Hello and welcome to the 2nd edition of the MPhil Seminar Series: Novel Ideas (probably the best masters-level Seminar Series in the world!). Seminars will take place on Thursdays at 6pm from Week 1 to Week 4 HT and on Wednesdays at 6pm from Week 5 to Week 8. All seminars will be held in TBD at Manor Road Building . Presentations can also be followed online via Zoom . Below you can find a miscellaneous of all the materials provided by the speakers in Hillary 2023.
You can visit the site for previous Editions here.
If you are interested in attending as a speaker, please consider submitting your paper or presentation idea to carlos.gonzalezperez@economics.ox.ac.uk and daniel.barbosa@economics.ox.ac.uk . Submissions are currently open for Trinity Term of the Academic Year 2022-2023.
19/01 De-escalation Technology: The Impact of Body-worn Cameras on Citizen-Police Interactions by Daniel AC Barbosa (joint with Thiemo Fetzer, Caterina Soto-Vieira and Pedro CL Souza)
Broad Topic: Applied Microeconomics. Specific Topic: Economics of Crime, Policy Evaluation, RCT.
Abstract
We provide experimental evidence that monitoring of the police activity through body-worn cameras reduces use-of-force, handcuffs and arrests, and enhances criminal reporting by the police. Stronger treatment effects occur on events ex-ante classified as low risk. Monitoring effects are moderated by officer rank, which is consistent with a career concern motive by junior officers. Our results stand in sharp contrast with previous literature which, due to often used coarser designs, showed muted or null body-worn camera effects on use of force. We show that these designs are likely to suffer from attenuation biases. Overall, our results show that body-worn cameras robustly de-escalate citizen-police interactions.
26/01 Germany's 9-Euro Ticket: A Short Term Price Shock with Lasting Effects? by Milan Marcus
Broad Topic: Applied Microeconomics, Urban Economics. Specific Topic: Transportation Economics.
Abstract
In response to the increased cost of living, in particular energy/fuel costs, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the German government passed several measures in the first half of 2022 to alleviate the pressure on households. One such measure was the temporary introduction of a cheap, country-wide public transport ticket. In June, July, and August, one could take almost every train, bus, or tram throughout Germany for as little as 9 Euros a month. This paper first establisheds that the decrease in public transport fares indeed led to higher public transit ridership, and lower car traffic. It then proceeds to estimate whether the short-term price shock has had knock-on effects. In other words, did some motorists get a taste for using public transport when it was cheap, and decide to continue using it even when fares returned to their regular levels? To achieve this, I collect air pollution levels, peak-hour traffic times, and public transit ridership for over 30 German cities.
02/02 The East Asian Miracle: Did Industrial Policy Transformed Growth Trajectories by Kristen Yang
Broad Topic: Development Economics Specific Topic: Industrial Policy.
Abstract
The role of active industrial policy in transforming economic growth trajectories has attracted advocates from the both sides of the literature. Some emphasize the importance of industrial policies in the East Asian growth miracle, while others argue for the occurrence of the growth miracle despite industrial policies. I plan to take a more panoramic view of this issue by comparing the effects of industrial policies across East Asian countries using staggered difference-in-differences and counterfactual methods.
09/02 Communication with Cultural Agents by Brooklyn Han
Broad Topic: Applied Microeconomic Theory. Specific Topic: Information Design, Coordination Games, Economics of Culture.
Abstract
During times of crisis when economic uncertainty is rampant, sound policymaking is paramount for a benevolent government that wishes to maximise social welfare; communication, in particular, becomes a powerful tool through which a government could guide society by affecting individuals’ beliefs. As people from different cultural backgrounds differ in what they find salient and how they respond to contextual cues, communication must be carefully tailored to a society’s cultural strength and diversity in order to achieve the desired outcome. This is not well-understood in the theoretical literature. Using an information design approach, I investigate how a benevolent government with commitment power optimally communicates with a society in which there is a continuum of players, potentially belonging to different groups. Players are randomly pairwise-matched and play a coordination game with multiple equilibria; crucially, their strategic behaviour is driven by societal culture and diversity via a process of introspection à la Kets and Sandroni (2021), which endogenises equilibrium selection. In the baseline model without diversity, I find that the government’s concavified payoff function under optimal communication is piece-wise and non-monotone in cultural strength; this non-linearity arises from conflicting coordination and persuasion effects. This model has possible applications to explaining cross-country differences in government communication during the Covid-19 pandemic and populism, and can generate empirically testable predictions.
15/02 The Effects of Economic Information on Household Expectations and Economic Literacy by Peter Rickards
Broad Topic: Applied Macroeconomics, Experimental Economics. Specific Topic: Economic Expectations, Information Effects, Economic Literacy.
Abstract
This paper uses an RCT design to investigate the impact of informational treatments on household expectations and economic literacy in Australia.
22/02 Modeling Time Inconsistency through Non-stationary Instantaneous Utility by Stefania Merone
Broad Topic: Microeconomic Theory, Behavioral Economics. Specific Topic: Choice under Uncertainty.
Abstract
One of the key predictions of Samuelson's discounted utility framework (DU) is that agents are time-consistent; however, empirical evidence usually detects such behavior in real life. I propose a theoretical framework that allows for time-inconsistency by introducing a minimal deviation from the DU assumption by relying on stationary instantaneous utility.
01/03 Effects of Parental Receipt of Unemployment Insurance on Children's Educational Outcomes by Tiansui Tu
Broad Topic: Public Economics. Specific Topic: Unemployment Insurance, Education Economics.
Abstract
This paper studies the effect of parents’ receiving unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on their children’s educational attainment. Using reason of unemployment being business closure as an instrumental variable (IV) and data from NLSY79, I show that parents receiving UI when the child is 10-17 years old has a negative effect on whether the child graduates from high school at the age of 18/19. The effect however is small and statistically insignificant if parents get UI when the child is below 10 years old. Both linear and non-parametric IV models are considered and some falsification tests (e.g. Mourifié and Wan (2017)) are conducted. I then proceed to a structural approach. PSID data is used to fit a simple model in which a parent is the only decision maker and s/he maximises utility from consumption and investing in the child’s educational production.
08/03 Controlled Foreign Corporation Rules under Heterogeneous Home Country Taxation by Gerwin Kiessling
Broad Topic: Public Economics. Specific Topic: International Corporate Taxation.
Abstract
Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) legislation is a set of rules implemented by many countries in an effort to counteract tax avoidance by multinational firms. These rules stipulate that selected parts of the income of a foreign subsidiary based in a low-tax country be included in the corporate tax base of its parent company. This income of the foreign subsidiary is thus subject to the higher corporate tax rate which the multinational firm faces in its home country. Exploiting a particular feature of the German tax system, this paper provides evidence on how the effects of CFC rules on multinational firms' financial decisions depend on home country corporate tax rates. German municipalities have autonomy over their local business tax rates which yields ample variation in corporate tax rates within Germany. Using information on the location of parent companies in Germany, I combine administrative panel data on foreign investment stocks of German multinationals with municipality-level corporate tax rates in Germany. This allows me to observe the tax rate on the income of a foreign subsidiary targeted by the German CFC rules.