Events

  • Visiting speaker (November 18)

    Friday, November 15, 2024 | By

    Tianyi Wang (U Toronto, NBER, IZA) will be presenting his paper, McCarthyism, Media, and Political Repression: Evidence from Hollywood. Please find the paper attached and the abstract below. The presentation is taking place on Monday, November 18th from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in PLZ410.
    Abstract
    Demagogues have existed throughout history, yet their impact on individuals and society remains little understood. We study a far-reaching episode of demagoguery in American history. From the late 1940s to 1950s, anti-communist hysteria led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others gripped the nation. Hollywood was a prime target, with hundreds of professionals in the industry being accused of having communist ties or sympathies. To study the Red Scare in Hollywood, we assemble a unique collection of data on individual and film characteristics, spanning the period 1930-1970. We show that the anti-communist accusations targeted progressive personalities with dissenting views. Implementing a difference-in-differences design, we find that accused actors and screenwriters experienced a significant setback in their careers that lasted a decade or more. Beyond the effects on the accused, we also document a decline in progressive films during the McCarthy era. We provide suggestive evidence that this shift in film content made society more conservative, using newly-digitized data on movie theaters across US counties. Areas with greater movie exposure saw increased Republican support in presidential elections after the onset of the Hollywood Red Scare. Our results highlight how demagoguery can suppress civil liberties and reshape political preferences in society.
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  • Visiting speaker (November 4)

    Friday, November 01, 2024 | By

    Marco Cozzi from the University of Victoria will be presenting his paper, “Optimal Capital Taxation with Incomplete Markets and Schumpeterian Growth”, next Monday, November 4th, from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM in PLZ410. Please find the abstract below. Join us!

    Abstract

    In this paper, I characterize quantitatively the optimal capital income tax rate in an OLG economy with uninsurable income risk, incomplete markets and endogenous Schumpeterian growth. Contrary to the most recent literature, I find that it is virtually never optimal to tax capital. Under the optimal scheme, the highest proportional tax rate on capital is found to be less than 0.2%. The reason for this result lies in the reduced GDP (and wage) growth rate stemming from a higher capital tax rate. In General Equilibrium, the interest rate rises, and the increased cost of capital reduces the endogenous rate of innovation, leading to a negative response of the growth rate. Although the equilibrium effect on the growth rate is found to be quantitatively modest (approximately half a percentage point), it still has a first order consequence on welfare. The results show that moving to the optimal income tax schedule entails large welfare gains, approximately 5% in consumption equivalent. These large effects are also explained by a large reduction in the monopolistic distortions: in the intermediate goods sector, the mark-up over the marginal costs falls by more than 10 percentage points. The results are robust along a number of dimensions, including the specification of preferences.

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  • Visiting Speaker (October 9)

    Tuesday, October 08, 2024 | By

    Yihong Bai, postdoctoral researcher at Western University, will present the paper “Assessing the impact of welfare reform in the UK on mental health, life satisfaction, and impairments: a quasi-experimental study”. The presentation is taking place at 9:30am in GSB 307. Yihong is also a graduate of the MBE program. Join us!

    Abstract:

    Universal Credit (UC) was introduced in the UK in 2013 to gradually replace six benefit schemes by a single benefit scheme. UC has been criticized for its complex online application system, lengthy wait period, and its association with increased financial hardships among claimants. Previous studies have highlighted the system’s challenges, but this study aims to assess multiple health-related outcomes and financial implications of transitioning to UC. Utilizing data from the UK Longitudinal Household Survey, this quasi-experimental study applied the Callaway and Sant’Anna difference-in-differences (CSDID) method, to account for the staggered implementation of UC and treatment effect heterogeneity. We found that the transition to UC led to increased psychological distress and life dissatisfaction, with no significant effects on physical impairment. Furthermore, transitioning to UC led to a reduction in social benefit income; however, those who transitioned did not have significantly decreased personal or household net income over time. Despite UC’s goals to simplify the welfare system and encourage employment, the findings call for urgent policy adjustments to genuinely support claimants’ well-being and financial health, ensuring that welfare reforms do not inadvertently harm the very individuals they aim to assist.

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  • Visiting speaker (April 4)

    Monday, April 01, 2024 | By

    Larry Samuelson (A. Douglas Melamed Professor of Economics at Yale University) will present his paper “What you don’t know may be good for you” this Thursday at 1100am-1230pm in WH 303. Join us!

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  • Visiting Speaker (March 28)

    Monday, March 25, 2024 | By

    Nikolai Cook from Wilfrid Laurier University will be presenting his paper “Stay Frosty: Climate Change and Gun Violence in North America” this Thursday, March 28th between 11:00am – 12:30pm in STH201. Join us if you can.

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  • Visiting speaker (March 19)

    Monday, March 18, 2024 | By

    Adam Lavecchia from McMaster University will be presenting the paper “The Impact of Comprehensive Student Support on Crime: Evidence from the Pathways to Education Program” on Tuesday, March 19th, from 2:30pm to 4pm in STH216. Join us!

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  • Visiting speaker (March 7)

    Monday, March 04, 2024 | By

    Please join us if you can.

    Laëtitia Renée from the University of Montreal will be presenting her paper “The Impact of After-School Care on Maternal Income: Evidence from Canadian Administrative Data” on Thursday, March 7th, from 11 am to 12:30 pm in STH201.

    Abstract:

    We study the impact of affordable after-school care programs on the labor market outcomes of mothers. Specifically, we analyze the effects of a policy implemented in Quebec (Canada) in 1998, which reduced the costs and expanded the availability of after-school care programs for primary school children. We use tax return data and a triple difference strategy to identify the causal effects of the policy. Ten years after the policy implementation, we find an average increase in after-school care use of 46 school days. This increase is associated with a significant 12% increase in labor income for mothers with primary school children.

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  • Visiting speaker (February 8)

    Friday, February 02, 2024 | By

    Mohammed Dore, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Brock University, will present this Thursday February 8 from 11am to 12:30pm in STH 216. The title of the paper is “Recurrent Financial Crises and US Monetary Regulation: Bubbles and Blisters”. Hope to see you there.

     

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  • Visiting speaker (November 30)

    Monday, November 27, 2023 | By

    Mikko Packalen (Waterloo) will be visiting this week on Thursday. The presentation, titled “Power of Economists”, starts at 14:30 and will be in STH 215.

    Abstract: Economics is an influential and exceptional discipline in social sciences, dominating other social science and humanities fields. This paper quantifies the influence of economists and other professions through an analysis of 311 million news articles published during 1980-2022. We show that the influence of economists grew during the Covid pandemic, especially in high-status newspapers and broadcast networks, and that economists were more active in debates on lockdowns, testing and vaccines than in the debates on hospital capacity and school closures. There is similar variance in the influence of economists across climate change topics. We also examine whether the relatively high-powered nature of economics as a scientific discipline explains some of the marked distinction in the influence and public posture of economists relative to representatives of other social science and humanities disciplines.

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  • Visiting speaker (November 23)

    Thursday, November 16, 2023 | By

    Jonathan Créchet from University of Ottawa will be presenting his project “Life-cycle Worker Flows and Cross-country Differences in Aggregate Employment” next Thursday November 23rd between 2:30pm-4:00pm in STH215.  Please join us!

    ABSTRACT – We propose new data moments to measure the role of life-cycle worker flows between employment, unemployment and out of the labor force in shaping cross-country differences in aggregate employment. We then show that a suitably extended version of the Diamond- Mortensen-Pissarides model can capture well these data moments. Two features of the model are crucial for this result: heterogeneity in match quality and endogenous search intensity. We examine the implications of this model for the sources of employment dispersion across Europe’s largest countries, assessing the contribution of factors related to (i) the production technology, (ii) search, and (iii) policies. The sources of cross-country employment dispersion differ substantially across ages. Technology factors account for most of the employment variance of youths and prime-age workers, whereas search and policies are the main drivers of employment differences for older individuals.

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