April 14, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

※　日本マーケティング・サイエンス学会と共催

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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Ron Shachar (Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya)

Advertising and Consumers' Communications [PDF] [PDF2]

Until recently, brand identities were built by firms via brand image advertising. However, the flourishing consumer communication weakened the firms' grip on their brands. The interaction between advertising and consumer communications and their joint impact on brand identity is the focal point of this paper. We present a model in which consumer preference for functional attributes may correlate with the identity they desire to project of themselves. This correlation is known to the firm but not to the consumers. Both the firm and the consumers can communicate their desired brand identity, although the actual brand identity is determined endogeneously by the composition of consumers who purchase it (i.e., what types of people consume the brand). We find that sometimes the firm can strengthen the identity of its brand by refraining from advertising. This result is based on the following intermediate finding: advertising can diminish the endogeneous informativeness of consumer communications by making it one-sided. Furthermore, it turns out that refraining from brand image advertising may be optimal for the firm when the product is especially well positioned to create a strong identity—i.e., when consumer preferences for functional and self-expressive attributes are highly correlated.

April 21, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Emiko Usui (Hitotsubashi University)

Employer Learning, Job Changes, and Wage Dynamics (with Seik Kim) [PDF]

This paper takes a new approach to testing whether employer learning is public or private. We show that public and private learning schemes make two distinct predictions about the curvature of the wage growth path when a worker changes jobs, since less information about worker's productivity is transferred to a new employer in the private learning case than in the public learning case. This prediction enables us to account for individual and job-match heterogeneity, which was not possible in previous tests. Using the NLSY79, we find that employer learning is public for high school graduates and private for college graduates.

JSTテニュアトラック普及・定着事業　研究成果発表会/ JST Tenure-Track Program Special Workshop [website]

May 27, 2014 (Tuesday) 14:00-18:20

※　日時に注意。ミクロ経済学ワークショップ、CIRJE特別セミナーと共催

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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

 

14:00-15:00 Michal Fabinger (University of Tokyo)　
　　　　　　　　Applications of analytically tractable models to trade liberalization with heterogeneous firms

15:00-16:00 Drew Griffen (University of Tokyo)
　　　　　　　　　Fertility and Maternal Labor Supply in Japan: Conflicting policy goals? [paper]

16:00-16:20 break

16:20-17:20 Juan Pantano (Washington University in St. Louis)

17:20-18:20 Gil Shapira (The World Bank) *Schedule Changed

 

June 2, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yasutora Watanabe (Northwestern University)

Do Risk Preferences Change? Evidence from Panel Data Before and After the Great East Japan Earthquake (with Chie Hanaoka and Hitoshi Shigeoka)[PDF]

We investigate whether experiencing a natural disaster—the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011—changes individuals' risk preferences. The novelty of our study is that we use panel of nationally-representative survey, and we can track the change in risk preference of the same individuals before and after the Earthquake. Previous studies use cross-section data collected after the occurrence of negative shocks, and hence can be biased by unobserved individual heterogeneity. We find that people who experienced larger intensity of the Earthquake become more risk tolerant. Interestingly, all the results are driven by men. Further, we find corroborative evidence that men become more engaged in gambling and drinking if they were more exposed to the Earthquake. Finally, we compare the estimates from cross-section and panel specifications, and demonstrate that the estimate relying on cross-section data may be biased.

June 9, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

※　ミクロ経済学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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Nicolas Jacquemet (Paris School of Business)

Coordination with Communication under Oath (with Stéphane Luchini, Jason F. Shogren and Adam Zylbersztejn)

June 16, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Alisha Holland (Harvard University)

The Distributive Politics of Enforcement

Why do some politicians tolerate the violation of the law? In contexts where the poor are the primary violators of property laws, I argue that the answer lies in the electoral costs of enforcement: enforcement can decrease support from poor voters even while it generates support among nonpoor voters. Using an original dataset on unlicensed street vending and enforcement operations at the subcity district level in three Latin American capital cities, I show that the combination of voter demographics and electoral rules explains enforcement. Supported by qualitative interviews, these findings suggest how the intentional non-enforcement of law, or forbearance, can be an electoral strategy. Dominant theories based on state capacity poorly explain the results.

The originally announced topic "Redistributive Politics in Truncated Welfare States" has been moved to the new Rationality and Society Workshop taking place from 10:30 to 12:10 on the same day, Monday, June 16.

特別セミナー

June 18, 2014 (Wendesday) 16:40-18:20　

※　日時に注意。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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Brendan K. Beare (University of California, San Diego)

1) Power improvements to three tests of concavity (joint with Juwon Seo and Xiaoxia Shi)

2) Nonparametric tests of density ratio ordering (joint with Jong-Myun Moon) [PDF]

1) We consider three recently developed tests of three distinct null hypotheses: density ratio ordering, stochastic monotonicity and conditional stochastic dominance. The three tests are mechanically similar. Each involves reformulating the relevant null hypothesis in terms of the concavity of some unknown but estimable function, and then basing a test statistic on the dierence between an estimate of that function and its least concave majorant. Drawing on recent results on the application of the functional Delta method and bootstrap with directionally dierentiable operators, we show how to improve the power of the three tests by choosing critical values in a way that exploits the form of the directional derivative of the least concave majorant operator.

2) We study a family of nonparametric tests of density ratio ordering between two continuous probability distributions on the real line. Density ratio ordering is satisfied when the two distributions admit a nonincreasing density ratio. Equivalently, density ratio ordering is satisfied when the ordinal dominance curve associated with the two distributions is concave. To test this property, we consider statistics based on the L^p-distance between an empirical ordinal dominance curve and its least concave majorant. We derive the limit distribution of these statistics when density ratio ordering is satisfied. Further, we establish that, when 1 ≤ p ≤ 2, the limit distribution is stochastically largest when the two distributions are equal. When 2 < p ≤ ∞, this is not the case, and in fact the limit distribution diverges to in nity along a suitably chosen sequence of concave ordinal dominance curves. Our results serve to clarify, extend and amend assertions appearing previously in the literature for the cases p = 1 and p = ∞. We provide numerical evidence confirming their relevance in finite samples.

June 26, 2014 (Thursday) 12:10-13:10 　※　Schedule Changed

※　Tokyo Workshop on International Development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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Kensuke Teshima (ITAM)

Assortative Matching of Exporters and Importers [PDF]

This paper examines what determines matching of exporters and importers by investigating how matching changes in a large trade liberalization episode. In Mexican textile/apparel exports to the US, both exporters and importers concentrate more than 80% of product-level trade with the single largest partners (the main partners). To understand how firms choose the main partners and change them in response to liberalization, our model introduces one-to-one matching of exporters and importers based on the complementarity/substitutability of firm capability (productivity/quality) within matches in an otherwise standard heterogeneous firm trade model. Our data shows increases in Chinese exporters to the US at the end of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement in 2005 caused Mexican exporters to downgrade and US importers to upgrade their main partners. Our model shows this pattern is consistent with complementary-driven positive assortative matching, but not with capability-independent random matching or substitutability-driven negative assortative matching. The presence of complementarity we find suggests trade liberalization improves matching of firms in supply chains as a part of within industry reallocation that improves the aggregate industrial performance.

June 30, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Gee Hee Hong (Bank of Canada)

Education, Task Assignment, and Skill Biased Technological Changes (joint with Shoya Ishimaru and Seung-Gyu Sim) [paper]

This paper develops and estimates a multi-sector job search model with endogenous education choice to quantify the social cost from degree-inflation. The skilled workers perform the tasks with skill requirement and the unskilled workers the tasks without it. However, some skilled workers, if they fail in certain qualification tests, are assigned to perform unskilled tasks, which causes congestion in the unskilled labor market, suppresses the unskilled wages, reinforces the skill premia, and, in turns, encourages education attainment. In contrast to previous literature on skill biased technological changes, our general equilibrium approach demonstrates that crowding-out in the labor market hinders enhanced skill acquisition from fully contributing economic growth. Our numerical experiments based on estimates from Canadian data report that the crowding out effect due to degree-inflation creates a significant adverse effect on economic growth.

July 14, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Will Dobbie (Princeton University)

Pay-for-Performance Incentives in Consumer Finance: Evidence from the Debt Settlement Industry

August 25, 2014 (Monday) 11:30-13:00　

※　時間と場所にご注意ください。ミクロ経済学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）2階 小島コンファレンスルーム
in Koijma Conference Room on the 2nd floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Ali Hortaçsu （University of Chicago)

Deposit Competition and Financial Fragility: Evidence from the US Banking Sector (joint with Mark Egan and Gregor Matvos)

We develop and estimate an empirical model of the U.S. banking sector using a new data set covering the largest U.S. banks over the period 2002-2013. Our model incorporates rich consumer preferences on the deposit demand-side and endogenous bank bankruptcy decisions on the supply-side as well as competition between banks in the spirit of Matutes and Vives (1996). Our demand estimation results suggest that a bank's ability to attract uninsured rather than insured deposits depends critically on its nancial solvency. We use estimated demand elasticities for interest rates, CDS spreads and bank balance sheet information to calibrate the model. At the estimated parameter values, our model suggests that banks were nancially fragile at the height of the crisis in 2009. In addition to the realized equilibrium outcome, the same fundamentals supported additional equilibria, in which bankruptcy probabilities and interest rates in the banking sector were signicantly higher. We use our model to assess recent and proposed bank regulatory changes. In particular, we nd that increasing FDIC insurance could improve the equilibrium survival probabilities across the banking system, and could actually lower the cost of providing FDIC insurance. Conversely, we nd that certain interventions to bank risk limits may actually lower banks' equilibrium survival probabilities.

October 6, 2014 (Monday) 16:40-18:10

※CIRJE特別セミナー、Rationality and Society Workshop、経済史研究会、財政・公共経済ワークショップ、ミクロ経済学ワークショップ　、工学系研究科技術経営戦略学専攻、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）2階 小島コンファレンスルーム
in Kojima Conference Room on the 2nd floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

James J. Heckman (University of Chicago)

The Market and Nonmarket Returns to Education

October 27, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Daiji Kawaguchi (Hitotsubashi University)

University prestige, performance evaluation and promotion: Estimating the employer learning model using personnel datasets (joint with Shota Araki and Yuki Onozuka)

According to the employer learning model, employers form prior employees' ability distribution from educational credential and update its distribution by observing workers' performance on the jobs. This paper estimate the employer learning model for university graduate white collar workers using personnel datasets from two large manufacturers that contain rich set of information including the name of university a worker graduated, annual performance evaluation, position in the promotion ladder and wage. The estimates indicate that information and human capital roles of university prestige are equally important on initial promotion decision, but employers learn workers' ability relatively quickly through observing performances on the job. The variance of initial subjective ability distribution becomes half in about 3 years in both Companies A and B. Companies promote elite school graduates quickly mainly because they tend to perform better on the job.

November 10, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Takanori Adachi (Nagoya University)

Does Gender Matter in Insurance Purchase Decisions? The Case of Extended Warranties for Electronic Products

Are women more likely to purchase an insurance? In this paper, I study in-store sales of extended warranties for electronic products. To overcome the sample selection bias (i.e., the price of an extended warranty is observed　only if a consumer purchases one), I provide estimates based on Heckman’'s (1979) sample selection model, and …find that female consumers from low-income households are more likely to purchase an extended warranty, though there are little gender differences for middle- and high-income households. It is also found that gender differences in extended warranty purchases are more apparent in the case of personal computers (which consisted of a fairly new category in the data period) than in the case of CRT (cathode ray tube) televisions (which supposedly belonged to the traditional categories), controlling for product safety measures. This fi…nding suggests that gender may matter more to insurance purchase decisions in newly arising circumstances.

December 1, 2014 (Monday) 10:00-11:15 ※時間にご注意ください。
※ミクロ経済学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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Nobuhiko Fuwa (Waseda University)

Hyperbolic Discounting and Induced Informal Credit Transactions: A Case of ATM Card Pawning in the Philippines (joint with Kei Kajisa, Eduardo Lucio, Sharon Faye Piza, and Yasuyuki Sawada)

This paper investigates the emerging credit arrangement called ‘ATM sangla (pawning)’ in the Philippines, with a focus on how it interacts with borrowers with different time preferences. We report on initial results based on a small survey of 300 factory workers in an industrial estate near the Metro Manila area. ATM sangla is informal loan arrangement where the borrower’s ATM card is used as the collateral and where the lender uses the ATM card to withhold the repayment from salary payment on every pay day until the entire amount is repaid. While almost all (93%) of our respondents are aware of ATM sangla, it is slightly less than half of our respondents (42%) who have actually utilized ATM sangla at least once, and the average amount of the loan (principal) is 15,000 pesos, which correspond to 1.3 times the average monthly salary. The main uses of loan proceeds include medical expenses, daily consumption and education of children. We find that 43% of our respondents have consistent time preferences while 34% of them are hyperbolic (present biased) discounters, and that hyperbolic discounters tend to rely more on ATM sangla loans than do consistent discounters. We also find suggestive evidence that those hyperbolic discounters are naïve, rather than sophisticated.

December 1, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Edward Norton (University of Michigan)

Low-user Moral Hazard in the Home Health Market (joint with Hyunjee Kim)

Prospective payment combats moral hazard in health care for high users, but can create moral hazard problems for low users at both the extensive and intensive margins. The prospective payment sys- tem for home health care, created by CMS to reduce total expen- ditures, instead provided perverse incentives that predictably in- creased the number patients, episodes, visits per episode, and total expenditures among low users. We call this e ect low-user moral hazard. The e ects were particularly pronounced among for-pro t agencies. Prospective payment systems can create several di erent low-user moral hazard problems.

December 15, 2014 (Monday) 12:10-13:10

*Schedule Cancelled

Kosuke Uetake (Yale University)

上記セミナーは中止となりました。

December 22, 2014 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Naoaki Minamihashi (University of Gothenburg)

The Effect of Bilateral Lending Relationships on Syndicated Loans: Evidence from Japan (joint with Fumio AkiyoshiI) [PDF]

This paper studies the effect of bilateral lending relationships on syndicated loans by match- ing syndicated loan data with unique bilateral loan data from Japan. We …nd that past bilateral lending relationships signi…cantly affect the arranger choice of syndicated loans, particularly for informationally opaque …rms. Additionally, a …rm can secure a larger loan and more participants if the …rm’s largest bilateral lender becomes its arranger. Finally, those syndicated loans arranged by the largest bilateral lenders are less likely to default. Overall, our empirical results suggest that bilateral lending relationships can be used to mitigate information asymmetry in the syndicated loan market.

January 9, 2015 (Friday) 11:15-12:15　※Schedule Changed/ 日時にご注意ください。

※ミクロ経済学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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Myoung jae Lee (Korea University)

Extensive and Intensive Margin Effects and Their Hybrids in Sample-Selection Treatment Effects

In sample selection models, a treatment can influence the observed outcome in two different ways: affecting the binary selection/participation decision, and affecting the latent outcome. The former is called the extensive margin effect, and the latter the intensive margin effect. Despite the popularity of these effects in economics, the intensive margin effect is not a proper causal parameter, because it is conditioned on the selecting/participating decision which is a post-treatment variable possibly affected by the treatment. This paper presents a proper causal framework, and introduces additional hybrid effects relevant for sample selection models. It is hard to separate those effects in general, but in some popular models (parametric sample-selection models, semiparametric independence models, semiparametric zero-censored models, and polynomial approximation models), they are separately idenfitified and estimable. An empirical analysis and a simulation study are provided to illustrate these causal effects as well as conventional non-causal effects in sample selection models.

January 9, 2015 (Friday) 17:30-19:00 　※日時にご注意ください。

※ミクロ経済学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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Takashi Yamano (International Rice Research Institute)

How does drought-tolerant rice help farmers? Evidence from a randomized control trial in eastern India [PDF]

By using data from a randomized control trial (RTC) of more than 1,500 farmers in eastern India, this paper investigates how a drought-tolerant rice variety, called Sahbhagi Dhan, helps farmers. In the RTC, farmers in treatment villages received 5 kg seeds of Sahbhagi Dhan before the main agricultural season, called kharif, in 2013. The paper finds that Sahbhagi Dhan enabled farmers adopt an additional crop, mostly wheat, after kharif because of its short duration. However, its impact on rice yields is inconclusive because a major cyclone and other non-drought stresses damaged rice production significantly in kharif 2013. Receiving a new rice variety seems to have a positive impact on farmers’ perception toward new agricultural technology among the treatment group. The investigation continues as the RTC continues for two more years.

January 26, 2015 (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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Yoshifumi Konishi (Sophia University)

Can Green Car Taxes Restore Efficiency? Evidence from the Japanese New Car Market (joint with Meng Zhao) [PDF]

We quantify the impacts of Japan’s green vehicle taxation policy since 2009. A random-coefficients logit model is estimated for quarterly automobile sales data between 2007 and 2012 from the Japanese new car market. We construct the location of product-specific taxes in the characteristics space as instruments to control for endogeneity of car prices. The policy-induced large variation in effective car prices are then used to obtain consistent estimates of own- and cross-price elasticities. Our results indicate the significantly positive effects of the policy on both the average fuel efficiency and the total sales of new vehicles. Consequently, the policy induced only a small reduction in vehicle CO₂ emissions, yet a sizable increase in economic surplus, relative to the no-policy counterfactual.

January 27, 2015 (Tuesday) 12:10-13:10 ※曜日にご注意ください。

※ミクロ経済学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 第１セミナー室
in Seminar Room 1 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Andrew Ching (University of Toronto)

The Effects of Publicity on Demand: The Case of Anti-cholesterol Drugs (joint withRobert Clark,Ignatius Horstmann and Hyunwoo Lim) [PDF]

Over the past ten years there has been increased recognition of the importance of publicity as a means of generating product awareness. Despite this, previous research has seldom investigated the impact of publicity on demand. We contribute to the literature by (i) proposing a new method for the interpretation of publicity data, one that maps the information in news articles (or broadcasts) to a multi-dimensional attribute space; (ii) investigating how different types of publicity affect demand; and (iii) investigating how different types of publicity interact with firms’ own marketing communication efforts. We study these issues for statins. We find that publicity plays an important role both for expanding the market for statins and for determining which statins patients/physicians choose. We also find evidence that publicity can serve as either a substitute or a complement for traditional marketing channels depending on the complexity of the information type. These results suggest that managers should be aware of the interactions between publicity and traditional marketing channels in order to better determine how to allocate their marketing expenditures.

March 23, 2015 (Monday) 12:00-13:30 　※日時・場所にご注意下さい。

※ミクロ経済学ワークショップ、Tokyo Workshop on International Development 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 第２セミナー室
in Seminar Room 2 on the 1st floor of the Economics Research Annex (Kojima Hall) [Map]

Jonathan Haidt　（NYU-Stern School of Business）

Two reasons why moral psychology should be of interest to economists: Wicked problems and changing values

The 20^th century settled the matter: There is no alternative to capitalism. The question for the 21^st century is: what kind of capitalism is right for each country? Economists are the experts we usually consult for advice on the economic order, but in my talk I will make the case that my field – moral psychology – has a great deal to contribute to discussions of the economy. First I will show why capitalism is so morally divisive in most economically advanced countries. I’ll show how people on the left and right – including economists – are influenced by the underlying moral narratives they embrace about capitalism. These moral divisions turn many economic questions into “wicked” problems, which warp the minds of problem solvers. Next, I’ll discuss research on how moral values change as societies get richer, leading to generation gaps and political polarization – as has happened in Japan and many Asian democracies (and of course in the USA). We’ll end with a discussion of how Japanese people think about capitalism, wealth, inequality, and the big question: What should a flourishing capitalist society look like for Japan in the coming decades?