主持人：马湘君教授（辽宁大学经济学部）

主讲人1：Yukun Ding（南加州大学）

时间：2023年1月3日（周二）9:00-10:00（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：How Do First and Second Moment Trade Policy Shocks Affect Firm Export Activities?

摘要：This paper studies empirically and theoretically the link between trade policy uncertainty (TPU) and firm export activities. I combine data on country-product level tariff change policy announcements with country-level news-text-based TPU indices to separately identify the effects of expectation and uncertainty shocks of trade policy. Firm-level supply chain data from over 45 countries reveal that after controlling for expected future tariffs: (1) an increase in uncertainty decreases the measure of exporters up to 2 percent over 4 quarters; (2) uncertainty shock reduces the firm exit probability by generating an option cost to re-entry; (3) firms more highly exposed to the U.S market are more resilient to uncertainty shock. The empirical results are interpreted through the lenses of a two-country general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities, firms’ export participation decisions, and first- and second-moment shocks to tariffs. I find that a 1 percent increase in both the expected value and standard deviation of tariff rates reduces GDP by 0.36 percent in the first 4 periods following the shock; of this, about 47 percent (0.17 percentage points) can be attributed to firm responses to higher tariff rate uncertainty.

主讲人2：Rui Xu（雪城大学）

时间：2023年1月3日（周二）10:15-11:15（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：The Returns to a Master's Degree: Evidence from Recession-Induced Graduate Degree Enrollment

摘要：Unlucky college undergraduates entering the labor market in a recession suffer a persistent loss in their earnings in the medium- to long-term. Due to this ``scarring effect," the opportunity cost for graduate school attendance decreases when an individual is exposed to a recession. This paper examines whether staying in school can help the unlucky cohort in terms of future labor market outcomes. There are two channels: delaying the time to enter the labor force and human capital accumulation. I find that graduating during a recession increases the probability of pursuing a graduate degree by 3 percentage points, and the return for the induced graduate degree is about 23\% in future annual salary. At the same time, there is no statistically significant effect on the employment probability for those graduate degree holders induced by the recession. These findings provide evidence that the main benefit those induced graduate degree holders gain is from the additional accumulated human capital; the effect of delayed labor force entrance is negligible. I also find younger non-white females in non-STEM majors from non-research universities are more sensitive to the recession when making the graduate school decision.

主讲人3：Jingyu Fan（加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校）

时间：2023年1月3日（周二）11:30-12:30（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：Corruption Networks

摘要：This paper studies how an agent's propensity to accept bribes depends on the organizational structure, which we model with a broad set of random networks that contains two canonical special cases. In hierarchies, agents' best responses exhibit strategic substitutability, with bribe taking being risker if others accept more bribes, for it is then easier for a corruption investigation to trace through bribe transactions to locate bribe takers. On the contrary, best responses in flat, two-layer networks feature strategic complementarity, as more bribe acceptances better protect criminal subordinates from being caught, reducing the risk of bribe taking. While incentives differ across networks, we show that for any of our random networks, in equilibrium, increasing its density always deters agents from accepting bribes. Nevertheless, opposite results for hierarchies and two-layer networks are obtained if we make the number of subordinates each agent monitors more evenly distributed. We use this model to point out a corruption identification problem and propose a remedy to it.

主讲人4：Ninghui Li（加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校）

时间：2023年1月3日（周二）14:30-15:30（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：Innovation Clusters and Spatial Inequality with a Local Brain Drain

摘要：Proximity to innovative counties makes low-educated counties experience slower growth in educational attainment in the US. Each innovative county, together with the other counties within 90km, is defined as an innovation cluster. The divergence inside innovation clusters can be explained by a local brain drain: talents are drawn to innovative counties by attractive high-skilled wages, given that migration costs are low. I document the fact that the local divergence of educational attainment increases the spatial inequality inside the innovation clusters, and contributes to a U-shape spatial inequality across the country during 1980-2010. I develop and calibrate a dynamic spatial model with two types of skill and endogenous education decisions, which reproduces the U-shape spatial inequality. Based on this model, I assess the place-based policies that some local governments subsidize tuition with income tax revenue. 50% tuition subsidies in 28 low-educated counties inside the innovation clusters increase real GDP at the national level for the short run and the long run. The place-based subsidies do not decrease spatial inequality, as people leave after getting higher education.

主讲人5： Dakang Huang(图卢兹经济学院）

时间：2023年1月3日（周二）15:40-16:40（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：Market Structure and Adverse Selection

摘要：This paper adopts a unified perspective on multi-contracting in competitive markets plagued by adverse selection. We subsume the two polar cases of exclusive and nonexclusive competition by introducing the concept of a market structure, i.e., a trading rule that specifies the subset of sellers buyers can jointly trade with. The existing literature shows that the market structure matters greatly in shaping competitive allocations, allowing for either separating allocations (as shown by Rothschild-Stiglitz) or layered pooling (Jaynes-Hellwig-Glosten) allocations. We prove the existence of intermediate “Pooling + Separating” equilibria that allow for simultaneous pooling and low-risk buyer separation. Crucially, those allocations alleviate at the same time the concern of excessive rationing under separation of and cross-subsidies paid by low-risk buyers. They oftentimes Pareto dominate the Rothschild-Stiglitz separating allocation. Our analysis singles out the "1+1" market structure where sellers are separated into two subgroups so that buyers can trade with at most one seller from each subgroup. Any “Pooling + Separating” allocation is an equilibrium here. Finally, we prove that “Pooling + Separating” allocations satisfy a notion of stability that we call serendipitous-aftermarket-proofness.

主持人：周宇教授（辽宁大学经济学部）

主讲人1：Ziqi Hang（华盛顿大学）

时间：2023年1月4日（周三）9:00-10:00（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：Informational versus Monetary Incentives in Learning

摘要：To influence learning by an agent, a principal can provide both informational and monetary incentives.  This involves an interplay of information design by the principal and standard information gathering by the agent. Starting from a common prior about whether a trade is good or bad for the agent, the principal can design a public signal, but the agent can also privately gather costly information.  We show that for extreme priors, trade always occurs without information gathering. For intermediate priors, the principal uses information design to induce information gathering and the agent accepts the contract only if he gathers good information, generating a non-monotonic probability of trade on the equilibrium path. Moreover, the principal’s monetary incentive to induce information gathering decreases with the accuracy of the (designed) signal. Compared to the case when only a signal design is possible, the principal discloses less information (in Blackwell sense) when she can make use of both signal and transfer.

主讲人2：Ge Song（科罗拉多大学博德分校）

时间：2023年1月4日（周三）10:15-11:15（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：Trade Liberalization and Firms' Corruption Engagement: Theory and Evidence from China

摘要：This paper studies the role of trade liberalization in shaping domestic corruption. I develop a model of trade with heterogeneous firms that features endogenous corruption and export participation decisions. In the model, firms face a trade-off between engaging in corruption, thereby obtaining higher profits in the domestic market, or preserving their non-corrupt status in foreign markets to obtain higher export profits. In equilibrium, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between firm productivity/size and corruption engagement. This prediction is confirmed in firm-level and aggregate data on international trade. I then calibrate the model to China and evaluate the extent to which trade policy is an effective tool for fighting domestic corruption. My findings suggest that (i) the share of firms that are “missing from trade” due to domestic corruption is 1%; (ii) conditional on the same reduction in the level of domestic corruption, trade liberalization is preferable to direct anti-corruption campaigns in terms of the associated gains in consumer welfare.

主讲人3：Ming Fang（马里兰大学帕克分校）

时间：2023年1月4日（周三）11:30-12:30（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：494-197-454

语言：英文

题目：More Than a Degree: China’s College Expansion and the Marriage Market (with Sai Luo)

摘要：China has experienced a radical expansion of college education that began in 1999. We study the impacts of this college expansion on the Chinese marriage market, with a special focus on its effects on the marriage outcomes of college-educated women and men. The empirical analysis is undergirded by a model featuring educational investment, marriage matching, and reductions in search frictions associated with the expansion. We estimate the effects of the expansion on marriage outcomes by exploiting geographic and birth-cohort variation in exposure to the expansion. Our analysis shows that, consistently with the predictions of the model, the expansion increased the marriage probability of college graduates. The expansion also increased the probability of college-college matches relative to the counterfactual of random matching and reduced the marriage age gap. Our findings highlight the important role of higher education institutions in shaping the marriage market.