CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Friday – October 11^th, 2025, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Not Incentivized Yet Efficient: Working From Home in the Public Sector”

Tom Kirchmaier –  LSE, London School of Economics (England, United Kingdom)

Abstract:

“This paper studies whether working from home (WFH) affects workers’ performance in public sector jobs. Studying public sector initiatives allows us to establish baseline estimates on the impact of WFH net of incentives. Exploiting novel administrative data and plausibly exogenous variation in work location, we find that WFH increases productivity by 12%. These productivity gains are primarily driven by reduced distractions. They are not explained by differences in quality, shift length, or task allocation. The productivity gains more than double when tasks are assigned by the supervisor.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – September 24^th, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Consumption, Wealth, and Income Inequality: A Tale of Tails“

Christian Hellwig –  Toulouse School of Economics (France), CEPR – Center for Economic Policy Research (E.U.)

Abstract:

“We provide evidence that the distributions of consumption, labor income, wealth, and capital income exhibit asymptotic power-law behavior with a strict ranking of upper tail inequality, in that order, from the least to the most unequal. We show analytically and quantitatively that the canonical heterogeneous-agent model cannot replicate the proper ranking and magnitudes of these four tails simultaneously. Mechanisms addressing the wealth concentration puzzle in these models through return heterogeneity lead to a mirror consumption concentration puzzle. We match the cross-sectional data on these four Pareto tails by positing a combination of non-homothetic, wealth-dependent preferences and scale-dependent returns to capital. We underscore the importance of these results by showing that all four dimensions of top inequality jointly determine the long-run elasticity that governs the revenue-maximizing capital tax rate.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – June 4^th, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Uncertainty shocks in monetary unions: The case for a nominal anchor”

Benjamin Born  –  Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (Germany)

Abstract:

“Uncertainty shocks contract economic activity and arguably more so if monetary policy cannot cushion their effect. Yet, as we employ a Bayesian VAR model to identify and contrast the effects of country-specific and common uncertainty shocks on the countries in the euro area, we find that countryspecific shocks have milder effects—even though they are not accommodated by monetary policy. We rationalize this result in a two-country model of a monetary union and find that union membership provides a nominal anchor for the price level, thereby dampening the “markup channel” through which the adverse effects of uncertainty shocks unfold.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – May 28^th, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Optimal Redistribution with Government Debt“ (with Kirill Shaknov)

Facundo Piguillem  –  Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (Italy)

Abstract:

“We analyze the tight relationship between government debt, redistribution and capital taxation in Overlapping Generations Economies (OLG). We do so in an heterogeneous agents economy where the government collects capital and progressive labor taxes to pay government spending, debt and redistribute income. In this environment, the Ramsey planner uses all taxes, even in the long run. We show that rising inequality leads not only to more progressivity, but also to more government debt and capital taxation. The necessary increase in debt to achieve the optimal redistribution policy can be substantial. We explore how limits to government’s borrowing choices severely restrict its ability to redistribute income. We calibrate the model to the U.S. in the 2000-10 decade and estimate the optimal response to the observed change in inequality. We find the optimal level of debt should approximately doubled.”

CEF.UP – ECO/FIN Seminar/Webinar

Thursday – May 23^rd, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

Bank Specialization in Lending to New Firms

Diana Bonfim– Banco de Portugal and European Central Bank

Abstract:

“We formulate a novel dimension of bank-lending specialization—specialization in lending to new firms—and investigate its impact on the creation, credit access, and survival of new businesses. We exploit a Portuguese reform that drastically reduced the red tape of starting a new firm and that was rolled out in a staggered manner across municipalities. We show that while reducing regulatory barriers stimulates business creation, this effect depends crucially on the pre-reform local presence of bank branches specialized in lending to new firms. A greater presence of such branches is associated with improved credit access and higher leverage of new local businesses. Moreover, new firms that obtain loans from specialized branches exhibit an up to 12 percent higher survival rate.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – April 9^th, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“A Temporary VAT Cut in Three Acts: Announcement, Implementation, and Reversal” (joint work with Tiago Bernardino, Ricardo Duque Gabriel e Márcia Silva-Pereira)

João Nuno Quelhas   –  Banco de Portugal

Abstract:

“We investigate the pass-through of a Value-Added Tax (VAT) decrease to consumer prices, using Portugal’s temporary cut in VAT for a subset of food items in 2023 as a laboratory. Exploiting a novel high-frequency dataset of online retail prices, we use an event study approach to analyze price dynamics across the complete policy lifetime. We find that prices rose by around 1% upon announcement, that the pass-through was almost complete when the policy was implemented, and around 70% at the reversal. The reduction in prices persisted high over the entire duration of the policy. We estimate that the policy decreased month-on-month inflation by 0.7 percentage points. We also find evidence of deflation in producer prices which could be a potential mechanism driving the high pass-through.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Friday – March 1^st, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“The Transmission of Foreign Demand Shocks”

Jeppe Druedahl  –  University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

Abstract:

“Introducing heterogeneous households into a New Keynesian model of a small open economy enables the model to fit a set of stylized empirical facts about the transmission of foreign demand shocks. In the absence of a strong labor income effect on consumption, the model counterfactually implies that domestic consumption decreases as the central bank raises the interest rate to curb domestic inflation. With plausible marginal propensities to consume, the model instead produces the observed increase in domestic consumption of both tradeable and non-tradeable goods. This implies that foreign demand shocks are more important for international business-cycle comovement than predicted by existing models. Our findings also have implications for stabilization policies: While monetary policy is well-suited to counteract foreign demand shocks, traditional fiscal policies are inadequate, as they do not provide sufficient stimulus to the tradeable sector. This poses a particular challenge for countries with a fixed exchange rate or in a monetary union.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – February 20^th, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Closing the Gender Gap in Multilateral Negotiations Through Institutional Design“

Diogo Geraldes  –  University College Dublin (Ireland)

Abstract:

“Experimental evidence from different subject pools shows that men earn more than women in majoritarian negotiations. Three stylized modes of behavior emerge as potential reasons for the gap: men sort into making opening offers more often, prefer to partner with other men, and when partnering with each other, their coalitions are more stable compared to mixed-gender ones. We design three experimental interventions to investigate the explanatory role each channel plays in the emergence of the gap and, consequently, provide potential solutions. We find that enabling everyone to simultaneously make an initial proposal does not close the earnings gap, if anything, it weakly grows in magnitude. Hiding gender eliminates bias in coalition partner choice, alters bargaining dynamics, and equalizes mean earnings. Finally, allowing for instantly-binding agreements in bargaining closes the gap, not only because mixed-gender coalitions become more stable, but also because women become preferred partners. Our results highlight how the attributes of the negotiation environment interact with gender, and suggest that the design of bargaining institutions can be leveraged to promote gender equity.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Friday – February 2^nd, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Good Rents versus Bad Rents: R&D Misallocation and Growth“

Antonin Bergeaud  –  HEC Paris (France)

Abstract:

“Firm price-cost markups may reflect (a) bigger step sizes from quality innovations that confer significant knowledge spillovers onto other firms, and/or (b) higher process efficiency than competing firms. We write down an endogenous growth model in which, compared with the laissez-faire equilibrium, the social planner would generally like to reallocate research resources towards high markup firms in case (a) so as to capitalize on knowledge spillovers but not in case (b). We then exploit unit price variation across firms in French manufacturing to assess the relative strength of these two forces. Viewed through the lens of our model, the French data are consistent with significant variation in innovation step sizes, and hence gains from mitigating R&D misallocation. The policy implication is that, to reach the social optimum, French research subsidies should favor only those high markup firms with “good” rents.”

CEF.UP – MaR – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Friday – January 26^th, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Necessary condition analysis (NCA) with archival data: backgrounds and illustration”

Jan Dul – Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (Netherlands)

Abstract:

“Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA; Dul 2016, 2020, 2021) is an emerging method that is now used in many business and management research fields and beyond. NCA understands cause-effect relations as “necessary but not sufficient” and not as probabilistic causality. “Necessary” means that an outcome will not occur without the right level of the condition, independently of the rest of the causal structure (thus the condition can be a “bottleneck”, “critical factor”, or “constraint”). In practice, the right level must be put and kept in place to avoid guaranteed failure and to allow the outcome to exist. NCA can be used as a stand-alone tool or in combination with regression-based approaches (e.g., multiple regression analysis, structural equation modeling) or Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). By adding a different logic and data analysis approach, for instance through the reuse of data with a necessity causal perspective, NCA adds both rigor and relevance to theory and data analysis and provides new possibilities for impactful publications.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – December 19^th, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Leveraging Expertise to Build Authority: Experimental Evidence”

Miguel Fonseca  –  University of Exeter

Abstract:

“Decision-makers often seek guidance from experts, whose authority is key for achieving efficiency gains. However, building authority from expertise is challenging, and there is very limited evidence on whether individuals strategically enable it and how. We conduct a laboratory experiment in which an expert recommends a course of action to a decision-maker, and players subsequently bargain over the split of payoffs. In our main treatment, players can bargain pre-play, and we ask whether they use this opportunity to establish authority. We find that pre-play bargaining triples the frequency of authority relationships, resulting in higher efficiency. Authority is strongly associated with agreements that align interests, but only when reached swiftly, indicating that participants exploit bargaining dynamics to signal their intentions. Finally, committing to pre-play bargaining outcomes does not enhance authority compared to non-binding promises due to more challenging bargaining dynamics under commitment. This finding helps explain why informal promises remain prevalent in social interactions.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – December 5^th, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“Optimal income redistribution”

Pavel Brendler  –  Bonn University

Abstract:

“What is the optimal income tax and Social Security policy?  We set up a rich quantitative model in which a Ramsey planner jointly chooses both programs by maximizing the welfare of currently alive and future generations. We find that the extent to which the government is willing to provide insurance through the income tax-and-transfer program vis-a-vis the pension system crucially depends on the weight the planner assigns to future generations as well as the persistence of wealth transmission across generations. Depending on the intergenerational weight, some of the joint reforms deliver Pareto improvements across generations (but not within generations).”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Friday – November 17^th, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“The cost-vs.-quality tradeoff in make-or-buy decisions”

Frederik Andersson  –  Lund University

Abstract:

“The make-or-buy decision is analyzed in a simple two-task principal-agent model. There is a cost-saving-vs.-quality trade-off in effort provision, both effort and outcome having these two dimensions. The principal faces a dichotomous choice between make/in-house, coming with weak cost-saving incentives for the agent, and buy/outsourcing, coming with strong incentives; the dichotomy is due to an incomplete-contracting limitation necessitating that one party be residual claimant of cost-savings. Choosing buy rather than make leads to higher cost-saving effort and in a plausible main case to lower effort directed towards quality and lower equilibrium quality, this in spite of stronger direct quality-provision incentives. The attractiveness of make-vs.-buy is explored and shown to be aligned with its impact on quality.”