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Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Emily Blanchard: Tuck School of Business
Justice for Sale: Explaining the Rise in Investor-State Dispute Settlement
FEA - Economics
Justice for Sale: Explaining the Rise in Investor-State Dispute Settlement
Speaker: Emily Blanchard: Tuck School of Business
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Peter Morrow: University of Toronto
Wage Income and Profits, Workers and Owners
FEA - Economics
Wage Income and Profits, Workers and Owners
Speaker: Peter Morrow: University of Toronto
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Simon Fuchs: Visiting Lecturer, Dartmouth Economics
TBD
FEA - Economics
TBD
Speaker: Simon Fuchs: Visiting Lecturer, Dartmouth Economics
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Deniz Atalar: Cambridge
Import Price Shocks and Heterogeneous Innovation Responses
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Import Price Shocks and Heterogeneous Innovation Responses
Speaker: Deniz Atalar: Cambridge
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Aaron Berman: MIT
International Cooperation, Trade, and Common-Pool Resources
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International Cooperation, Trade, and Common-Pool Resources
Speaker: Aaron Berman: MIT
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Yulu Tang: Dartmouth College
TBD
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TBD
Speaker: Yulu Tang: Dartmouth College
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Anais Galdin: Tuck School of Business
Making Talk Cheap: LLMs and Signaling on Digital Labor Platforms
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Making Talk Cheap: LLMs and Signaling on Digital Labor Platforms
Speaker: Anais Galdin: Tuck School of Business
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Teresa Fort: Tuck School of Business
Growth is Getting Harder to Find, Not Ideas
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Growth is Getting Harder to Find, Not Ideas
Speaker: Teresa Fort: Tuck School of Business
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Relatively flat US output growth versus rising numbers of US researchers is often interpreted as evidence that “ideas are getting harder to find.” We build a new 46-year panel tracking the universe of US firms’ patenting to investigate the micro underpinnings of this claim, separately examining the relationships between research inputs and ideas (patents) versus ideas and growth. Over our sample period, we find that researchers’ patenting productivity is increasing, there is little evidence of any secular decline in high-quality patenting common to all firms, and the link between patents and growth is present, differs by type of idea, and is fairly stable. On the other hand, we find strong evidence of secular decreases in output unrelated to patenting, suggesting an important role for other factors. Together, these results invite renewed empirical and theoretical attention to the impact of ideas on growth. To that end, our patent-firm bridge, which will be available to researchers with approved access, is used to produce new, public-use statistics on the Business Dynamics of Patenting Firms (BDS-PF).Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Deniz Atalar: Cambridge
TBD
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TBD
Speaker: Deniz Atalar: Cambridge
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Aaron Berman: MIT
TBD
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TBD
Speaker: Aaron Berman: MIT
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Patrick Farrell
Export Restrictions as Industrial Policy
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Export Restrictions as Industrial Policy
Speaker: Patrick Farrell
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
Export restrictions are increasingly popular instruments of industrial policy, adopted by both developing and developed countries in various forms and for differing rationales. Despite their growing prevalence and importance these export restrictions are understudied in the trade and industrial policy literatures. A simple model of costly trade in both intermediates inputs and final goods, with increasing returns to scale in the more "advanced" final goods sector, demonstrates the potential for welfare gains from restricting the export of intermediates.TBD
Speaker: Xiang Zhang
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
TBD-
Speaker: Prakash Mishra
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
-Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Penny Goldberg: Yale School of Management
Industrial Policy in the Global Semiconductor Sector
International Economics
Industrial Policy in the Global Semiconductor Sector
Speaker: Penny Goldberg: Yale School of Management
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
The resurgence of subsidies and industrial policies has raised concerns about their potential inefficiency and alignment with multilateral principles. Critics warn that such policies may divert resources to less efficient firms and provoke retaliatory measures from other countries, leading to a wasteful “subsidy race.” However, subsidies for sectors with inherent cross-border externalities can have positive global effects. This paper examines these issues within the semiconductor industry: a key driver of economic growth and innovation with potentially significant learning-by-doing and strategic importance due to its dual-use applications. Our analysis employs a combination of historical analysis, natural language processing, and a model-based approach to measure government support and its impacts. Our findings indicate that government support has been vital for the industry’s growth, with subsidies being the primary form of support. They also highlight the importance of cross-border technology transfers through FDI, business and research collaborations, and technology licensing. China, despite significant subsidies, does not stand out as an outlier compared to other countries, given its market size. Model estimates indicate the presence of learning-by-doing with significant international spillovers. These spillovers likely reflect cross-country technology transfers and the role of fabless clients in disseminating knowledge globally through their interactions with foundries. Such cross-border spillovers are not merely accidental but result from deliberate actions by market participants that cannot be taken for granted. Firms may choose to share knowledge across borders or restrict access to frontier technology, thereby excluding certain countries. Future research will use model estimates to simulate the quantitative implications of subsidies and to explore the dynamics of a “subsidy race” in the semiconductor industry.-
Speaker: Myeongwan Kim
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Alperin
-Tseng
12:15 PM - 1:30 PM
Ann Harrison: Berkeley Haas
Free Markets No More? How to Ensure a Successful Return for Industrial Policy
International Economics
Free Markets No More? How to Ensure a Successful Return for Industrial Policy
Speaker: Ann Harrison: Berkeley Haas
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:30 PM
Location: Tseng
History is full of examples of successful and unsuccessful industrial policies. The critical question is not whether to engage in such policies but how they are designed and implemented. Industrial policy can work, but only with strict adherence to sensible guidelines based on sound economic practice, political economy considerations, and historical context. In this lecture I review the necessary foundation for a successful industrial policy. We incorporate both recent theory and evidence, as well as country-specific examples drawn from China, India, and the United States. About the speaker: Ann E. Harrison is a renowned economist and one of the most highly cited scholars on foreign investment and multinational firms. She served as the 15th dean of the Haas School of Business and was the second woman to lead the school since its founding in 1898. Harrison is a Life Member of the Council of Foreign Relations, as well as a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She serves on a number of Boards, including UNPRME, the Berkeley Haas Advisory Board, and the board of the French business school EDHEC.Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Martin Rotemberg: New York University
Tariffs and State Capacity: A Specific Example
International Economics
Tariffs and State Capacity: A Specific Example
Speaker: Martin Rotemberg: New York University
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
Evasion is a key obstacle to raising customs revenue. We study how improved administrative capacity enables governments to combat evasion by redesigning tariff codes. Using newly compiled historical records from the Early American Republic, we show that as Customs administration matured, the tariff code became more complex and more reliant on specific (quantity-based) tariffs in preference to ad valorem (value-based) ones. We develop an equilibrium model of tariff administration with costly verification of declared values that explains these twin trends: Administrative capacity allows Customs officials to disaggregate goods and assess tailored specific tariffs, obviating misvaluation while minimizing price distortions. The model successfully predicts several additional empirical patterns: Specific tariffs tend to be assessed on goods that are homogeneous, cheap, or lightly taxed.Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Giulia Brancaccio: New York University
Transportation Disruptions and Prices
International Economics
Transportation Disruptions and Prices
Speaker: Giulia Brancaccio: New York University
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
Do transportation disruptions have significant impact on prices? If so, in what ways? And, what can we do about it? This paper aims to address these questions by focusing on maritime transportation (ports, and ships), which moves more than 80% of international trade. We use granular data to measure port activity and disruptions, and quantify their impact on commodity price increases, while addressing a first-order endogeneity problem. We illustrate that port congestion is a composite of different terms (service time, capacity, and demand) that give rise to different kinds of disruptions, which in turn need different types of policy interventions (e.g. automation vs. infrastructure investment). Motivated by our findings, we provide a stylized international trade model to investigate the impact of disruptions on macro outcomes. The model includes two key features of transportation: (i) infrastructure bottlenecks; and (ii) endogenous freight costs and showcases that transportation disruptions lead to shortages of goods, which in turn increase prices.TBD
Speaker: Felipe Barbieri: Tuck School of Business
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
TBDVolanakis
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Catherine Thomas: London School of Economics
Global Sourcing Flexibility: The Role of Contracts in LNG
International Economics
Global Sourcing Flexibility: The Role of Contracts in LNG
Speaker: Catherine Thomas: London School of Economics
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
This paper explores how firms design sourcing strategies that provide flexibility to adjust to demand shocks. We model buyers’ sourcing decisions in settings where goods are indivisible and trade can take place both within long-term relationships and in spot markets. Reduced-form evidence from the global LNG industry between 2009 and 2019 shows that larger buyers source from more suppliers and often from multiple suppliers within a given week. Shipments sourced through contractual relationships—which are more efficient on average—respond to buyer-specific demand shocks. Estimating the model for the same period indicates that maintaining several supplier relationships offers greater resilience to shocks than relying solely on spot markets. Counterfactual analysis suggests that adaptation within contracts contributes substantially to overall value creation in the global LNG industry.Volanakis
12:30 PM - 1:45 PM
Asaf Manela: Washington University
Chronologically Consistent Large Language Models
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Chronologically Consistent Large Language Models
Speaker: Asaf Manela: Washington University
Time: 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
Large language models are increasingly used in social sciences, but their training data can introduce lookahead bias and training leakage. A good chronologically consistent language model requires efficient use of training data to maintain accuracy despite time-restricted data. Here, we overcome this challenge by training a suite of chronologically consistent large language models, ChronoBERT and ChronoGPT, which incorporate only the text data that would have been available at each point in time. Despite this strict temporal constraint, our models achieve strong performance on natural language processing benchmarks, outperforming or matching widely used models (e.g., BERT), and remain competitive with larger open-weight models. Lookahead bias is model and application-specific because even if a chronologically consistent language model has poorer language comprehension, a regression or prediction model applied on top of the language model can compensate. In an asset pricing application predicting next-day stock returns from financial news, we find that ChronoBERT and ChronoGPT’s real-time outputs achieve Sharpe ratios comparable to a much larger Llama model, indicating that lookahead bias is modest. Our results demonstrate a scalable, practical framework to mitigate training leakage, ensuring more credible backtests and predictions across finance and other social science domains.TBD
Speaker: Patrick Farrell
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location: Volanakis
TBDVolanakis
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Xiang Ding: Georgetown University
Capital Services in Global Value Chains
International Economics
Capital Services in Global Value Chains
Speaker: Xiang Ding: Georgetown University
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
This paper constructs the first global dataset on inter-sectoral capital service flows. Using the new data, I disaggregate capital services and intermediate inputs in a dynamic multi-sector model of global production. Steady state allocations and responses to shocks are determined by a simple capital-augmented global input-output matrix. Two properties of the capital services network deliver larger long-run consumption impacts of globalization than existing estimates, and larger impacts in more capital-intensive countries. First, more consumption-influential producers use capital from more trade-exposed suppliers. Second, heterogeneity in the network reallocates sectoral expenditures towards producers with the largest respective declines in capital service costs. These reallocations raise capital incomes for producers and lower price indices for consumers.-
Speaker: Xiang Zhang
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
-Volanakis
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Nate Baum-Snow: University of Toronto
Housing Affordability and the Mobility of Renters
International Economics
Housing Affordability and the Mobility of Renters
Speaker: Nate Baum-Snow: University of Toronto
Time: 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
Location: Volanakis
This paper examines the welfare costs of rent growth and the prospects for reducing these costs. Using panel data on the near universe of renters in Texas 2011-2019, we estimate migration costs between neighborhoods jointly with the demand system for neighborhoods and commuting zones. A structural dynamic model of demand for cities and neighborhoods with endogenous mobility underlies these estimates. Using estimated model parameters, we quantify how migration to substitute cities and neighborhoods has mitigated the welfare cost of rent growth by household type. A reduced-form analysis of the impacts of housing supply shocks on renters' mobility and rental payments corroborates this model-based decomposition.