lisa abraham harvard universitydiscussant degryse, hans, karapetyan, artashes and karmakar, sudipto,...

-1-

LISA ABRAHAM https://scholar.harvard.edu/abraham

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathaniel Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information: Littauer Center 1805 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Undergraduate Studies: B.A., Economics & Mathematics, Wellesley College, Magna Cum Laude, with Honors, 2010 Graduate Studies: MSc, Economics & Management, The London School of Economics, with Distinction, 2014

Harvard University, 2014 to present

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics Thesis Title: “Essays in Labor Economics”

Expected Completion Date: June 2020 References: Professor Claudia Goldin Professor Nathaniel Hendren Littauer Center 229, Harvard University Littauer Center 230, Harvard University 617-495-3934, [email protected] 617-496-3588, [email protected] Professor Lawrence Katz Professor Amanda Pallais Littauer Center 224, Harvard University Littauer Center 234, Harvard University 617-495-5148, [email protected] 617-495-2151, [email protected] Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Labor Economics, Public Finance Teaching Experience: Fall, 2018

Spring, 2017 Market Imperfections & Rationales for Government Interventions (undergraduate), Harvard University, teaching fellow for Professor Nathaniel Hendren

Spring, 2018 Spring, 2017 Fall, 2017 Fall, 2016

Intermediate Macroeconomics (undergraduate & Extension School), Harvard University, teaching fellow for Professor Christopher Foote American Economic Policy (undergraduate & Harvard Kennedy School), Harvard University, head teaching fellow (2017) and teaching fellow (2016) for Professors Martin Feldstein, Jeffrey Liebman, Lawrence Summers, Amitabh Chandra, and Katherine Baicker

-2-

Fall, 2016

Economics of Work & Family (undergraduate), Harvard University, teaching fellow for Professor Claudia Goldin

Research Experience and Other Employment: Summer 2015 Harvard University, Research Assistant to Professor Amanda Pallais 2011 – 2013 U.S. Department of the Treasury, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of

Economic Policy, Washington D.C.

2007 – 2011 J.P. Morgan, Investment Banking Analyst & Summer Analyst, New York, NY Professional Activities: Referee Service: Quarterly Journal of Economics Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2018 – 2019 Harvard University Department of Economics Travel and Research Grant (twice) 2019

2019 Harvard Dissertation Completion Fellowship Weatherhead Initiative on Gender Inequality Fellowship

2018 2016 – 2018 2015 – 2016

Harvard Lab for Economic Applications and Policy Grant Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (for each of the following courses): Economics of Work & Family (2016); Market Imperfections & Rationales for Government Intervention (2017, 2018); American Economic Policy (2017) Donald B. Marron Graduate Fellowship

Research Papers: “Words Matter: Experimental Evidence from Job Applications” (Job Market Paper, with Alison Stein, Uber) Women are underrepresented in certain jobs, particularly in STEM fields and the tech sector. Many women in tech argue that they hold themselves to higher standards than their male counterparts when deciding whether to apply for a job. Thus, job postings that ask for “exceptional” expertise and a slew of “bonus” qualifications may disproportionately discourage women from applying if they believe they must meet or exceed all the listed qualifications. To investigate this hypothesis, we ran a randomized controlled trial on a sample of 60,000 potential applicants to over 600 of Uber’s corporate U.S. job postings. Our treatment removed optional qualifications and softened language about the intensity of the required qualifications. We find that job seekers of both genders meaningfully respond to language: our treatment significantly increased the total number of applications by 7 percent. Altering the language did not change the fraction of women who applied, but did close the gender skills gap. While women applying in the control group are 6 percentage points significantly more likely to have advanced degrees (i.e., higher than a bachelor’s degree) relative to men applying for the same job, women in the treatment group are equally likely as men to have advanced degrees for the same job. Our results confirm the importance of language in the self-screening process: words matter in different ways for women and men of different educational backgrounds, and materially affect job seekers’ economic outcomes.

-3-

Research in Progress: “Gender Differences in Performance Evaluations” I use a proprietary dataset from an HR tech firm to examine gender differences in over 100,000 performance evaluations for a sample of 200 companies. Performance evaluations are an important aspect of labor markets, as they impact decisions related to worker productivity, compensation, promotion, and long-term career choices. Preliminary findings reveal that there are gender differences in the way that females and males publicly present themselves in formal evaluations. In particular, the gap between workers’ numerical self-assessment of their overall work performance and their manager’s assessment of them is more negative for female workers than for male workers, indicating that females rate themselves lower than their male counterparts, even after controlling for their manager’s beliefs. Future work will explore mechanisms for this finding, including gender differences in signaling and self-promotion. “The Gender Earnings Gap within Firm and Job: Evidence from Online Self-Reports” (with Matthew Gibson) Using a proprietary dataset of online self-reports, we provide evidence on the gender wage gap after controlling for detailed occupational- and firm-fixed effects, typically not permissible in publicly available data. We validate the sample by comparing it to Occupational Employment Statistics and Current Population Survey data. Estimates of the gender wage gap range from 5 to 7 percent after including detailed controls, smaller than in prior studies. This work illuminates the value of confidential, proprietary data to more accurately quantify existing gender differences in the labor market.

-1-

EDOARDO MARIA ACABBI https://scholar.harvard.edu/eacabbi

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Department of Economics, Harvard University Littauer Building, Room 315 1805 Cambridge Street

Cambridge, MA, 02143 Cell phone number: 857-207-5410 Personal Information: born 12/17/1988, Male, Italian citizen. Proficient in English and Italian, intermediate German, basic Portuguese. Undergraduate Studies: Bachelor of Arts, International Economics and Management, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy,

110/110 cum laude, 2007-2010 Master of Science, Economics and Social Sciences, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, 110/110 cum laude, 2010-2013

Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Business Economics

Thesis Title: “Essays in Finance and Macroeconomics” Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor Gabriel Chodorow-Reich Professor Jeremy Stein Littauer Center 206 Littauer Center 219 617-496-3226, [email protected] 617-496-6455, [email protected] Professor Emmanuel Farhi Professor Samuel G. Hanson Littauer Center 208 Baker Library | Bloomberg Center 361, HBS 617-496-1835, [email protected] 617-495-6137, [email protected] Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Financial Economics, Macroeconomics Secondary fields: Labor Economics Teaching Experience: Spring, 2018 International Economics (undergraduate), Harvard University, teaching

fellow for Professor Emmanuel Farhi Spring, 2017 Economics of Banking (undergraduate), Harvard University, teaching fellow

for Professor Jeremy Stein

-2- Fall 2016 Economics of Globalization (undergraduate), Harvard University, teaching

fellow for Professors Robert Lawrence and Lawrence H. Summers Spring 2014 Monetary Economics (undergraduate), Bocconi University, teaching fellow

for Professor Angelo Porta and Franco Bruni Fall 2013 Industrial Organization (undergraduate), Bocconi University, teaching fellow

for Professor Chiara Fumagalli and Michele Polo Research Experience and Other Employment: 2014-2017 Harvard University and NBER, research assistant for Professor Matteo

Maggiori 2013-2014 Bocconi University, research assistant for Professors Chiara Fumagalli,

Tommaso Monacelli and Antonella Trigari Professional Activities Invited presentations: 2019: Barcelona GSE Summer Forum “Financial Shocks, Channels, and

Macro Outcomes” workshop, Barcelona, Spain; Job market bootcamp, Petralia, Italy; Harvard macro and finance lunches.

2018: briq “Firms, jobs and inequality” workshop, Bonn, Germany; Harvard, macro, finance and public finance lunches.

Discussant Degryse, Hans, Karapetyan, Artashes and Karmakar, Sudipto, “To Ask or Not To Ask? Bank Capital Requirements and Loan Collateralization”, Final Workshop of the Research Project “Connecting the Real Economy and the Financial System: Theory and Empirics”, ISEG, Lisbon, Portugal

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2014-2020 Harvard Business School full scholarship 2014-2016 Bank of Italy “Bonaldo Stringher” scholarship 2010-2013 Bocconi University Merit Award Research Papers: “The financial channels of labor rigidities: evidence from Portugal” (Job Market Paper), with Ettore Panetti and Alessandro Sforza How do credit shocks affect labor market reallocation, firms' exit and other real outcomes? How do labor-market rigidities impact their propagation? To answer these questions, we match administrative data on worker, firms, banks and credit relationships in Portugal, and conduct an event study of the interbank market freeze at the end of 2008. Our results highlight that the credit shock had significant effects on employment dynamics and firms' survival. These findings are entirely driven by the interaction of the credit shock with labor market frictions, determined by rigidities in labor costs and exposure to working-capital financing, which we label “labor-as-leverage” and “labor-as-investment'” financial channels. The credit shock explains about 30 percent of the employment loss among large Portuguese firms between 2008 and 2013, and contributes to productivity losses due to increased labor misallocation. Work in progress: “The macro-dynamics of matching, sorting and human capital accumulation along the life cycle”, with Andrea Alati and Luca Mazzone We study the importance of business cycle fluctuations for sorting between firms and workers in frictional labor markets. We argue that recessions can have long-lasting effects on workers careers and economic activity through lost investment in human capital of affected cohorts. Differently from physical capital, the extensive and intensive margins for investment in human capital are limited by search frictions and

-3- limited life-time duration. For these reasons human capital plays a persistent role in affecting economic performance. We characterize the cyclical behavior of worker-firm matches and the process of on-the-job human capital accumulation in a structural model of the labor market that features both worker and firm heterogeneity. In our model aggregate fluctuations alter the sorting between workers and firms and distort incentives to accumulate human capital. This process leads to a slowdown in the recovery from shocks, as workers sluggishly catch up on their missing investment opportunities. We provide empirical evidence of these mechanisms using administrative data on the population of Italian contracts provided by the national social security institute (INPS).

-1-

OMAR BARBIERO https://scholar.harvard.edu/obarbiero

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151

Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588

Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927

Office Contact Information

Department of Economics

Littauer Center North

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA 02138

Cell phone: 857-829-7556

Personal Information

Citizenship: Italy

Undergraduate Studies

BSc in Statistics, University of Padua, Italy, with honors, 2010

MSc in Economics, Bocconi University, Italy, with honors, 2013

Graduate Studies


Ph.D. Candidate in Economics

Thesis Title: “Essays in International Macroeconomics”

Expected Completion Date: May 2020

References:

Professor Gita Gopinath Professor Matteo Maggiori

Harvard University Harvard University

617-495-8161, [email protected] 617-496-2614, [email protected]

Professor Marc Melitz

Harvard University

617-495-8297, [email protected]

Teaching and Research Fields

International macroeconomics, macroeconomics, trade

Teaching Experience

Spring 2019 International Finance, Harvard Economics Department, teaching fellow for

Professor Maggiori

https://scholar.harvard.edu/obarbiero

mailto:[email protected]

-2-

Fall 2018-19 A Libertarian Perspective on Economic and Social Policy, Harvard Economics

Department, teaching fellow for Professor Miron

Spring 2017-18 International Finance, Harvard Economics Department, teaching fellow for

Professor Gopinath

Fall 2017 The Future of Globalization: Issues, Actors, and Decisions, Harvard Economics

Department, teaching fellow for Professors Summers and Lawrence

Research Experience and Other Employment

2016 Harvard University, research assistant for Professor Gopinath

2013-14 Bocconi University, research assistant for Professors Alesina, Favero and

Giavazzi

2012-14 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), consultant

Professional Activities

Referee Service: Journal of International Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics

Conference Presentation: NBER Macroeconomic Annual 2018

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships

2019 Molly and Domenic Ferrante Economics Research Fund, Harvard University

2018-19 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University

2018-19 Research Grant, Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science

2018 Jens Aubrey Westengard Fund, Harvard University

2018 Research Grant, Weatherhead Center Mid-dissertation Grant, Harvard University

2017 Research Grant, Lab for Economic Applications and Policy, Harvard University

Publications

Omar Barbiero, Emmanuel Farhi, Gita Gopinath, and Oleg Itskhoki, “The Macroeconomics of Border

Taxes”, NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 33 (2018): 395-457.

Alberto Alesina, Omar Barbiero, Carlo Favero, Francesco Giavazzi, and Matteo Paradisi, “Austerity in

2009–13”, Economic Policy, Volume 30, Issue 83, July 2015, Pages 383–437.

Research Papers

“The Valuation Effects of Trade” (Job Market Paper)

This paper estimates the cash flow effects of currency mismatches generated by foreign-priced operations

of French manufacturers. My results reconcile large exchange rate effects on gross trade flows with the

standard exchange rate disconnect puzzle. I find that the value of transactions invoiced in foreign

currencies is twice as sensitive to exchange rates as the value of transactions invoiced in the domestic

currency. Movements in nominal valuations drive this result, as opposed to any real demand response. I

aggregate pricing choices to the firm level to build a shift-share measure of invoice currency mismatch.

My measure outperforms any trade-weighted effective exchange rate index at explaining cash flows,

investment, and employment of trading firms. An invoice-weighted exchange rate shock has an average

cash flow impact of 45 cents on the dollar across all types of exposed firms. However, virtually all

-3-

investment and payroll sensitivity to foreign-pricing mismatch come from small domestic-oriented firms.

The real macroeconomic effects are limited because large traders are liquid and small exporters partially

hedge their dollar-priced exports with dollar-priced imports.

“The Effects of Fiscal Consolidations: Theory and Evidence” (Working Paper, 2017)

with Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero, Francesco Giavazzi, and Matteo Paradisi.

We investigate the macroeconomic effects of fiscal consolidations based upon government spending cuts,

transfers cuts and tax hikes. We extend a narrative dataset of fiscal consolidations, with details on over

3500 measures for 16 OECD countries. We show that government spending cuts and cuts in transfers are

much less harmful than tax hikes, despite the fact that non-distortionary transfers are not classified as

spending. Standard New Keynesian models robustly match our results when fiscal shocks are persistent.

Wealth effects on aggregate demand mitigate the impact of a persistent spending cut. Static distortions

caused by persistent tax hikes cause larger shifts in aggregate supply under sticky prices.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w23385

http://www.nber.org/people/alberto_alesina

http://www.nber.org/people/carlo_favero

http://www.nber.org/people/francesco_giavazzi

http://www.nber.org/people/matteo_paradisi

-1-

ALEX BELL alexbell.net

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathaniel Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Home Contact Information 1805 Cambridge St 63 Webster Ave Apt 2 Cambridge, MA 02143 Somerville, MA 02143 Cell: (203) 530-0454 Personal Information: Born Jan. 3, 1991; male; citizen USA Undergraduate Studies: Sc.B., Computer Science & Economics, Brown University, magna cum laude & with honors, 2013 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Economics

Thesis Title: Essays in Labor Economics Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor Nathaniel Hendren Professor Raj Chetty 617-496-3588 [email protected] 617-744-9492 [email protected] Professor Lawrence Katz Professor Elie Tamer 617-495-5148 [email protected] 617-496-1526 [email protected] Teaching and Research Fields: Primary field: Labor Economics, Social Economics Secondary fields: Public Economics, Innovation Teaching Experience: Summer, 2018 Senior Thesis Mentor, Harvard, Weatherhead Center for International Studies Fall, 2017 Graduate Social Economics, Harvard, Prof. Roland Fryer Spring, 2017 Intro Econometrics, Harvard, Dr. Gregory Bruich 2016-2018 Volunteer high-school equivalency tutor, MA Correctional Institute - Framingham Spring, 2013 Health, Hunger, & Household in Developing Countries, Brown, Prof. Andrew Foster Spring, 2012 Database Management Systems, Brown, Prof. Stan Zdonik (CS Dept) Research Experience and Other Employment: 2013-2014 Harvard Lab for Economic Applications to Policy, Pre-Doctoral Fellow for Profs.

Chetty, Hendren, & Friedman Summer 2012 Federal Trade Commission Antitrust Division, Summer RA Summer 2011 US Patent & Trademark Office Chief Economist, Summer RA

-2- Professional Activities Referee: AEJ Applied, AEJ Policy, AER Insights, Economics of Transition, Quarterly Journal of Economics Organizer, Harvard Economics Peer Mentoring Program (2016-2018) Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2018 Washington Center for Equitable Growth Doctoral Grant 2018 Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Knowledge Challenge Grant 2017 Weatherhead Initiative on Gender Inequality Fellowship 2017

2016 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Bok Center (both semesters) NBER Health & Aging Economics Fellow

2015 Inequality & Social Policy Fellow, Malcolm Weiner Center for Social Policy 2013 Gordon Lindsay Undergraduate Thesis Prize, Brown University Publications: “Do Tax Cuts Produce More Einsteins? The Impacts of Financial Incentives vs. Exposure to Innovation on the Supply of Inventors” (with Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John van Reenen), Journal of the European Economic Association Volume 17 (3): 651–77, 2019. “Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation” (with Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John van Reenen), The Quarterly Journal of Economics 134 (2): 647–713, 2019 “Team-Specific Capital and Innovation” (with Xavier Jaravel and Neviana Petkova), American Economic Review 108(4-5):1034-73, 2018. Research Papers: “Job Amenities & Earnings Inequality” (Job Market Paper) Previous research on prices of job amenities in representative datasets has suffered from simultaneity bias due to unobserved worker ability, resulting in apparently “wrong-signed” compensating wage differentials. I propose a new estimator for amenity prices that uses only a single imprecise proxy for workers' ability to identify the amenity price that holds ability fixed. My estimation strategy removes imprecision from the ability proxy by using predicted values from a regression of the ability proxy on wages and amenities. With price estimates for a set of observed job characteristics, I turn to investigating the role of job amenities in demographic income gaps. I find a large role for costly amenity substitution in explaining the gender pay gap. In contrast, substitution on the basis of observed amenities does not appear to play large roles in income inequalities by race or by parent background. Research Papers in Progress “The Role of Mentoring in Economic Mobility” (with Neviana Petkova) How does social exposure to successful adults affect kids' life trajectories? For experimental variation in social exposure to high-income adults, we leverage an RCT that randomized disadvantaged kids' eligibility to be exposed to well-off volunteer mentors every week for at least a year. We find that 20 years later, many social outcomes of youth exposed to mentors, including college-going, seem considerably more in line with those from higher-income families. Effects on income measures are imprecisely estimated, and we cannot reject typical returns to college. However, when all outcomes are rescaled by their correlations with parental income, effects on participants’ later-life incomes are significantly smaller than the effects on measured social variables.

-1-

SOPHIE CALDER-WANG https://www.sophiecalderwang.com/

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY




Office Contact Information Home Contact Information

1805 Cambridge Street 2 Peabody Ter, Apt 702

Cambridge, MA 02138 Cambridge, MA 02138

609-751-4607

Undergraduate Studies:

Mathematics, Princeton University, summa cum laude, 2011

Graduate Studies:

Harvard University


Thesis Title: Essays on Innovations and Markets


References:

Professor Ariel Pakes (Chair) Professor Edward Glaeser


[email protected] [email protected]

Professor Paul Gompers Professor Robin Lee

Harvard Business School Harvard University


Professor Adi Sunderam

Harvard Business School

[email protected]

Teaching and Research Fields:

Primary fields: Industrial Organization

Secondary fields: Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Real Estate

Teaching Experience:

2018 Summer Teaching assistant for Prof. David Robinson (NBER Entrepreneurship Bootcamp)

2017, 2018 Teaching assistant for Senior Thesis Seminar (Harvard Ec985)

2015 Teaching assistant for Prof. Ben Golub (Harvard Ec980O): Network Economics

2010, 2011 Preceptor for Prof. Sun-Yung Alice Chang (Princeton MAT 201/202): Vector

Calculus and Linear Algebra

Research Experience and Other Employment:

2016 Research Assistant to Prof. Ariel Pakes

2015 Research Assistant to Prof. Lauren Cohen and Prof. Christopher Malloy

https://www.sophiecalderwang.com/

-2-

2018 Spring Visiting Researcher, Luohan Academy, Alibaba, Hangzhou, China

2015 Summer Investment Analyst, Weiss Asset Management, Boston, MA

2011-2014 Derivatives Structuring, Financial Institutions Group, Goldman Sachs

2008 Summer Research Intern, Computer Vision, Google Maps, Google

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships:

2018 - 2019 Kauffman Foundation Knowledge Challenge Fellowship

2017 John Meyer Housing Fellowship, Joint Center for Housing Studies

2017, 2018 Certificate of Teaching Excellence, Bok Center, Harvard University

2016, 2017 Summer Travel and Research Award, Harvard University

2014 - 2018 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Fellowship, Harvard University

2011 Peter A. Greenberg '77 Mathematics Departmental Prize, Princeton University

2011 Birch Family Prize for Finance Certificate Program, Princeton University

2011 Phi Beta Kappa

Job Market Papers:

“The Distributional Impact of the Sharing Economy on the Housing Market”

What is the impact of the sharing economy, pioneered by companies such as Airbnb, on the housing

market? In this paper, I estimate the welfare and distributional impact of Airbnb on the residents of New

York City. I develop a model of an integrated housing market, where a landlord can offer a housing unit

for rent on either the traditional long-term rental market or the newly available short-term rental market.

To assess the impact of housing units being reallocated to Airbnb, I estimate a structural model of

resident choice, featuring heterogeneous household preferences. To evaluate the host gains from peer

production, I estimate a home-sharing supply system featuring heterogeneous costs. Overall, the net

impact of Airbnb on the median renter is a loss of $125 per annum, since the losses from an increase in

the equilibrium rent dominate the host surplus. Moreover, the most significant losses are suffered by

renters who are high-income, educated, and white, because they tend to demand housing types that are

more desirable in the short-term rental market. Nonetheless, there is a divergence between the median

and the tail where a few households with particularly low costs of sharing obtain substantial gains. This

paper delivers a more nuanced characterization of the winners and losers of the sharing economy,

highlighting the detrimental role of housing supply restrictions. It also provides a positive basis on how

local governments could make informed regulatory decisions when faced with such technological

innovations.

Publications:

“A Set Optimization Approach to Utility Maximization under Transaction Costs” (joint with Andreas

Hamel), Decisions in Economics and Finance 40(1), 257-275 (2017)

A set optimization approach to multi-utility maximization is presented, and duality results are obtained

for discrete market models with proportional transaction costs. The novel approach allows us to obtain

results for non-complete preferences, where the derived formulae closely resemble but generalize the

scalar case.

Research Papers:

“And the Children Shall Lead: Gender Diversity and Performance in Venture Capital” (joint with Paul

Gompers), NBER Working Paper w23454, under review

With an overall lack of gender and ethnic diversity in the innovation sector, we ask the next question:

Does increased diversity lead to better firm performances? In this paper, we answer this question using a

https://www.sophiecalderwang.com/research-1

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sophie-qingzhen-wang/files/hamel_wang_2017_decision_in_economics_and_finance_-_a_set_optimization_approach_to_utility_maximization_under_transaction_costs.pdf

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sophie-qingzhen-wang/files/gompers_wang_2017_nber_wp_and_the_children_shall_lead_-_gender_divresity_and_performance_in_venture_capital.pdf

-3-

unique dataset of the gender of venture capital partners’ children. First, we find strong evidence that

parenting more daughters leads to an increased propensity to hire female partners by venture capital

firms. Second, using an instrumental variable set-up, we show that improved gender diversity, induced

by parenting more daughters, improves deal and fund performances. These effects concentrate

overwhelmingly on the daughters of senior partners than junior partners. Taken together, our findings

have profound implications on how the capital markets could function better with improved diversity.

(Featured in The Economist, The New York Times, and Fortune.)

“Homophily in Entrepreneurial Team Formation” (joint with Paul Gompers and Kevin Huang), NBER

Working Paper No. 23459, under review

We study the role of homophily in the formation and performance of entrepreneurial teams. We exploit a

unique dataset of MBA students who participated in a business course to propose start-up plans. The

course was run in multiple cohorts in otherwise identical formats except for the team formation

mechanism used. In one cohort, students are allowed to form teams freely among classmates. In another

cohort, students were randomly assigned to teams with pre-determined demographic compositions. We

find strong homophily in team formation: Shared ethnicity and gender increase the probability of

forming a team by over 20%. Shared school and workplace experience increase the probability by 17%

and 11%. Among organically formed teams, ethnic diversity is not statistically correlated with

performance. Nonetheless, among the computer-assigned teams, ethnically diverse teams perform

significantly worse than ethnically more uniform teams. These findings suggest that diversity policies

should take adequate consideration of idiosyncratic match qualities to avoid unintended and potentially

negative outcomes.

“Unobserved Heterogeneity, State Dependence, and Health Plan Choices” (joint with Ariel Pakes, Jack

Porter, and Mark Shepard), in progress

In this paper, we propose a new approach for the structural estimation of switching costs in a panel data

discrete choice model with individual choice-specific fixed effects, by leveraging the recent

developments in moment inequality methods. We achieve this by comparing the choice probabilities of

the same individual over two different points in time. With non-parametric i.i.d. distribution of the error

terms, we develop a set estimator for the switching cost by constructing a set of improving choices over

time. Next, when allowing for generic parametric assumptions on the error term, we develop conditional

moment inequalities by making inference on the revealed preferences of a pair of choices. We show that

in the CommCare Health Plan Choice context, they provide particularly informative upper bounds on the

switching cost, rejecting a simplistic model when unobserved heterogeneity is omitted. In addition, if the

errors are assumed to be logit, we make further improvements as the ratio of odds-ratio is independent of

individual heterogeneity. Overall, these new sets of inequalities provide an intuitive and easy-to-

implement test to assess the robustness of state-dependence models when concerns about unobserved

heterogeneity loom significant.

“No Land Like Disneyland: The Impact of Airbnb Restriction on Home Prices,” in progress

In this paper, I exploit a natural experiment of a short-term rental ban in Anaheim, CA, to study the

impact of Airbnb on the housing market. Leveraging detailed housing transaction data, I employ a

difference-in-difference specification as well as a spatial regression-discontinuity design. I find that the

restriction leads to an average reduction of 2.5% in home values, with a large impact on homes closer to

Disneyland. I also find lower levels of trading volume and home renovation activities after the short-

term rental restriction is enacted.

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/09/30/venture-capitalists-with-daughters-are-more-successful

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/upshot/a-proven-way-to-win-in-business-have-a-daughter-hire-women.html

https://fortune.com/2017/05/30/snap-women-venture-capital-gender/

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sophie-qingzhen-wang/files/gompers_huang_wang_2017_nber_wp_homophily_in_entrepreneurial_team_formation.pdf

-4-

“The Value of Information: A Moment Inequality Approach towards Second Order Conditions,” under

review

When conducting estimation based on agent optimization, I show that one can improve the performance

of the estimator when information such as the second-order condition is incorporated as moment

inequality restrictions, especially when there are weak instruments. I run a simulation study to

demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach in both continuous and discrete choice problems.

“Equity Investor of Last Resort? Government Venture Capital in China” (joint with Jinlin Li), in

progress

Government efforts to spur innovation and entrepreneurship have often been lackluster due to a lack of

appropriate incentives and skills. However, government entities also have the unique ability to deploy

capital during times of financial distress when private investors face additional constraints. Building an

extensive dataset of VC deals and outcomes, we run a horse race between the government-backed

venture capital firms and the private ones. We test whether the government is indeed a successful anti-

cyclical investor—and thus providing much-needed equity as a last resort—or whether they fall prey to

further political capture.

Personal Information:

Citizenship: China; U.S. Permanent Resident

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sophie-qingzhen-wang/files/weak_instruments_in_moment_inequalities_11_2016_sophie_wang.pdf

MOYA CHIN https://scholar.harvard.edu/moyachin

[email protected]

Cell: +1-732-822-4706

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected], 617-495-2151

Placement Director: Nathaniel Hendren [email protected], 617-496-3588

Graduate Administrator: Brenda Piquet [email protected], 617-495-8927

Contact

Harvard University

Department of Economics, Littauer Center

1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA 02138

Graduate Studies

Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University 2014 – 2020 (expected)

References:

Professor Melissa Dell Professor Nathan Nunn


617-384-7272 617-496-4958


Professor Vincent Pons Professor Gautam Rao

Harvard Business School Harvard University

617-495-9329 857-998-4505



B.S., Economics and Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 2013

Thesis: Migrant Households During Economic Crisis: Evidence from Mexico and the 2007 –

2008 Financial Crisis


Primary field: Development economics, political economy

Secondary field: Applied microeconomics

Research Papers

“When Do Politicians Appeal Broadly? The Economic Consequences of Electoral Rules in Brazil” (Job

Market Paper)

Electoral rules determine how voters' preferences are aggregated and translated into political

representation, and their design can lead to the election of representatives who represent broader or

https://scholar.harvard.edu/moyachin









narrower constituencies. This project examines how single- and two-round elections in Brazil affect

municipal mayoral races using a regression discontinuity design. Two-round elections use two rounds of

voting to elect a winner, ensuring the eventual winner obtains at least 50% of the vote. Theoretically, this

may provide incentives for candidates to secure a broader base of support. Consistent with this, I show

that in two-round systems, candidates represent a more geographically diverse group of voters, more

resources are allocated to public schools, and there is less variance in resources allocated to public

schools across the municipality. I find evidence suggesting that these effects are driven by strategic

responses of candidates, rather than differential entry of candidates into races. The findings suggest that

two-round systems can lead candidates to secure broader voter bases and subsequently exhibit less

political favoritism when implementing policy.

Research Papers in Progress

“Uncovering Household Self-Targeting with Machine Learning”

I investigate the extent to which households in Colombia manipulate their eligibility for a social program.

Eligibility is determined by a poverty score that is calculated from answers to a household survey, the

formula for which was released four years after the start of the program. Because proxy-means testing

systems can potentially predict household poverty poorly, households have incentives to manipulate their

eligibility. I find that, as in Camacho and Conover (2011), there is a significant discontinuity at the

eligibility cutoff and that one method households use to manipulate their eligibility is by having their

poverty score overwritten. I then use machine-learning techniques to predict households’ actual poverty

level. I find that households who manipulate their score are more likely to be poor than households with

the same score and more likely to be poorly predicted by the government’s poverty score. These findings

suggest that not all proxy-means testing systems predict household poverty well and when they do not,

households self-target by manipulating their eligibility.

“The Gendered Impact of Anti-Sweatshop Activism in Indonesia”

Teaching Experience

The Political Economy of Development (Econ 2392), Melissa Dell Spring 2019

The Behavioral Economics of Poverty and Development (Econ 980), Gautam Rao Spring 2017, 2019

A Libertarian Perspective on Economic and Social Policy (Econ 1017), Jeffrey Miron Fall 2018

Development Economics (Econ 2390), Michael Kremer Fall 2016, 2017

The Historical Origins of Middle Eastern Development (Econ 980), Eric Chaney Spring 2017

Introduction to Econometrics (Econ 1123), James Stock Fall 2016

Relevant Positions

Research Assistant for Gautam Rao (Harvard) 2015-2016

Research Assistant for Gautam Rao (Harvard) and Rohini Pande (Harvard Kennedy Summer 2015

School), Evidence for Poverty Design

Research Assistant for Dave Donaldson (MIT) 2013-2014

Assessment Assistant, MIT D-Lab Scale-Ups 2013

Intern, Morgan Stanley Summer 2012

High Yield Research Intern, Fidelity Management and Research Company Summer 2011

Fellowships and Awards

Harvard Dissertation Completion Fellowship 2019

Economic History Association Exploratory Travel and Data Grant 2017

Harvard Warburg Fund Research Grant 2016

Harvard Warburg Fund Research Grant (with Tzachi Raz) 2015

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program 2014


Referee for American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Invited presentations:

NEUDC (Northwestern University) 2019

Other

Programming Skills: Python, Java, R, Matlab, Stata, ArcGIS

Languages: English (native), Mandarin Chinese (intermediate), French (intermediate)

Citizenship: United States

-1-

CHRISTOPHER CLAYTON https://scholar.harvard.edu/clayton

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY




Office Contact Information Home Contact Information

Littauer Center G23 1600 Massachusetts Ave Apt 705

1805 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA 02138

Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: (650) 515-7166


Citizenship: USA


B.A., Economics and Mathematics, University of Chicago, 2012

Graduate Studies:



Thesis Title: “Essays in Macroeconomics and Finance”


References: (All Harvard University)

Professor Emmanuel Farhi Professor Matteo Maggiori

Littauer Center 208 Littauer Center 212

(617) 496-1835, [email protected] (617) 496-2614, [email protected]

Professor Jeremy Stein Professor Samuel Hanson

Littauer Center 219 Baker Library 361

(617) 496-6455, [email protected] (617) 495-6137, [email protected]

Research Fields:

Primary fields: Macroeconomics, Financial Economics


Spring, 2018-2019 Economic Theory (1st year PhD, Macro), Harvard, T.F. for Emmanuel Farhi

Fall, 2017-2018 Economic Theory (1st year PhD, Macro), Harvard, T.F. for David Laibson

Spring 2017 Corporate Finance (Undergraduate), Harvard, T.F. for Marcus Opp

Fall 2016 Intermediate Microeconomics: Advanced (Undergraduate), Harvard, T.F. for

Edward Glaeser


2012-2014 National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Assistant

(For David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian, John Beshears, James Choi)





-2-

Research Papers:

“Multinational Banks and Financial Stability” (Job Market Paper) (with Andreas Schaab)

We provide a framework to study the scope for international cooperation in macroprudential policies. We model a

global economy where multinational banks operate across borders. In the model, banks are exposed and contribute

to fire sales in countries they invest in, making financial stability an international concern. National governments

can regulate both domestic and foreign banks operating in their borders. They prefer to both under-regulate

domestic banks and over-regulate foreign banks. The optimal global cooperative arrangement enforces equal

regulatory treatment of foreign banks and increases regulation of domestic banks, resembling existing cooperative

regimes. Non-cooperative quantity regulation, a common macroprudential paradigm, therefore necessitates

international cooperation in our model. Surprisingly, non-cooperative Pigouvian taxation can also implement the

global optimum. Intuitively, this occurs because when applying taxes, rather than quantity restrictions,

governments internalize the business value of foreign banks, which affects the tax revenue collected. Our theory

not only provides a unified framework to think about international bank regulations, but also yields concrete

insights with the potential to improve on the current policy stance.

“Bail-Ins, Optimal Regulation, and Crisis Resolution” (with Andreas Schaab)

We provide a framework to study bail-in policies that have been adopted in the financial regulatory regimes in the

US and EU. In our model, the optimal bank capital structure is a combination of standard debt, which liquidates the

bank, and bail-in debt, which is written down to restore solvency. In the presence of fire sale externalities from

bank failures and moral hazard from bailouts, banks privately use too much standard debt relative to bail-in debt. A

bail-in regime is the optimal regulatory policy and fully replaces bailouts. Bail-ins can generate self-fulfilling

crises in long-term debt markets, leading to bank runs. Debt guarantees and an expanded notion of lender of last

resort can prevent these crises, and should complement bail-ins as parts of the crisis resolution toolkit.

“Heterogeneous Price Rigidities and Monetary Policy” (with Xavier Jaravel and Andreas Schaab)

This paper investigates the implications of heterogeneous price rigidities across sectors for the distributional and

aggregate effects of monetary policy. First, we identify and characterize analytically a new set of earnings and

expenditure channels of monetary policy that emerge in the presence of sectoral heterogeneity. Second, we

establish empirically that (i) prices are more rigid in sectors selling to college-educated households, (ii) prices are

more rigid in sectors employing college-educated households, and (iii) sectors that employ college-educated

households also sell more to these households. These new facts suggest that monetary policy stabilizes sectors that

matter relatively more for college-educated households, due to an expenditure channel (from (i)), an earnings

channel (from (ii)), and their amplification by feedback loops (from (iii)). Finally, we develop a multi-sector

incomplete-markets Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian model, in which households of different education

levels work and consume in different sectors. We quantify the aggregate and distributional effects from

heterogeneous price rigidities using this model. In the baseline calibration, we find that the consumption of

college-educated households is 22% more sensitive to monetary policy shocks as that of non-college households,

while the aggregate real effect of monetary policy is 5% stronger than with homogeneous price rigidities.

“Optimal Illiquidity” (with John Beshears, James Choi, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, and Brigitte

Madrian)

We calculate the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and

present bias (Amador, Werning, and Angeletos 2006). The government chooses mandatory contributions to

respective spending/savings accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Penalties collected

by the government are redistributed through the tax system. When naive households have heterogeneous present

bias, the social optimum is well approximated by a three-account system: (i) a completely liquid account, (ii) a

completely illiquid account, and (iii) an account with an ≈10% early withdrawal penalty. In some ways this

resembles the U.S. system, which includes completely liquid accounts, completely illiquid Social Security and

401(k)/IRA accounts with a 10% early withdrawal penalty. The social optimum is also well approximated by an

even simpler two-account system — (i) a completely liquid account and (ii) a completely illiquid account — which

is the most common retirement system in the world today.

-3-

Research Papers in Progress:

“A Theory of Dynamic Inflation Targets” (with Andreas Schaab)

Should central banks’ inflation targets, once formulated, remain set in stone? We study a dynamic mechanism design

problem between a government (principal) and a central bank (agent). The central bank has private information about

persistent structural shocks that affect the average optimal rate of inflation. In addition to the standard time consistency

problem, information persistence generates incentives for the central bank to influence beliefs of both the government

and of outside agents (firms) who use that information in price setting (Philips curve). When incentive provision is

costless for the government, the constrained efficient allocation can be implemented using a mechanism resembling a

dynamic inflation target: the central bank reports its inflation target one period in advance, and is provided a linear

incentive scheme based on performance relative to that target. We provide interpretations of the incentive scheme

outside of monetary transfers. We derive the optimal mechanism when incentive provision is costly, and show that it

can be characterized in terms of two sufficient statistics: one reflecting the time consistency problem, and one reflecting

information persistence. The former component also resembles a dynamic inflation targeting mechanism.


2019 Harvard Dissertation Completion Fellowship

2017-2019 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (awarded four times)

-1-

PAULO COSTA https://scholar.harvard.edu/pcosta

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY





Littauer Center

1805 Cambridge Street

Cambridge, MA, 02138

Mobile: 203-507-9114

Personal Information: Male, Brazilian Citizen, U.S. Permanent Resident


B.A., Economics, Yale University, 2014

Thesis Title: “The Relationship between Math and Financial Literacy: Evidence from a Survey and a

Randomized Experiment in Brazil”

Advisors: Gary Gorton, Dean Karlan, and Doug McKee

Graduate Studies:



Thesis Title: Essays on Behavioral and Household Finance


References:

Professor Andrei Shleifer (chair) Professor John Y. Campbell



Professor Xavier Gabaix

Harvard University

[email protected]


Primary fields: Household Finance, Behavioral Economics

Secondary fields: Experimental Economics, Empirical Asset Pricing


Fall 2017 Intermediate Microeconomics, teaching fellow for Professor Maxim Boycko

Harvard’s Derek Bok Award for Excellence in Teaching (Teaching Score: 4.9/5.0)


2014-2015 Research Assistant for Andrei Shleifer, Harvard University

2012-2014 Research Assistant for Dean Karlan, Yale University

2011-2014 Research Assistant for Gary Gorton, Yale School of Management

https://scholar.harvard.edu/pcosta


-2-


2019-2020 Jorge Paulo Lemann Graduate Reserach Grant, Harvard University

2018-2019 Person of the Year Fellowship, Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce

2016-2018 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship on Economics of an Aging Workforce

2016, 2017 Bradley Foundation Fellowship

2015, 2016 Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science Summer Fellowship

2015, 2018 Paul M. Warburg Fund, Harvard Economics Department

2014- 2020 Harvard University Graduate Fellowship

Job Market Paper:

“Numerical Anchoring, Perceived Returns, and Asset Prices” When considering the benefits and costs of investing, rational agents should think in proportional terms

(i.e. interest rates). However, since consumers frequently observe financial information in dollar

amounts, they may think of interest rates both in dollar terms and percentage units. I develop a model

of how describing financial information in dollar terms may distort investors’ perception of interest

rates. Specifically, when converting from percentage returns to dollar amounts and vice-versa,

individuals anchor on the customary dollar amount they observe and do not fully adjust to the amount

presented to them. I test and confirm the predictions of the model in one field experiment with over

170,000 active investors from a brokerage firm and one MTurk experiment. Then, I apply the model

to understand the effect of share prices - quoted in dollar terms - on the behavior of stock returns, I

find that stocks with similar past returns but higher share prices exhibit stronger return predictability

and are less likely to show reversal in the long-run, controlling for size. A trading strategy that exploits

this finding exhibits a Fama-French 3-factor alpha of 30.28% (t-stat = 10.54) and enhances the

profitability of momentum strategies by generating a Fama-French-Carhart 4-factor alpha of 8.55% (t-

stat = 5.24) in annualized terms.

Research Paper in Progress

“The Perceived Cost of Small-Dollar Loans” Many small-dollar loans – such as payday loans – charge interest rates (APR) in the triple digits,

despite their costs being usually marketed as a small fee for service, typically at $15-$17 per $100

borrowed. Rational individuals should only consider the percentage interest rates when analyzing the

costs and benefits of a loan. However, the advertisement of loans using small dollar fees for service

may distort the consumer’s perceived interest rate charged. Given a fixed interest rate, I study

whether the small magnitude of the dollar amount used to explain the interest rate affects the demand

for loans. To do so, I run a field experiment with over 130,000 customers of a Brazilian bank selling

loans whose interest rates are between 100-300% APR. To test the effect of the small-dollar

advertisement on demand, I vary the dollar amount (R$ 1.00 vs R$1,000.00) used to explain the

interest rates as well as the framing of the interest rate (simple vs compound interest). Conditional on

observing the same interest rate, customers are highly susceptible to the dollar amount observed,

increasing the take-up of loans by 23% when observing the explanation conveyed in lower dollar

amounts. I find no evidence of the impact of compound interest on loan demand.

-1-

XIANG DING https://scholar.harvard.edu/xiangding

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Littauer Center, 1805 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 609-775-7226 Undergraduate Studies: A.B. summa cum laude in Economics, Princeton University, 2013 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Business Economics

Thesis Title: “Essays on International Trade” Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor Pol Antràs Professor Marc Melitz Harvard University Harvard University 617-495-1236 617-495-8297 [email protected] [email protected] Professor Elhanan Helpman Professor Emmanuel Farhi Harvard University Harvard University 617-495-4690 617-496-1835 [email protected] [email protected] Professor Teresa Fort Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth 603-646-8963 [email protected] Teaching and Research Fields: Primary field: International Trade Secondary fields: Macroeconomics, Industrial Organization Teaching Experience: 2017 – 2019 Advanced Topics in International Trade, Harvard, Teaching Fellow for Professor

Pol Antràs and Professor Marc Melitz Research Experience and Other Employment: 2019 International Economics Ph.D. Fellow, Tuck School at Dartmouth 2015 – Special Sworn Status Researcher, US Census Bureau

-2- 2015 – 2016 Research Assistant for Professor Pol Antràs, Harvard University, and Professor

Teresa Fort, Tuck School at Dartmouth 2013 – 2014 Research Assistant for Professor Dave Donaldson, MIT 2013 Research Assistant for Professor Stephen Redding, Princeton University Professional Activities: Presentations: 2019: Dartmouth Tuck, FSRDC at Wisconsin-Madison, Midwest Trade at WUSTL Referee: Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford Economic Papers Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2019 – 2020 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University 2017 – 2018 Lijun Lin and Ruilin Gong Graduate Student Fellowship, Harvard University 2014 – 2019 Doctoral Fellowship, Harvard Business School 2013 Daniel L. Rubinfeld ‘67 Prize in Empirical Economics, Princeton University 2009 – 2012 Sir Edward Youde Memorial Scholarship for Overseas Studies, Hong Kong Research Papers: “Intangible Economies of Scope: Micro Evidence and Macro Implications” (Job Market Paper) Do economies of scope within firms affect how macro shocks propagate across industries? I exploit

plausibly exogenous variation in foreign demand faced by US multi-industry manufacturers to identify this transmission mechanism. Within the firm, a positive demand shock in one industry increases revenues in another only when both industries use the same intangible inputs. To rationalize these empirical findings, I develop and estimate a general equilibrium model of joint production in which inputs have unrestricted scale and rivalry elasticities within the firm. I find that scope economies are driven by the scalability and non-rivalry of intangible inputs; they account for roughly 20 percent of the aggregate response of productivity to market size. I apply these estimates to study the US-China tariff war and identify alternative tariff policies that mitigate the adverse effects on the US manufacturing CPI.

“Structural Change Within Versus Across Firms: Evidence from the United States” (joint with Teresa Fort, Steve Redding, and Pete Schott) US manufacturing's employment share fell from 27 to 9 percent between 1977 and 2016. A third of

this reallocation is driven by a shift towards services—particularly professional services and retail—within continuing manufacturers. We show that firms with in-house professional service establishments are larger, grow faster, more likely to survive, and more diversified than firms without such plants. These trends motivate a model of within-firm structural transformation in which non-manufacturing workers complement physical production, and where physical input price reductions induce firms to reallocate towards services. This mechanism is consistent with US firms' responses to growing trade with China.

Research Papers in Progress: “The Costs of Market Disintegration: Evidence from the India-Pakistan Border” (joint with Robin Burgess, Dave Donaldson, and Steve Redding) We use the partition of India in 1947 as a natural experiment to provide evidence on the costs of

international disintegration. In the years leading up to partition, the areas making up modern-day India accounted for over 60 percent of the imports of those making up modern-day Bangladesh and Pakistan. Yet almost immediately after partition, Indian trade with these regions declined

-3-

precipitously. We combine this natural experiment with a quantitative spatial general equilibrium model of trade and geography to evaluate the impact of partition on the spatial distribution of economic activity and welfare. We show that partition involved a major disruption to the pre-existing network of input-output linkages across regions and industries. We find large-scale trade diversion in the aftermath of partition and sharp negative impacts on the industrial activity in individual region-industry pairs. However, consistent with existing findings for the aggregate welfare gains from trade, we estimate relatively modest effects on welfare through this mechanism of the disruption of prior import and export relationships.

-1-

JETLIR DURAJhttps://scholar.harvard.edu/liri

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151Placement Director: Nathaniel Hendren [email protected] 773-344-8990Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927

Office Contact Information:Littauer Center, 1805 Cambridge StreetCambridge, MAPhone: +1-857-261-7853

Doctoral Studies:Harvard University, 2014 to presentPh.D. Candidate in EconomicsThesis Title: “Essays in Economic Theory”Expected Completion Date: May 2020

References: Professor Drew Fudenberg Professor Tomasz StrzaleckiDepartment of Economics, MIT Department of Economics, Harvard University617-715 4582, [email protected] 617-496-6284, [email protected]

Professor Jerry Green Professor Eric MaskinDepartment of Economics, Harvard University

Department of Economics, Harvard University


Professor Matthew RabinDepartment of Economics, Harvard University617-496-1841, [email protected]

Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, 2013 to presentPh.D. Candidate in Mathematics, Thesis Title: “Essays on Random Walks Conditioned to Stay in Cones”Expected Completion Date: May 2020Committee: Franz Merkl, Vitali Wachtel, Marc Peigné

Previous Studies:M.Sc. in Economics, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, 2013M.Sc. in Mathematics, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, 2012B.Sc. in Mathematics, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, 2011B.Sc. in Economics, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, 2009


Primary field: Economic Theory Secondary field: Behavioral Economics






-2-

Teaching Experience: (teaching fellow unless otherwise stated)2016-2018 Microeconomics/Game Theory part (Ph.D.), Harvard University, Prof. Eric Maskin

Respective teaching evaluations: 3.9 out of 5.0, 4.1 out of 5.0, 4.0 out of 5.02016-2018 Decision Theory (Ph.D.), Harvard University, Prof. Tomasz Strzalecki

Respective teaching evaluations: 4.2 out of 5.0, 5.0 out of 5.0, 5.0 out of 5.0Fall 2018 Capital Markets (undergraduate), Harvard University, Prof. Pedro Bordalo

Teaching evaluations: 4.8 out of 5.0Spring 2018 Capital Markets (undergraduate), Harvard University, Prof. Xavier Gabaix

Teaching evaluations: 3.8 out of 5.0Spring 2014 Random Walks Conditioned To Stay Positive (co-lecturer with Prof. Vitali Wachtel,

graduate course), Ludwig-Maximilian-University MunichSpring 2014 Probability Theory (B.Sc. and M.Sc.), Ludwig-Maximilian-University MunichSpring 2013 Mathematical Statistics (M.Sc.), Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich

Publications:Random Walks in Cones: the Case of Non-Zero Drift, Stochastic Processes and Their Applications 124(4), 1503-1518, April 2014On Harmonic Functions of Killed Random Walks in Convex Cones, Electronic Communications in Probability 19, no. 80, pp. 1-10, 2014

Research Papers in Economics:

“Bargaining with Endogenous Learning” ( Job Market Paper ) Latest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/jmp.pdfAbstract: I study a dynamic bargaining game in which a buyer can choose to learn over time about her valuation of the good. Information generation takes time. After learning, the buyer can disclose verifiableevidence of her valuation to the seller. Examples include venture capital negotiations or procurement of new technologies, which feature significant delay due to endogenous costly learning. I first study the caseof costless information acquisition and then look at the case in which learning is costly. If learning is costless, the buyer receives informational rents only if period-length is small enough. If learning is costly,she receives informational rents for any period-length. In contrast to many standard sequential bargaininggames the seller generically does not `screen down a demand curve,' if period-length is small enough. In stationary mixed equilibria the buyer waits till she can acquire the information and exercise the associatedstrategic option. The analysis quantifies the inefficiency from costly learning, from the endogenous delay and allows for comparative statics.

“Dynamic Information Design with Diminishing Sensitivity over News” with Kevin He Latest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/ds.pdfAbstract: A benevolent sender communicates non-instrumental information over time to a Bayesian re-ceiver who experiences gain-loss utility over changes in beliefs (“news utility”). We show how to com-pute the optimal dynamic information structure for arbitrary news-utility functions. With diminishing sensitivity over the magnitude of news, one-shot resolution of uncertainty is strictly suboptimal under commonly used functional forms. Information structures that deliver bad news gradually are never optimal. We identify additional conditions that imply the sender optimally releases good news in small pieces but bad news in one clump. When the sender lacks commitment power, diminishing sensitivity leads to a credibility problem for good-news messages. Without loss aversion, the babbling equilibrium isessentially unique. More loss-averse receivers may enjoy higher equilibrium news-utility, contrary to the commitment case. We discuss applications to media competition and game shows.

-3-

“Identification and Welfare Analysis in Sequential Sampling Models” with Yi-Hsuan Lin Latest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/sesa_final.pdfAbstract: Consider an agent or a population of homogeneous agents who privately learn information about a payoff-relevant uncertain state of the world through a technology of sequential experiments. We consider two distinct cases of costly learning. In the first case, the agents discount future payoffs geomet-rically. In the second, they pay a constant flow cost of time. Suppose the analyst observes the joint distri-bution over chosen action and decision time. We show that such random choice data uniquely identify thediscount factor in the first case and the cost of time in the second case, besides identifying the agents' pri-or and taste. Moreover, we show how an outside observer with access to this random choice data can con-duct welfare analysis despite being oblivious of the technology of sequential experiments the agents are using. Our results highlight the usefulness of decision time in choice data.

“Optimal Stopping with General Risk Preferences” revise and resubmit at Mathematics of OperationsResearch, latest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/os.pdfAbstract: We give a full characterization of the continuation and stopping regions of optimal stopping of(time-homogeneous) diffusions for an agent with a general risk preference. We consider separately the case of a naive agent who is unaware of the possible time inconsistency in her behavior and the case of a sophisticated agent who is fully aware of such an inconsistency. We apply our general results to charac-terize optimal stopping behavior among several distinct classes of non-Expected Utility risk preference models. We also show that although some specific models related to probability weighting may exhibit extreme behavior in the sense of naive agents always continuing with positive probability or sophisticatedagents never starting, many other risk preference models do not lead to such extreme behavior.

“Mechanism Design with News Utility” Latest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/mdnu.pdfAbstract: An agent with news utility cares about changes in her beliefs over consumption and money. We study the implications of news utility and loss aversion for the design of Bayesian mechanisms, in both one-agent and multi-agent settings. News utility leads to dynamic inconsistency, thus introducing a novel design variable available for the designer: the timeline of the implementation of the mechanism. We give general results about the optimal design of the timeline, in addition to illustrating how news util-ity changes other well-known classical results from the theory of Bayesian mechanism design.

“Costly Information and Random Choice” with Yi-Hsuan LinLatest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/circ_final.pdfAbstract: Consider an agent who decides whether to employ an information structure to learn about a payoff-relevant state of the world before making a decision. Information is costly either because (1) the agent has to wait a fixed amount of time for the availability of the information structure and is impatient, or because (2) she has to pay a fixed and menu-independent cost to use the information structure. For each menu of options the analyst observes random choice from the menu and whether the agent acquires the information. We give an axiomatic characterization of when this random choice is consistent with ei-ther of the cases (1) or (2) and show how the analyst can identify the information structure the agent can employ, and respectively, discount factor or additive costs.

“Dynamic Random Subjective Expected Utility” Latest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/dr_seu_main.pdfAbstract: Dynamic Random Subjective Expected Utility (DR-SEU) allows to model choice data ob-served from an agent or a population of agents whose tastes and beliefs about objective payoff-relevant states can evolve stochastically. Our observable, the augmented Stochastic Choice Function (aSCF), al-lows for a direct test of whether the agents’ beliefs reflect the true data-generating process conditional on their private information as well as identification of the possibly incorrect beliefs. We give an axiomatic characterization of when an agent satisfies the model, both in static and dynamic settings. We also prove

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/dr_seu_main.pdf

-4-

natural comparative static results on the degree of belief incorrectness as well as on the speed of learning about taste.

“Static and Dynamic Consistency of Preferences in Optimal Stopping Problems”Latest version: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/liri/files/conseqcontinuous.pdfAbstract: Suppose an agent with a static risk preference faces prize processes given by regular diffusionsand decides when to stop the process and consume the prize. We show that the agent satisfies dynamic consistency of preferences if and only if she is an Expected Utility agent. This extends a classical result from Hammond (1988) and Gul, Lantto (1990) to a continuous-time setup in which the classical proof techniques do not apply, because the ‘decision trees’ the agent faces are not the usual discrete-time, finite-horizon lottery trees.

Research Papers in Mathematics:Green Function of a Random Walk in a Cone, with Vitali Wachtel, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.07360

Invariance Principles for Random Walks in Cones, with Vitali Wachtel, revise and resubmit at StochasticProcesses and Their Applications, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.07966

Research Papers in Progress:In Economics: “Experiment-based costs of information”, with Kevin HeIn Mathematics: “Invariance Principles for Integrated Random Walks Conditioned to Stay Positive”, withMichael Bär

Research Experience:2015-2019 Harvard University, Research Assistant for Prof. Tomasz Strzalecki2013-2014 Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich, Research Assistant at the Department of

Mathematics

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships:2014-2015 Douglas Dillon Fellowship, Harvard University2013 VAC Alumni Prize for the 2nd best M.Sc. performance in Economics,

Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich2008, 2009, 2012 Scholarship of Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich for foreign students

2008-2011 Scholarship of the Max Weber Program of the Elite Network of Bavaria2009 VAC Alumni Prize for the best B.Sc. performance in Economics,

Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich

Presentations in Conferences:June 2019 Risk, Uncertainty and Decision conference, Paris School of EconomicsJune 2019 North-American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society, University of

WashingtonJuly 2016 Stochastic Processes under Constraints, University of AugsburgJuly 2014 Persistence Probabilities and Related Fields workshop, TU Darmstadt

Professional Activities:Referee Management Science, Revista Matematica Iberoamericana, Brazilian Journal of

Probability and StatisticsOrganizer Games and Markets Seminar at Harvard Economics, 2018-2019

https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.07966

https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.07360

Nir Hak

Placement Director: Nathaniel Hendren [email protected], 773-344-8990

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected], 617-495-2151

Graduate Administrator: Brenda Piquet [email protected], 617-495-8927

Contact

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +1-857-221-2586

Website: https://scholar.harvard.edu/nir

Harvard University

Department of Economics, Littauer Center

1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA 02138

Doctoral Studies

Ph.D., Economics, Harvard University 2014 – 2020 (expected)

References:

Professor Ariel Pakes Professor Ben Golub


617-495-5320 617-496-0009


Staff support: [email protected] Staff support: [email protected]

Professor Robin Lee

Harvard University

617-495-2997

[email protected]

Staff support: [email protected]

Prior Education

A.M in Economics, Harvard University 2016

M.A. in Economics, Tel Aviv University 2013

Advisor: Prof. Zvika Neeman, Joint program of the Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew

University of Jerusalem

B.A. in Economics (with honors), The Open University of Israel 2011

Minor: Mathematics


Primary field: Industrial Organization

Secondary field: Theory, Network Theory




https://scholar.harvard.edu/nir

Research Papers

“Estimation of Learning, Adoption and Diffusion over a Network” (Job Market Paper)

Firms often decide whether to adopt an innovation of uncertain value in markets where the outcomes of

earlier adopters are observed. This paper introduces a flexible Bayesian model suitable for the analysis of

social learning, competition, and diffusion in such environments. Agents in the model have (potentially

misspecified) theories of how others’ profits relate to their own, and use these to make their entry

decisions. I estimate the model exploiting a unique reform in Illinois that legalized slot machines, and

empirically study how information and adoption diffuse through a network. This setting is well-suited for

such analysis since gambling data are publicly available, adoption is a discrete action, and the set of

potential adopters (liquor license holders) is defined by law. I find that establishments that observe more

adoption or higher neighbors’ profits are more likely to adopt themselves, yet learning could improve

since they do not use all relevant information. Establishments have diffuse priors and that they learn from

more neighbors than they compete with. The direction and extent to which learning affects adoption are

ex-ante ambiguous. In two counterfactual exercises I show that increasing information availability or

learning substantially increases both adoption and total profits in the market.

“Social Learning in a Dynamic Environment.” (with Krishna Dasaratha & Ben Golub)

Agents learn about a changing state using private signals and past actions of neighbors in a network.

When can they learn efficiently about recent changes? We find two conditions are sufficient: (i) each

individual's neighbors have sufficiently diverse types of private information; (ii) agents are sophisticated

enough to use this diversity to filter out outdated information and identify recent developments. If either

condition fails, learning can be bounded far from efficient levels—even in networks where, with a fixed

state, learning is guaranteed to be efficient without (i) or (ii). We thus identify learning externalities that

are distinctive to a dynamic environment, and argue that they can be quite severe. The model we develop

to make our argument provides a Bayesian foundation for DeGroot learning in networks, permitting new

counterfactual and welfare analyses for that commonly-used behavioral model.


“Geography and Diversity in the Formation of Academic Collaborations Networks” (with Krishna

Dasaratha, Co-Pierre Georg & Michael E. Rose)

“When Small Businesses become Data-Driven: A Field Experiment” (With Sagit Bar-Gill and Erik

Brynjolfsson)

“Are College Football's “Best” Teams Better on the Field or on TV? Exposure to Information and Expert

Opinion Bias.”

“Firm Size Distribution Goes Online: The Evolution of eBay Firms’ Sales Distribution” (With Sagit Bar-

Gill and Erik Brynjolfsson)

Teaching Experience

Industrial Organization: Theory and Applications (Econ 1640), Robin Lee Fall 2017, Spring 2019

A Libertarian Perspective on Economic and Social Policy (Econ 1017), Jeffrey Miron Fall 2018

Graduate Economic Theory (Econ 2010b), Jerry Green Spring 2017, 2018

Intermediate Microeconomics (Econ 1010a), Maxim Boycko Fall 2016, 2017

Advanced Microeconomic Policy Analysis II (API-110 Kennedy School), Ran Shorrer Spring 2016

Intermediate Microeconomics (Tel Aviv University), Ariel Rubinstein Fall 2013

Introduction to Microeconomics (Tel Aviv University) Spring 2013

Geographical Economics (Tel Aviv University) Fall 2013

Invited Presentations

INFORMS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona 2018

North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society, Davis University, California 2018

Economic Theory Workshop, Tel Aviv University, Israel 2018

Relevant Positions

Intern, eBay Economics Summer 2015

Research Assistant for Kfir Eliaz (Tel Aviv University) 2013

Teacher, Kahanoff Foundation 2012

Talpiot Program, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, IDF’s elite training program 2006-2007

Fellowships and Awards

Harvard Dissertation Completion Fellowship 2019

Douglas Dillon Fellowship 2015

Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences PhD Scholarship 2014

MA Students merit Scholarship, Economics, Tel Aviv University 2013

Social-Sciences Masters Students Excellency Prize 2013

MA Students merit Scholarship, Economics, Tel Aviv University 2012

President’s List of Honors, The Open University of Israel 2012

Dean’s List of Honors, The Open University of Israel 2011

Refereeing

Quarterly Journal of Economics

Other

Programming Skills: Python, SQL, Teradata SQL, Matlab, R, Stata

Languages: Hebrew (native), English (fluent),

Citizenship: Israel

-1-

TAEHOON KIM https://scholar.harvard.edu/taehoonkim

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY





Littauer Center, 1805 Cambridge Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

+1 (781) 382-4294


B. in Business Administration, B.A. in Economics, B.S. in Mathematical Sciences

Seoul National University, 2014

Graduate Studies:



Thesis Title: “Global Financial Flows and Macroeconomics”


References:

Professor Gita Gopinath Professor Pol Antràs

Harvard University, Littauer Center 206 Harvard University, Littauer Center 207

[email protected], (617) 495-8161 [email protected], (617) 495-1236

Professor Kenneth Rogoff Professor Jeremy Stein

Harvard University, Littauer Center 216 Harvard University, Littauer Center 219

[email protected], (617) 495-4022 [email protected], (617) 496-6455


Primary fields: International Macroeconomics, Financial Economics


Spring 2019 Advanced Topics in Empirical Macroeconomics (Ph.D.), Teaching Fellow for

Gabriel Chodorow-Reich

Fall 2017, 2018 International Trade (Ph.D.), Teaching Fellow for Elhanan Helpman

International Trade Policy, Teaching Fellow for Elhanan Helpman


2017-2019 Harvard University, Research Assistant to Gita Gopinath and Jeremy Stein

2016 Harvard University, Research Assistant to Elhanan Helpman

2013-2014 Seoul National University, Research Assistant to Yeon-Koo Che, Jinwoo Kim and

Yoon-Jae Whang

https://scholar.harvard.edu/taehoonkim






-2-


Referee Quarterly Journal of Economics (x2)

Service Organizer of Harvard PhD international economics lunch from 2018-2019


2019 NSF/BEA/ASA Fellowship (Title: Multinationals as Global Financiers, Co-PI:

Casey Kearney)

2019 Molly and Domenic Ferrante Economics Research Fund (Title: Multinationals as

Global Financiers, Co-PI: Casey Kearney)

2019, 2017 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University

2018 Harvard GSAS Professional Development Funds

2015 Samsung Scholarship

2015 Harvard GSAS Tuition and Stipends

2014 Summa Cum Laude, Seoul National university

Working Papers:

“The World's Banker: On the Rise in U.S. Wealth Inequality” (Job Market Paper)

Abstract: The U.S. economy is often referred to as the “banker of the world,” due to its unique role in

supplying global reserve assets and funding foreign investment. This paper develops a general equilibrium

model to analyze and quantify the contribution of this role to rising wealth concentration among American

households. I highlight the following points: 1) financial globalization raises wealth inequality in a

financially-developed economy initially due to foreign capital pressing up domestic asset prices; 2) much

of this increase is transitory and can be reversed as future expected returns on domestic assets fall; and 3)

despite the low-interest-rate environment, newly accessed foreign capital provides incentives for affluent

households to reallocate wealth toward risky assets while impoverished households increase their debt.

Wealth concentration ensues only if this rebalancing effect is large enough to counteract the decline in

return on domestic assets. Quantitative analysis suggests that global financial integration alone can

account for 34% to 55% of the observed increase in the current top one percent wealth share in the U.S.

but indicates a possible reversal in the future.

“Multinationals as Global Financiers” (with Casey Kearney, Disclosure Approval Pending)

Abstract: U.S. multinational companies (MNCs) play a prominent role in raising capital abroad and

investing in high-yield global business opportunities. Using administrative data collected by the US

Bureau of Economic Analysis on foreign funding and investment activities of U.S. multinational firms at

the affiliate level, we estimate the impact of MNC operations on the persistent spread between the return

on assets (ROA) and the interest rate payments of firms. Our evidence indicates MNCs enjoy a 0.9% larger

spread between ROA and average interest rate compared to when these firms did not have large ownership

holdings in foreign affiliates. We then introduce a model of MNC activity to disentangle potential

mechanisms to explain the spread such as risk premium and cross-country return differentials. Our

structural estimation of this model suggests some of the variations can be accounted for by the return

differential channel due to the incomplete integration of global financial markets. Our results highlight the

role of US multinationals as global arbitrageurs in addition to being global risk-takers.

Research in Progress:

“Currency Mismatch, Bank Fragility and the Design of a Global Reserve System” (with Gita Gopinath

and Jeremy Stein)

-3-

Abstract: We develop a theory of the global reserve system under the dominant currency paradigm. Our

model highlights two main points. First, from an individual country's perspective, dollar reserve

accumulation allows the central bank to implement bailouts at lower fiscal costs. A small open economy

can achieve the first best allocation on its own by means of bank regulation and dollar reserves.

Paradoxically, however, the best response of each central bank drives down dollar interest rates at the

global level, thereby inducing banks in other countries to further increase dollar borrowings. This causes

a negative spiral of reserve accumulation and reduces global welfare. We use this framework to account

for observed trends in currency mismatch on the private sector and study the optimal design of a global

reserve system.

-1-

ALEJANDRO LAGOMARSINO http://scholar.harvard.edu/alagomarsino

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY





Littauer Center

1805 Cambridge Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

617-949-0326

Personal Information

Citizenship: Uruguay


B.A. in Economics, University of Montevideo, 2011

Graduate Studies


Ph.D. Candidate in Economicsesis Title: “<Your Thesis Title: Essays on the Last N Years of MyLfe>”


References:

Professor Lawrence Katz Professor Alberto Alesina

Littauer Center 224, Harvard University Littauer Center 210, Harvard University


Professor Stefanie Stantcheva

Littauer Center 232, Harvard University

617-496-2614, [email protected]


Primary fields: Labor Economics, Political Economy

Secondary field: Public Economics

Teaching Experience

Fall 2019

Spring 2017/18

Fall 2016/18

Fall 2016/17

Summer 2017

Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems, Harvard College,

Teaching Fellow for Professor Raj Chetty

Introduction to Econometrics, Harvard College, Head Teaching Fellow for

Professor Gregory Bruich

Immigration Economics, Harvard College, Teaching Fellow for Professor George

Borjas

Political Economy, Harvard Economics Department, Teaching Fellow for Professor

Alberto Alesina

Mathematics and Probability Theory (graduate), University of Montevideo,

Lecturer

http://scholar.harvard.edu/alagomarsino

-2-

Summer 2016 Economic Development, Harvard Summer School, Teaching Fellow for Professor

Sunil Kanwar

Research Experience and Other Employment

2019

2018

2017

2014

2011-2013

2009-2010

Inter-American Development Bank, Fiscal Management Division, Consultant

Inter-American Development Bank, Fiscal Management Division, Research Intern

World Bank, Education Unit, Consultant

Harvard Business School, Research Assistant to Professor Rafael Di Tella

Center for the Study of Economic and Social Affairs (Uruguay), Research Assistant

to Ernesto Talvi

CPA Ferrere (Uruguay), Economic Consultancy Division, Junior Economist


Leadership Organizer of Harvard PhD Political Economy lunch from 2017-2018;

Harvard GSAS Latinx Student Association Co-founder and Vice President of

Finances from 2016-2017

Conferences Empirics and Methods in Economics Conference 2016 (Northwestern University);

Annual Conference in Economics 2015 (Central Bank of Uruguay)

Workshops Summer School in Structural Estimation and Corporate Finance 2017 (Ross School

of Business, University of Michigan); Summer Institute on Geographic and

Information Systems 2017 (Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard University)

Affiliations Harvard Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences Graduate Student Affiliate,

since 2017

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships

2019-2020

2019

2019

Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University

Molly and Domenic Ferrante Economics Research Award

Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University

2019

2017

2015

2015

2014-2019

Warburg Fund Research Grant, Harvard University

Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences Research Grant, Harvard University

David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Travel Grant

Douglas Dillon Fellowship, Harvard University

Graduate Student Fellowship, Harvard University

Job Market Paper

“Do Cash Assistance Programs Create Welfare Traps?” (with Lihuen Nocetto)

Abstract: The possibility that the long-term receipt of cash (and near-cash) assistance programs inhibits

beneficiaries’ abilities to be self-sufficient is a major concern in the design of safety-net programs. We

provide new evidence on the possibility of such “welfare traps” exploiting the unique way in which

Uruguay decided to re-target its main unconditional cash transfer program. We use rich administrative

longitudinal data and survey data and plausibly exogenous changes in welfare program receipt to provide

separate causal estimates of the impact of entry into and of (forced) exit from a cash assistance program

based on both regression discontinuity and dynamic differences-in-differences designs. We focus on three

key outcomes: labor supply and formalization of work, human capital investments for children, and take-

up of other safety-net programs. We find that formal labor supply of adults drops after entering the

program. Nevertheless, this does not constitute a “welfare trap”: long-term recipients that are forced to

exit the program increase their formal labor supply. We find negative impacts on school enrollment but

not on completed years of schooling given the low graduation rates in our population. The program

negatively impacts enrollment in public housing programs and take-up of other types of public cash

assistances, more suggestive of safety-net program substitution than of increased dependency on multiple

-3-

programs. Overall, these results suggest that the program does not induce a “welfare trap”, and long-term

enrollment seems to be associated with strategic behaviors to sustain eligibility status, and not with

decreased ability to leave social assistance.

Working Papers

“Meet the Oligarchs: Business Legitimacy, State Capacity and Taxation” (with Rafael Di Tella and Juan

Dubra) NBER Working Paper No. 22934

Abstract: We study the impact of two dimensions of trust, namely trust in business elites and trust in

government, on preferences for taxation. Using a randomized online survey, we find that our two

treatments are effective in changing trust in Major Companies and in Courts/Government. In contrast to

previous work, we find that distrust causes an increase in desired taxes on the top 1%. For example, our

treatment decreasing trust in business elites causes an increase in desired taxes on the top 1% of 2.4

percentage points (it closes 27% of the Democrat-Republican gap in tax preferences) when trust in

government is low; a similar result is obtained for distrust in government. We also find that trust is a key

driver of these preferences: 52% of the Democrat-Republican gap in tax preferences can be explained by

differences in trust. With respect to proxies for regulation and state capacity, we find a negative effect of

trust in business elites (and an unclear effect of trust in government). A model based on Rotemberg (2008),

where people tax to punish corrupt business leaders rather than to redistribute income, helps interpret these

findings.


“Are Medium Sized Businesses in Peru on the “Wrong” Side of the Laffer Curve?” (with Rodrigo

Azuero and Mariano Bosch)

Abstract: We exploit a quasi-experiment that led a group of businesses to face a lower corporate tax rate

in 2017, and study how reported business activity and tax revenue responds to corporate tax rates in Peru.

Our preliminary results suggest that “medium sized” businesses in Peru that experienced a drop (-58%) in

their corporate tax rate in 2017, paid less taxes (36% on corporate tax and 9% on VAT) on that year and

thus are not on the downward sloping side of the Laffer curve. The sign of the impact on VAT is explained

by a null impact on income and a positive impact on acquisitions. We hypothesize that these results

highlight that a positive shock on “real” business activity could translate in less VAT collection in a

context with low fiscal capacity.

“Imperfectly enforced emissions standards, under-reporting and general deterrence: empirical

evidence” (with Marcelo Caffera)

Abstract: This paper fills a gap in the literature by providing empirical estimates of the effect that

enforcement actions by municipal and national authorities have on the level of both reported and actual

emissions of industrial plants. In a regulatory framework where non-complying is ubiquitous and most

violations are not followed by a sanction, we provide evidence consistent with under-reporting of BOD

discharges by industrial plants. Previous empirical analyses in environmental enforcement, mostly in

developed countries and without information on both reported and actual levels of emissions, either did

not deal with this question or were not able to find such evidence.

-1-

DAVID C. MARTIN https://scholar.harvard.edu/david-martin

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Littauer Center G6 1805 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 206-295-5082 Personal Information: Citizenship: United States Undergraduate Studies: B.A., Economics, Pomona College, magna cum laude, 2009 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Business Economics Thesis Title: “Essays in Labor and Behavioral Economics” Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor Amanda Pallais Professor Lawrence Katz Harvard University Harvard University 617-495-2151 617-495-5148 [email protected] [email protected] Professor Andrei Shleifer Professor Brian Hall Harvard University Harvard University 617-495-5046 617-495-5062 [email protected] [email protected] Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Labor, Economics of Education Secondary field: Behavioral Teaching Experience: Spring, 2018 Econ 970, “The Economics of Education,” Harvard University, Instructor Fall, 2017 MET MA113, “Introductory Statistics,” Boston University Metropolitan College

Prison Education Program, Teaching Assistant for Dr. Thomas Peteet, MD Spring, 2017

Econ 1030, “Psychology & Economics,” Harvard University, Teaching Fellow for Professors David Laibson and Tomasz Strzalecki

Fall, 2016 MET PY105, “Introductory Physics,” Boston University Metropolitan College Prison Education Program, Teaching Assistant for Dr. Thomas Peteet, MD

-2-

Research Experience and Other Employment: Oct 2009 – Jun 2014 Cornerstone Research, Research Associate / Senior Analyst / Analyst Professional Activities: Jun 2017 – present Harvard Economics Peer Support Network, Co-Founder Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2019 Dissertation Completion Fellowship (Harvard University) 2018 Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (Harvard University) 2017 Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (Harvard University) 2009 Morris B. Pendleton Prize in Economics (Pomona College) Job Market Paper: “Discipline Reform, School Culture, and Student Achievement” (with Ashley Craig)

Does relaxing school discipline improve student achievement, or lead to classroom disorder? We study a 2012 reform in New York City public middle schools that eliminated suspensions for non-violent, disorderly behavior, replacing them with less disruptive interventions. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we exploit the sharp timing of the reform and natural variation in its impact to measure the effect of reducing suspensions on student achievement. Math scores of students in more-affected schools rose by 0.05 standard deviations relative to other schools over the three years after the policy change. Reading scores rose by 0.03 standard deviations. Only a small portion of these benefits can be explained by the direct impact of eliminating suspensions on students who would have been suspended under the old policy. Instead, test score gains are associated with improvements in school culture, as measured by the quality of student-teacher relationships and perceptions of safety.

Research Papers in Progress: “Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?” (with Benjamin Enke, Uri Gneezy, Brian Hall, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman, and Jeroen Van de Ven) A large body of laboratory experiments documents systematic violations of the rational economic

model. Surprisingly, empirical evidence of the effect of incentives (particularly, very large ones) on the strength of biases is scant. The current paper targets this gap in the literature, testing the effect of incentives on four widely documented cognitive biases: base rate neglect, anchoring, failure of contingent thinking (the Wason test), and intuitive reasoning in the Cognitive Reflection Test. In pre-registered laboratory experiments with a large and mathematically sophisticated student sample in Nairobi, we test the four biases with three incentive levels: hypothetical (no incentives), standard lab payments (low incentives), and very high incentives that increase stakes by a factor of 100. We are currently in the process of collecting expert predictions from a set of behavioral economists, so we cannot yet share our experimental results.

“Political Partisanship and Wages in the Public Sector” Wage setting in the public sector is an inherently political process. Unions bargain with state and

local government officials, to whom they are also important constituents. The unions themselves are politically active through donations to candidates, lobbying, and voter mobilization, with the vast majority of support going to Democrats. Looking specifically at fire fighters, police officers, and teachers, I provide preliminary evidence that strong unions can moderate partisan differences in public sector spending. In particular, wages and employment are higher under Democratic mayors than under Republican mayors in states with weak union laws, but not in those with strong union laws. I obtain these results using two empirical strategies: (1) a difference-in-differences analysis using variation in state union laws; and (2) a regression discontinuity analysis of close mayoral elections.

-3-

Publications: Eleanor Brown and David Martin, “Individual Giving and Volunteering,” The State of Nonprofit America, ed. Lester M. Salamon. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2012), 495-517.

-1-

SANJAY MISRA https://scholar.harvard.edu/smisra

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY





Harvard University

Department of Economics

1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138


B.A., Applied Mathematics, Harvard University, Magna Cum Laude, 2012.

Graduate Studies:

Harvard University, 2014-present.

Ph.D. Candidate in Economics.

Thesis Title: “Essays in Local Taxation: Evidence from Germany.”

Expected Completion Date: May 2020.

References:

Professor Robert J. Barro Professor Gabriel Chodorow-Reich


617-495-3203

[email protected]

617-496-3226

[email protected]

Professor Jeffrey Miron Professor Stefanie Stantcheva


617-495-4129

[email protected]

617-496-2606

[email protected]


Primary fields: Public Finance

Secondary fields: Macroeconomics, Labor Economics


Fall 2016-2018 Libertarian Economic Policy, Harvard, Teaching Fellow for Prof. Jeffrey Miron

Spring 2017-2018

Summer 2015

Intermediate Macroeconomics, Harvard, Teaching Fellow for

Prof. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, Prof. Karen Dynan, and Dr. Paul Willen

Introductory Economics, Harvard, Teaching Fellow for Prof. Daron Acemoglu,

Prof. David Laibson, and Prof. John List

Research Experience:

Summer 2018

Fall 2016

2012-2014

Harvard University, Research Assistant for Prof. Jeffrey Miron

Harvard University, Research Assistant for Prof. Stefanie Stantcheva

Harvard University, Research Assistant for Prof. Robert J. Barro

https://scholar.harvard.edu/smisra

-2-

Employment Prior to Ph.D:

2012-2014 The Greatest Good LLC (Consulting firm founded by Daniel Kahneman, Steven

Levitt, and Andrew M. Rosenfield), Consultant

Professional Activities:

Referee: Quarterly Journal of Economics


2019

2019

2019

2017, 2018

Harvard University Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Molly and Domenic Ferrante Fellowship

Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science Fellowship

Distinction in Teaching Award (awarded 4 times)

2016, 2017 World Econometrics Games Champion (2-time winner)

2012 Phi Beta Kappa Society

Publications:

“Gold Returns,” (joint with Robert J. Barro). 15 April 2015. Economic Journal, 126, (594), 1293-1317.

Job Market Paper:

The Effects of Local Corporate Taxation: Evidence from Germany What factors bears the burden of local corporate taxation? Using linked German employer-employee data and

variation from 24,000 municipal-level corporate tax changes, I leverage a triple difference strategy comparing the

labor market outcomes for establishments and individuals in covered industries responsible for paying the

corporate tax relative to those in an untaxed sector. I find that a one percentage point profit tax increase induces

covered establishments to contemporaneously reduce total employment by 1.2% in the short run, while bearing no

significant effect on real wages. Over a three year period, the employment steadily falls by 5.5%. I document

substantial heterogeneous effects by establishment: smaller and medium-sized single-plant establishments account

for the drop in employment, suggesting that the tax-induced effects are stronger for credit-constrained

establishments.

-1-

ANDREA PASSALACQUA https://scholar.harvard.edu/apassalacqua

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-496-6448 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Department of Economics Cambridge, MA 02138 Office 315, Cell: (617) 301-1054 Undergraduate Studies: B.A. Economics, Bocconi University, Summa Cum Laude, 2009

M.Sc. Economics, Bocconi University, Summa Cum Laude, 2012 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2013 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Political Economy and Government (Economics Track) Expected Completion Date: May 2020

References: Professor Jeremy Stein Professor Josh Lerner Department of Economics Entrepreneurial Management Unit Harvard University

[email protected] (617) 496-6455

Harvard Business School [email protected] (617) 495-6065

Professor Adi Sunderam Professor David Scharfstein Finance Unit Finance Unit Harvard Business School

[email protected] (617) 495-6644 Professor Marco Di Maggio Finance Unit Harvard Business School [email protected] (617) 495-6152

Harvard Business School [email protected] (617) 496-5067

Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Banking, Corporate Finance, Entrepreneurship Secondary fields: Innovation

https://scholar.harvard.edu/apassalacqua

https://scholar.harvard.edu/apassalacqua













-2- Teaching Experience: Spring 2019

Spring, 2018

Theoretical and Empirical Perspective on Entrepreneurship – Finance (2nd year Ph.D class), Harvard, teaching fellow for Professor Josh Lerner And William Kerr Empirical Methods in Financial Economics (2nd year Ph.D class), Harvard, teaching fellow for Professor Sam Hanson And Adi Sunderam

Spring, 2018

Theoretical and Empirical Perspective on Entrepreneurship (2nd year Ph.D class), Harvard, teaching fellow for Professor Josh Lerner And William Kerr

Fall 2016, Fall 2017 Fall 2015 Fall 2012

Introduction to Econometrics (Undergraduate class), Harvard, teaching fellow for Professor James Stock and Elie Tamer Cultural Economics (Undergraduate class), Harvard, teaching fellow for Alberto Alesina Introduction to Microeconomics (Undergraduate class), Bocconi, teaching fellow for Maristella Botticini

Research Experience and Other Employment: Sept 2019-

present 2017- 2016-present 2015 2013 2012-2013

Boston FED, Dissertation Fellow Bank of Italy, Visiting Researcher Institute for Quantitative Studies, Fellow NBER Entrepreneurship Bootcamp University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Visiting Scholar, Research Assistant to Paola Giuliano (UCLA) and Alberto Alesina (Harvard)

2012 2011

OECD Center for Local Development and Entrepreneurship, Intern Research Assistant to Carlo Favero (Bocconi)

Professional Activities: Referee Service:

Seminars: Discussant:

International Economic Review, European Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review: Insight, Journal of Comparative Economics, Economic Inquiry 2017: Wharton Innovation Doctoral Symposium (WINDS), Harvard Finance Lunch, Harvard Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lunch 2018: Harvard Finance Lunch, HBS Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lunch 2019: Harvard Finance Lunch (x2), HBS Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lunch (x2), Bank of Italy, Boston FED (scheduled) 2017: Wharton Innovation Doctoral Symposium (WINDS)

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2019

2019 2018 2017

Dissertation Fellowship, Boston FED Harvard Certificates of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard Jens Aubrey Westengard Award Travel and Research Grant, Harvard (x2)

2017 Research Grant, Lab for Economic Applications and Policy, Harvard 2016 Research Grant, Institute for Quantitative Studies, Harvard 2013-2017 Harvard GSAS Fellowship

Publications: “The Political Economy of Government Debt.” (with Alberto Alesina) In Handbook of Macroeconomics, 2: 2599-2651. North Holland, 2. Elsevier.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157400481600015X

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157400481600015X

-3- Abstract: This paper critically reviews the literature which explains why and under which circumstances governments accumulate more debt than would be consistent with the prescriptions of optimal fiscal policy. Departures from optimality are linked to various political mechanisms which make real world governments depart from what a social planner should do. We also discuss numerical rules or institutional designs which might lead to a moderation of these distortions. Research Paper(s) in Progress: “The Real Effects of Bank Supervision” (with Francesca Lotti and Giovanni Soggia) (JMP) “Does the Nature of Supervisor matters? Evidence from the Banking Industry” (with Giovanni Soggia) “Human capital, Team Capital and The Value of Labor” (with Sabrina Di Addario and Giovanna Marcolongo) Work in Progress: “The Real Effects of Corporate Scandals: Evidence from the VC Industry” (with Ruiqing Cao) (data collection) “Supervising with Style: Evidence from the Banking System” (with Luigi Guiso and Luc) (data collection)

-1-

ITZCHAK TZACHI RAZ https://scholar.harvard.edu/iraz

[email protected] Cell: +1-617-866-3864

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Department of Economics, Littauer Center 1805 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Undergraduate Studies: B.A., Philosophy, Economics and Political Science, Hebrew University, Summa Cum Laude, 2011 Graduate Studies: Hebrew University, 2011-2014 M.A., Economics, Magna Cum Laude Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Economics

Thesis Title: “Land, Institutions and Culture During the Period of Westward Expansion” Expected Completion Date: June 2020 References: Professor Alberto Alesina Professor Claudia Goldin Harvard University Harvard University 617-495-8388, [email protected] 617-495-3934, [email protected] Professor Melissa Dell Professor Nathan Nunn Harvard University Harvard University 617-384-7272, [email protected] 617-496-4958, [email protected] Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Economic History, Political Economy Secondary fields: Cultural Economics, Development Teaching Experience: Spring 2017, 2018 Intermediate Macroeconomics, Harvard, Prof. Chris Foote Fall 2017 The History of Economic Growth, Harvard, Prof. Melissa Dell Fall 2016 The Future of Globalization, Harvard, Prof. R. Lawrence and Prof. L.

Summers Fall 2012 Advanced Macroeconomics (Graduate), Hebrew University, Prof. Joseph

Zeira 2012-2014 Introductory Economics, Hebrew University, Prof. E. Klor, Prof. A.

Zussman and Prof. O. Moav Fall 2011 Intermediate Macroeconomics, Hebrew University, Prof. N. Sussman and

Prof. Prof. A. Ben-Bassat

-2- Job Market Paper “There’s No Such Thing As Free Land: The Homestead Act and Economic Development” (with Ross Mattheis) Abstract: The 1862 Homestead Act provided free land conditional on five years of residency and cultivation to settlers on the American West. In total, 10% of the land in the United States was granted to 1.6 million individuals. This study examines the impact of the Act on long-run development. Using spatial regression discontinuity and instrumental variable designs, we find that areas with greater historical exposure to homesteading are poorer today. The effect is stronger in urban locations and driven by non-agricultural sectors. Homesteading regions are also more rural and less geographically mobile. Using newly geo-referenced historical census data, we document the path of regional divergence starting from the initial settlement. We find that homesteading regions were slower to transition out of agriculture. We hypothesize that the transitory distortions caused by the Act's residency and cultivation requirements induced a selection process that set homesteading regions on divergent paths of development. Settlers with lower productivity as laborers selected into homesteading, and those with greater agricultural skills were more likely to survive as homesteaders on the frontier. This, in turn, inhibited the development of non-agricultural sectors and the subsequent benefits of agglomeration. Working Papers “Use It Or Lose It: Adverse Possession and Economic Development” Abstract: The legal doctrine of adverse possession limits the security of property rights by transferring formal land titles from absentee owners who leave their land idle to adverse possessors that use the land. This paper exploits plausibly exogenous variation in the security of land titles, as a result of historical changes of adverse possession legislation in U.S. states between 1840-1920, to investigate the causal effects of the security of land titles. I find that a reduction in the security of titles increased agricultural output. The main channel is incentivizing higher land utilization. A reduction in the security of land rights is also associated with an increase of investment in farms and improved access to capital markets, as well as with an increase in the share of owner-cultivated farms and the number of mid-sized farms. These findings suggest that the effect of property rights on economic development is not monotonic, and that property rights may be over secure. Research Papers in Progress “Learning is Caring: An Agrarian Origin of American Individualism” Abstract: This study examines the historical origins of American individualism. I test the hypothesis that local heterogeneity of the physical environment limited the ability of farmers on the American frontier to learn from their successful neighbors, turning them into self-reliant and individualistic people. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find that current residents of counties with higher agrarian heterogeneity are more culturally individualistic, less religious, and have weaker family ties. They are also more likely to support economically progressive policies, to have positive attitudes toward immigrants, and to identify with the Democratic Party. Similarly, counties with higher environmental heterogeneity had higher taxes and a higher provision of public institutions during the 19th century. This pattern is consistent with the substitutability of formal and informal institutions as means to solve collective action problems, and with the association between “communal” values and conservative policies. These findings also suggest that, while understudied, social learning is an important determinant of individualism. Research Experience and Other Employment: Summer 2016 Harvard University, Research Assistant for Prof. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich 2015-2016 Harvard University, Research Assistant for Prof. Michael Kremer 2013 Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Research Assistant for Prof. Saul Lach 2010-2013 ERCG - Economic Research and Consulting Group, Economist

-3- Professional Activities: Invited Presentations: “There’s No Such Thing As Free Land: The Homestead Act and Economic Development”: Nov. 2019 Clark University (scheduled) Oct. 2019 Stanford University, Economic History Seminar Sep. 2019 Harvard Law School, Harvard Empirical Legal Studies “Use It Or Lose It: Adverse Possession and Economic Development”: June 2018 SIOE (HEC Montréal, Canada) May 2018 TADC (London Business School) April 2018 DEVPEC (UC Berkeley) Feb. 2018 Harvard Law School, Law, Economics & Organization Workshop Sep. 2017 Economic History Association Meeting (San Jose, CA) May 2017 Northwestern, Economic History Workshop Dec. 2016 Israeli Economic History Association Meeting (BGU, Israel) Referee for: Quarterly Journal of Economics Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2019 Harvard Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Research Grant, LEAP Program, Harvard University (with Ross Mattheis) 2018 Thomas Cochran Dissertation Fellowship in Economic and Business History

David S. Howe Fund for the Study of American Economic and Business History Cambridge University Press Dissertation Fellowship (EHA) Research Fellowship on the Study of the American Republic (CAPS)

2017, 2018, 2019 The Humane Studies Fellowship (IHS) 2016 Harvard University Graduate Student Fellowship 2015 Harvard Warburg Fund Research Grant (with Moya Chin)

Douglas Dillon Fellowship, Harvard University 2014 Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award, Department of Economics, Hebrew

University 2012, 2013 M.A. Merit Scholarship, Department of Economics, Hebrew University

-1-

JONATHAN ROTH

https://scholar.harvard.edu/jroth

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY




Contact Information:

Littauer Center

1805 Cambridge St.

Cambridge, MA 02138

Cell: 857-383-1794


B.A., Economics and Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, 2013

Graduate Studies:



Thesis Title: “Essays in Robust Inference”


References:

Professor Isaiah Andrews Professor Elie Tamer



Professor Lawrence Katz

Harvard University

617- 495-5148, [email protected]


Primary fields: Econometrics

Secondary fields: Labor Economics, Machine Learning


Spring 2018 The Econometrics of Machine Learning (graduate), Harvard University, Professor

Sendhil Mullainathan


2016-2018 Research Assistant for Professor Isaiah Andrews

2015 Research Assistant for Professors Lawrence Katz and Claudia Goldin

2013-2014 Analyst, Cornerstone Research


2019 Harvard Dissertation Completion Fellowship

2016-2018 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

https://scholar.harvard.edu/jroth





-2-

2013 Shanbaum Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Economics (UPenn)

2012 Simon Kuznets Fellowship Award in Economics (UPenn)

Research Papers:

“An Honest Approach to Parallel Trends” (Job Market Paper) (with Ashesh Rambachan)

Abstract: Standard approaches for causal inference in difference-in-differences and event-study

designs are valid only under the assumption of parallel trends. Researchers are often unsure

whether the parallel trends assumption holds in practice, and thus gauge the plausibility of the

parallel trends assumption by testing for pre-treatment differences in trends between the treated

and untreated groups (“pre-trends”). The logic behind these pre-trends tests is that the observed

pre-trends are informative about the post-treatment differences in trends that would have

occurred absent treatment. This paper proposes robust inference methods that allow for the

possibility that parallel trends may not hold exactly by formalizing the logic behind pre-trends

testing. We derive confidence sets that are uniformly valid (“honest”) under a class of possible

assumptions on the informativeness of the pre-trends about the counterfactual post-treatment

differences in trends. Our proposed confidence sets are consistent, and have optimal local

asymptotic power for many parameter configurations. We also discuss fixed length confidence

intervals, which can offer finite-sample improvements for a subset of the cases we consider. We

recommend that researchers conduct sensitivity analyses to show what conclusions can be drawn

under various restrictions on the set of possible differences in trends. We conduct a simulation

study and illustrate our recommended approach with applications to two recently published

papers.

“Pre-test with Caution: Event-study Estimates After Testing for Parallel Trends”

Abstract: Researchers using an event-study design often test for pre-event trends (“pre-trends”),

yet typical estimation and inference does not account for this test. This paper analyzes the

properties of conventional event-study estimates conditional on having survived a test for pre-

trends. Pre-testing for pre-trends changes the bias of conventional estimates when parallel trends

is violated. I show that in settings with homoskedastic errors and a monotone trend, the bias

conditional on surviving a pre-test is larger than the unconditional bias. Hence, pre-trends tests

meant to mitigate bias can actually exacerbate it. Pre-testing also distorts the coverage rates of

conventional confidence intervals, which can be above or below their nominal level conditional

on surviving the pre-test. Simulations based on a systematic review of recent papers in leading

economics journals suggest that conventional pre-tests are often underpowered and substantial

distortions from pre-testing are possible in practice. To address these issues, I develop a method

to correct event-study plots for the distortions from pre-testing. I recommend that researchers

who rely on pre-trends testing report these corrected event-studies along with calculations of the

power of the pre-test against economically relevant alternatives.

“Inference for Linear Conditional Moment Inequalities” (with Isaiah Andrews and Ariel Pakes)

Abstract: We consider inference based on linear conditional moment inequalities, which arise in

a wide variety of economic applications, including many structural models. We show that linear

conditional structure greatly simplifies confidence set construction, allowing for

computationally tractable projection inference in settings with nuisance parameters. Next, we

derive least favorable critical values that avoid conservativeness due to projection. Finally, we

-3-

introduce a conditional inference approach which ensures a strong form of insensitivity to slack

moments, as well as a hybrid technique which combines the least favorable and conditional

methods. Our conditional and hybrid approaches are new even in settings without nuisance

parameters. We find good performance in simulations based on Wollmann (2018), especially

for the hybrid approach.

“Bias In, Bias Out? Evaluating the Folk Wisdom” (with Ashesh Rambachan)

Abstract: We evaluate the folk wisdom that algorithms trained on data produced by biased

human decision-makers necessarily reflect this bias. We consider a setting where training labels

are only generated if a biased decision-maker takes a particular action, and so bias arises due to

selection into the training data. In our baseline model, the opposite of the usual “bias in, bias

out” intuition holds: the more biased the decision-maker is toward a group, the more the

algorithm favors that group. We then clarify the conditions that give rise to this result. Whether

a prediction algorithm reverses or inherits bias depends critically on how the decision-maker

affects the training data as well as the label used in training. We illustrate our main theoretical

results in a simulation study applied to the New York City Stop, Question and Frisk dataset.

“Union Reform and Teacher Turnover: Evidence from Wisconsin’s Act 10”

Abstract: This paper studies teacher attrition in Wisconsin following Act 10, a policy change

which severely weakened teachers’ unions and capped wage growth for teachers. I document a

sharp short-run increase in teacher turnover after the Act was passed, driven almost entirely by

teachers over the minimum retirement age of 55, whose turnover rate doubled from 17 to 35

percent. Such teachers faced strong incentives to retire before the end of pre-existing collective

bargaining agreements in order to secure collectively-bargained retirement benefits (e.g.

healthcare), which no longer fell under the scope of collective bargaining after the Act. I find

much more modest long-run increases in teacher turnover, consistent with previous estimates of

labor supply elasticities. I then attempt to evaluate the effect of the wave of retirements

following Act 10 on education quality using grade-level value-added metrics. I find suggestive

evidence that student academic performance increased in grades with teachers who retired

following the reform, and I obtain similar results when instrumenting for retirement using the

pre-existing age distribution of teachers. Differences in value-added between retirees and their

replacements can potentially explain some, but not all, of the observed academic improvements.

Papers in Preparation:

“Why Do Sectoral Employment Programs Work?” (with Lawrence Katz)

Invited Conference Presentations:

2019 Econometrics International PhD Conference, Erasmus University of Rotterdam

2019 American Educational Research Association Annual Conference

Professional Service: Referee for American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of Public Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics

-1-

ELISA RUBBO https://scholar.harvard.edu/elisarubbo

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY





Littauer Center G7 1805 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138


Date of birth: October 17, 1991 Citizenship: Italy


MA in Mathematics, University of Torino, Summa cum laude, 2015

Master in Economics, Allievi Program, Collegio Carlo Alberto, With distinction, 2015

BA in Mathematics for Finance and Insurance, University of Torino, Summa cum laude, 2013

Graduate Studies:


Ph.D. Candidate in Economics Thesis Title: Essays on Networks in Macroeconomics


References:

Professor Emmanuel Farhi Littauer Center 208 617-496-1835, [email protected]

Professor Elhanan Helpman Littauer Center 217 617-495-4690, [email protected]

-2-

Professor Gita Gopinath Littauer Center 206 617-495-8161, [email protected]

Professor Gabriel Chodorow-Reich Littauer Center 206 617-496-3226, [email protected]


Primary fields: Macroeconomics, International Trade

Secondary fields: Monetary economics, International Finance


Fall/Spring 2019

Senior Thesis Advisor, Harvard University. Topics: Macroeconomics, International Economics, Finance, and Theory

Spring 2018 Sophomore Tutorial Instructor, Harvard University. Topic: From Micro to Macro - Firm-level variables and aggregate outcomes


2017 Harvard University, Research Assistant for Professor Elhanan Helpman


Referee for the Quarterly Journal of Economics

Job Market Paper:

“Inflation Targeting Revisited: Optimal Monetary Policy with Production Networks”

This paper provides an analytical framework to revisit the “positive” and “normative” implications of the New Keynesian model in an economy with multiple sectors and a general input-output structure. Input-output linkages reduce the slope of the consumer-price Phillips curve by one order of magnitude, and productivity shocks generate an endogenous residual. By contrast, weighting sectoral inflation rates by sales shares and appropriately discounting flexible sectors yields a correct specification, that has no endogenous residual and whose slope that does not change with the production structure. Phillips curve regressions with our indicator have an R-squared of about 0.2, as opposed to 0.05 with standard measures of consumer inflation, and the calibrated model correctly predicts the estimated coefficient for both specifications. Optimal monetary policy cannot jointly stabilize the output gap and inflation in all sectors, but it can still be implemented via inflation targeting. The optimal target places higher weight on sectors that trigger more substitution or that are more exposed to monetary shocks. Due to imperfect stabilization, productivity fluctuations lead to a welfare loss of 0.28% of per-period GDP under the optimal policy. Targeting consumer inflation increases this loss to 1.12%, while targeting the output gap is close to optimal.

-3-


“Aggregate vs Cross-section: a Network Approach”

I model a currency union, with segmented labor markets and a fully general production network. I study local versus aggregate Phillips curves and transfer/spending multipliers. I derive the full matrix of elasticities of regional prices to regional output gaps and transfers as a function of primitives. I argue that cross-sectional regressions which estimate “local” consumer-price Phillips curves are misspecified, because they ignore heterogeneity in the own effect and cross-regional spillovers. In addition, the relative response of aggregate inflation and output gap depends on the underlying shock, and even conditional on a shock (for example a money supply shock), it cannot be inferred from cross-sectional regressions. I propose an alternative specification for the Phillips curve (based on a price index that weights sectors according to their value added in local consumption) which depends on two parameters only: one governs the response to own output gaps, and the other governs the spillover from foreign output gaps, weighted by net trade flows between the corresponding regions. With this inflation measure the coefficient on the own output gap is the same as the slope of the aggregate Phillips curve. I derive moment conditions that generalize the standard assumptions in cross-sectional studies, whereby aggregate monetary policy is orthogonal to local business cycles.

“A General Equilibrium model of Outsourcing and Wage Inequality”

A growing literature documents that outsourcing puts downwards pressure on the wage of low-skill workers in instances where it entails a change in the employment relationship (it excludes workers from earning firm premia) without affecting the organization of production. I consider a complementary question: I define outsourcing as a shift from producing “in house” to buying components “on the market”, with the resulting increase in intermediate input flows across industries. I model the incentives behind it as coming from a tradeoff between demand volatility and specialization on one side, and coordination frictions on the other. With respect to standard models based on attention vs coordination costs or property rights theory my setup allows to rationalize the formation of a full network with cross-industry linkages (not just a vertical chain) and the fact that producers serve multiple customers, without the counterfactual implication of decreasing firm size. The model is tractable enough to derive general equilibrium implications, and I focus on the wage distribution. A fall in outsourcing costs for a set of tasks is equivalent to a factor-biased increase in the productivity of the worker type performing those tasks. The effect on relative wages across types then depends on whether they are complements or substitutes. I assume that workers cannot learn the tasks that are not specific to their type, while in principle they can be employed on any of the tasks that their group performs. This introduces an inherent substitutability between workers belonging to the same group. If skilled workers have a comparative advantage on products with volatile demand, which are more likely to be outsourced, a fall in outsourcing costs reduces inequality at the bottom end of the distribution and increases inequality at the top end.

“Monetary Policy in the Global Economy”

-4-

I consider a global production network, where every country has multiple sectors that trade in intermediate inputs both domestically and internationally. Producers in each country-sector pair can price different shares of their output in different currencies, also conditioning on the destination. I derive the response of local inflation and output to local and foreign shocks to sector-level productivity, monetary policy and exchange rates. I plan on using this framework to revisit traditional questions, such as the effect of competitive devaluations and monetary policy spillovers, and to evaluate the extent to which an increase in import shares (both in production and final consumption) can reduce the sensitivity of inflation to local employment.

-1-

PRIYA V. SHANMUGAM scholar.harvard.edu/priya

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information 1805 Cambridge St Cambridge, MA 02138 630-697-9481 Personal Information: Born July 30, 1991. Female. US Citizen. Undergraduate Studies: B.S., Economics and Mathematics, Dartmouth College, High Honors, cum laude, 2013 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2013 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Economics

Thesis Title: “Essays on Clinical Decision-Making” Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor Larry Katz Professor David Cutler Harvard University Harvard University 617-495-5148

[email protected] 617-496-5216 [email protected]

Professor Isaiah Andrews Harvard University 617-496-2720

[email protected]

Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Health Economics, Labor Economics Secondary field: Behavioral Economics Teaching Experience: Spring 2016

& 2017 Spring 2016 & 2017 Fall 2015

Econ 980b: Economics of Education, Harvard University, teaching fellow for Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz Econ 2330: History of Human Capital, Harvard University, teaching fellow for Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz Econ 1010a: Introductory Microeconomics, Harvard University, teaching fellow for Professor Maxim Boycko

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2018-2019 Earl A. Chiles Fellowship

-2-

2017-2018 Becker-Friedman Institute Predoctoral Fellowship in Health Economics 2017-2018

2013-2014 NBER Predoctoral Fellowship in Health and Aging Rita Ricardo-Campbell Fellowship

Research Papers: “Decision-Making Under Cognitive Constraints: Evidence from the Emergency Department.” (Job Market Paper) Complex, high-stakes decisions are often made solely by human experts. We know little about the effects of cognitive constraints on the quality of these decisions. I explore this question using the universe of Emergency Department (ED) visits across the state of New York from 2005-2015. I define cognitive constraints as a function of the number and complexity of other patients a doctor sees at one time. Exploiting within-hospital, within-hour variation in this measure of ED traffic, I show that patients who arrive when the ED is busy versus empty are of similar ex-ante health. I estimate the causal impact of cognitive constraints on the quality of ED care for two common complaints: chest pains, where decision-making aids in the form of simple risk-scoring tools are plentiful, and abdominal pains, where no such aids are available. Constraints improve survival for high-risk patients, even in the absence of aids. However, cognitive constraints increase mortality for low-risk patients, even when aids are present, which has strong policy implications for the optimal allocation of discretion between doctors and decision-making aids. When constrained, doctors reallocate diagnostic procedures toward low-risk patients, and reallocate hospital admission - primarily for therapeutic procedures - toward high-risk patients. Constraints improve 1-year mortality four times more when aids are present than when they are absent. When doctors are constrained, (1) high-risk patients receive more uncommon(common) diagnoses when aids are present(absent); (2) cross-hospital variation in treatment decreases(increases) when aids are present(absent). The results suggest that cognitive constraints can improve clinical decision-making, but that these effects hinge critically on both patient type and the availability of decision-making aids. Research Paper(s) in Progress “Gender Differences in Learning: Evidence from the Emergency Department” Gender differences in how workers perceive their own abilities may be an important channel through which gender gaps in performance appear and persist in the labor market. I use administrative data on every Emergency Department (ED) visit in New York from 2005-2015 to understand how doctors update their perceptions of their own abilities after a patient they treated dies. Using an event study design, I study how doctors change their treatment behavior in response to two types of patient deaths: when the patient had an ex-ante high(low) likelihood of death and the doctor was unlikely(likely) to be at fault. I explore how the effects of these shocks on a doctor’s treatment style, and the subsequent effects on the cost and quality of care they provide, differ by doctor gender. Preliminary results suggest that, even in situations where a patient’s death was unavoidable, male and female doctors respond by adjusting their treatment styles differently in ways that exacerbate existing gender gaps in performance. “Habit Formation and Technological Deadoption” Many clinical practices are ineffective or even harmful, yet they continue to be provided to patients. We still do not understand what causes healthcare practitioners to be slow to stop providing care that has been deemed low-value. I use administrative data on every hospital visit across the State of New York from 2005-2015 to understand how doctors de-adopt once-accepted practices that have been deemed harmful. I focus on two clinical practices: early elective deliveries for pregnant women and drug-eluting stents for blocked arteries, both of which were once common, then deemed harmful in the early 2000s and early 2010s respectively. Both practices were de-adopted with significant variation across hospitals in speed and extent of de-adoption. I develop a model of physician habit formation as a within-physician

-3-

productivity spillover, and test it as an explanation for slow technological de-adoption against other theories of information diffusion, risk aversion or institutional barriers.

“Decision Fatigue and Not-So-Grumpy Judges?” How does decision fatigue affect high-stakes choices? Previous evidence from Israel shows that the likelihood of granting parole decreases dramatically as judges get fatigued and “grumpy”. I find evidence to the contrary. Using administrative data on every parole hearing held at the New Hampshire Parole Board between 2008 and 2011, I exploiting the alphabetical ordering of parole hearings at the New Hampshire Parole Board to estimate the causal impact of judge fatigue on hearing outcomes. I show that having a parole hearing 10 minutes later in the day increases the likelihood of receiving parole by 2.5-3.1pp. The results support the idea that decision fatigue is distinct from changes in the emotion of the decision-maker. I hypothesize that the “default heuristic” - when fatigued, judges take the decision taken most often - may reconcile these and prior findings, as 82% of New Hampshire hearings result in parole.

-1-

ROBERT SILICIANO https://scholar.harvard.edu/siliciano

[email protected] HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Harvard University Littauer Center of Public Administration 1805 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone number: 651-357-5649 Personal Information: Citizenship: United States Undergraduate Studies: A.B., Economics, Princeton University, summa cum laude, 2015 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2015 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Economics

Thesis Title: “Essays in Optimal Taxation” Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor Stefanie Stantcheva Professor Edward Glaeser Harvard University Harvard University [email protected]

617-496-2614 [email protected] 617-495-0575

Professor Matthew Weinzierl Harvard Business School [email protected]

617-495-6697 Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Public Economics Secondary fields: Theory Teaching Experience: Spring, 2018-2019 Intermediate Macroeconomics, Harvard University

Teaching Fellow for Professor Christopher Foote Fall, 2017-2018

Fall, 2017

Intermediate Microeconomics: Advanced, Harvard University Teaching Fellow for Professor Edward Glaeser Contract Theory (graduate course), Harvard University Teaching Fellow for Professors Oliver Hart and Richard Holden

-2- Research Papers “A Tax of Two Cities: Optimal Housing Subsidies in Spatial Equilibrium” (Job Market Paper) How should a tax code subsidize housing (as in the mortgage interest deduction)? I study a model where workers choose between places offering different wages, housing prices, and amenities. Housing subsidies induce workers to move towards high-price, high-wage cities, where they pay higher income taxes. However, these subsidies are regressive, as high-skilled workers sort into these high-rent cities. The optimal housing subsidy balances distorting location choice, raising housing prices, and its regressive incidence. When geographic mobility is high, the optimal tax code features large housing subsidies and more regressive income taxes. When housing supply is more constrained in high-wage cities, the optimal housing subsidies are cut, and depending on social preferences, a tax could be optimal. Progressive housing subsidies can make a more efficient tax system, though cross-city redistribution and mobility reduce this. I quantify the model in a calibration to U.S. data that suggests a substantial role for housing subsidies. Using the theory and calibration, I show that declining rates of internal migration motivate tax policy to cut housing subsidies, mostly on higher incomes.

-1-

MICHAEL THALER [email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY


Baker Library | Bloomberg Center 420B


Boston, MA 02163

(917) 692-3047


A.B. Mathematics (honors) and Economics (honors), Brown University, 2010-2014

Graduate Studies:


Ph.D. Candidate in Business Economics


References:

Professor Matthew Rabin

Harvard University

[email protected]

Professor Alberto Alesina

Harvard University

[email protected]

Professor David Laibson

Harvard University

[email protected]

Professor Christine Exley


[email protected]


Primary fields: Psychology and Economics, Experimental Economics, Political Economy

Secondary fields: Applied Theory, Applied Microeconomics

Job Market Paper:

“The ‘Fake News’ Effect: An Experiment on Motivated Reasoning and Trust in News”

Abstract: On many factual questions, people hold beliefs that are biased and polarized in systematic

ways. One potential explanation is that when people receive new information, they engage in motivated

reasoning by distorting their inference in the direction of beliefs that they are more motivated to hold.

This paper develops a model of motivated reasoning and tests its predictions using a large online

experiment in the United States. Identifying motivated reasoning from Bayesian updating has posed a

challenge in environments where people have preconceived beliefs. I create a new design that

overcomes this challenge by analyzing how subjects assess the veracity of information sources that tell

them that the median of their belief distribution is too high or too low. In this environment, a Bayesian

would infer nothing about the source veracity, but motivated reasoning predicts directional distortions. I

reject Bayesian updating in favor of politically-driven motivated reasoning on eight of nine hypothesized

topics: immigration, income mobility, racial discrimination, crime, gender-based math ability, climate

change, gun laws, and the performance of other subjects. Subjects also engage in motivated reasoning

about their own performance. Motivated reasoning from these messages leads people's beliefs to become

more polarized and less accurate.






-2-


“Using Negative Feedback to Debias Motivated Reasoning”

Abstract: There is evidence that on politicized and performance-related issues people engage in

motivated reasoning, a bias in which people distort how they update from information in the direction of

beliefs that they are motivated to hold. This bias can lead to over-trust in false news sources, belief

polarization, and overconfidence. This paper tests whether learning about one’s past motivated reasoning

can facilitate self-debiasing. Using a large online experiment, I test the effects of a treatment that

provides negative feedback when subjects rate a source that sends a false message as true, or rate a

source that sends a truthful message as false. The treatment significantly lowers trust in future false

news, but does not significantly increase trust in future truthful sources. Results are suggestive that the

treatment partly mitigates the measure of motivated reasoning from Thaler (2019). In addition, subjects’

beliefs about their performance become less overconfident, as do their beliefs about others from their

preferred political party, but beliefs about people of the opposing party do not noticeably change.

“People Do Not Motivatedly Reason Towards Believing That the World Is a Good Place for Others”

Abstract: What beliefs are people motivated to hold? Motivated reasoning is a bias in inference in

which people distort their updating process in the direction of particular beliefs. This experiment tests

whether people motivatedly reason to think that the world is a better place for others: positivity-

motivated reasoning. I adapt the design from Thaler (2019), which identifies motivated reasoning in

other domains by studying inference about the veracity of customized news sources. In a large online

experiment, I test for positivity-motivated reasoning on issues such as leukemia survival rates, others’

happiness, and infant mortality. Across questions, I find no evidence for positivity-motivated or

negativity-motivated reasoning, and can rule out small effects. Results suggest that either motivated

beliefs are different than desired beliefs, or that desired beliefs do not depend on positivity.

“n ∈ [6,12] Angry Men: The Importance of Endogenizing Jury Size when Comparing Voting Rules”

Abstract: Across the United States, there is between-state heterogeneity in both jury sizes and voting

rules for criminal and civil trials. This paper presents a model comparing voting mechanisms with

different jury sizes and voting rules, and finds that unanimity is suboptimal. By comparing across both

sizes and rules, it is possible to simultaneously increase verdict accuracy and decrease the likelihood of a

hung jury. In particular, when jurors vote with conditionally independent signals, an (n+2)-person jury

that allows one dissenter is more accurate and less likely to hang than an n-person jury under unanimity.

When larger juries are penalized by imposing a cost per juror, the (n+2)-person jury still outperforms as

long as signals are not too informative. Results extend to the case in which jurors have public signals.

Publication (in Mathematics):

“Tribone Tilings of Triangular Regions that Cover All but Three Holes.” Discrete and Computational

Geometry, 53(2), (2015), 466-477.

Teaching:

Spring 2016

Fall 2016

Econ 2338: Behavioral Development (TF for Gautam Rao), Harvard University

Econ 2035 / HBS 4155: Psychology and Economic Theory (TF for Matthew Rabin),

Harvard University

-3-

Invited Presentations:

2019

Harvard University; Microsoft Research New England; Human Cooperation Lab (at

MIT Sloan); SITE: Psychology and Economics; Early-Career Behavioral Economics

Conference; ESA North American Meetings

Honors, Grants, and Fellowships:

2019-20

2019-20

2019

2018

2018-19

2017-19

2017-19

2017

2016

2016

2014

1998-2004

Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University

The Pershing Square Venture Fund for the Foundations of Human Behavior

FAIR Spring School in Behavioral Economics

Travel and Research Grant, Harvard University

The Eric M. Mindich Research Fund for the Foundations of Human Behavior

HBS Research Fellowship, Harvard Business School

Bradley Graduate and Post-Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University

briq Summer School in Behavioral Economics

Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University Russell Sage Foundation Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics

Albert A. Arnold 1871 Prize for Excellence in the Mathematics Concentration, Brown

University

3-time US National Scholastic Chess Champion

-1-

Megan R. Bailey https://scholar.harvard.edu/mbailey

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY




Office Contact Information 124 Mt. Auburn St., Suite 196, Room 135 Cambridge, MA, 02138

Cell: 661-618-3020


BS, Biology, and BA, Art; California State University, Fresno; summa cum laude; 2010

Graduate Studies:

California State University, Fresno; 2011-2013

MA, International Relations; summa cum laude


Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy

Thesis Title: “Essays in Climate Policy and Innovation”


References:

Professor Joseph E. Aldy Professor James H. Stock

Harvard Kennedy School Harvard University


Professor Robert N. Stavins Professor William Hogan

Harvard Kennedy School Harvard Kennedy School


Teaching and Research Fields: Environmental Economics, Econometrics


2017 Resources, Climate, Energy—Oh My! A Sophomore Tutorial

on the Economics of Long-Term Environmental Issues, Harvard University,

Primary Instructor (Teaching Fellow for Economics Department)

2016 & 2017

2016

2016

2015

Energy Policy Analysis, Harvard Kennedy School,

Teaching Fellow for Prof. Joe Aldy

Climate Change and Energy: Policymaking for the Long Term, Harvard

Kennedy School Executive Education, Teaching Fellow for Prof. Robert Stavins

and Robert Stowe

Environmental Economics, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard College,

Head Teaching Fellow for Prof. Robert Stavins

Sustainable Development, Harvard College, Teaching Fellow for Prof. William

Clark





-2-


2014 Harvard Kennedy School, Research Assistant, Robert Stavins and Richard

Schmalensee (MIT), “Lessons Learned from Three Decades of Experience with

Cap-and-Trade”

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: <honor, scholarship, fellowship>

2017 Joseph Crump Fellowship

2015, 2017

2015

2013

Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard Derek Bok Center for Teaching and

Learning

Vicki Norberg-Bohm Fellowship, Harvard Kennedy School Mossavar-Rahmani

Center for Business and Government, Sustainability Science Program

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship


2015-2017 Administrator, Harvard Environmental Economics Lunch

2015-2019 Graduate Fellow (2015-2016), Senior Graduate Fellow (2017-2019),

Sense and Sustainability

2016 UC Berkeley Summer School in Environmental and Energy Economics

2015 FEEM-EAERE-VUI Environmental Economics Summer School, Venice, Italy

Presentations:

2019 Harvard Environmental Economics Research Workshop

2019 Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

2019 Northeast Workshop on Energy Policy and Environmental Economics

2019 Interdisciplinary PhD Workshop in Sustainable Development, Columbia

University

2015-2019 Harvard Environmental Economics Lunch

2015 Northeast Environmental Economics Workshop, Yale University

Research Papers: “U.S. Carbon Pricing and Coal Power Plant Productivity” (Job Market Paper)

When faced with a carbon price, producers that rely on carbon-intensive inputs may, according to Hicks'

(1963) induced innovation hypothesis, find ways to economize those inputs. Prior academic literature

suggests that coal-fired power plants should become more efficient in response to a carbon price (Linn et

al. 2014), behavior that reflects innovation. I provide evidence of the opposite reaction: Coal plants

required to participate in the US Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) have become significantly

less efficient (and therefore more carbon-intensive) since the beginning of the cap-and-trade program.

Through a differences-in differences empirical strategy, I quantify the magnitude of this trend: RGGI

plants were 0.05% less efficient in the first seven years of the program, compared to plants in the rest of

the US. This magnitude is non-trivial for coal plant owners. To uncover the mechanism of this

inefficiency trend among RGGI plants, I decompose its time series into its two technical components at

a plant-level: the conversion of coal into electricity (gross efficiency) and usage of electricity on-site

(auxiliary power consumption). I estimate independent models of each and find that the majority of

efficiency changes at RGGI coal plants is associated with generation changes during the RGGI program

period, not the presence of equipment to control emissions of other pollutants, plants being near

retirement, or other factors. The decline in RGGI coal plant efficiency implies a CO2 emissions

"rebound effect" of 3.24% from generation changes induced by the program during its first four years.

This points to the tradoffs that firms may face in responding to changing factor prices. Results suggest

support for the "market share" hypothesis of induced innovation (Acemoglu, 2003): for producers losing

market share, investing in process improvements is not cost-effective. Overall, as carbon pricing

http://www.senseandsustainability.net/

-3-

expands and/or coal-fired power plants continue be less competitive with other sources of electricity, we

can anticipate such emissions rebound effects. These results also indicate that current US federal climate

policy (the Affordable Clean Energy Rule), which takes the form of efficiency improvements for coal-

fired power plants, requires a particularly costly form of emissions abatement from the electricity sector.

“What do we lose by picking winners? The role of technology-specific clean energy incentives in

induced innovation”

Technology-specific clean energy subsidies, when combined with a carbon price, can incur static costs.

This “policy overlap” problem occurs when subsidies dictate that expensive forms of carbon abatement

be used, relative to the suite of technologies that would be deployed under a carbon price. Do these

subsidies also incur dynamic costs in the form of re-directing innovation away from cost-effective

technology? This paper answers this question with a simple analytical model and a simulation calibrated

to the EU electricity sector. I examine the role of output subsidies for clean energy on innovation in the

form of learning-by-doing and R&D investment. I look at two important cases: the exogenous carbon

price (carbon tax) case and the endogenous carbon price (cap-and-trade) case. Results from the

analytical model indicate that innovation follows production shifts incentivized by clean energy

subsidies, under the condition that there are positive marginal returns to innovation in additional

production. This points to subsidies having the potential to re-direct innovation, in addition to altering

pollution abatement technology used in the near-term. When the carbon price is endogenous, as in a cap-

and-trade system, innovation directed toward reducing emissions of dirty fuels falls unambiguously, due

to the sensitivity of the carbon price to emissions abatement achieved by subsidized renewables. I further

explore the extent to which the positive marginal returns condition is true and the magnitude of the drop

in innovation toward dirty fuels with a simulation that is the first, to my knowledge, to include the

important feature of exogenous technical change. Simulation results are forthcoming.

-1-

MADELEINE GELBLUM https://scholar.harvard.edu/gelblum

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information: Harvard Kennedy School 79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Undergraduate Studies: B.A., Yale University, Cum Laude, 2008 Graduate Studies: M.S., Social Work (Policy Track), Columbia University, 2011-2013

M.Sc., Social Research Methods, Distinction, London School of Economics, 2013-2014 Harvard University, 2014 to present

Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy Thesis Title: Essays on Labor and Personnel Economics

Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor David Deming Professor Amanda Pallais Harvard Kennedy School Harvard University 617-495-4370, [email protected] 617-495-2151, [email protected] Professor Lawrence Katz Professor Claudia Goldin Harvard University Harvard University 617-495-5148, [email protected] 617-495-3934, [email protected] Research and Teaching Fields: Research Fields: Labor Economics, Personnel Economics

Teaching Field: Public Economics Teaching Experience: Spring 2017 Causes and Consequences of Inequality, Harvard University, Prof. David Deming Spring 2017 Empirical Methods II, Harvard Kennedy School, Prof. Joshua Goodman Research Experience and Other Employment: 2015-2017 Harvard University, Graduate Research Assistant to Professor David Deming 2012-2013

2009-2011 2008-2009

Columbia Population Research Center, Research Assistant to Professors Irwin Garfinkel and Jane Waldfogel NYC Financial Network Action Consortium, Program Coordinator Save the Children – Egypt Country Office, Program Associate

-2- Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2016-

2018 Harvard Inequality and Social Policy Ph.D. Scholar Harvard Dissertation Completion Fellowship

2018 Lara Warner Scholar, Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard University 2018

2017-2018 Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Graduate Fellowship Visiting PhD Student, LSE Centre for Economic Performance


Presentations Workshops

NBER Junior Researcher Seminar, 2019 Labour and Education Seminars, London School of Economics, 2018 NBER Economics of Digitization PhD Workshop, 2019

Job Market Paper: “Preferences for Job Tasks and Gender Gaps in the Labor Market” Women and men work in markedly different jobs, leading to persistent occupational segregation by gender. This paper provides evidence that gender differences in how individuals value activities performed at work, termed job tasks, may help explain these sorting patterns. I conduct a hypothetical choice experiment to elicit workers’ willingness to pay for a set of tasks that are more frequently performed by one gender than the other. The experimental scenarios ask participants to choose between two hypothetical jobs that differ in terms of pay and the amount of time spent on a gender-typical task, but are otherwise the same. I find significant gender differences in willingness to pay for three of the five tasks that I examine. Willingness to pay is significantly more positive among participants who report spending more time on a task in their current job, suggesting that estimates are correlated with actual sorting behavior. I show that gender differences in preferences for the tasks that I investigate can account for a substantial portion of occupational segregation in the U.S. labor market. Research in Progress: “Wages, Productivity and Firm Hiring Decisions: Evidence from an Online Labor Market” (with John Horton) How do firms interpret a worker’s wage bid when making hiring decisions? When worker skills are not perfectly observed, employers must form expectations about productivity based on the information available, including the worker’s proposed wage. If these beliefs are accurate, then firms will pay workers their marginal product and a higher-wage worker will complete a discrete project more quickly, leaving the total wage bill unchanged. We test this prediction by exploiting an institutional feature of an online labor market that creates quasi-random variation in which workers are recommended to employers. We show that the recommendation system arbitrarily induces firms to hire workers who make different wages bids but score similarly on a measure of the likelihood that they will be hired, based on historical data from the platform. Higher-wage employees work fewer hours, as expected, but cost firms more overall, suggesting that these individuals may be systematically overvalued. “Automation and Skill Requirements in Cognitive Occupations”

-1-

ASAD LIAQAT asadliaqat.com

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Contact Information: 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Cell: +1-609-356-8550 Undergraduate Studies: B.A., Political Economy & Philosophy, Williams College, magna cum laude, 2011 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy

Thesis Title: “Essays in Development Economics & Political Economy” Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor Asim Khwaja

Harvard University [email protected]

Professor Gautam Rao Harvard University [email protected]

Professor Vincent Pons

Harvard University [email protected]

Professor Torben Iversen Harvard University [email protected]

Teaching and Research Fields: Primary field: Development Economics Secondary fields: Political Economy, Behavioral Economics Research Papers: (Drafts linked)

“No Representation Without Information: Politician Responsiveness to Citizen Preferences” (JMP) Abstract: Studies on political accountability usually ask whether voters know enough about politicians. In this paper, I reverse this standard approach by asking instead whether politicians know enough about voters to adequately represent them. Using original politician and citizen surveys in Pakistan, I show that politicians hold highly inaccurate beliefs about citizen preferences and show high demand for more information. In collaboration with a large political party, I conduct a field experiment with 653 politicians to identify the conditions under which they respond to information about citizen preferences. I find that politicians who receive information make recommendations to their party leadership that are closer to what citizens prefer. Directly elected politicians are more responsive than indirectly elected ones. Politicians are more responsive to information about women's preferences compared to men's preferences. I construct a simple model of belief updating which shows that higher responsiveness to women's preferences should be expected if politicians are less confident in their prior beliefs about women, for which I find evidence in the data. This paper shows that our understanding of low accountability and inefficient public good provision in developing countries is missing an essential ingredient: politicians' inaccurate beliefs.

-2- “Canvassing the Gatekeepers: A Field Experiment to Increase Women’s Electoral Turnout in Pakistan” with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan and Shandana Khan-Mohmand Abstract: Women vote at lower rates than men in many developing countries. Do constraints on women’s voting lie with women themselves or with the men in their households who act as gatekeepers? We use a field experiment with 2,500 households to test how canvassing men or women affects women's turnout in Pakistan. We find that non-partisan canvassing only improves women's turnout when it targets men, and that targeting women alone is insufficient to effect changes in women's political participation on election day. Using a costly behavioral measure of support for women's role in democracy, we find that treating men increases their support for women's role in democracy beyond the election. Households where both men and women were treated saw greater political discussion among men and women, and men provided women in these households with logistical support to vote on Election Day. These findings have theoretical implications for understanding women's political participation in a context where they enjoy limited agency within the household, and policy implications for designing effective interventions to improve their participation under such conditions. “Political Connections & Vote Choice: Evidence from Pakistan” first-author, with Michael Callen, Ali Cheema, Adnan Khan, Farooq Naseer & Jacob Shapiro Abstract: Do voters care about how connected their candidates are? We investigate this question in the 2015 local government elections in Pakistan combining: (i) data on ties between candidates, higher level politicians, and bureaucrats; (ii) a large-scale field experiment; and (iii) election outcomes. Before the election, voters considered local candidates' connections important and expected local politicians to help them access services provided by other levels of government. Providing voters information on connections increased support for more connected candidates, but information on past party performance did not. More connected candidates received more votes and were more likely to win office, but there was no electoral benefit to past service provision. The results provide novel evidence of the importance of political connections for electoral outcomes and show that forward-looking expectations based on candidate characteristics and an understanding of higher-level political process play an important role in vote choice. Research Papers in Preparation: (Data collection & analysis complete; preliminary drafts available)

“Overseeing the Machine: Monitoring the Effort of Political Party Workers” Abstract: Can monitoring by political parties induce their workers to expend greater effort in electoral campaigns? I answer this question through a field experiment in collaboration with a major political party in Pakistan, a context where the costs of mobilizing men are lower than the costs of mobilizing female voters. Monitoring the overall effort of political workers increases contact with male voters, but does not affect contact with female voters. Monitoring the effort of political workers on male voters alone does not increase contact with male voters, but decreases contact with female voters. These results shed light on principal-agent relationships within political parties and norms against the involvement of women in politics. “Precision versus Proximity: Experimental Evidence on Bureaucrats’ Decision Making” with Michael Callen, Adnan Khan and Asim Khwaja Abstract: Bureaucrats take decisions with enormous welfare consequences in developing countries. Researchers present evidence to bureaucrats aiming to convince them to use this evidence in policy-making. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment with 746 civil servants in Pakistan, we show that key assumptions underlying this process are unwarranted. In particular, two key features of policy research are not aligned with how policy-makers respond to evidence. The first feature is that researchers produce large-N evidence. We find that policy-makers update their beliefs substantially when presented with small-N evidence, but large-N evidence only shifts their beliefs marginally more than small-N evidence does. This result casts doubt on the ability of large-N research to convince policy-makers. The second feature is that research is conducted with high internal validity in some areas and it is expected that policy-makers in ‘similar’ areas will use it to make policies in their own areas. Experimental results show that policy-makers update more when given small-N evidence from their area compared to large-N evidence from other areas. This implies that to convince policy-makers, researchers should supplement large-N research with small-N research in the local area. Book Chapter: Liaqat, Asad, Ali Cheema & Shandana K. Mohmand. Forthcoming, 2020. “Who do Politicians Talk to? Political Contact in Urban Punjab” in Pakistan’s Political Parties: Against All Odds. Georgetown University Press.

-3- Research Projects: (Funding raised; design & field implementation ongoing) “What motivates women to run for office?” with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan & Shandana Khan Mohmand “Government Responsiveness to Women’s Collective Action” with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan & Shandana Khan Mohmand “Inequality, Trust & Governance” with Ali Cheema & Siddharth George Teaching Experience:

2019 (Award) Distinction in Student Teaching, HKS 2019, Spring Development Economics (Graduate, HKS), Prof. Adnan Khan 2018, Fall Development Economics (Graduate, HKS), Prof. Ricardo Hausmann 2017, Fall Intermediate Microeconomics: Advanced (Undergraduate), Prof. Edward Glaeser 2015, ’18 HKS Executive Education Course: Rethinking Financial Inclusion 2012, ’14, ’17 CERP - J-PAL Trainings: Evaluation Methods 2009, ’10 Teaching Assistant, Williams College Research Experience: 2011-14 Center for Economic Research in Pakistan, Research Associate Research Grants: 2019 (R&R) Evidence in Governance & Politics (EGAP), “Pathways to Women’s

Substantive Representation in Pakistan” with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan & Shandana Khan Mohmand

$250,000

2019

Economic & Social Research Council, UK, “Governance, Trust & Inequality” with Ali Cheema & Shandana Khan Mohmand

$147,000

2019 Action for Empowerment & Accountability (A4EA) Research Programme, DFID UK, “What motivates women to run for office?” with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan & Shandana Khan Mohmand

$150,000

2018 International Growth Center (IGC), “Politician Responsiveness to Citizen Preferences”

$24,150

2018 Jameel-Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Governance Initiative, “Politician Responsiveness to Citizen Preferences”

$33,000

2018 United States Institute of Peace, “A Field Experiment to Increase Women’s Electoral Turnout” with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan & Shandana Khan Mohmand

$147,500

2018 IGC, “Effect of Capacity on Delivery of Urban Services” with Gharad Bryan, Ali Cheema, Adnan Khan & Gerrard Padro-Miguel.

$14,000

2017 A4EA Research Programme, DFID UK, “A Field Experiment to Increase Women’s Electoral Turnout”, with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan & Shandana Khan Mohmand

$170,500

2017 J-PAL Governance Initiative, Travel Grant $5,000 2016 J-PAL Urban Services Initiative, “Effect of Capacity on Delivery of Urban

Services” with Gharad Bryan, Ali Cheema, Adnan Khan & Gerrard Padro-Miguel

$47,500

2015 International Growth Center, “Political Connections & Vote Choice”, with Michael Callen, Ali Cheema, Adnan Khan, Farooq Naseer & Jacob Shapiro

$28,000

2015-6 South Asia Institute, Harvard University, Travel Grants $5,500

-4- Invited Talks & External Presentations: 2019 Pacific Development (PACDEV) Conference, New England Universities Development

Conference (NEUDC), MIT Political Behavior of Development (PBD) Conference, Yale Conference on Federalism in South Asia, Boston Judgment & Decision Making (JDM) Day, APSA Conference, South Asia Politics Conference at the World Bank, MPSA Conference, Harvard Experimental Working Group Conference

2018 Association for Analytic Learning on Islam & Muslim Societies (AALIMS) Conference, APSA Conference, New England Workshop in Empirical Political Science, Consortium for Development Policy Research (Pakistan)

2017 Harvard South Asia Institute Research Symposium 2016 Boston University Political Economy Workshop Referee Service: Journal Of Public Economics, Journal of Politics Research Briefs for Policy Audience: “State Capacity in Punjab’s Local Governments: Benchmarking Existing Deficits”, with Ali Cheema, Adnan Khan & Ameera Jamal. IDS, 2019. “Women’s Political Participation in Pakistan’s Big Cities: Evidence for Reform”, with Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan, Shandana K. Mohmand & Anam Kureishi. IDS Policy Briefing 166, Brighton: IDS. March 2019. “Competing to Deliver? Political Workers and Service Delivery in Pakistan”, with Ali Cheema & Shandana K. Mohmand. Making All Voices Count (MAVC) Research Briefing. September 2017. “These 3 barriers make it hard for policymakers to use the evidence that development researchers produce”, with Michael Callen, Adnan Khan, Asim Khwaja & Emily Myers. Washington Post. August 13, 2017. “Political Attitudes in Pakistan and the 2018 Election”, with Ali Cheema. IDEAS Policy Brief. April 2017. Affiliations: Graduate Fellow, Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) Junior Fellow, Association for Analytic Learning on Islam & Muslim Societies (AALIMS) Graduate Affiliate, Institute of Development & Economic Alternatives (IDEAS) Ph.D. Affiliate, Evidence for Policy Design, Harvard Kennedy School Languages: Urdu (Native), Punjabi (Native), Hindi (Fluent), English

-1-

M.R. SHARAN https://scholar.harvard.edu/mrsharan

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY





79, John F. Kennedy St

Cambridge, MA 02138 Cell phone number: +1-617-955-1357

Undergraduate Studies: B.A, Economics, University of Delhi, Honors, 2009

Graduate Studies: M.A, Economics, Delhi School of Economics, 2011



Thesis Title: “Essays in Development Economics and Political Economy”


References:

Professor Gautam Rao Professor Abhijit Banerjee

Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology

617-496-2614, [email protected] (617) 253-8855, [email protected]

Professor Asim Khwaja Professor Emily Breza




Development Economics, Political Economy

Job Market Paper:

“Something To Complain About: How Minority Representatives Overcome Ethnic Differences”

(with Chinmaya Kumar)

Ethnic diversity limits public good provision, proving particularly costly for ethnic minorities. Political representation could mitigate these effects. However, even while in government, minority members need

to collaborate across tiers to successfully deliver public goods to their constituents. Using data from over

100,000 local politicians in India and a variety of empirical methods, we argue that ethnic differences

across politicians cause breakdowns in collaboration. First, we use a regression discontinuity (RD) design to show that delivery of public goods suffers when ethnic minority (low caste) representatives govern

exogenously under non-minority (non-low caste) politicians. We then study if politicians can be

incentivized to collaborate. In our setting, local politicians can issue complaints to the higher bureaucracy under a formal complaints technology. A second RD strategy shows that ethnic minority representatives

https://scholar.harvard.edu/mrsharan


-2-

file over twice the number of complaints when paired with non-minority representatives. Does filing complaints improve public good provision? We run a large field experiment where we provide information

about the formal complaints technology and offer filing assistance to randomly selected ethnic minority

representatives. Our intervention, covering a population of over 15 million, increases filing of complaints

by 41 p.p and implementation of public works projects by 24%. Treatment has positive spillovers onto neighboring jurisdictions. An alternate experimental arm sheds light on barriers to adoption of the

technology. We use a simple Nash bargaining model to explain how technological innovations within

government can help fix politician incentives and improve public good provision.

Published Research Paper:

“Women Political Leaders, Corruption, and Learning: Evidence from a Large Public Program in

India”

(with Farzana Afridi and Vegard Iversen, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 66(1), pp.1-30.)

We exploit randomly assigned political quotas for women to identify the impact of women’s political leadership on corruption and on the governance of India’s largest poverty-alleviation program to date.

Using survey data, we find more program inefficiencies and leakages in village councils reserved for

women heads: political and administrative inexperience make such councils more vulnerable to bureaucratic capture. This is at odds with claims of unconditional gains from women assuming political

office. A panel of official audit reports enables us to explore (a) whether newly elected women leaders in

reserved seats initially perform worse; (b) whether they partly catch up, fully catch up, or eventually outperform (male) leaders in unreserved seats; and (c) the time it takes for such catch-up to occur. We find

that women leaders in reserved seats initially underperform but rapidly learn and quickly and fully catch

up with male politicians in unreserved seats. Over the duration of their elected tenure, we find no evidence

of overtake. Our findings suggest short-term costs of affirmative action policies but also that once initial disadvantages recede, women leaders are neither more nor less effective local politicians than men.

Research Paper:

“It’s Complicated: The Distributional Consequences of Political Reservation” (with Chinmaya Kumar)

We examine partial and general equilibrium effects of political reservation in favor of disadvantaged

ethnic minorities. We employ public good data from across 45,000 villages and private assets for nearly 20 million rural households. We use two natural experiments. Using a regression discontinuity design, we

causally establish that political reservation results in targeting of public goods towards disadvantaged

groups. However, private wealth outcomes don’t improve for disadvantaged groups as a whole. Instead, those from the ethnic sub-group of the winning candidate who live closest to them end up seeing a rise in

private wealth. Furthermore, this comes at the cost of reduced private wealth for the dominant ethnic group

in the village. Second, using a separate RD, we show that each additional reserved seat has negative spillovers on to disadvantaged groups residing in neighboring unreserved GPs. We suggest that this could

be backlash by ethnic non-minorities against the policy of reservation. The impact of political reservation,

thus, cannot be reduced to the simplistic binary of equity- or efficiency - improving: the web of winners

and losers is more complex than previously characterized.

Research Paper in Preparation:

“Affirmative Action, Attitudes and Social Networks: Evidence from Caste-Based Reservation in India”

(with Emily Breza and Arun Chandrashekhar)

We seek to study the role of affirmative action-type policies in shaping social structure. We propose to do this in the context of Indian political quotas (locally called “reservations”) for historically disadvantaged

caste groups (Scheduled Castes or SCs) in the state of Bihar, India. SC political reservation may affect

social structure in several ways. First, as discussed in the literature, exposure may change other castes'

attitudes towards the reserved caste group. On the other hand, it may also create a climate of resentment.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/mrsharan/publications/women-political-leaders-corruption-and-learning-evidence-large-public-program-0

https://scholar.harvard.edu/mrsharan/publications/women-political-leaders-corruption-and-learning-evidence-large-public-program-0

-3-

Second, access to leadership positions may change the distribution of resources available to SCs, which itself can change incentives to form links. To achieve our aims, we are conducting a series of primary data

collection activities, sampling from GPs close to the discontinuity. These include: (i) household surveys

to elicit network structure; (ii) household surveys to measure attitudes towards other caste groups and

political and resource utilization; (iii) incentivized measures of the costs of interaction within- and between-caste; and (iv) a diffusion experiment to quantify how political reservation and the resulting

change in network structure corresponds to changes in the distribution of knowledge.

Other-Refereed Journal Articles

“The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan: Rationed Funds and their allocation across villages” (with Himanshu and Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay), Economic and Political Weekly, 2015

“Identifying BPL Households: A Comparison of Competing Approaches”, Economic and Political

Weekly, 2011, pp.256-262

Grants and Fellowships:

2019-20 Warburg Fellowship

(with Emily Breza and Arun Chandrashekhar)

$7,500

2018-19 The Weiss Fund (with Chinmaya Kumar) $31,385 2018-20 The Weiss Fund (with Emily Breza and Arun Chandrashekhar) $69,810

2018-20 Rockefeller Grant for Technology and Governance

(through the IDFC Institute, Mumbai)

$300,000

2015-16 JPAL GI Travel/Proposal Grant $4,500 2014-15 GSAS Fellowship in honor of Amartya Sen


2018-19 IDFC Institute, Senior Research Associate

2016-17 Economist, Office of the Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance,

Government of India

2012-13 JPAL South Asia, Research Associate 2011-12 International Growth Centre, Delhi, Research Assistant

Professional Activities Referee Journal of Development Studies

Seminars NEUDC (2019), ISI Delhi Conference (2018), The Lakshmi Mittal and Family

(Harvard) South Asia Institute

Languages

English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Stata, R

-1-

CHRISTINE MULHERN Cmulhern.com

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY




Contact Information

Taubman Bldg 431

79 JFK St.

Cambridge, MA 02138

224-639-3845

Personal Information: US Citizen


B.A. in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences; Economics

Northwestern University, cum laude, 2013

Graduate Studies:

Harvard Kennedy School, 2015 to present



References:

Professor Christopher Avery Professor Amanda Pallais


617-495-4063

[email protected]

617-495-2151

[email protected]

Professor Joshua Goodman

Brandeis University

781-736-2283

[email protected]


Labor Economics, Public Economics, Economics of Education


Fall 2017 &

Fall 2018

Markets and Market Failure, Harvard University

Teaching Fellow for Christopher Avery

Certificate of Distinction in Student Teaching

Spring 2018 &

Spring 2019

Analyzing Education Policy, Harvard University

Teaching Fellow for Joshua Goodman

Certificate of Distinction in Teaching

https://www.cmulhern.com/

-2-


2013-2015

Ithaka S+R, Educational Transformation Team

Research Analyst for William G. Bowen

2011-2012 Northwestern University, Institute for Policy Research

Research Assistant to David Figlio and Jim Rosenbaum

Research Papers:

“Beyond Teachers: Estimating Individual Guidance Counselors' Effects on Educational Attainment”

Job Market Paper

Guidance counselors are a common school resource for students navigating complicated and

consequential education choices. I provide the first causal estimates of individual counselors' effects

on high schoolers, using quasi-random counselor assignment policies in Massachusetts. I find that

counselors vary substantially in their effectiveness at increasing students' high school graduation

rates and college attendance, selectivity and persistence. Counselors' effects on educational

attainment are similar in magnitude to teachers' effects but they flow through improved information

and direct assistance, rather than through improved cognitive or non-cognitive skills. Counselor

effectiveness is most important for low-achieving and low-income students, perhaps because these

students are most likely to lack other sources of information and assistance. Good counselors tend to

improve all measures of educational attainment but some specialize in improving high school

behavior while others specialize in increasing selective college attendance. Improving access to

effective counseling may be a promising way to increase educational attainment and close

socioeconomic gaps in education.

“Changing College Choices with Personalized Admissions Information at Scale”

Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of Labor Economics

Choosing where to apply to college is a complex problem with long-term consequences, but many

students lack the guidance necessary to make optimal choices. I show that a technology which

provides low-cost personalized college admissions information to over forty percent of high

schoolers significantly alters college choices. Students shift applications and attendance to colleges

for which they can observe information on schoolmates' admissions experiences. Responses are

largest when such information suggests a high admissions probability. Disadvantaged students

respond the most, and information on in-state colleges increases their four-year college attendance.

Data features and framing, however, deter students from selective colleges.

“Oh Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers in College Enrollment,”

with Joshua Goodman, Michael Hurwitz, and Jonathan Smith

We study within-family spillovers in college enrollment to show that college-going behavior is

transmissible between peers. Because siblings’ test scores are weakly correlated, we can identify

college-specific admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings’ college

options. Older siblings’ admissibility substantially increases their four-year college enrollment rate

and quality of college attended. Their improved college choices in turn raise younger siblings’

college enrollment rate and quality of college chosen, particularly for families with low predicted

probabilities of college enrollment. The observed spillovers are not well-explained by price, income,

proximity or legacy effects, but are most consistent with older siblings transmitting important

information about the college experience and its potential returns.

-3-

Publications:

Chingos, Matthew, Rebecca Griffiths, & Christine Mulhern. (2017) “Can Low-Cost Online Summer Math

Programs Improve Student Preparation for College-Level Math? Evidence from Randomized Control Trials

at Three Universities.” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 10(4): 794-816.

Chingos, Matthew, Rebecca Griffiths, Christine Mulhern, & Richard Spies. (2016). “Interactive Online

Learning on Campus: Comparing Students Outcomes in Hybrid and Traditional Courses in the University

System of Maryland.” Journal of Higher Education, 88(2): 210-233.


“Rural and Urban Gaps in Achievement and Educational Attainment”

“Scalable Technology for Personalized Student Support: The Impact of Nova Scotia’s Homework Hub on

Students’ Academic Outcomes”


Invited Talks:

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, October 2019

Hobson’s Summer Institute, July 2019

University of Chicago Urban Labs, June 2019

Conference Presentations:

Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, November 2019

Association for Education Finance and Policy, March 2019

Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, November 2018

Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Student Conference, April 2018



Referee Service:

Quarterly Journal of Economics; Economics of Education Review

University Service:

Organizer, Applied Microeconomics Seminar, Harvard Kennedy School (2018)

Vice President, Harvard Kennedy School Phd Student Association (2018)

Faculty Outreach Chair, Harvard Kennedy School PhD Student Association (2017)


2019-2020 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University

2016-2019

2018

Partnering in Education Research Fellowship, Institute for Education Sciences

Certificate of Distinction in Student Teaching, Harvard Kennedy School

2018 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard College

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/5UARySfGSHkvqqmEewQ4/full



-1-

REBECCA M SACHS https://scholar.harvard.edu/rmsachs

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 925-787-1632 Personal Information: U.S. Citizen Undergraduate Studies: BA, Economics and Public Policy with Honors, Stanford University, 2013 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy

Thesis Title: “Essays in Health Economics” Expected Completion Date: May, 2020 References: Professor David Cutler Professor Amitabh Chandra Department of Economics, Harvard University Harvard Business School and Kennedy School 617-496-5216, [email protected] 617-496-7356, [email protected] Professor Richard Frank Professor Mark Shepard Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School Harvard Kennedy School 617-432-5062, [email protected] 617-496-5062, [email protected] Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Health Economics, Public Economics Secondary field: Labor Economics Teaching Experience: Fall,

2018 Why is There No Cure for Health Care?, Harvard College, Head Teaching Fellow for Professor David Cutler

Spring, 2017-2018

Economic Analysis of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, Teaching Fellow for Professor Mark Shepard

Summer, 2016-2018 Doctoral Student Math Camp, Harvard Kennedy School, Instructor

Research Experience and Other Employment: 2015-2017 NBER, Research Assistant to Professor David Cutler

-2- 2013-2014 Princeton University, Research Assistant to Professors Alexandre Mas, Henry

Farber, and Will Dobbie 2012-2013 Stanford University, Research Assistant to Professors Nicholas Bloom and John

Pencavel 2012 Council of Economic Advisers, Intern 2011 Office of Management and Budget, Intern Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2019-2020 NBER Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Aging and Health Economics 2019-2020 Harvard University GSAS Dissertation Completion Fellowship 2019 Eli Ginzberg Award, Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy 2016-2019 Taubman Center Dissertation Fellowship in Urban Policy and Governance 2014-2016 Harvard University GSAS Fellowship 2013 Stanford Economics Anna Laura Myers Prize for an Outstanding Thesis Research Papers: “Safety Net Cutbacks and Hospital Service Provision: Evidence from Psychiatric Care” (Job Market Paper) This paper explores how the closure of unprofitable safety net care at one hospital affects the utilization of services at nearby hospitals, the capacity choices of those nearby hospitals, and patient outcomes. I focus on the effects of inpatient psychiatric unit closures, one of the least profitable services for hospitals. Exploiting sharp variation in the timing of psychiatric unit closures across local hospital markets in California, I find that neighboring hospitals treat less than a third of the number of patients that would have been seen in the closing units. Total loss margins double at nearby units, driven by increases in patient severity. Neighboring hospitals also decrease their supply of psychiatric services, lowering overall access to care and shifting patients to high-cost emergency room settings. Taken together, my findings suggest that preventing cutbacks at one hospital can have a multiplier effect in preserving market-level access to care for vulnerable populations. “How Do Hospitals Set Their Charity Care Policies? Evidence from Nonprofit Tax Returns” Hospitals play an important role in the social insurance system by providing free and discounted care to the uninsured. Despite the large economic cost of care for uninsured patients absorbed by hospitals, relatively little is known about how hospitals determine the amount of free and discounted care they provide. In this paper, I study how nonprofit hospitals change their policies regarding the supply of charity care in response to changes in local need, hospital income, and regulation/public pressure. To do so, I use data from IRS 990 tax returns for nonprofit hospitals between 2010-2015. These data provide the first opportunity to look at hospitals’ charity care policies over time and across states. A unique feature of the IRS 990 is that hospitals are required to list the federal poverty level (FPL) income thresholds at which they provide free and discounted care in addition to disaggregated information about charitable expenditures. I link these outcome measures to a variety of data on changes in state regulations, public funding for low-income care, and measures of need. I find hospitals’ charity care spending and policies significantly respond to external pressure at the margin. In contrast, charity care policies do not respond to changes in community need or hospital financial status in the two years following Medicaid expansion. These results indicate that extrinsic motivation may be the driving factor behind changes in hospital charity, not altruism. “Which Markets (Don’t) Drive Pharmaceutical Innovation? Evidence from U.S. Medicaid Expansions”, (with Craig Garthwaite and Ariel Stern) Contemporary innovation policy for pharmaceuticals involves trading off higher prices and reduced access today in order to provide incentives for firms to invest in new products in the future. Prior research has documented a causal relationship between changes in pharmaceutical market size and various measures of

-3-

research and development (R&D) activity. The existing literature, however, provides no evidence of whether or how this relationship varies across markets. In this paper, we investigate whether recent large-scale expansions in state Medicaid programs caused an increase in R&D investments. Despite an increase that is large than those previously seen in the literature, we find no evidence of the expansion changed R&D investments. This could be a result of Medicaid’s low reimbursement for pharmaceuticals, which suggests low reimbursing markets may have different opportunities for optimal innovation policy. Research Paper in Progress “Inequality in Regional Hospital Markets” (with David Cutler) External Presentations 2019-2020 APPAM Fall Research Conference, UCLA Health Law workshop (scheduled) 2018-2019 Annual Conference of the American Society of Health Economists, Harvard

Healthcare Markets and Regulation Annual Lab Meeting 2017-2018 Annual Conference of the American Society of Health Economists Poster APPAM Fall Research Conference (2018), AcademyHealth Annual Research

Meeting (2019) Discussant APPAM Fall Research Conference (2018, 2019)

-1-

MARYALINE CATILLON Website

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY






Wyss Doctoral Office

Boston, 02163

857-222-6863


B.S., Mathematics and Physics, Paris University, with Honors, 2003

Graduate Studies:


Ph.D. Candidate in Health Policy and Management

Thesis Title: “On the Value of Biomedical Research”


References:

Professor David Cutler Professor Richard Freeman

Department of Economics, Harvard University Department of Economics, Harvard University


Professor Ariel Stern Professor Richard Zeckhauser

Harvard Business School Harvard Kennedy School



Primary fields: Applied Microeconomics, Health Economics

Secondary fields: Economics of Science, Technology and Innovation


Spring 2019 Research in Global Health and Health Policy, Harvard College, instructor

Fall 2018 Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning, Harvard College, teaching fellow for

Professor David Cutler

Summer 2015 Microeconomics, Harvard Kennedy School Mid-Career MPA, instructor

Spring 2014 Health Economics, Master, Pasteur Institute CNAM School of Public Health

(Paris)

Fall 2013 Health Care Management, Bachelor in Management of Health Care and Social

Organizations, Pasteur Institute CNAM School of Public Health (Paris)

Fall 2013 Health Systems, Executive Education, Mid-Career Professionals from the French

National Cancer Institute, Pasteur Institute CNAM School of Public Health (Paris)

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=746066






-2-


2018 National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Assistant to Professor David

Cutler (NBER-IFS Value of Medical Research Grant)

2017-present Sergei Zlinkoff Fund for Medical Research and Education, Vice-President and

Board Member

2012-2014 Les Murets Hospital, Montreuil Hospital, EHESP School of Public Health (France)

Hospital Director, Member, Board of Directors, Second Official in charge,

Responsible for Finance, Strategy, Quality and IT

2004-2011 Académie de Créteil (France), Certified Teacher


2017-present NBER-IFS Value of Medical Research Fellowship (NIH grant R24AG058049)

2014-present Harvard Business School Doctoral Fellowship

2014-2016 Harvard Arthur Sachs Scholarship

2014 Harvard Club of France Award

2014 Health Care Management GRAPH Award (France)

2013 APHA Retirement Research Foundation Masters Student Research Award

2008 Fondation Charles de Gaulle, Public Policy Research Award and Grant (France)

2007 Luis Castro Leiva Research Award and Grant, Institut des Hautes Etudes de

l’Amerique Latine (France / Venezuela)

Publications:

Simcoe, Timothy, Maryaline Catillon, and Paul Gertler. “Who benefits most in disease management

programs: Improving target efficiency.” Health economics 28, no. 2 (2019): 189-203.

Catillon, Maryaline. “Trends and predictors of biomedical research quality, 1990–2015: a meta-

research study.” BMJ open, no. 9 (2019): e030342.

Catillon, Maryaline, David Cutler and Thomas Getzen. “Two hundred years of health and medical

care.” VOX CEPR Policy Portal, 2019.

Catillon, Maryaline, “Medical knowledge synthesis: A brief overview.” NBER White Paper, 2017.

Catillon, Maryaline, “Hospital Innovations: U.S. Perspectives (Innovations à l’hôpital : Perspectives

américaines.” Gestions Hospitalières, Paris (France), Vol. 555, April 2016.

Catillon, Maryaline, “Improving care coordination: Challenges and strategies in the U.S. and in

France (Améliorer la coordination des soins: Enjeux et stratégies Etats-Unis/France).” Gestions

Hospitalières, Paris (France), Vol. 540, November 2014. GRAPH Research Award (Paris, France)

-3-

Research Papers:

“What are the Payoffs for Good Science?: Incentives to Meet Methodological Standards in Clinical

Trials” (Job Market Paper)

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) inform medical practice, health care delivery, follow-on research,

regulation, and health policy. Yet, many RCTs are inadequately randomized, blinded, and reported. To

analyze scientists' and firms' incentives to meet clinical trial standards, I assemble a detailed database on

research methods, experimental results, bibliometric information, and funding for 23,321 RCTs

published between 1990 and 2018. I estimate the impact of meeting scientific standards on three

outcomes: (1) the direction and significance of experimental results; (2) the impact factor of the

publishing journal; and (3) the number of citations the publication receives. I find that increasing

numbers of inadequacies increase the probability of finding support for product adoption by 7% per

inadequacy, but decrease journal prestige and citations. Publication bias and strategic non-disclosure do

not appear to drive the results. I conclude that individual scientists benefit marginally from higher

quality research, but that pharmaceutical companies lack strong incentives to drive improvement in trial

quality.

“Two hundred years of health and medical care: The importance of medical care for life expectancy

gains”, with David Cutler and Thomas Getzen (NBER working paper No. w25330)

Using two hundred years of national and Massachusetts data on medical care and health, we examine

how central medical care is to life expectancy gains. While common theories about medical care cost

growth stress growing demand, our analysis highlights the importance of supply side factors, including

the major public investments in research, workforce training and hospital construction that fueled a

surge in spending over the 1955-1975 span. There is a stronger case that personal medicine affected

health in the second half of the twentieth century than in the preceding 150 years. Finally, we consider

whether medical care productivity decreases over time, and find that spending increased faster than life

expectancy, although the ratio stabilized in the past two decades.


“Accelerating learning about the value of prescription drugs: Does medical research quality predict

medical reversals?”

Uncovering low-value medical practices is typically protracted. For example, atenolol, a beta-blocker

approved in 1981, generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and became the standard of care for

hypertension until it was shown 25 years later to be no better than a placebo. Using a large sample of

more than 20,000 clinical trials of prescription drugs, this paper studies the effect of biomedical research

quality on the probability of medical reversals, defined as a change in clinical recommendations when

practices are found to be no better than a prior standard of care. I analyze whether, and under what

circumstances, the quantity and quality of research on a topic predicts changes in medical knowledge

and recommended clinical practices.

“Exploring solutions to the reproducibility crisis: Post publication reviews”

In theory, compliance with scientific standards is observable in publications. In practice, due to limited

attention spans and information overload, peer scientists, competitors, and expert adopters may focus on

trial results, and fail to include information about a trial’s reliability in their decisions. Post-publication

reviews provide independent third party assessments of the reliability of drug trials. I study the effect of

post-publication reviews on three outcomes: (1) the use of knowledge by peer scientists, (2) the quality

of follow-on studies by the firm and its competitors, and (3) adoption decisions by clinicians. I consider

implications for health care strategy in different types of institutions and clinical settings and discuss the

opportunities and limitations of post-publication reviews as a solution to improving biomedical research

quality.

-4-

“Learning and ethics in Randomized Controlled Trials” (with Richard Zeckhauser and Soroush

Saghafian)

Medical research quality has specific implications for patients enrolled in clinical trials. Few trial

protocols include pre-specified stopping rules and many trial discontinuations are based on ad hoc

decisions. We use operations research methods and decision science to compare learning, patient

outcomes and statistical significance under current statistical significance based rules and alternative

ethical constraints. Using a large sample of clinical trials of drugs, we show that current practice fails to

maximize learning subject to patient centered ethical constraints, and consider implications for the

design and conduct of patient centered clinical trials.


Selected presentations:

“What are the Payoffs for Good Science?: Incentives to Meet Methodological Standards in Clinical

Trials”

POMS Annual Conference, Minneapolis, April 2020 (scheduled)

INFORMS Annual Meeting, Seattle, October 2019

Harvard PhD in Health Policy Research Seminar, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard

Medical School, October 2019 (scheduled)

INFORMS Healthcare, MIT, Cambridge, July 27 2019

ASHEcon Annual Meeting, Washington DC, June 25, 2019

Harvard Business School, Science Based Business Initiative Seminar, April 26, 2019

Department of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, Wednesday, April 2, 2019

Columbia University, HPM Brown Bag Seminar, March 27, 2019

“Ethics and learning in Randomized Controlled Trials” (with Richard Zeckhauser and Soroush

Saghafian)

POMS Annual Conference, Minneapolis, April 2020 (scheduled)

“Trends and predictors of biomedical research quality, 1990-2015: A Meta-research study”

Harvard-MIT Regulatory Science Symposium, HBS, February 4, 2019

International Network on the Value of Health Research, National Bureau of Economic Research,

Friday, September 14, 2018

The Value of Medical Research Pre-Doctoral Meeting, National Bureau of Economic Research,

Friday, June 8, 2018

Harvard PhD in Health Policy Research Seminar, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard

Medical School, Tuesday, April 17, 2018

“Two Hundred Years of Medical Care and Health” (with David Cutler and Thomas Getzen)

Cohort Studies Meeting, National Bureau of Economic Research, Friday, May 11, 2018.

“Knowledge Synthesis: From Medical Research to Medical Practice”

Department of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, Wednesday, April 4, 2018

“Determinants of High Quality Medical Research”

Society of General Internal Medicine, 2018. Abstract published in: Journal of General Internal

Medicine. Vol. 33, 2018.

“The Buyer's Curse” (with Richard Zeckhauser)

CEAR/MRIC Behavioral Insurance Workshop 2017, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Thursday,

December 7, 2017.

-5-

Conference organization:

2019 Session Chair & Organizer: “From R&D to Post-Market Information: Learning

about the Value of Prescription Drugs” Washington DC, ASHEcon.

2015 Conference Co-chair & Organizer: “French–American Conference on Hospital

Innovation: Evidence driven innovative care improvement”, Brigham and

Women’s Hospital (Boston), Bellevue Hospital Center & Robert F. Wagner School

of Public Service (New York)

Memberships:

French Hospital Directors Association (ADH), Harvard Club of France, Arthur Sachs Scholarship

Fund Alumni Association, American Society of Health Economists, Academy of Management,

INFORMS, A3PC, Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM).

Ad Hoc Refereeing:

Health Services Research

-1-

JULIA DENNETT https://scholar.harvard.edu/jdennett

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: Amanda Pallais [email protected] 617-495-2151 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information 14 Story St, Fourth Floor Cambridge, MA 02138 (303) 378-3051 (cell) Undergraduate Studies: B.S., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Health Policy (Economics)

Thesis Title: “Essays on the Determinants of Health and Human Capital” Expected Completion Date: May 2020 References: Professor David Cutler (Chair) Dean Katherine Baicker Department of Economics, Harvard University Harris Public Policy, The University of Chicago (617) 496-5216, [email protected] (773) 702-9623, [email protected] Professor Thomas McGuire Professor Ateev Mehrotra Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School (617) 432-3536, [email protected] (617) 432-3905, [email protected] Research Fields: Primary fields: Health Economics Secondary fields: Labor Economics, Public Economics Teaching Experience: Fall, 2018 Why is There No Cure for Health Care?, Harvard College,

Teaching Fellow for Professor David Cutler Research Experience and Other Employment: 2013-2014 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Data Analyst 2010-2013 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Research Associate 2008-2010 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Assistant Economist Professional Activities: 2019 Poster Presentation, Annual Conference of the American Society of Health

Economists 2016 Referee, Journal of Health Economics

-2-

2012 Presentation, Annual Conference of the American Society of Health Economists

2012 Poster Presentation, Society of Labor Economists Annual Meeting Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2018-2019 NBER Pre-Doctoral Fellow in Aging and Health Research 2017-2018 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Trainee 2014-2017

2008 Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation MIT Undergraduate Economics Association Journal Prize: First Place

Job Market Paper: “The Effects of Prenatal Exposure to Seasonal Influenza on Life Course Outcomes in the United States”

Seasonal influenza is a common infectious disease that jeopardizes the health of pregnant women. Prenatal exposure to the flu likely disturbs fetal development and harms health at birth, but long run effects are difficult to identify. I investigate the impact of in utero exposure to seasonal influenza over the life course in the U.S. by exploiting state and time variation in influenza-related mortality, a proxy for disease severity in the local environment. I first show adverse effects on birth weight and an increased risk of heart malformations, and then evaluate impacts on long term outcomes. Exposure to seasonal influenza while in utero increases disability and decreases childhood school attendance, adult high school completion, and labor force participation. I also examine implications for influenza vaccination as a policy intervention and find that historical vaccine uptake accounted for economically meaningful improvements in life course outcomes. Furthermore, my estimates suggest substantial returns to future reductions in flu exposure due to vaccination expansions, including 10,000 fewer infants born each year with low birth weight, 54,000 more workers in the labor force, and 34,000 more adults without a disability.

Working Papers: “Connecting Neighborhood Characteristics and Clinical Health Outcomes: Using Novel Data to Explore Nuanced Relationships” (with Katherine Baicker, Hannah Cohen-Cline, and Bill J. Wright) Publications: “Are American Homeowners Locked into their Houses? The Impact of Housing Market Conditions on State-to-state Migration,” Regional Science and Urban Economics 43(2), March 2013: 322-337. (with Alicia Sasser Modestino)

-1-

ANNABELLE FOWLER https://scholar.harvard.edu/afowler

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY




Contact Information

56 Linnaean St, #383

Cambridge, MA 02138

802-989-6301 (cell)


B.A. in Mathematics and Economics, Middlebury College, magna cum laude, 2010

Graduate Studies:


Ph.D. Candidate in Health Policy (Economics Track)

Thesis Title: “Essays on Incentives and Regulation in Pharmaceutical Markets”


References:

Professor Thomas McGuire (Chair) Professor David Cutler

Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School Department of Economics, Harvard University


Professor Ariel D. Stern Professor J. Michael McWilliams

TOM Unit, Harvard Business School Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School



Primary field: Health Economics, Health Policy

Secondary fields: Labor Economics, Industrial Organization

Job Market Paper:

“Hurry Up or Wait?: Strategic Delay in the Introduction of Pharmaceutical Line Extensions”

Pharmaceutical firm decisions on the timing of follow-on product introductions involve a strategic

tradeoff. Follow-on drugs, termed line extensions, receive a fixed exclusivity period that starts upon

approval. Thus, firms can choose to introduce a line extension earlier to attract new consumers, or delay

introduction so the line extension's exclusivity extends beyond that of the original drug. I show that the

firm’s incentive for delay increases with the share of line extension sales that cannibalize the original

drug. I test for this behavior empirically using a novel dataset of over 700 drugs approved in the US from

1985-2016, linked to all subsequent line extensions in that period. Consistent with strategic delay, an

original drug is twice as likely to have a line extension approved in the period leading up to expected

generic entry than three or more years prior. Using Monte Carlo simulations, I find that line extensions

that are more cannibalizing are delayed up to 2.5 years, compared to an average of five months for those

that are less so, reflecting nuanced firm responses to regulatory incentives. A separate analysis comparing

line extensions under different regulatory regimes confirms these findings. Delays in drug introduction

can create welfare losses for consumers and payers, and I consider implications for innovation policy.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/afowler


-2-

Published Papers:

Fowler AC, Grabowski DC, Gambrel RJ, Huskamp HA, and Stevenson DG. “Corporate Investors Have

Increased Common Ownership In Hospitals And The Post-Acute Care And Hospice Sectors.” Health Affairs

(Millwood). September 2017; 36(9):1547-1555. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0591.

We used data from the Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System of the Centers for Medicare

and Medicaid Services to identify common investor ownership linkages across the acute care, post-acute

care, and hospice sectors within geographic markets. To our knowledge, this study provides the first

description of common investor ownership trends in these sectors. We find that the percentage of acute

care hospitals having common investor ties to the post-acute or hospice sectors increased from 24.6

percent in 2005 to 48.9 percent in 2015, and discuss implications for payment and regulatory policy.


“Measurement and Determinants of Formulary Generosity in Medicare Part D”

“PBMs, Market Power and Efficient Formulary Placement” (with Thomas McGuire)

“Innovative Payment for Innovative Therapies” (perspective piece with Rena Conti)


Spring 2018-19 Research in Global Health and Health Policy, Harvard College

Head Teaching Fellow for Professor David Cutler

Summer 2018

Summer 2017-19

Fall 2016-17

Fall 2016

Winter 2015

Math Review for Incoming Policy and Business PhD Students, Harvard University,

Part 1 Instructor

Academic Exploration: Business, Economics and Policy of Pharma, Harvard Pre-

College Program, Lecturer

The Economics of Health Care Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Teaching Fellow for Professor Joseph Newhouse

United States and the World: U.S. Health Policy, Harvard College

Teaching Fellow for Professor Amitabh Chandra

Health System Reform in Chile, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Teaching

Assistant for Professor Thomas Bossert


2016 Harvard Medical School and National Bureau of Economic Research

Research Assistant to Professors David Grabowski and David Cutler

2015 Harvard Medical School, Department of Health Care Policy

Research Assistant to Professors J. Michael McWilliams and Joseph Newhouse

2010-2014

2009

Charles River Associates, Antitrust and Competition Economics,

Analyst/Associate/Consulting Associate

Inter-American Development Bank Headquarters

Summer Research Intern in Early Childhood Health and Education

Invited Presentations:

Nov. 2019

Oct. 2019

Oct. 2019

Aug. 2019

June 2019

May 2019

Middlebury College, Department of Economics, Middlebury VT

National Bureau of Economic Research Productivity Seminar, Cambridge, MA

Science Based Business Initiative, Economics of Science Seminar, Boston, MA

The Society for Economic Measurement’s Conference, Frankfurt, Germany

Conference of the American Society of Health Economists, Washington, DC

Bates White’s 7th Life Sciences Symposium, Washington, DC

-3-

Feb. 2019

Harvard-MIT Center for Regulatory Science Student Symposium, Boston, MA

June 2018

June 2018

June 2017

June 2017

Sept. 2016

Conference of the American Society for Health Economists, Washington, DC

NBER-IFS Value of Medical Research Pre-Doctoral Meeting, Cambridge, MA

NBER-IFS Value of Medical Research Pre-Doctoral Meeting, Cambridge, MA

AcademyHealth Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (poster presentation)

U19 NBER Grant: Outcomes Associated with Delivery Systems, Cambridge, MA

Professional Affiliations:

American Society of Health Economists, Academy of Management


2019-20

2019

2019

2017-19

Harvard University Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Harvard Graduate Student Council Conference Grant

Derek Bok University-Wide Teaching Award Nominee

Certificate of Excellence and Distinction in Teaching (four-time recipient)

2017-18

NBER-IFS Pre-Doctoral Fellowship on the Value of Medical Research

2016

2016

2014-16

Best Performance on Doctoral General Examination in Health Policy

Harvard Graduate Student Council Summer Research Grant

Harvard GSAS fellowship

Service:

2019- Resident Tutor, Pforzheimer House, Harvard College

2019- Sophomore Academic Adviser, Harvard College (five students per year)

2018- Ad-hoc Reviewer for Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation

2018-19 Visiting Undergraduate Adviser, Harvard College (nine students per semester)

2016 Co-organizer: weekly seminar in Health Economics, Harvard University


Citizenship: UK, Ecuador, Ireland

Languages: English (native), Spanish (native), Portuguese (fluent)

1

Date Prepared: October 23, 2019

Name: Dan P. Ly, MD, MPP

Work Phone: 615-478-2666

Work Email: [email protected]

Place of Birth: Los Angeles, CA

Personal Website: https://scholar.harvard.edu/danly

References Professor David Cutler Professor Anupam Jena Harvard University Harvard Medical School 617-496-5216, [email protected] 617-432-8322, [email protected] Professor Sherry Glied New York University Wagner Graduate School of Public Service 212-998-7527, [email protected]

Education

2006 BA, cum laude History Yale College, New Haven, CT

2011 MPP Health Policy Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA

2012 MD Medicine Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY

expected 2020 PhD Health Policy (Concentration in Economics)

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Postdoctoral Training

06/12-06/13 Intern Internal Medicine and Primary Care Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

06/13-06/15 Resident Internal Medicine and Primary Care Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

Faculty Academic Appointments

04/16- Lecturer Medicine Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

09/17- Adjunct Instructor Medicine Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA

Appointments at Hospitals/Affiliated Institutions

11/15- Staff Physician Medicine

VA Boston Healthcare System, West Roxbury, MA

Editorial Activities

2

Ad hoc Reviewer Health Affairs

Medical Care

Journal of General Internal Medicine

American Journal of Managed Care

Health Care: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation

Journal of Hospital Medicine

Women’s Health Issues

American Journal of Public Health

International Journal of Health Economics and Management

Pain Medicine

American Heart Journal

Academic Emergency Medicine

JAMA Internal Medicine Other Editorial Roles 2015- Assistant Editor Health Care: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation

Honors and Prizes

2005 John C. Schroeder Award Yale College Service

2010 Certificate of Distinction in Teaching

Harvard University Teaching

2017 NIH Loan Repayment Program Awardee

National Institute on Minority Health Disparities

Loan Repayment Program Award

2017 Fellow in Aging and Health Economics

National Bureau of Economic Research

Fellowship

2018 NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32)

National Institute on Aging Fellowship

2018

Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship ($102,500 awarded. Declined due to other funding)

Charles A. King Trust Fellowship

2018 Fellow in Aging and Health Economics (Declined due to other funding)

National Bureau of Economic Research

Fellowship

2019 NIH Loan Repayment Program Renewal Awardee

National Institute on Minority Health Disparities

Loan Repayment Program Award

Report of Funded and Unfunded Projects

Current

2018-2021 Understanding how physician cognitive biases affect the treatment of older adults with dementia

NIA/F32 AG060650-01

PI ($219,959)

3

The major goal of the study is to use national electronic health record data to examine how cognitive biases among physicians may lead them to pay less attention to important clinical data in the medical record when caring for patients with dementia.

2019-2020 Understanding testing differences in the treatment of minority patients

NIMHD/ L60 MD012002-02

PI ($35,000)

The major goal of the study is to use national electronic health record data to examine testing differences when caring for minority patients.

Past

2017-2018 Trends and disparities in de-adoption

NIA/T32-AG000186

Training fellow ($31,364)

The major goals of the study are to examine temporal trends in de-adoption of clinically inappropriate care in the Medicare population and to determine whether these trends differ by race and ethnicity.

2017-2019 Disparities in de-adoption of less desirable and clinically inappropriate care

NIMHD/ L60 MD012002-01

PI ($70,000)

The major goals of the study are to examine whether de-adoption of clinically inappropriate care differs by race and ethnicity, and if so, to determine the causes of such disparities.

Current Unfunded Projects

2010- Study of the characteristics of physicians who reduced the use of percutaneous coronary intervention after the COURAGE trial (First author)

I am examining with Anupam Jena, Alan Garber, and David Cutler the characteristics of physicians who reduced the use of percutaneous coronary intervention for stable angina after the COURAGE trial.

2014- Study of physician home values in states with unlimited homestead exemptions (Joint)

I am examining with Eric Helland, Anupam Jena, and Seth Seabury whether physicians increase their home values in states with unlimited homestead exemptions.

Report of Local Teaching and Training

Teaching of Students in Courses

2010 American Health Care Policy (undergraduate, US-World 11) Harvard College

Undergraduate students 1-hr discussion section per week for 12 wks

2011 Empirical Methods II [econometrics] (graduate, API-202B). Harvard Kennedy School

Graduate students 1-hr review section and 1 hour of office hours per week for 12 weeks

2018 Essentials of the Profession II—Health Policy (medical school) Harvard Medical School

Medical school students 1-hr small group session twice per week for 4 weeks

Report of Regional, National, and International Invited Teaching and Presentations

Invited Presentations and Courses

4

Regional 2018 Physicians and work-life balance/ Oral Presentation RAND, Boston, MA 2019 Racial and ethnic differences in outpatient opioid prescribing/ Oral Presentation Stanford, Palo Alto, CA

National 2008 Non-price competition among physicians/ Oral Presentation AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting, Washington, D.C. 2010 How do minority-serving hospitals perform on patient safety indicators?/ Oral Presentation AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting, Boston, MA 2010 Does the number of contracts matter? Managed care contracts and physicians’ career satisfaction,

hours, and income/ Oral Presentation AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting, Boston, MA

Report of Clinical Activities and Innovations

Current Licensure and Certification

2012 Massachusetts Medical Licensure

2015 Board Certified, American Board of Internal Medicine

Practice Activities

2016 Inpatient teaching attending Internal medicine, VA Boston Healthcare System, West Roxbury, MA

Six weeks per year

Report of Scholarship

Peer reviewed publications in print or other media 1. Ly DP, Glied SA. Disparities in service quality among insured adult patients seen in physicians’ offices.

Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2010; 25 (4): 357-62. 2. Ly DP, Lopez L, Isaac T, Jha AK. How do black-serving hospitals perform on patient safety indicators?

Implications for national public reporting and pay-for-performance. Medical Care. 2010; 48 (12): 1133-37. 3. Cutler DM, Ly DP. The (paper) work of medicine: understanding international medical costs. Journal of

Economic Perspectives. 2011; 25 (2): 3-25. 4. Ly DP, Jha AK, Epstein AM. The association between hospital margins, quality of care, and closure or

other change in operating status. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2011; 26 (11): 1291-96. 5. Ly DP, Glied SA. Variations in the service quality of medical practices. American Journal of Managed

Care. 2013; 19 (11): e378-85. 6. Ly DP, Glied SA. The impact of managed care contracting on physicians. Journal of General Internal

Medicine. 2014; 29 (1): 237-42. 7. Ly DP, Seabury SA, Jena AB. Divorce among physicians and other health care professionals in the United

States: an analysis of Census survey data. The BMJ. 2015; 350: h706. 8. Ly DP, Seabury SA, Jena AB. Differences in incomes of physicians in the United States by race and sex:

observational study. The BMJ. 2016; 353: i2923. 9. Ly DP, Seabury SA, Jena AB. Hours worked among US dual physician couples with children, 2000 to

2015. JAMA Internal Medicine. 2017; 177 (10): 1524-25. 10. Ly DP, Cutler DM. Factors of U.S. hospitals associated with improved profit margins: an observational

study. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2018; 33 (7): 1020-27. 11. Ly DP, Seabury SA, Jena AB. Characteristics of U.S. physician marriages, 2000-2015: An analysis of data

from a U.S. Census survey. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2018; 168 (5): 375-76.

5

12. Ly DP, Jena AB. Sex differences in time spent on household activities and care of children among U.S. physicians, 2003-2016. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 2018. 93 (10): 1484-87.

13. Patel YM, Ly DP, Hicks T, Jena AB. Proportion of non-US-born and noncitizen health care professionals in the United States in 2016. JAMA. 2018. 320 (21): 2265-67.

14. Ly DP. Racial and ethnic disparities in the evaluation and management of pain in the outpatient setting, 2006-2015. Pain Medicine. 2019. 20 (2): 223-32.

15. Ly DP. Differences within practices in opioid-prescribing patterns of orthopedic surgeons and in subsequent rates of chronic opioid use, 2012-2014. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2019. 34 (4): 529-31.

16. Ly DP. Rates of Advanced Imaging by Practice Peers after Malpractice Injury Reports in Florida, 2009-2013. JAMA Internal Medicine. 2019. 179 (8): 1140-41.

17. Ly DP. Association between US News & World Report medical school ranking and physician opioid prescribing for new low back pain, 2011-2014. Journal of General Internal Medicine. [Epub ahead of print].

18. Ly DP. Evaluation and Treatment Patterns of New Low Back Pain Episodes for Elderly Adults in the United States, 2011-2014. Medical Care. 2019. Accepted.

Non-peer reviewed scientific or medical publications/materials in print or other media

1. Sheingold S, Shartzer A, Ly DP. Variation and trends in Medigap premiums. ASPE report, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2011. Accessed at: https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/variation-and-trends-medigap-premiums.

2. Glied SA, Ly DP, Brown LD. Health savings accounts in the United States. In: Thomson S, Sagan A, Mossialos E, editors. International experience with private health insurance: history, politics, performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [In press].

-1-

ADRIENNE SABETY

https://scholar.harvard.edu/asabety/

[email protected]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY




Office Contact Information Adrienne Sabety

c/o NBER

1050 Massachusetts Ave.

Cambridge, MA, 02138

805-441-6311


B.A. in Economics, University of California, Berkeley, honors, 2012

A.S. in Mathematics, Cuesta Community College, 2010

Graduate Studies:


Ph.D. Candidate in Health Policy (Economics Track)

Thesis Title: “Essays in the Organization of Health Care”


References:

Professor David Cutler (chair) Professor Claudia Goldin

Department of Economics,

Harvard University

Department of Economics,

Harvard University

[email protected], 617-496-5216 [email protected], 617-495-3934

Professor Timothy Layton

Department of Health Care Policy,

Harvard Medical School

[email protected], 617-432-4465


Primary fields: Health Economics

Secondary fields: Industrial Organization, Labor Economics

Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2018- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship on the Economics of

an Aging Workforce award from the National Bureau of Economic

Research 2018- Thomas Parry Research Fellowship award from the Integrated Benefits

Institute

-2-

2018- Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science Fellow

2018 Pilot Paper Funding, Brandeis-Harvard NIDA Center

2018 The Pershing Square Fund for Research, Foundations of Human Behavior

2017 Research Grant, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government

2015-2017 Harvard Kennedy School Inequality and Social Policy Fellowship

2014-2017 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Funding:

Robin Hood, Rockefeller, and Altman Foundations, Co-PI ($2,950,000)

R01 AG026290, National Institute of Aging, Collaborator ($1,753,325)

Retirement Research Foundation, pending, Co-PI ($200,000)

Thomas Parry Research Fellowship award from the Integrated Benefits Institute, PI ($8,500)

Pilot Paper Funding, Brandeis-Harvard NIDA Center, PI ($5,000)

The Pershing Square Fund for Research, Foundations of Human Behavior, PI ($5,000)

Research Grant, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, PI ($3,000)

Job Market Paper:

“The Value of Service Sector Relationships in Health Care”

The relationship between patients and their primary care provider (PCPs) is widely valued, but

how much does it matter for patients' health? I find that a PCP's retirement or relocation causes

a large and long-lasting decline in patients' use of primary care. For at least four years after a

PCP's exit, patients have 17% fewer primary care visits and receive 4% fewer preventive

services per year. Patients compensate for the loss of a PCP by relying on pre-existing

specialists for care. Adverse events, such as emergency department and inpatient admissions,

also increase for one year after a PCP's exit, which increases patients' spending by $4,640 and

Medicare spending by $16,052 per exiting PCP. I rule out the local availability of PCPs, firm

level capacity constraints, and changing PCP practice patterns as main explanations. Instead,

evidence suggests that (1) patients face switching costs when finding a new PCP and (2) PCP-

specific information grows over time. I also show that effects are smallest when patients belong

to clinics that provide care as a team. Therefore, team care may be an effective way to minimize

the adverse health and spending impacts of a PCP's departure.

Publications:

Sherry, Tisamarie, Adrienne Sabety, and Nicole Maestas. 2019. “Documented Pain Diagnoses

in Adults Prescribed Opioids: Results from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey,

2006-2015 – In Reply.” Annals of Internal Medicine 171(4): 307-308

Sherry, Tisamarie, Adrienne Sabety, and Nicole Maestas. 2018. “Documented Pain Diagnoses

in Adults Prescribed Opioids: Results from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey,

2006-2015.” Annals of Internal Medicine 169(12): 892-894.

Altmetric Attention Score in Top 5%. Coverage in: The Boston Globe, NBC, CNN,

Becker's Hospital Review, Chicago Sun-Times, The Week, USA Today, HealthDay,

Physician's Briefing, NBC News, Kaiser Health News, U.S. News and World Report,

and more.

-3-

Under Review: “ActionHealthNYC: A New York City-Based Health Care Access Demonstration Program for

the Uninsured” with Rishi Sood, Jin Yung Bae, Polly Chan, Caroline Heindrichs, Mina Chang,

and Sonia Angell

Hundreds of thousands of low-income immigrants in New York City are not eligible for

low-cost health insurance due to their immigration status. Using a randomized

controlled trial design, we implemented and evaluated a one-year demonstration

program to improve access to care for this population. The program used a dedicated

primary care home, a consistent fee scale, and customer service. Participants did not

significantly differ at baseline by having a regular source of care, visiting a doctor in the

past year, and/or getting an appointment when needed. At follow up, 58% percent of

intervention participants reported having a primary care provider compared to 46% of

control participants. Ninety-one percent of intervention participants reported having

seen a doctor in the past 9 months compared to 77% of control participants, and

intervention participants were 1.6 times more likely to get an appointment as soon as

needed compared to control participants. The increase in primary care access indicates a

strong interest for this type of program among the uninsured. States, counties, and

municipalities should consider building on their existing local health systems to improve

access to health care for uninsured immigrants.

“Association of Primary Care Physician Turnover with Utilization and Outcomes Among

Medicare Patients: Observational Study”

With a growing number of PCPs leaving practice due to retirement, an increasing

number of patients will experience disruptions to care. This national analysis of

Medicare patients illustrates the magnitude of this issue and what it means for patients

with three main findings. First, a higher rate of PCPs were shown to leave practice than

previously reported. Second, patients who lost PCPs decreased their use of primary care

and increased their use of specialty, urgent, ED, and inpatient care. Spending per patient

also increased, with small changes to clinical care. Third, patients of solo PCPs

experienced effects that were larger than patients of non-solo PCPs. Taken together,

these results suggest that non-solo clinics may be better able to mitigate adverse

consequences associated with the loss of a PCP. Partnerships between solo PCPs and

other organizations—such as independent practice associations, nearby primary care and

specialty clinics, and/or hospitals and health systems—could therefore ensure the well-

being of patients well after their longstanding PCP leaves clinical practice.

“Opioid Use in Older Adults and Medicare Part D” with Tisamarie Sherry and Nicole Maestas

Prescription opioid use among the elderly is prevalent and has increased substantially

over time. While there are many possible contributors to this shift, it has been

hypothesized that the expansion of prescription drug coverage through Medicare Part D

may have increased patients’ demand for opioid analgesics. Our principal finding is that

while care-seeking for pain increased after Part D’s implementation, provider-assigned

diagnoses of pain and opioid prescriptions did not correspondingly increase. This does

not support hypotheses that the high prevalence of opioid use observed in the elderly

Medicare population is due to Medicare Part D. Instead, we find that from 2000-2016

there was a large secular increase in opioid prescribing across all ages, not just among

the elderly, which lead to a high prevalence of opioid use among commercially insured

adults aged 50-64. This suggests that prescription opioid use among new Medicare

-4-

beneficiaries began prior to Medicare enrollment, and that the aging of privately insured

opioid users into Medicare has contributed to the increased prevalence of opioid use in

Medicare over time.

Working Papers: “Should There be Vertical Choice in Health Insurance Markets?” with Victoria Marone (job

market paper)

The availability of choice over coverage level––“vertical choice”––is widespread in

U.S. health insurance markets, but there is limited evidence of its effect on welfare. The

socially efficient level of insurance coverage, which optimally trades off risk protection

and moral hazard, likely varies across consumers. We show that in regulated

competitive health insurance markets, vertical choice should be offered only if

consumers with higher willingness to pay for insurance also have a higher efficient level

of coverage. We test for this condition empirically using administrative data from a

large employer and a model of consumer demand for health insurance and healthcare

utilization. We estimate substantial heterogeneity in the efficient coverage level across

consumers, but do not find that higher willingness to pay is associated with higher

efficient coverage level. Optimal regulation is to offer a single coverage level. Relative

to a status quo with vertical choice, offering only the optimal single level of coverage

increases welfare by $302 per household, equal to a fifth of the potential welfare loss

from adverse selection that would arise if the market were unregulated.

“The ActionHealthNYC Experiment: Effects of Insuring Undocumented Immigrants” with

Jonathan Gruber, Jin Yung Bae, and Rishi Sood

The ActionHealthNYC program was a year-long randomized control trial providing

health care to New York City unauthorized immigrants with incomes at or below 200%

of the federal poverty level. Using both survey and administrative data, we examine how

the intervention affects the populations' utilization of health care, health status, and

financial strain. We also significantly add to policymakers' understanding of

unauthorized populations' demographic characteristics and how they interact with the

health system since we precisely observe the unauthorized population. We find that

coordinating undocumented immigrants' care leads to a significant reduction in

emergency department use for high risk patients. This suggests that applying lessons

from our intervention nationwide could decrease high risk individuals' use of the

emergency room for non-urgent care.


2015- New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, Consultant

2012-2014 National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Assistant for Jonathan

Gruber

Teaching Experience

2016-2017 Grader, Harvard Business School, Technology and Operations

Management Unit

2010-2012 Lead math tutor, University of California, Berkeley

Fall, 2009 Teaching Assistant, US Government & Politics taught by Professor Kent

Brudney, Cuesta Community College

2008-2010 Head tutor, Cuesta Community College

-5-

Educational Materials for the Lay Community: The Immigrant Doctors Project (https://immigrantdoctors.org/): is a project by Harvard and

MIT Economics PhD students demonstrating where immigrant doctors from Iran, Libya,

Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen practice in the United States. We find that doctors from

these countries provide 14 million appointments each year across America, providing vital

services throughout the Rust Belt and Appalachia, especially in Ohio, Michigan, West

Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky. The results have supported several amicus briefs and have

been covered by many news sources including, but not limited to, CNN, NBC, Huffington

Post, Vox, FiveThirtyEight, and The Boston Globe.

Professional Experience:

2019 Presenter, Annual Conference of the American Society of Health

Economists

2018 Presenter and discussant, Annual Conference of the American Society of

Health Economists

2017 Presenter, AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting

Referee Service Journal of Health Economics, The American Journal of Managed Care,

The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation

Restricted Data Special Sworn Status at the U.S. Census Bureau

lisa abraham harvard universitydiscussant degryse, hans, karapetyan, artashes and karmakar, sudipto,...

Documents