April 9, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Tomohiro Hirano (University of Tokyo)

Asset Bubbles, Endogenous Growth, and Financial Frictions (joint with Noriyuki Yanagawa) [PDF]

This paper analyzes the existence and the effects of bubbles in an endogenous growth model with financial frictions and heterogeneous investments. Bubbles are likely to emerge when the degree of pledgeability is in the middle range. This suggests that improving the financial market might enhance the possibility of bubbles. We also find that when the degree of pledgeability is relatively low, bubbles boost long-run growth. When it is relatively high, bubbles lower growth. Moreover, we examine the effects of bubbles bursting, and show that the effects depend on the degree of pledgeability, i.e., the quality of the financial system.

April 16, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Michio Suzuki (University of Tokyo）

Consumption Smoothing and Durable Goods Adjustment: Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey

※　配付資料なし (no presentation materials)

April 23, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Junichi Fujimoto (University of Tokyo）

Life-Cycle Search, Match Quality and Japan's Labor Market

※　配付資料なし (no presentation materials)

May 7, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Kengo Kato (Hiroshima University）

Quasi-Bayesian Analysis of Nonparametric Instrumental Variables Models [paper]

This paper aims at developing a quasi-Bayesian analysis of the nonparametric instrumental variables model, with a focus on the asymptotic properties of quasi-posterior distributions. In this paper, instead of assuming a stringent distributional assumption on the data generating process, we consider a quasi-likelihood induced from the conditional moment restriction, and put priors for the function-valued parameter. We call the resulting posterior quasi-posterior, which corresponds to "Gibbs posterior" in the literature. Here we shall focus on sieve priors, which are priors that concentrate on finite dimensional sieve spaces. The dimension of the sieve space should increase as the sample size. We derive rates of contraction and a non-parametric Bernstein-von Mises type result for the quasi-posterior distribution, and rates of convergence for the quasi-Bayes estimator defined by the posterior expectation. We show that, with priors suitably chosen, the quasi-posterior distribution (the quasi-Bayes estimator) attains the minimax optimal rate of contraction (convergence, respectively). These results greatly sharpen the previous related work.

May 14, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Daisuke Oyama (University of Tokyo）

On Interaction Games

May 28, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Eiichiro Kazumori (State University of New York, Buffalo）

Information Aggregation in Large Double Auctions with Interdependent Values

This paper studies a foundation of the Walrasian market mechanism by considering uniform price double auctions among buyers and sellers with private information and interdependent values and identifying the conditions that the equilibrium outcome becomes efficient as the market becomes large. If buyers and sellers have unit demand and supply, conditionally iid one dimensional signals with the monotone likelihood ratio property, and symmetric values with a strictly private value element, then, every perfect equilibrium price provides a consistent and asymptotically normal estimator of the fundamental value of the asset. With multiple units of demand and supply, multidimensional signals, and asymmetric information, information aggregation requires additional assumptions to limit the effect of inferences from the information contained in the price.

June 11, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Seung-Gyu Sim (University of Tokyo）

On-the-job Training: Investment or Compensation?

I analyze the rm's decision of how much general but informal training to provide in the presence of on-the-job search. In particular, due to lack of formal measure and commitment technology on the training intensity, I assume that rms exibly adjust their training intensity at any time, but hardly charge the cost of training to their workers. Even without any contractual agreement on training, rms still provide training not only to improve productivity (in- vestment motive) but also to keep their workers from defecting to other rms (compensation motive). Furthermore, better paying rms are encouraged to provide more intensive training by investment motive, while they are discouraged by compensation motive. The implied wage-training pattern among ex-ante identical rms is reverse U-shaped. That is, training intensity rises with wage payment at low wages, but declines at high wages. Also, as the search friction is mitigated, the investment motive is deteriorated, but the compensation motive is intensied. I also show that the training intensity per trainee declines with the accelerated oer arrival rates in the numerical experiment with reasonable parameter values.

June 18, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yi-Chan Tsai (University of Tokyo）

Explaining the Durable Goods Co-movement Puzzle with Non-Separable Preferences: A Bayesian Approach (joint with Jaya Dey)

Standard two-sector sticky price model with flexibly priced durables depicts negative co-movement between durables and non-durables after a monetary policy shock, which is at odds with the empirical evidence. This paper proposes a new channel, non-separable preferences with near zero wealth effect on labor hours, as a solution to the co-movement puzzle. In contrast to the standard model where the aggregate hours remain relatively unchanged after the contractionary policy shock, aggregate labor hours fall along with the fall in labor wage, discouraging production in both durable and non-durable sector. We further compare our model's explanatory power with two other alternatives that can resolve the puzzle by using a Bayesian approach. Based on log marginal likelihood and cross-correlation comparison exercises, we find the evidence that data strongly favors our baseline model over all the alternative specifications.

July 6, 2012 (Friday) 16:40-18:20 *日時にご注意下さい。
※応用統計ワークショップと共催

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Xiaohong Chen (Yale University）

Sieve Quasi Likelihood Ratio Inference on Semi/nonparametric Conditional Moment Models (joint with Demian Pouzo)

This paper considers inference on functionals of semi/nonparametric conditional moment restrictions with possibly nonsmooth generalized residuals. These models belong to the difficult (nonlinear) ill-posed inverse problems with unknown operators, and include all of the (nonlinear) nonparametric instrumental variables (IV) as special cases. For these models it is generally difficult to verify whether a functional is regular (i.e., root-n estimable) or irregular (i.e., slower than root-n estimable). In this paper we provide computationally simple, unified inference procedures that are asymptotically valid regardless of whether a functional is regular or irregular. We establish the following new results: (1) the asymptotic normality of the plug-in penalized sieve minimum distance (PSMD) estimators of the (possibly iregular) functionals; (2) the consistency of sieve variance estimators of the plug-in PSMD estimators; (3) the asymptotic chi-square of an optimally weighted sieve quasi likelihood ratio (SQLR) statistic; (4) the asymptotic tight distribution of a possibly non-optimally weighted SQLR statistic; (5) the consistency of the nonparametric bootstrap and the weighted bootstrap (possibly non-optimally weighted) SQLR and sieve Wald statistics, which are proved under virtually the same conditions as those for the original-sample statistics. Small simulation studies and an empirical illustration of a nonparametric quantile IV regression are presented.

July 9, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Junko Koeda (University of Tokyo）

Estimating monetary policy effects with multiple zero interest rate regimes (joint with Fumio Hayashi)

※　配付資料なし (no presentation materials)

October 15, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Saul Lach (The Hebrew University) *Schedule Changed*

Heterogeneous Price Information and the Effect of Competition (joint with José L. Moraga-González) [PDF]

This paper examines how the distribution of prices and consumer welfare change with the number of competitors in a model where consumers di¤er in the amount of price information they have. The number of …rms a¤ects prices (and welfare) by changing consumers’information about prices. We only assume that an increase in the number of competitors raises the average number of prices observed by a consumer in the market and (weakly) lowers the probability consumers see only one price. Under this assumption, the lower percentiles of the price distribution decrease with an increase in the number of …rms. We then derive a necessary and su¢ cient condition under which all percentiles of the price distribution decrease when competition is intensi…ed. In such a situation, some percentiles fall more than others, which leads to asymmetric welfare gains from increased competition. We also provide a necessary and su¢ cient condition under which the higher percentiles of the distribution of prices paid increase. When this happens, the probability that a consumer already paying a high price will pay even a higher price increases and it may even be the case that some consumers experience a welfare loss on average. Nevertheless, the weighted consumer surplus always (weakly) raises with increased competition. We illustrate these results by estimating the response of the distribution of prices to competition in the gasoline retail market in the Netherlands. We …nd that all percentiles of the price distribution decrease with intensi…ed competition but the magnitude of the change, although not large, varies along the distribution in a way similar to that predicted by the model. We also estimate that the less informed consumers bene…t more from increased competition than the more informed ones.

October 22, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Jiro Kondo (McGill University)

Vagueness as Adjudicator Authority: Theory and Evidence on Contract Vagueness and Enforcement Evaluation

I develop a simple model of optimal contract vagueness that allows for renegotiation and builds on the literatures on authority delegation and transaction costs in contracting. The main predictions of the model are that optimal contract vagueness and renegotiation rates depend on project complexity and the quality of contract enforcement. In particular, contract vagueness increases with project complexity and enforcement quality while renegotiation rates rise with project complexity and may fall with enforcement quality. I provide evidence to support the joint comparative statics of this model using new data on material contracts disclosed through the SEC. Given this support, I use the predictions of the model to undertake an evaluation of public versus private contract enforcement. I find that contracts enforced through private enforcement (i.e., arbitration) are both vaguer and renegotiated less often than those enforced through public enforcement (i.e., courts). This evidence suggests that private enforcement institutions have a quality advantage over public enforcement institutions.

October 29, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

November 5, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Daiya Isogawa (University of Tokyo）

Product Innovation in a Dynamic Environment

※　配付資料なし (no presentation materials)

This paper estimates a dynamic oligopoly model of product innovation to evaluate an equilibrium effect of public policy on firms' innovation activities. The model considers a multi-agent Markov-Perfect Nash Equilibrium, allowing for firms' dynamic decision making on innovation activities and entry and exit. The estimation results obtained by using Japanese firm-level data on product innovation identify spillovers among firms' dynamic innovation activities. Lastly, simulation exercises based on the obtained estimates are conducted to evaluate the existing subsidies.

December 3, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Seung-Gyu Sim (University of Tokyo）

Unemployment and Inequality after Trade Liberalization (joint with Shoya Ishimaru and Soohyun Oh)

※　配付資料なし (no presentation materials)

December 11, 2012 (Tuesday) 12:10-13:10 *Schedule Changed

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Jungmin Lee (Sogang University）

Understanding the Effect of Communism on Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence with North Korean Refugees (joint with Byung-Yeon Kim (SNU), Syngjoo Choi (UCL), Sokbae Lee (SNU) and Kyunghui Choi (University of Tokyo))

We report a combined study of experiments and survey with North Korean (NK) refugees, having recently arrived in South Korea, and South Koreans (SK). Participants in the experiments play a variety of games against both ingroup and outgroup members. Prior to this, they are randomly assigned to information on historical events between the two nations. Experimental data reveals information about social preferences and trust based upon the group affiliation. We find that NK refugees are more homogeneous in preferences, while SK subjects exhibit a great deal of heterogeneity. In regard to social preferences attached to the group affiliation, SK subjects show favoritism toward outgroup members, while NK defectors are neutral. These patterns remain similar in the trusting behavior. Using the survey data, we relate experimental behavior to basic sociodemographic information such as gender and age. For NK defectors, we further establish how their social and economic experiences in North Korea affect experimentally-measured social preferences and trust.

December 17, 2012 (Monday) 11:00-12:00 ※時間に注意

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Steven F. Lehrer (Queen's University）

Estimating Context Independent Treatment Effects in Education Experiments

* Title Changed

December 17, 2012 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Junichi Suzuki (University of Toronto）

Identifi…cation and Counterfactuals in Dynamic Models of Market Entry and Exit (joint with Victor Aguirregabiria)

This paper deals with a fundamental identification problem in the structural estimation of dynamic oligopoly models of market entry and exit. Using the standard datasets in existing empirical applications, there are three components of a …firm's profit function that are not separately identified: the fixed cost of an incumbent firm, the entry cost of a new entrant, and the scrap-value of an exiting firm. We study the implications of this result on the power of this class of models to identify the effects of different comparative static exercises and counterfactual public policies. First, we derive a closed-form relationship between the three unknown structural functions and two functions that are identified from the data. We use this relationship to provide the correct interpretation of the estimated objects that are obtained under the ‘normalization assumptions' considered in most applications. Second, we characterize a class of counterfactual experiments that are identified using the estimated model, despite the non-separate identification of the three primitives. Third, we show that there is a general class of counterfactual experiments of economic relevance that are not identified. We present a numerical example that illustrates how ignoring the non-identification of these counterfactuals (i.e., making a ‘normalization assumption on some of the three primitives) generates sizable biases that can modify even the sign of the estimated effects. Finally, we discuss possible solutions to deal with these identification problems.

January 21, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Hirokazu Matsuyama (University of Tokyo）

The Effects of Long-Term Care Insurance on Labor Market Outcomes in Japan

※　配付資料なし (no presentation materials)

January 28, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Makiko Nakamuro (Tohoku University）

Estimating the Return sto Education Using a Sample of Twins - The Case of Japan - [paper]

The objective of this paper is to measure the causal effect of education on earnings using a sample of twins in Japan, with information collected through a web-based survey. The empirical results show that although the conventional OLS estimate is 10.0%, we obtain 9.3% as the estimated rate of return to education after the omitted ability bias and measurement errors in self-reported schooling were corrected. Our findings suggest that the conventional OLS estimate is not largely contaminated by potential biases.

February 4, 2013 (Monday) 13:40-14:40 * Time Changed　

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Eiichiro Kazumori (State University of New York, Buffalo)

What Drives Stock Returns of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Oracle? Industry Structure and Stock Returns.in the US Computer Industry, 1965-2012 *Title and Abstract Changed*

We report the results of the first study of the structure of stock returns in the computer industry characterized by platform competition based on network effects using the US market data from 1965 to 2012. The computer industry provides the highest returns among all industries from the industry market share momentum strategy that buys the stock of firms whose market shares are increasing and sells the stocks of firms whose market shares are decreasing. These computer industry returns are robust to size, market beta, Fama French factors, and turnovers. Furthermore, these high returns may not be attributable to investor under-reaction to slow diffusion of company specific information given analyst coverage and high public availability of information about the computer industry. We present a simple consumption-based asset pricing model with industry dynamics based on network effects that explains these empirical findings. Our findings suggest that risk and returns of stocks in the computer industry are driven, not just by behavioral mechanisms, but rather by its underlying industry structure.

March 11, 2013 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

東京大学大学院経済学研究科 学術交流棟 （小島ホール）１階 セミナー室
in Seminar Room on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Clement Joubert (University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill)

The value of remarriage: welfare eff ects of divorce legalization [PDF]

Until 2004, divorce in Chile was illegal and separated individuals were unable to remarry. This paper examines who benets or looses from the option of exiting a marriage and remarrying. Using longitudinal survey data, we rst document the eects of the reform on couples formation and separation. We then use this variation in the data to structurally estimate and validate a dynamic equilibrium model of marriage and remarriage over the life cycle and estimate the welfare impacts of legal divorce across genders, schooling levels and ages. We then simulate the eects of mutual consent vs. unilateral divorce and of dierent separation time requirements on marital decisions and welfare.