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!
Visiting speaker (April 4)
Categories: Events
Events
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Visiting Speaker (March 28)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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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