Harvard University and NBER, and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "The Impact of Pensions and Insurance on Global Yield Curves"
• Andrew Ellul, Indiana University; Anastasia Kartasheva, Bank for International Settlements; Chotibhak Jotikasthira, Southern Methodist University; Christian Lundblad, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Wolf Wagner, Erasmus University, "Insurers as Asset Managers and Systemic Risk"
• Juan Pablo Atal, University of Pennsylvania; Hanming Fang, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; Martin Karlsson, University of Duisburg-Essen; and Nicolas R. Ziebarth, Cornell University and NBER, "Long-Term Health Insurance: Theory Meets Evidence"
• David Schoenherr, Princeton University; Janis Skrastins, Washington University in St. Louis; and Bernadus Doornik, Banco Central do Brasil, "Unemployment Insurance, Strategic Unemployment, and Firm-Worker Collusion"
• Michael Geruso, University of Texas at Austin and NBER; Timothy Layton and Mark Shepard, Harvard University and NBER, and Grace McCormack, Harvard University, "The Two Margin Problem in Insurance Markets"
• Keaton S. Miller, University of Oregon; Amil Petrin, University of Minnesota and NBER; Robert Town, University of Texas at Austin and NBER; and Michael Chernew, Harvard University and NBER, "Optimal Managed Competition Subsidies"
• Rebecca Diamond and Petra Persson, Stanford University and NBER; Michael J. Dickstein, New York University and NBER; and Timothy McQuade, Stanford University, "Take-Up, Drop-Out, and Spending in ACA Marketplaces"(NBER Working Paper 24668)

Law and Economics

Members of the NBER's Law and Economics Program met February 15 in Cambridge. Program Director Christine Jolls of Yale University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Andrew Daughety and Jennifer Reinganum, Vanderbilt University, "Reducing Unjust Convictions: Plea Bargaining, Trial, and Evidence Suppression/Disclosure"
• Albert Choi, University of Virginia, and Kathryn E. Spier, Harvard University and NBER, "Class Actions and Private Antitrust Litigation"
• Martijn Cremers, University of Notre Dame; Scott Guernsey, University of Cambridge; and Simone M. Sepe, University of Arizona, "Directors' Duties Laws and Long-Term Firm Value"
• Huseyin Gulen, Purdue University, and Brett W. Myers, Texas Tech University, "The Selective Enforcement of Government Regulation: Battleground States and the EPA"
• Alexander Dyck, University of Toronto; Adair Morse, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; and Paulo Martins Manoel, University of California, Berkeley, "Outraged by Compensation: Implications for Public Pension Performance"
• Lucian A. Bebchuk, Harvard University and NBER, and Doron Y. Levit, University of Pennsylvania, "Myopic Shareholders"
• Marcella Alsan, Stanford University and NBER, and Crystal Yang, Harvard University and NBER, "Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence from Secure Communities"(NBER Working Paper 24731)

Labor Studies

Members of the NBER's Labor Studies Program met February 22 in San Francisco. Program Directors David Autor of MIT and Alexandre Mas of Princeton University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Conrad Miller, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; Jennifer Peck, Swarthmore College; and Mehmet Seflek, University of California, Berkeley, "Big Push Policies and Firm-Level Barriers to Employing Women: Evidence from Saudi Arabia"
• Randall Akee, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, and Maggie R. Jones, U.S. Census Bureau, "Immigrants' Earnings Growth and Return Migration from the U.S.: Examining Their Determinants Using Linked Survey and Administrative Data"
• François Gerard, Columbia University and NBER; Lorenzo Lagos, Columbia University; Edson R. Severnini, Carnegie Mellon University; and David Card, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Assortative Matching or Exclusionary Hiring? The Impact of Firm Policies on Racial Wage Differences in Brazil"
• Shai Bernstein and Rebecca Diamond, Stanford University and NBER, and Timothy McQuade and Beatriz Pousada, Stanford University, "The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States"
• David J. Deming, Harvard University and NBER, and Kadeem L. Noray, Harvard University, "STEM Careers and Technological Change"(NBER Working Paper 25065)
• Luigi Pistaferri, Stanford University and NBER, and Hamish Low, University of Cambridge, "Disability Insurance and Gender Differences: Evidence from Merged Survey-Administrative Data"
• Alisa Tazhitdinova, University of California, Santa Barbara, "Increasing Hours Worked: Moonlighting Responses to a Large Tax Reform"
• Brigham Frandsen and Emily C. Leslie, Brigham Young University, and Lars Lefgren, Brigham Young University and NBER, "Judging Judge Fixed Effects"

Economic Fluctuations and Growth subgroup

Members of the NBER's Economic Fluctuations and Growth program's subgroup on growth met February 28 in San Fran-cisco. Martí Mestieri of Northwestern University and Faculty Research Fellow Christopher Tonetti of Stanford University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Matthew J. Delventhal, Claremont McKenna College; Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; and Nezih Guner, Center for Monetary and Financial Studies, "Demographic Transitions across Time and Space"
• Sebastian Heise, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Tommaso Porzio, University of California, San Diego, "Workers' Home Bias and Spatial Wage Gaps: Lessons from the Enduring Divide between East and West Germany"
• Wyatt Brooks and Terence R. Johnson, University of Notre Dame, and Kevin Donovan, Yale University, "Bringing Data to the Model: Quantitative Implications of an Equilibrium Diffusion Model"
• Victor Couture, University of California, Berkeley; Cecile Gaubert, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; Jessie Handbury, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; and Erik Hurst, University of Chicago and NBER, "Income Growth and the Distributional Effects of Urban Spatial Sorting"
• Hugo Hopenhayn, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, and Julian Neira and Rish Singhania, University of Exeter, "From Population Growth to Firm Demographics: Implications for Concentration, Entrepreneurship, and the Labor Share"(NBER Working Paper 25382)
• Jie Cai, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; Nan Li, International Monetary Fund; and Ana Maria Santacreu, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, "Knowledge Diffusion, Trade and Innovation across Countries and Sectors"

Economic Fluctuations and Growth

Members of the NBER's Economic Fluctuations and Growth Program met March 1 in San Francisco. Research Associates David Lagakos of the University of California, San Diego and Martin Schneider of Stanford University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Paolo Martellini, University of Pennsylvania, and Guido Menzio, New York University and NBER, "Declining Search Frictions, Unemployment and Growth"(NBER Working Paper 24518)
• Tarek Alexander Hassan, Boston University and NBER; Stephan Hollander, Tilburg University; Laurence van Lent, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management; and Ahmed Tahoun, London Business School, "Firm-Level Political Risk: Measurement and Effects"(NBER Working Paper 24029)
• Fernando E. Alvarez, University of Chicago and NBER, and Francesco Lippi, LUISS Guido Carli University and Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, "The Analytic Theory of a Monetary Shock"
• Pedro Bordalo, University of Oxford; Nicola Gennaioli, Bocconi University; Yueran Ma, University of Chicago; and Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University and NBER, "Over-Reaction in Macroeconomic Expectations" (NBER Working Paper 24932)
• Joel David, University of Southern California, and Venky Venkateswaran, New York University and NBER, "The Sources of Capital Misallocation"(NBER Working Paper 23129)
• Juan Morelli and Diego Perez, New York University, and Pablo Ottonello, University of Michigan, "Global Banks and Systemic Debt Crises"

International Finance and Macroeconomics

Members of the NBER's International Finance and Macroeconomics Program met March 8 in Cambridge. Faculty Research Fellow Cristina Arellano of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Research Associate Brent Neiman of the University of Chicago, and Program Director Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas of the University of California, Berkeley organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Egemen Eren, Bank for International Settlements, and Semyon Malamud, Swiss Finance Institute, "Dominant Currency Debt"
• Javier Bianchi, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and NBER, and Jorge Mondragon, University of Minnesota, "Monetary Independence and Rollover Crises"(NBER Working Paper 25340)
• Kalina Manova, University College London; Antoine Berthou, Banque de France; Jong Hyun Chung, Stanford University; and Charlotte Sandoz, International Monetary Fund, "Productivity, (Mis)allocation, and Trade"
• Illenin Kondo, University of Notre Dame; Fabrizio Perri, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; and Sewon Hur, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, "Real Interest Rates, Inflation, and Default"
• Juan Morelli and Diego Perez, New York University, and Pablo Ottonello, University of Michigan, "Global Banks and Systemic Debt Crises"
• Mishita Mehra, Grinnell College, "Skilled Immigration, Firms, and Policy"
• Rodrigo Barbone Gonzalez, Central Bank of Brazil, and Dmitry Khametshin, José-Luis Peydró, and Andrea Polo, Pompeu Fabra University, "Hedger of Last Resort: Evidence from Brazilian FX Interventions, Local Credit, and Global Financial Cycles"

Monetary Economics

Members of the NBER's Monetary Economics Program met March 8 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Faculty Research Fellow David W. Berger of Northwestern University, Research Associate Giorgio Primiceri of Northwestern University, and Program Directors Emi Nakamura and Jón Steinsson, both of the University of California, Berkeley organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Jasmine Xiao, University of Notre Dame, "Borrowing to Save and Investment Dynamics"
• Gauti B. Eggertsson, Brown University and NBER; Ella Wold, Brown University; Ragnar Juelsrud, BI Norwegian Business School; and Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University and NBER, "Negative Nominal Interest Rates and the Bank Lending Channel"
• Pierpaolo Benigno, LUISS Guido Carli University, "Monetary Policy in a World of Cryptocurrencies"
• Gabriel Chodorow-Reich and Gita Gopinath, Harvard University and NBER (on leave); Prachi Mishra, Goldman Sachs; and Abhinav Narayanan, Reserve Bank of India, "Cash and the Economy: Evidence from India's Demonetization"(NBER Working Paper 25370)
• Stefano Giglio, Yale University and NBER; Matteo Maggiori, Harvard University and NBER; Johannes Stroebel, New York University and NBER; and Stephen Utkus, Vanguard, "Five Facts about Beliefs and Portfolios"
• Carlo Altavilla, Frank Smets, and Miguel Boucinha, European Central Bank; and José-Luis Peydró, Pompeu Fabra University, "Banking Supervision, Monetary Policy and Risk-Taking: Big Data Evidence from 15 Credit Registers"

Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

Members of the NBER's Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program met March 15 in Cambridge. Program Directors Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School, Research Associate Serguey Braguinsky of the University of Maryland, and Faculty Research Fellow Sabrina T. Howell of New York University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Shai Bernstein and Rebecca Diamond, Stanford University and NBER, and Timothy McQuade and Beatriz Pousada, Stanford University, "The Contribution of High-Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States"
• Greer K. Gosnell, London School of Economics; John A. List, University of Chicago and NBER; and Robert Metcalfe, Boston University, "The Impact of Management Practices on Employee Productivity: A Field Experiment with Airline Captains"(NBER Working Paper 25620)
• Laurent Fresard, University of Lugano and Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and Gerard Hoberg and Donald E. Bowen III, University of Maryland, "Technological Disruptiveness and the Evolution of IPOs and Sell-Outs"
• Timothy J. DeStefano, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Richard Kneller and Jonathan D. Timmis, University of Nottingham, "Cloud Computing and Firm Growth"
• Nicolas Crouzet, Apoorv Gupta, and Filippo Mezzanotti, Northwestern University, "Shocks and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Electronic Payment Systems"
• Achyuta Adhvaryu, University of Michigan and NBER; Anant Nyshadham, Boston College and NBER; and Jorge A. Tamayo, Harvard University, "Managerial Quality and Productivity Dynamics"
• George P. Ball, Indiana University; Jeffrey Macher, Georgetown University; and Ariel Dora Stern, Harvard University, "Recalls, Innovation, and Competitor Response: Evidence from Medical Device Firms"

Environment and Energy Economics

Members of the NBER's Environment and Energy Economics Program met March 14–15 at Stanford. Research Associates Kelsey Jack of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Ryan Kellogg of the University of Chicago organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Fiona Burlig and Louis Preonas, University of Chicago, and Akshaya Jha, Carnegie Mellon University, "Out-of-Merit Costs and Blackouts: Evidence from the Indian Electricity Market"
• Peter Christensen and Ignacio Sarmiento, University of Illinois, and Christopher Timmins, Duke University and NBER, "Housing Discrimination and the Pollution Exposure Gap in the United States"
• Koichiro Ito, University of Chicago and NBER, and Shuang Zhang, University of Colorado Boulder, "Setting the Price Right: Evidence from Heating Price Reform in China"
• Derek Lemoine, University of Arizona and NBER, "Estimating the Consequences of Climate Change from Variation in Weather"(NBER Working Paper 25008) 
• David Keiser, Iowa State University, and Joseph S. Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Burning Waters to Crystal Springs? U.S. Water Pollution Regulation over the Last Half-Century"
• Cloe Garnache, University of Oslo, and Todd Guilfoos, University of Rhode Island, "The Effect of Salience on Risk Perceptions and Asset Prices"
• Jonathan I. Dingel, University of Chicago and NBER; Kyle C. Meng, University of California, Santa Barbara and NBER; and Solomon M. Hsiang, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Spatial Correlation, Trade, and Inequality: Evidence from the Global Climate" (NBER Working Paper 25447)
• James M. Sallee, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Pigou Creates Losers: On the Implausibility of Achieving Pareto Improvements from Pigouvian Taxation"
• Nicholas Ryan, Yale University and NBER, "Contract Enforcement and Productive Efficiency: Evidence from the Bidding and Renegotiation of Power Contracts in India"(NBER Working Paper 25547)
• Stephen P. Holland, University of North Carolina at Greensboro and NBER; Erin T. Mansur, Dartmouth College and NBER; Nicholas Muller, Carnegie Mellon University and NBER; and Andrew J. Yates, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Decompositions and Policy Consequences of an Extraordinary Decline in Air Pollution from Electricity Generation"(NBER Working Paper 25339)
• Panle Jia Barwick and Shanjun Li, Cornell University and NBER; Liguo Lin, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; and Eric Zou, Cornell University, "The Value of Pollution Information: Evidence from China's Air Quality Disclosure"

Chinese Economy

Members of the NBER's Chinese Economy Working Group met March 21–22 in Shanghai. Research Associates Hanming Fang of the University of Pennsylvania, Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia University, and Wei Xiong of Princeton University organized the meeting jointly with the Fanhai International School of Finance, Fudan University, and the School of Entrepreneurship and Management, ShanghaiTech University. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• J. Vernon Henderson, London School of Economics; Dongling Su, Boston University; Qinghua Zhang, Peking University; and Siqi Zheng, MIT, "Local Factor Market Distortions in China"
• Tao Chen, Nanyang Technological University; Yi Huang, The Graduate Institute, Geneva; and Chen Lin, University of Hong Kong, "Finance and Volatility"
• Shang-Jin Wei, and Chunliu Yang, Fudan University, "Do Internet Finance Platforms Mitigate Conflicts of Interest? The Case of Mutual Fund Investment"
• Kaiji Chen and Tong Xu, Emory University; Qing Wang, Southwest University of Finance and Economics; and Tao Zha, Emory University and NBER, "Aggregate and Distributional Impacts of Housing Policy: China's Experiment"
• Ran Duchin, University of Washington; Zhenyu Gao, Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Haibing Shu, Shanghai Jiaotong University, "Involuntary Political Connections and Firm Outcomes"
• Yan Bai, University of Rochester and NBER; Keyu Jin, London School of Economics; and Dan Lu, University of Rochester, "Misallocation under Trade Liberalization"
• Guangwei Li, ShanghaiTech University, "The Role of R&D Offshoring in Knowledge Diffusion: New Evidence from China"
• Sumit Agarwal, Georgetown University; Yongheng Deng, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Quanlin Gu, Peking University; Jia He, Nankai University; and Wenlan Qian and Yuan Ren, National University of Singapore, "Mortgage Debt, Hand-to-Mouth Households, and Monetary Policy Transmission"
• Zheng Michael Song, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Duncan Thomas and Daniel Xu, Duke University and NBER; and Miaojun Wang, Zhejiang University, "The Rise of Modern Retail in China: An Anatomy of the Footwear Industry"
• Kevin Lim, University of Toronto; Daniel Trefler, University of Toronto and NBER; and Miaojie Yu, Peking University, "Trade and Innovation: The Role of Scale and Competition Effects"
• Bo Li, Tsinghua University, and Jacopo Ponticelli, Northwestern University, "Going Bankrupt in China"
• Ziying Fan and Hang Zhang, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and Xiaxin Wang, Fudan FISF and University of Michigan, "Understanding Misreporting: Responses to a Housing Transaction Tax Notch in China"

Development of the American Economy

Members of the NBER's Development of the American Economy Program met March 23 in Cambridge. Program Directors Leah Platt Boustan of Princeton University and William J. Collins of Vanderbilt University organized the meeting. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

• Lisa D. Cook, Michigan State University and NBER, "A New National Lynching Data Set and New Explanations for Lynching Behavior in the United States from 1684 to 1983"
• Prottoy Akbar and Sijie Li, University of Pittsburgh, and Allison Shertzer and Randall Walsh, University of Pittsburgh and NBER, "Racial Segregation in Housing Markets and the Erosion of Black Wealth"
• Ariell Zimran, Vanderbilt University and NBER, "Transportation and Health in a Developing Country: The United States, 1820–1847"
• Shawn E. Kantor, Florida State University and NBER, and Alexander T. Whalley, University of Calgary and NBER, "Space Race: Automation Innovation and Labor's Share"
• Andrew Goodman-Bacon, Vanderbilt University and NBER, and Lucie Schmidt, Williams College and NBER, "Federalizing Benefits: The Introduction of Supplemental Security Income and the Size of the Safety Net"
• Joshua K. Hausman and Paul Rhode, University of Michigan and NBER; and Johannes Wieland, University of California, San Diego and NBER, "Farm Prices, Redistribution, and the Severity of the Early U.S. Great Depression"