UnaJointSem - Program 

20/10/2025 - Sara Lazzaroni (University of Bologna) -  The Rise of the Knowledge Economy: Republic of Letters and Communication Infrastructures in Early Modern England - Maison des sciences économiques, 106 boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris - Salle du 6ème étage. 

This paper provides a first formal investigation of the drivers of the diffusion of knowledge in England and Wales in the context of the Republic of Letters, a pan-European, correspondence-based network, formed by a community of intellectuals that shared, distributed, and evaluated knowledge. Using a novel dataset on early modern correspondence in Britain, we document a sharp increase in epistolary communications during the 17th century and identify a plausible catalyst for this change: a postal reform enacted in England in 1635 that made the British postal system openly available to the public. Taking a difference-in-differences approach, we show that locations in England and Wales hosting a postal stage in 1628 (the latest year in the pre-reform period in which we know the whole geographical distribution of the British postal network) exhibited a significant increase in the volume of total correspondence after 1635 relative to places lacking a postal stage in 1628. We also find evidence that the postal reform benefited scholars the most, as after 1635 they started interacting more both among themselves and with practitioners, publishing editors and political figures, to discuss more science-oriented issues. Finally, places with a pre-existing postal stage in 1635 saw a significant increase in innovation activity soon thereafter. These findings provide the first systematic evidence of the rise of knowledge economies in early modern Europe. 

15/12/2025 - Max Steinhardt (FU Berlin) - The Impact of Inter-Ethnic Contact in Schools on Managers’ Hiring Decisions - Maison des sciences économiques, 106 boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris - Salle du 6ème étage

This paper analyzes whether inter-ethnic contact in childhood affects the hiring behavior of managers. To identify the causal effect of exposure, we exploit quasi-random variation in the share of immigrant students across cohorts within Danish schools. Using administrative employer-employee data, we find that being exposed to more immigrant peers of the same gender in school leads Danish managers to hire more immigrants later in life. Exploring a variety of mechanisms, we find evidence most consistent with a change in managers’ attitudes toward immigrants.

20/04/2026 - Karsten Donnay (U. of Zürich) - TBA - Maison des sciences économiques, 106 boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris - Salle du 6ème étage

08/06/2026 - Lore Vandewalle (KU Leuven) - TBA - Maison des sciences économiques, 106 boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris - Salle du 6ème étage