Conferences Winter/Spring 2021

03/01/2021
Featured in print Reporter

Machine Learning in Health Care

An NBER conference on Machine Learning in Health Care, supported by the National Institute on Aging, took place online on January 15. Research Associate David M. Cutler and Faculty Research Fellow Timothy Layton of Harvard University organized the meeting. These researchers’ papers were presented and discussed:

  • Suproteem Sarkar, Harvard University; N. Meltem Daysal, University of Copenhagen; Sendhil Mullainathan, University of Chicago and NBER; Ziad Obermeyer, University of California, Berkeley; and Mircea Trandafir, University of Southern Denmark, “Preventive Care through a Richer Policy Space: A Machine Learning Approach to Breast Cancer Screening”
  • Kelli R. Marquardt, University of Arizona, “Mis(sed) Diagnosis: Physician Decision-Making and ADHD”
  • Jill E. Furzer, University of Toronto, “Diagnostic Errors in Child Mental Health: Assessing Treatment Selection and Its Long-Term Consequences”
  • Angela Kilby, Northeastern University, “Algorithmic Fairness in Predicting Opioid Use Disorder Using Machine Learning”
  • Adelina Yanyue Wang, NBER, “The Impact of Alternative Types of Elder Care Providers: Stratified IV Analysis with Machine Learning Using Nursing Home Exits”

Summaries of these papers are at www.nber.org/conferences/machine-learning-health-care-spring-2021

New Developments in Long-Term Asset Management

An NBER conference on New Developments in Long-Term Asset Management took place online January 21–22. Research Associates Monika Piazzesi of Stanford University and Luis M. Viceira of Harvard University organized the meeting, which was supported by Norges Bank Investment Management. These researchers’ papers were presented and discussed:

  • Camille Gardner, New York University, and Peter Blair Henry, New York University and NBER, “Global Infrastructure: Potential, Perils, and a Framework for Distinction”
  • Daniel Greenwald, MIT; Martin Lettau, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; and Sydney C. Ludvigson, New York University and NBER, “How the Wealth Was Won: Factor Shares as Market Fundamentals” (NBER Working Paper 25769)
  • Patrick Bolton, Columbia University and NBER, and Marcin Kacperczyk, Imperial College London, “Global Pricing of Carbon-Transition Risk”
  • Juliane Begenau, Stanford University and NBER, and Emil Siriwardane, Harvard University, “How Do Private Equity Fees Vary across Public Pensions?”
  • Patrick Augustin, McGill University; Mikhail Chernov, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER; Lukas Schmid, University of Southern California; and Dongho Song, Johns Hopkins University, “The Term Structure of CIP Violations” (NBER Working Paper 27231)
  • Lucian A. Bebchuk, Harvard University and NBER, and Doron Y. Levit, University of Washington, “Should Short-Term Shareholders Have Less Rights?”
  • Ralph S. J. Koijen, University of Chicago and NBER, and Motohiro Yogo, Princeton University and NBER, “Exchange Rates and Asset Prices in a Global Demand System” (NBER Working Paper 27342)
  • Anil K Kashyap, University of Chicago and NBER; Natalia Kovrijnykh, Arizona State University; Jian Li, University of Chicago; and Anna Pavlova, London Business School, “Is There Too Much Benchmarking in Asset Management?” (NBER Working Paper 28020)

Summaries of these papers are at www.nber.org/conferences/new-developments-long-term-asset-management-spring-2021

The Rise in Cardiovascular Disease Mortality

An NBER conference on The Rise in Cardiovascular Disease Mortality took place online on February 5. Research Associates Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton University organized the meeting, which was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging. These researchers’ papers were presented and discussed:

  • Anne Case, “International Trends in Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Has This Engine of Progress Ground to a Halt?”
  • Renee Y. Hsia, University of California, San Francisco; Yu-Chu Shen, Naval Postgraduate School and NBER; and Harlan Krumholz, Yale University, “Racial Disparities in the Regionalization of Care for Patients with ST-segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI)”
  • David M. Cutler, Harvard University and NBER, “Understanding Differences in Heart Disease Trends by Education”
  • Paul Novosad, Dartmouth College; Charlie Rafkin, MIT; and Sam Asher, Johns Hopkins University, “Mortality Change among Less-Educated Americans”
  • Adam Leive, University of Virginia, and Christopher J. Ruhm, University of Virginia and NBER, “Education Gradients in Mortality Trends by Gender and Race” (NBER Working Paper 28419)
  • Joanna Aleksandra Kopinska, Sapienza University of Rome; Vincenzo Atella, Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”; and Jay Bhattacharya and Grant Miller, Stanford University and NBER, “The Changing Relationship between Bodyweight and Longevity in High- and Low-Income Countries”
  • Effrosyni Adamopoulou and Eleftheria Triviza, University of Mannheim, and Elisabetta Olivieri, Bank of Italy, “Eating Habits: The Role of Early Life Experiences and Intergenerational Transmission

Summaries of some of these papers are at: www.nber.org/conferences/rise-cardiovascular-disease-mortality-spring-2021

COVID-19 and Health Outcomes

An NBER conference on COVID-19 and Health Outcomes took place online on February 10. Research Associates Jonathan S. Skinner of Dartmouth College and David M. Cutler of Harvard University organized the meeting, which was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging. These researchers’ papers were presented and discussed:

  • Francis Annan, Georgia State University, and Belinda Archibong, Columbia University, “The Value of Communication during a Pandemic”
  • Yulya Truskinovsky, Wayne State University, and Lindsay Kobayashi and Jessica Finlay, University of Michigan, “Caregiving in a Pandemic: COVID-19 and the Well-Being of Family Caregivers over 55 in the United States”
  • Randall Akee, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER; Luis E. Quintero, Johns Hopkins University; and Emilia Simeonova, Johns Hopkins University and NBER, “Pandemic Protocols, Native Health: Health Care Access from American Indian Reservations during COVID-19”
  • Francesco Bianchi, Duke University and NBER; Giada Bianchi, Harvard Medical School; and Dongho Song, Johns Hopkins University, “The Long-Term Impact of the COVID-19 Unemployment Shock on Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates” (NBER Working Paper 28304)
  • Janet Currie, Princeton University and NBER; Molly Schnell and Hannes Schwandt, Northwestern University and NBER; and Jonathan Zhang, Princeton University, “The Epidemic within the Pandemic: Drivers of Overdose Deaths during COVID-19”
  • Michael Bailey, Facebook; Drew M. Johnston and Martin Koenen, Harvard University; Theresa Kuchler and Johannes Stroebel, New York University and NBER; and Dominic Russel, New York University, “Social Distancing during a Pandemic: The Role of Friends”

Summaries of some of these papers are at www.nber.org/conferences/covid-19-and-health-outcomes-spring-2021

Economics and Politics of Mega-Firms

An NBER conference on the Economics and Politics of Mega-Firms took place on February 19 online. Research Associates Chad Syverson of the University of Chicago and John Van Reenen of the London School of Economics organized the meeting, which was supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation. These researchers’ papers were presented and discussed:

  • Marianne Bertrand, University of Chicago and NBER; Matilde Bombardini and Francesco Trebbi, University of California, Berkeley and NBER; Raymond Fisman, Boston University and NBER; and Eyub Yegen, University of Toronto, “Investing in Influence: Investors, Portfolio Firms, and Political Giving”
  • Bruno Pellegrino, University of Maryland, “Product Differentiation and Oligopoly: A Network Approach”
  • Kilian Huber, University of Chicago, “Are Bigger Banks Better? Firm-Level Evidence from Germany”
  • Ezra Oberfield and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, Princeton University and NBER, and Pierre-Daniel Sarte and Nicholas Trachter, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, “Plants in Space” (NBER Working Paper 27303)
  • Antonio Falato, Federal Reserve Board; Hyunseob Kim, Cornell University; and Till M. von Wachter, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, “Shareholder Power and the Decline of Labor”
  •  Philippe Aghion, London School of Economics; Antonin Bergeaud, Banque de France; Timo Boppart, IIES, Stockholm University; Peter J. Klenow, Stanford University and NBER; and Huiyu Li, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, “A Theory of Falling Growth and Rising Rents”
  • David Baqaee, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER, and Emmanuel Farhi, Harvard University and NBER (deceased), “The Darwinian Returns to Scale” (NBER Working Paper 27139)
  • Diana Van Patten, Princeton University, and Esteban Méndez-Chacón, Central Bank of Costa Rica, “Multinationals, Monopsony and Local Development: Evidence from the United Fruit Company”

Summaries of these papers are at www.nber.org/conferences/economics-and-politics-mega-firms-spring-2021