QPEWS

The Quebec Political Economics Webinar Series (QPEWS) is a webinar series that will meet by Zoom on Mondays, from 11 am to 12 pm (EST).

Here is the registration link to the webinars: https://forms.gle/f3y6xDcSouafm3wM7

Organizers: Vincent Arel-Bundock, Arnaud Dellis, Caroline Le Pennec and Arthur Silve

Past webinars:

• September 21, 2020: Moses Shayo (Hebrew)

"How Do We Choose Our Identity? A Revealed Preference Approach Using Food Consumption" (with David Atkin and Eve Colson-Sihra)

• October 19, 2020: Emiel Awad (LSE)

"International Coordination and the Informational Rationale of Delegation" (with Nicolas Riquelme)

• November 16, 2020: Ruixue Jia (UCSD)

"The Nexus of Elites and War Mobilization: An Empirical Investigation" (with Ying Bai and Jiaojiao Yang)

Abstract: This paper documents that elites made war and war made elites, using the setting of the organization of the Hunan Army -- an army organized by one Hunanese scholar-general from existing local militia to suppress the Taiping Rebellion (1850--1864). We construct comprehensive datasets to depict the elites in the scholar-general's pre-war network and the distribution of national-level offices before and after the war. By studying how pre-war elite connections affected where soldiers who died actually came from, and subsequent shifts in the post-war distribution of political power towards the home counties of these very elites, we highlight a two-way nexus of elites and war mobilization: (i) elites used their personal network for mobilization, and (ii) network-induced mobilization elevated regional elites to the national political stage. These findings are relevant for understanding what determines war mobilization and and who benefits from war.

• December 14, 2020: Eric Avis (HEC Montréal)

"Interest Groups, Campaign Finance and Policy Influence: Evidence from the U.S. Congress"

• February 1, 2021: Gani Aldashev (Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management)

"Governance in the Wild: A Theory of State vs. Private Firms under Weak Institutions" (with Giorgio Zanarone)

Abstract: We study the relative efficiency of state and private firms under different institutions. We argue that when political institutions are weak, the government must enter a relational “social contract” with firm owners and suppliers to guarantee them against expropriation. Moreover, when judicial institutions are weak, owners and suppliers must also enter relational “business contracts” with each other. In a state-owned firm, the government is a common party to both contracts, so relational capital can be efficiently concentrated by making it residual claimant of the firm’s surplus. In a private firm, a tension arises between the social contract, which calls for the government to be residual claimant, and the business contract, which calls for the firm’s private owner to be residual claimant. Thu, although a private firm is potentially more productive than a state-owned firm, it may be less credible when both political and judicial institutions are weak. Our model is consistent with the fact that privatizations succeeded in developing countries with stronger institutions but failed in those with weaker institutions, and with the fact that state firms in East-Asian countries became relatively less important as those countries reformed their political and judicial institutions.

• March 1, 2021: Hye Young You (NYU)

"Bureaucratic Revolving Doors and Interest Group Participation in Policymaking" (with Kyuwon Lee)

• March 29, 2021: Ian Turner (Yale)

"Motivated Reasoning and Democratic Accountability" (with Andrew Little and Keith Schnakenberg)

• April 26, 2021: Caroline Le Pennec (HEC Montreal)

"How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multi-Country Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates" (with Vincent Pons)

• September 20, 2021: Dimitrios Xefteris (University of Cyprus)

"Ideological Consistency and Valence" (with Enriqueta Aragones)

• November 15, 2021: Nathan Canen (University of Houston)

"Political Parties as Drivers of U.S. Polarization: 1927-2018" (with Chad Kendall and Francesco Trebbi)

• December 13, 2021: Cesi Cruz (UCLA)

"Gender, Social Recognition, and Political Influence" (with Charis Tolentino Neric)

Abstract: What determines women’s political influence? While the literature on political engage-ment focuses on individual traits, a˛itudes, and participation, we argue that how these factors translate to political influence is fundamentally a social process that requires recognition from the broader community, with important implications for understand-ing women’s political engagement. Using new data on networks of political influence in Philippine villages, we show that even a˝er controlling for socioeconomic status or po-litical participation, women are still markedly less likely to be recognized as influential. Furthermore, we show that engagement in politics through traditional means–running for o˙ice, participating in councils, or joining parties–are only associated with political influence for men. The determinants of influence are more complex for women: embed-dedness in the community and participation in community activities are more important than traditional modes of political participation.

• March 7, 2022 (11 am - 12 pm EST): Luca Corazzini (University of Venice "Ca' Foscari")

"The Gates Effect in Public Goods Experiments: How Donors Focus on the Recipients Favored by the Wealthy" (with Christopher Cotton, Enrico Longo and Tommaso Reggiani)

• April 4, 2022 (11 am - 12 pm EST): Teresa Esteban-Casanelles (University of California Berkeley)

"The Effects of Economic Shocks on New Party Emergence and Changes in Voting Patterns"

• May 2, 2022 (11 am - 12 pm EST): Mathieu Couttenier (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon)

"The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Production Network Approach" (with Nathalie Monnet and Lavinia Piemontese)

Abstract: A novel approach is presented for estimating the economic costs of conflict, in which the production network serves a first-order mechanism through which the disruptive effect of localized conflict spreads to firms in peaceful areas. The method is applied to the Maoist insurgency in Eastern India during the period 2000-2009. We document the negative impact of conflict on firms’ behavior, which spreads to firms in peaceful areas through input-output connections. We then apply a model of production networks in order to quantify the overall impact of conflict by taking these propagation effects into account. We find that the Maoist insurgency results in an average aggregate output loss of 3.8 billion USD per year. Interestingly, 73% of the loss is explained by network propagation.

• September 26, 2022: Awa Ambra Seck (Harvard)

"Age Set vs. Kin: Culture and Financial Ties in East Africa" (with Jacob Moscona)

• October 17, 2022: Anna Wilke (Washington University in St. Louis)

"How Does the State Replace the Community? Experimental Evidence on Crime Control from South Africa"

• November 7, 2022: Ferenc Szucs (Stockholm)

"The Political Economy of Alternative Realities" (with Adam Szeidl)

• November 28, 2022: Zhao Li (Princeton)

"Economic Geography and Special Interest Entrenchment: Evidence from the Shale Boom and State Campaign Finance" (with Richard DiSalvo)