Capucine will present her own work: Her project aims to study the impact of social capital on violence during the French Revolution. Social capital, which captures a group's propensity for cooperation, was studied as a consequence of conflict but may also be a major determinant of conflict. Especially as social capital is theorized to have divergent effects on conflict depending on whether it is of the "bridging" (cross-group) or "bonding" (within-group) variety. The French Revolution provides a unique setting to examine this dynamic. In 1789, the Estates-General was summoned, leading to the collection of detailed grievance lists (the Cahiers de Doléances) that offer a window into local social dynamics just prior to the onset of violence. Analyzing the content of these cahiers can shed light on both bridging and bonding social capital from an area. Linking these measures to subsequent patterns of revolutionary violence across France holds the potential to generate interesting new findings. Using a varied empirical framework, this work aims to provide robust evidence on the complex relationship between social capital and conflict. The use of text-based data sources analyzed through machine learning methods and the focus on different geographic scales in a highly relevant context will allow for a comprehensive investigation of this key issue for long-term development and peace-building.

Geoffrey will present a paper by  Bernheim, B. Douglas, and Michael D. Whinston. entitled “Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior.” Here is the abstract: Traditional analyses of industrial behavior typically link the exercise of market power in an industry to internalfeatures such as demand conditions, concentration, and barriers-to-entry. Nevertheless, some economists have remained concerned that external factors, such as contact across markets, may also play a significant role in determining the level of competitiveness in any particular industry. In this article, we examine the effect of multimarket contact on the degree of cooperation that firms can sustain in settings of repeated competition. We isolate conditions under which multimarket contact facilitates collusion and show that these collusive gains are achieved through modes of behavior that have been identified in previous empirical studies of multimarket firms.

Daniel will present his own work: As alcohol consumption is a strong predictor of intimate partner violence (IPV), we hypothesize that exposure to peers with a predisposition to alcohol use increases a woman’s risk of IPV victimization. To test this, we exploit quasi-random variation in peer composition across grades in middle school and high school, using genetic data to measure peers’ predisposition to alcohol use. We find that a one-standard-deviation increase in peers’ average genetic predisposition raises women’s IPV victimization index in early adulthood by 0.045 standard deviations, or about three-fifths of the effect of a one-standard-deviation increase in parental socio-economic status in absolute value. This effect operates primarily through social network formation—specifically, forming friendships with females who binge drink—rather than through changes in the victims’ own drinking or risk-taking behavior. We also find that the influence of peers diminishes in later adulthood.

Mehdi will present his own work: The value of time (VOT)—the monetary amount passengers are willing to pay to reduce travel time—is a key parameter with broad applications in both public policy and private transportation markets. Using detailed trip-level data from the Iranian ride-hailing platform Tapsi, this study aims to estimate the VOT in Iran. While following the standard discrete-choice framework common in the literature, the paper’s main contribution is to model passengers’ evolving expectations about waiting time as their trip request remains unfulfilled. This approach introduces a form of duration dependence, conceptually similar to models used in labor economics to study job-search behavior. The analysis is ongoing, and the paper outlines the empirical framework and estimation strategy.

Falone will present a paper by Alberto Bisin & Thierry Verdier entitled "Economic Models of Cultural Transmission". Here is the abstract: In this chapter we survey recent advances in modeling cultural transmission in the economics literature. We first present the basic canonical model of the evolution of cultural traits in the social sciences. Both Economics and Evolutionary anthropology build on this canonical model but their approaches are conceptually very different. After elucidating these differences, we introduce several recent economic models of cultural transmission which address a rich set of novel and interesting questions in the literature. We present these models as extensions of the canonical framework, organized along theoretical dimensions that we categorize as pertaining to preferences and technology. We finally briefly discuss how cultural evolution represents a fundamental component - alongside institutional change - of recent theoretical work on the political economy of long-run growth. We conclude suggesting interesting areas for future research.

Abstract upcoming