The 125th meeting: Tokyo Conference, Spring 2019
Date Monday and Tuesday, March 18-19, 2019.
Place Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo.
Conference Room (Room 549), 5th floor, Akamon General Research Building, Hongo Campus.
Program https://editorialexpress.com/conference/TCEIO2019/program/TCEIO2019.html
The 124th meeting jointly organized with the Search Theory Workshop
Date Friday, January 18, 2019.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Noritaka Kudoh, Department of Economics, Nagoya University.
Title: “DSGE versus DMP: Do General Equilibrium Effects Matter?”
Abstract:
DSGE models with search-matching frictions and variants of the textbook DMP model are the two widely accepted paradigms for studying the aggregate labor market. The two paradigms are very similar as long as hours of work per employee are ruled out. With variable hours of work, the two paradigms generate significantly different outcomes, both in and out of steady-state. For a small surplus calibration, the risk-aversion parameter and the Frisch elasticity parameter must be small enough. Habit persistence does not matter for labor market fluctuations.
16:20-17:50 Christian Holzner, ifo Center for Labour and Demographic Economics.
Title: “Do intermediaries reduce coordination frictions?”
Abstract:
We show that the major intermediary in the German labor market, the Public Employment Agency (PEA), reduces coordination frictions. Coordination frictions arise because job seekers do not know to which vacancies other job seekers apply. The lack of coordination leads to an uneven distribution of applications across vacancies. Using inequality measures we are able to show that applicants coming via the PEA are more equally distributed across vacancies than applicants coming via the private market. Our data allows us to determine this difference using within-vacancy information on the number of applicants coming via the PEA and the private market. Our analysis further suggests that the PEA achieves this by increasing job seekers' search intensity and by directing their applications to less attractive jobs. We also show that the PEA thereby helps vacancies at risk of not hiring to fill their vacancies. However, the fit is less precise compared to matches formed through the private market.
The 123rd meeting
Date Friday, December 21, 2018.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Tadashi Sekiguchi, Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University.
Title: “Nash reversion revisited: Implications from gain/loss asymmetry.”
Abstract:
In the repeated Cournot oligopoly, the Nash reversion is not the strongest punishment and is therefore unlikely to be part of a most collusive equilibrium. Recent empirical findings, however, suggest the implementation of the Nash reversion. We propose a potential answer for this empirical puzzle by using a refined version of the discounted utility where players discount gains more than losses. Our main result is a reverse Folk theorem, which examines the case where the discount factor used to evaluate gains converges to zero. Since the discount factor for evaluating gains determines the enforceability of the optimal penalty, its convergence to zero lets the optimal penalty go to the weakest penalty, the Cournot equilibrium output. Hence, the most collusive outcome converges to the best outcome implementable by the Nash reversion. This shows an advantage of the Nash reversion as the only punishment robust in terms of gain/loss asymmetry in discounting.
16:20-17:50 Takeharu Sogo, Faculty of Economics, Osaka University of Economics.
Title: “Costly entry and the optimality of asymmetric auction designs.” (co-authored with Dan Bernhardt and Tingjun Liu)
Abstract:
We investigate optimal auction mechanisms when bidders base costly entry decisions on their valuations, and payments depend on both the bids and asset payoffs generated by the winning bidder. We first show that when bidders pay with cash plus a large fixed royalty rate, the optimal mechanism can feature asymmetry, where the seller sets differential reserve prices so that bidders enter with strictly positive but different (ex-ante) probabilities, even when bidders are ex-ante identical. The optimality of asymmetric mechanisms extends to auctions with smaller royalty, including pure cash auctions, and the optimal degree of asymmetry rises with the royalty rate when there is sufficient valuation uncertainty relative to entry costs.
The 122nd meeting jointly organized with the Search Theory Workshop
Date Friday, November 16, 2018.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Kosho Tanaka, Graduate School of Economics, Nagoya University.
Title: “Technological progress and job separation: Does specific human capital matter?”
Abstract:
This paper explains the long-term impact of technological progress on job destruction in the presence of specific human capital. The incorporation of specific human capital is expected to strengthen the (employer-side) labor hoarding effect; at the same time, this is expected to mitigate the (worker-side) outside option effect. The model results confirm the above conjecture. However, through a simulation, it is shown that specific human capital itself has little impact on improving the ability to explain U.S. data.
16:20-17:50 Junichi Fujimoto, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
Title: “Marriage, Fertility, and Labor Market Participation: Implications for the Japanese Economy.”
Abstract:
In Japan, the decline in fertility occurred hand in hand with the decline in marriage. At the same time, the fraction of married individuals varies substantially with their employment status. To shed light on this issue, we build a model featuring different employment types as well as decisions on marriage and labor force participation. We then use the model to explore the aggregate effects of different policies.
The 121st meeting
Date Friday, October 19, 2018.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Akifumi Ishihara, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.
Title: “Managing authority and incentives in relational contracts.”
Abstract:
We consider a relational contracting model in which the parties choose whether to allocate authority either to the principal (centralization) or to the agent (delegation). The party who has authority chooses a project, and the agent exerts effort to successfully execute the project. Delegation combines both the control rights of project and effort and allocates them to the agent, which generates both (i) a positive effect to motivate the agent to exert effort through credible choice of the agent’s favoured project; and (ii) a negative effect to choose an inefficient project to avoid the agent’s deviation to his favourite project. Consequently, delegation (centralization) is inclined to be optimal for the parties with low (high) discount factors.
16:20-17:50 Takashi Shimizu, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
Title: “Equilibrium selection in dynamic auction markets with fiat money: An experimental approach.” (co-authored with Kazuya Kamiya, Hajime Kobayashi, and Tatsuhiro Shichijo)
Abstract:
Kamiya and Shimizu (2013) present a model of dynamic double auction markets with fiat money that has a continuum of stationary equilibria with different real allocations. This paper investigates the determinants of equilibrium selection through experiments. One of the main findings is that, despite the theoretical indeterminacy results, we observe the neutrality of money, i.e., the equilibrium price is proportional to the nominal stock of money.
The 120th meeting: Tokyo Conference on Economics of Institutions and Organizations Summer 2018
Date Wednesday and Thursday, August 22-23, 2018.
Place Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo.
Conference Room (Room 549), 5th floor, Akamon General Research Building, Hongo Campus.
Program
https://editorialexpress.com/conference/TEIO/program/TEIO.html
The 119th meeting
Date Friday, July 20, 2018.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Nobuyoshi Kikuchi, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
Title: “Intergenerational transmission of education in Japan: Nonparametric bounds analysis with multiple treatments.”
Abstract:
This paper investigates the intergenerational effects of education in Japan using a nonparametric bounds approach. The educational levels of parents are considered key factors in explaining children’s educational success. Nevertheless, the literature has not reached consensus on the causal effects of parents' education on their child's schooling. This is because both parents' and the child's schooling depend on unobserved heterogeneity. Moreover, the strong positive correlation of the mother's and father's schooling makes it difficult to separate the effects of each parent's schooling, making it unclear how to control spousal schooling in the analysis. Therefore, this paper estimates a set of semi-ordered vectors of both parents' schooling as an application of the nonparametric bounds method with multiple treatments. It thus derives bounds depending on relatively weak semi-monotonicity assumptions on treatment response, selection, and instrumental variables. A combination of these assumptions provides informative bounds on the average treatment effect of both parents' education on their child’s schooling. The main results show that the tightest lower bounds suggest the positive causal effects of parents' schooling, but the tightest upper bounds on the effects are lower than the point estimates that rely on the assumptions of an exogenous selection for parents' schooling. These results suggest that simple regressions overestimate the true causal effect of parents' education.
16:20-17:50 Jun Goto, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
Title: “On the origins and persistence of parochial altruism: A tenure institution and intergroup conflicts in colonial India.”
Abstract:
This paper provides econometric evidence on historical origins and persistence of altruism by exploiting natural experiments during the colonial period (1801-1932) in South India combined with the data from newly developed lab-in-the-field experiments. Specifically, I identify the causal impacts of frequent exposure to intergroup conflicts in customary tenure institutions on the evolution of in-group favoritism and out-group hostility. Furthermore, I demonstrate that such a parochial altruistic norm induced by intergroup competitions has persisted over generations even after the institutions had dissipated. Econometric analyses suggest that this is because individual beliefs and social values have been transmitted from old generations to successive generations.]
The 118th meeting
Date Friday, June 15, 2018.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Masayuki Kudamatsu, Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University.
Title: “Economic Consequences of Unrecognized States: Evidence from Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.”
Abstract:
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, some ethnic minorities in its constituent republics waged the war of secession. While they militarily succeeded in controlling their territories, international community refused to recognize them as sovereign states. I investigate the economic impact of being an unrecognized state by focusing on Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, where the boundary of a breakaway territory is plausibly orthogonal to socio-economic conditions. I use nighttime light intensity, observed by satellites, as a measure of economic activities, and employ spatial regression discontinuity design (comparing the outcome between both sides of the border of unrecognized states) to estimate the causal impact of being internationally unrecognized as a state.
16:20-17:50 Ryosuke Okazawa, Graguate School of Economics, Osaka City University.
Title: “Why do voters elect less qualified candidates? .”(co-authored with Nobuhiro Mizuno)
Abstract:
Voters sometimes vote for seemingly less qualified candidates; the winners of elections are sometimes less competent than the losers in light of observable candidates’ attributes such as their past careers. To explain this fact, we build a model of elections in which the degree of voters’ preference for competent politicians is their private information, and the elected politician guesses it using the electoral results. We argue that there exists an equilibrium in which voters dislike competent candidates because, if elected, they believe that their election victory is a sign of voters’ high preference for competence and are more likely to pursue their own interests while in office. The necessary condition for the existence of this equilibrium is that voters place significant weight on policy choice by elected politicians rather than their competency. When political polarization is high, this condition is more likely to hold because a voter loses a lot when his/her supporting policy fails to be implemented.
The 117th meeting
Date Friday, May 25, 2018.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Kasuya Takii, Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University.
Title: “Intergenerational Conflict Over Fiscal Consolidation: Evidence from Japan.” (co-authored with Real Arai and Ryosuke Okazawa)
16:20-17:50 Eric Weese, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
Title: “Insurgency and Small Wars: Estimation of Unobserved Coalition Structures.”
Abstract:
Insurgency and guerrilla warfare impose enormous socio-economic costs and often persist for decades. The opacity of such forms of conflict is an obstacle to effective international humanitarian intervention and development programs. To shed light on the internal organization of otherwise unknown insurgent groups, this paper proposes two methodologies for the detection of unobserved coalitions of militant factions in conflict areas. These approaches are based on daily geocoded incident-level data on insurgent attacks. We provide applications to the Afghan conflict during the 2004-2009 period and to Pakistan during the 2008-2011 period, identifying systematically different coalition structures. Applications to global terrorism data and identification of new groups or shifting coalitions are discussed.
The 116th meeting
Date Friday, April 27, 2018.
Place Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University. https://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/index_en.html
Meeting room 608, 6th floor, Osaka School of International Public Policy Building, Toyonaka Campus.
Presenters
14:40-16:10 Kohei Yamagata, Graguate School of Economics, Osaka University.
Title: “Government Comparison: Utilitarian v.s. Growth Maximizer in a simple Endogenous Growth Model With Limited Prediction Ability.”
Abstract:
We analyze the welfare of households under a simple endogenous growth model with different types of governments, utilitarian and growth maximizer while introducing government prediction ability: governments with higher such ability can anticipate household’s consumption decisions more precisely. This analysis shows that for a certain range of prediction ability, a growth maximizer may be better for the household than a utilitarian. Also, we see this tendency through a simple empirical research.
16:20-17:50 Masaki Nakabayashi, “Growth, Risk and the Family: A Patriarchal Origin of the Welfare State Capacity.”
Title: “Growth, Risk and the Family: A Patriarchal Origin of the Welfare State Capacity.”