Seminario CEDE - Nicolás de Roux

We study the medium- and long-term effects of Venezuela’s 2009 ban on imports from Colombia on Colombian manufacturing firms. Using a synthetic control design, we first document a significant targeted reduction in Venezuelan imports from Colombia between 2009 and 2013. We then leverage microdata from customs transactions and the manufacturing census to compare the performance of firms with varying exposure to the trade war—as determined by the proportion of their previous exports destined to Venezuela.

Seminario CEDE - Anders Fremstad

Economists are not well-known for agreeing with each other, but in the 1960s an unusual consensus emerged around anti-poverty programs in the United States. Utilitarians and Austrians joined Post Keynesian, feminist, and institutionalist economists to speak in one voice about the benefits of a negative income tax (NIT). Several economists won the attention of Sargent Shriver, the leader of President Johnson’s War on Poverty, and were given over 100 million dollars to experiment on America’s poor. What happened next should have become a champagne moment for experimental economics.

Seminario CEDE - Antoine Bommier

We analyze lifecycle saving using a recursive utility model calibrated to match estimates of the value of a statistical life. The novelty of our approach is that we require preferences to be monotone with respect to first-order stochastic dominance while disentangling risk aversion and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution. We show that, with a positive value of life, risk aversion reduces each of savings, stock market participation, and annuity purchase. Risk averse agents insure against early death by consuming more when young and retaining wealth for bequests.

Seminario CEDE - Pablo Querubin

What is the equilibrium effect of politicians’ wages in the presence of criminal groups, that use both bribes and violence? With a regression discontinuity design, we show that better-paid local politicians in Italy are significantly more likely to prevent corruption in public procurement, but are also more likely to be targeted by criminal attacks. The disciplining effect of wages, which subsides after three years, is driven by a change in incumbents' behavior rather than improved selection.