Events

  • 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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  • Visiting speaker (November 14)

    Friday, November 10, 2023 | By

    Ying Feng from National University of Singapore will be presenting her paper “The Reversal of the Gender Education Gap with Economic Development” next Tuesday, November 14th between 2:30pm – 4:00pm in WH324. You can find the abstract below. Join us!

    Abstract

    Using household surveys covering 83 countries of all income levels, we document that the gender education gap in low-income countries is strikingly large and that it narrows and reverses with economic development. To study the driving forces, we propose a three-sector model in which development features skill-biased structural change, gender-biased technological change (a reduced form of changing discrimination), changing marriage markets, and varying levels of home productivity. The model is parameterized to match contrasting labor market outcomes by education and gender groups and it does well in matching the patterns of the gender education gap we document. Counterfactual exercises show that skill-biased structural change explains most of the narrowing gender education gap across the development spectrum, whereas other mechanisms play only a minor role.

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  • Visiting speaker (November 7)

    Monday, November 06, 2023 | By

    Ruben Gaetani (UofT) will be presenting his paper “Are Cities Losing Innovation Advantages? Online versus Face-to-face Interactions” next Tuesday November 7th between 2:30pm – 4:00pm in STH203. Join us!

    Abstract

    How did COVID-19 affect the innovation advantages of dense locations? Using data on the universe of U.S. patent applications, we find that the density premium in the production of novel inventions declined by 18.5%-22.9% in 2020-2021 relative to its pre-pandemic level. Smartphone data on local mobility suggest that the drop in the frequency of local interactions can explain a significant portion of this effect. While COVID-19 resulted in a temporary setback in the innovation advantages of dense locations, the role of urban density in facilitating the exchange and recombination of ideas is unlikely to be persistently replaced by online communication.

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  • Visiting speaker (November 2)

    Tuesday, October 31, 2023 | By

    Ashantha Ranasinghe from University of Alberta will be presenting his ongoing project “Gender Differences in Firm Performance: Selection and Misallocation in Mexico” Thursday November 2, 2:30-4pm in STH 215. Please join us!

     

     

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  • Visiting speaker (September 26)

    Monday, September 25, 2023 | By

    Tony Fang from Memorial University will be presenting his paper, “Where Did The Time Go? The Effects of China’s Two-Day Weekend Policy on Labor Supply, Household Work, and Leisure Activities”, tomorrow Tuesday September 26th between 2:30-4:00pm in STH217. 

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  • Visiting speaker (September 19)

    Friday, September 15, 2023 | By

    Arthur Sweetman (McMaster) will be presenting September 19 at 2:30 until 4pm in STH 203.
    Title of Paper – Physician Labour Supply: Efficient Use of General-Purpose Surveys
    Abstract

    Physician labor supply trends in Canada from 1987 to 2021 are examined together with the correlates of the current perceived physician shortage. A survey weighting technique with general applicability is employed that enhances estimation quality for profession-specific analysis using the modest sample sizes of general-purpose surveys. Our findings indicate a 16.5% decline in average work hours among practicing physicians during the study period. The reduced work hours among male physicians contribute significantly to this decline. The growing representation of females within the workforce, characterized by fewer hours than their male counterparts, also contributes to the downward trend. Moreover, the aging of the physician workforce contributes noticeably to the overall decline in average work hours. Particularly, there has been an approximately 90% rise in physicians aged 65 and older between 1989 and 2021. These senior physicians work notably fewer hours than their prime-age counterparts. Increasing lengths of absences (e.g., vacations) among physicians also contributes to the decline. Though we cannot distinguish cohort effects from year effects, successive cohorts are observed to work fewer hours than preceding ones.

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  • Visiting speaker (March 16, virtual)

    Thursday, March 16, 2023 | By

    Melissa Spencer, University of Richmond, will be presenting her paper “Safer Sex? The Effect of AIDS Risk on Birth Rates”. This is a virtual presentation.

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  • Visiting speaker (March 6)

    Friday, March 03, 2023 | By

    Evelyn Forget from the University of Manitoba will be presenting her work, “Basic Income in the Wake of the Pandemic” on Monday March 6 at 1pm in WH327. Please join us.

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  • Visiting speaker (December 8, virtual)

    Monday, December 05, 2022 | By

    This is our last presentation of the Fall term.

    Walter Steingress from the Bank of Canada will be presenting his work, “The fiscal impact of immigration in the United States: Evidence at the local level” (joint with Anna Maria Mayda and Mine Z. Senses). Contact Prof. Lamarche at jfl@brocku.ca if you want the Zoom link.

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