New fellows of the Econometric Society

Congratulations to the 42 newly elected Fellows of the Econometric Society. That's up from 29 new Fellows elected in 2023, which is a step towards the goal (about which I blogged last year*) of electing more Fellows.  But elections depend on recognition that isn't equally available to every specialty and geography, so there are still many nominees and others who would be jewels in the crown of the Society.

"The Society is pleased to announce the election of 42 new Fellows of the Econometric Society. The 2024 Fellows of the Econometric Society follow.

Jerome Adda, Bocconi University 

Cristina Arellano, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (Secondary affiliation: Latin America)

Costas Arkolakis, Yale University

John Asker, University of California, Los Angeles (Secondary affiliation: Australasia)

David Atkin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Paul Beaudry, University of British Columbia

Sascha O. Becker, University of Warwick and Monash University

Sandra E. Black, Columbia University

Estelle Cantillon, Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Alessandra Casella, Columbia University

Thomas Chaney, University of Southern California

David Dorn, University of Zurich

Janice Eberly, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management

Kfir Eliaz, Tel Aviv University

Erica Field, Duke University

Andrea Galeotti, London Business School

Francisco Gallego, Pontificia Universidad Caatolica de Chile

Maitreesh Ghatak, London School of Economics (Secondary affiliation: Asia)

Olivier Gossner, CNRS - CREST; London School of Economics

Ayşe Ökten İmrohoroğlu, University of Southern California

Henrik Kleven, Princeton University

Kala Krishna, The Pennsylvania State University

Jeanne Lafortune, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Francesco Lippi, LUISS University; Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance

Deborah J. Lucas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Annamaria Lusardi, Stanford University

N. Gregory Mankiw, Harvard University

Kalina Manova, University College London

Elena Manresa, New York University

Enrique G. Mendoza, University of Pennsylvania (Secondary affiliation: Latin America)

Ismael Y. Mourifie, Washington University in St Louis (Secondary affiliation: Africa)

Barry Nalebuff, Yale School of Management

Andrew Newman, Boston University

Efe A. Ok, New York University

Guillermo Ordonez, University of Pennsylvania

Maria Petrova, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Mar Reguant, IAE-CSIC; Northwestern University

Diego Restuccia, University of Toronto

Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, University of California, Berkeley (Secondary affiliation: Latin America)

Andrea Weber, Central European University

Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Gabriel Zucman, Paris School of Economics; University of California, Berkeley

Finally, the Society would like to express its gratitude to the members of the 2024 Fellows Nominating Committee: Jan Eeckhout (chair), Mariacristina De Nardi, Marcela Eslava, Richard Holden, Yuichi Kitamura, Yaw Nyarko, and Nathan Nunn."

 

As I wrote last year, Congratulations again to the new Fellows, who have received the carefully considered and frugally awarded applause of their peers. 

##########

*Last year:

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Econometric Society Fellows (2023), procedures, and some thoughts on prizes in general

Is algebra for 8th graders repugnant because it leads to calculus?

 The tide is shifting back towards teaching algebra in San Francisco middle schools.

The WSJ has the story:

In the Battle Over Early Algebra, Parents Are Winning. After schools prevented students from taking algebra before high school to reduce racial inequities, parents in San Francisco and Cambridge, Mass., pushed back. By Sara Randazzo

"San Francisco’s public school district set off a yearslong fight with parents when it decided to prevent students from taking algebra until high school, an attempt to combat racial inequities in math by waiting until more students were ready.

"Parents in favor of letting students start in middle school launched petitions, a ballot measure and a lawsuit, sparring with school officials over questions of equity and privilege.

"Now, it appears the parents who are pushing for eighth-grade algebra are winning.

"The San Francisco Unified School District said Friday that it would reverse its decade-old policy, a move that comes after a similar recent change by the school system in Cambridge, Mass., home to Harvard University.

"When to start students on algebra is a contentious topic because the subject is the gateway to a series of math classes culminating in calculus, which many see as crucial for STEM careers and selective college admissions. Students aspiring to take calculus before graduating have traditionally begun this sequence in eighth grade.

“A lot of the attention to eighth-grade algebra is based upon the feeling that that’s the point at which the race is won,” said Thurston Domina, an education professor at the University of North Carolina.

"In San Francisco, the district long argued that the policy of restricting algebra to high school wasn’t done to hold children back, but to reduce the inequities that result from sorting students by math ability at too young an age.

...

"Nationally, 48% of Asian students reach calculus before graduation, compared with 22% of white students, 14% of Latino students and 11% of Black students.

...

"Last year, California passed a new math framework that de-emphasizes early algebra access. Earlier drafts discouraged any eighth-grade algebra, citing the San Francisco school district’s policy as a more equitable approach. After hundreds of public comments and rounds of revisions, the final framework says students should accelerate in math if they are ready."

#########

I'm reminded of the wisecrack that says that fundamentalists disapprove of pre-marital sex because it leads to dancing, and they don't like dancing.

In this case, education reformers disapproved of 8th grade algebra because it leads to calculus...

Harm reduction is not a panacea: drug use and drug policy in Portugal, and San Francisco

 The Washington Post has a story about Portugal, and the SF Chronicle has one as well. Both stories touch on the tensions between treating drug addicts with respect, and assuring that cities remain safe and livable.  

Here's the Washington Post:

Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts  By Anthony Faiola and Catarina Fernandes Martins

"Portugal decriminalized all drug use, including marijuana, cocaine and heroin, in an experiment that inspired similar efforts elsewhere, but now police are blaming a spike in the number of people who use drugs for a rise in crime. In one neighborhood, state-issued paraphernalia — powder-blue syringe caps, packets of citric acid for diluting heroin — litters sidewalks outside an elementary school.

"Porto’s police have increased patrols to drug-plagued neighborhoods. But given existing laws, there’s only so much they can do. 

...

"Portugal became a model for progressive jurisdictions around the world embracing drug decriminalization, such as the state of Oregon, but now there is talk of fatigue. Police are less motivated to register people who misuse drugs and there are year-long waits for state-funded rehabilitation treatment even as the number of people seeking help has fallen dramatically. The return in force of visible urban drug use, meanwhile, is leading the mayor and others here to ask an explosive question: Is it time to reconsider this country’s globally hailed drug model?

“These days in Portugal, it is forbidden to smoke tobacco outside a school or a hospital. It is forbidden to advertise ice cream and sugar candies. And yet, it is allowed for [people] to be there, injecting drugs,” said Rui Moreira, Porto’s mayor. “We’ve normalized it.”

...

" In the United States alone, overdose deaths, fueled by opioids and deadly synthetic fentanyl, topped 100,000 in both 2021 and 2022 — or double what it was in 2015. According to the National Institutes of Health, 85 percent of the U.S. prison population has an active substance use disorder or was jailed for a crime involving drugs or drug use.

"Across the Atlantic in Europe, tiny Portugal appeared to harbor an answer. In 2001, it threw out years of punishment-driven policies in favor of harm reduction by decriminalizing consumption of all drugs for personal use, including the purchase and possession of 10-day supplies. Consumption remains technically against the law, but instead of jail, people who misuse drugs are registered by police and referred to “dissuasion commissions.” 

...Other countries have moved to channel drug offenses out of the penal system too. But none in Europe institutionalized that route more than Portugal. Within a few years, HIV transmission rates via syringes — one the biggest arguments for decriminalization — had plummeted. From 2000 to 2008, prison populations fell by 16.5 percent. Overdose rates dropped as public funds flowed from jails to rehabilitation. There was no evidence of a feared surge in use.

...

"But in the first substantial way since decriminalization passed, some Portuguese voices are now calling for a rethink of a policy that was long a proud point of national consensus. Urban visibility of the drug problem, police say, is at its worst point in decades

...

"A newly released national survey suggests the percent of adults who have used illicit drugs increased to 12.8 percent in 2022, up from 7.8 in 2001, though still below European averages.

...

"Porto’s mayor and other critics, including neighborhood activist groups, are not calling for a wholesale repeal of decriminalization — but rather, a limited re-criminalization in urban areas and near schools and hospitals to address rising numbers of people misusing drugs."

...

"After years of economic crisis, Portugal decentralized its drug oversight operation in 2012. A funding drop from 76 million euros ($82.7 million) to 16 million euros ($17.4 million) forced Portugal’s main institution to outsource work previously done by the state to nonprofit groups,

...

"Twenty years ago, “we were quite successful in dealing with the big problem, the epidemic of heroin use and all the related effects,” Goulão said in an interview with The Washington Post. “But we have had a kind of disinvestment, a freezing in our response … and we lost some efficacy.”

*******

And here are some related paragraphs about San Francisco, in a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about a concentration of drug dealers from Honduras:

THIS IS THE HOMETOWN OF SAN FRANCISCO’S DRUG DEALERS By Megan Cassidy and Gabrielle Lurie |  July 10, 2023

"Like many other U.S. cities, San Francisco shifted years ago to treating drug use more like a disease than a crime. The heavy policing approach of the War on Drugs era failed to slow dealers or decrease demand while overcrowding jails and disproportionately punishing people of color, studies show.

"Now one of the most progressive cities in the nation is fracturing over concerns that it has become too permissive. What to do about the Honduran dealers is a key political issue as a major citywide election approaches in 2024.

"On a weekday afternoon in June, a man in his early 30s lay motionless on a SoMa sidewalk outside the Federal Building. On his right, a dozen users smoked fentanyl and crack cocaine or hung bent at the waist, heads suspended at their knees. To his left, a handful of dealers, cloaked in black but for the space around their eyes, continued selling while a passerby revived the man with Narcan, the nasal-spray antidote to opioid overdoses, and as paramedics arrived to treat him a few minutes later.

“I’m so mad at them for ruining my neighborhood,” said Kevin DeMattia, who owns Emperor Norton’s bar and has lived in the Tenderloin for the past 25 years. “Businesses are dying because people don’t want to come to the Tenderloin.  They’re ruining the neighborhood in so many ways. They’re poisoning people. … They’re this cancer, this aggressive, metastasizing cancer on the Tenderloin — the dealers and the addicts.”

The (American) market for assault rifles

There was a time when Americans thought that rifles were for hunting game, and assault weapons were banned.  That has changed.

The Washington Post has the story:

The gun that divides a nation. The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche. By Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton 

"The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller.

"The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers’ rifle in the late 1950s. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.

...

"Today, the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, industry figures indicate. About 1 in 20 U.S. adults — or roughly 16 million people — own at least one AR-15, according to polling data from The Washington Post and Ipsos.

...

"One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama, introduced a bill in February to declare the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”

"It also has become a stark symbol of the nation’s gun violence epidemic. Ten of the 17 deadliest U.S. mass shootings since 2012 have involved AR-15s.

...

"the U.S. firearms industry came to embrace the gun’s political and cultural significance as a marketing advantage as it grasped for new revenue.

"The shift began after the 2004 expiration of a federal assault weapons ban that had blocked the sales of many semiautomatic rifles. 

...

"Today, the industry estimates that at least 20 million AR-15s are stored and stashed across the country.

"More than 13.7 million of those have been manufactured by U.S. gunmakers just since the Newtown massacre in late 2012"

*************

NPR puts some history into perspective:

The Nashville school shooting highlights the partisan divide over gun legislation , by Ron Elving, April 1, 2023

"The Stockton schoolyard shooting in 1989

...

"The Stockton story was national news, featured on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "Armed America." Public alarm at Stockton pushed the legislature to be the first to prohibit the sale of assault weapons that year.

"Stockton was still reverberating three years later when California, the home of Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, sent two liberal Democrats, both women, to the U.S. Senate It also stocked its legislature and congressional delegation with big Democratic majorities and gave its Electoral College vote to Bill Clinton.

"One of the two women senators elected that year was former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who had first become mayor when her predecessor was shot to death in his office in the 1970s. She had long been outspoken on gun control and brought that commitment to Washington, D.C., becoming one of the principal sponsors of a bill banning assault weapons ban in her first year.

"The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994

"Feinstein and her cosponsors wanted to end the sale or manufacture of 14 categories of semi-automatic assault weapons. They also wanted to go beyond the California ban by outlawing copycat versions of earlier models and high-volume detachable magazines that held more than 10 rounds.

"But the bill did not address the status of an estimated one million assault weapons nationwide. "Essentially what this legislation does is create a freeze," she said. She lamented the resistance that rarely produced actual arguments among her colleagues. She said had never realized "the power of the NRA in this town."

...

"There were literally hundreds of exceptions included in the final version, distressing many of the bill's supporters. But getting the ban into the crime package to be passed in that Congress (with billions in new police funding) required many compromises. Ultimately, to get to a majority, Feinstein would have to accept a sunset provision by which her restrictions would need reenactment after 10 years.

...

"So when the 10-year expiration date on Feinstein's bill arrived in 2004, Democrats were no longer the majority party in Congress and all attempts to extend the 1994 ban were unavailing.

...

"The Sandy Hook Test in 2012

The next time serious energy developed behind renewing the ban was in the winter of 2012-2013. Barack Obama had just been reelected president, and the Senate was still in Democratic hands.

"Just as important, the effort to address the gun issue had been given an enormous boost by a new and more horrific tragedy.

"On Dec. 12, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20 — described by counselors as fascinated with mass shootings — killed his mother and took guns she had legally purchased to a Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"There he shot dead 20 children, ages 6 and 7. He also killed six adults on the school staff. Then he killed himself.

"The national shock at the time is hard to appreciate a decade later, as there have been so many like it. 

...

"But the 113th Congress came and went in 2013 and 2014 without passing notable gun legislation. A compromise measure on background checks, offered by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, got 54 votes in the Senate but needed 60.

"As for prospects for reviving gun legislation in the current Congress, the situation looks much as it did a decade ago. The 118th Congress has a Senate where Democrats have a nominal majority that depends on the cooperation of several independents. Feinstein is still in the Senate, the longest-serving incumbent Democrat, but planning to retire next year.

"The current House, like that of a decade ago, has a Republican majority led by a speaker whose power depends on placating a hardcore group known as the House Freedom Caucus."

SITE 2023 Conference Call For Papers

 There are 18 sessions at Stanford SITE this summer, something for everyone. (You can submit papers at the link.)  Regular readers of this blog may be particularly interested in Session 3: Market Design; Session 4: Dynamic Games, Contracts, and Markets; Session 5: Psychology and Economics; Session 6: Experimental Economics, all described below.

SITE 2023 Conference Call For Papers

Session 1: Empirical Implementation of Theoretical Models of Strategic Interaction and Dynamic Behavior

Wednesday, July 12, 2023, 9:00am - Friday, July 14, 2023, 5:00pm

Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

The unifying theme of the papers for this session is a theoretical model of an economic interaction and an empirical implementation of this theoretical model using actual data.  This year will have a more concentrated focus on topics where the theoretical economic model must also respect both technology and legal institutions governing the economic environment as well as the optimizing behavior and strategic behavior of economic agents. For example, in the case of wholesale electricity markets with significant amounts intermittent renewables and storage devices that can either inject or withdraw electricity, simplified economic models that do not account for the physics of power flows, non-convexities dispatchable generation units operate (such as start-up costs, limited range of output levels, and limited rates of change in their output levels), and how forward financial markets can limit the impact of these non-convexities and intermittency risks are increasingly ill-suited for policy analysis or the assessment of market design changes. Recent experience with the simplified markets for both natural gas and electricity in Australia, Europe and the United States provide ample real-world evidence of the need for economic models that incorporate these factors for effective policy analysis and market design.  There is an increasing number of engineers that recognize strategic behavior by market participants that understand the physics of power systems and natural gas systems operation can create economically and environmentally harmful market outcomes.

The goal of this session is to encourage cross-field interaction between the increasing number of engineers with some knowledge of economic models of strategic behavior and economists that understand how to use data to estimate theory-based econometric models of strategic behavior in complex economic environments but do not understand how to incorporate into the empirical models the physical constraints and legal framework that are having a first-order impact on market participant behavior and market outcomes. There are many other examples where these same issues arise in modeling strategic behavior such as air travel and freight transportation where this same interaction between engineers and economist would be particularly fruitful.  The session welcomes these kinds of papers from both economists and engineers as well.

ORGANIZED BY: Christoph Graf, New York University, Frank Wolak, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION April 15, 2023

Session 2: International Macroeconomics and Finance

Monday, July 31, 2023, 9:00am - Tuesday, August 1, 2023, 5:00pm

This session is on international macroeconomics and finance, focusing on global capital allocations, the role of the dollar, the emergence of China, and tax havens. Both empirics and theory.

ORGANIZED BY: Antonio Coppola, Stanford University  Matteo Maggiori, Stanford University  Jesse Schreger, Columbia University  Chenzi Xu, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 1, 2023

Session 3: Market Design

August 3, 2023, 9:00am - Friday, August 4, 2023, 5:00pm

Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

This session seeks to bring together researchers in economics, computer science, and operations research working on market design.  We’re aiming for a roughly even split between theory papers and empirical and experimental papers.  In addition to faculty members, we also invite graduate students on the job market to submit their paper for shorter graduate student talks.

ORGANIZED BY: Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University  Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University  Ravi Jagadeesan, Stanford University  Shengwu Li, Harvard University  Ellen Muir, Harvard University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 1, 2023

Session 4: Dynamic Games, Contracts, and Markets

Monday, August 7, 2023, 9:00am - Wednesday, August 9, 2023, 5:00pm

This session is to bring together microeconomic theorists working on dynamic games and contracts with more applied theorists working in macro, finance, organizational economics, and other fields. There are two aims. First, this is a venue to discuss the latest questions and techniques facing researchers working in dynamic games and contracts. Second, to foster interdisciplinary discussion between scholars working on parallel topics in different disciplines and help raise awareness among theorists of the open questions in other fields.

ORGANIZED BY: Arjada Bardhi, Duke University  Simon Board, University of California Los Angeles  Erik Madsen, New York University  Joao Ramos, University of Southern California  Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford University  Takuo Sugaya, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION  April 15, 2023

Session 5: Psychology and Economics

Tuesday, August 8, 2023, 9:00am - Wednesday, August 9, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street, Stanford

This session brings together researchers working on issues at the intersection of psychology and economics. The segment will focus on evidence of and explanations for non-standard choice patterns, as well as the positive and normative implications of those patterns in a wide range of economic decision-making contexts, such as lifecycle consumption and savings, workplace productivity, health, and prosocial behavior. The presentations will frequently build upon insights from other disciplines, including psychology and sociology. Theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies will be included. 

ORGANIZED BY: B. Douglas Bernheim, Stanford University  John Beshears, Harvard University  Vincent Crawford, University of Oxford & University of California San Diego  David Laibson, Harvard University  Ulrike Malmendier, University of California Berkeley

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION  May 8, 2023

Session 6: Experimental Economics

Thursday, August 10, 2023, 9:00am - Friday, August 11, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street, S

This session will be dedicated to advances in experimental economics combining laboratory and field-experimental methodologies with theoretical and psychological insights on decision-making, strategic interaction and policy. We are inviting papers in lab experiments, field experiments and their combination that test theory, demonstrate the importance of psychological phenomena, and explore social and policy issues. In addition to senior faculty members, invited presenters will include junior faculty as well as graduate students.

ORGANIZED BY:  Christine Exley, Harvard University  Kirby Nielsen, California Institute of Technology  Muriel Niederle, Stanford University  Alvin Roth, Stanford University  Lise Vesterlund, University of Pittsburgh

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 8, 2023

Session 7: Political Economic Theory

Thursday, August 10, 2023, 9:00am - Friday, August 11, 2023, 5:00am

LOCATION: Stanford Graduate School of Business, M104,

This session will bring together researchers from political science and economics who apply economic theory to the study of politics. This includes work in the areas of voting theory, political bargaining, policy-making and implementation, lobbying and regulation, and the media and information environment in which politics takes place. The session will encourage productive dialogue between researchers in economic theory that have developed ideas and tools relevant to the study of politics, and those in political science who study questions and topics that can be addressed by economic theory.

ORGANIZED BY: Nina Bobkova, Rice University  Steven Callander, Stanford University Hülya Eraslan, Rice University  Dana Foarta, Stanford University  Federica Izzo, University of California San Diego

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 10, 2023

Session 8: Politically Feasible Environmental and Energy Policy

Monday, August 14, 2023, 9:00am - Tuesday, August 15, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: Landau Economics Building, 

This session will feature empirical papers evaluating environmental and energy (E&E) policy decisions by both governments and firms. The session will focus on papers that deliver useful and politically feasible insights on how to make E&E policy more efficient and equitable. We welcome papers studying topics such as the following:

Quantitative evaluations of past or potential future E&E policy changes, 

How to improve the public appeal of economically efficient E&E policies,

Evaluations of voluntary corporate actions such as net-zero commitments and ESG investing screens, and

Empirical evaluations of utility programs, such as energy efficiency, load management, and pricing reform.

One potential downstream impact of this session could be a concrete set of politically feasible suggestions for efficient and equitable E&E policy reforms for governments and firms.

In addition to standard paper presentations, we will leave time for structured conversations to encourage new interactions and collaborations.

ORGANIZED BY: Hunt Allcott, Stanford University  Meredith Fowlie, University of California Berkeley  Lawrence Goulder, Stanford University  Joe Shapiro, University of California Berkeley

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 15, 2023

Session 9: Climate Finance, Innovation, and Challenges for Policy

Wednesday, August 16, 2023, 9:00am - Thursday, August 17, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

The session would bring together research on how to best finance companies that innovate on green technologies, the pricing of climate risks in financial markets, banks' exposures to climate risk and their regulation, the impact of monetary policy on climate change, and policies more broadly that help mitigate climate changes.

ORGANIZED BY:

Juliane Begenau, Stanford University    Stefano Giglio, Yale University  Lars Peter Hansen, University of Chicago  Monika Piazzesi, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 15, 2023

Session 10: Fiscal Sustainability

Monday, August 21, 2023, 9:00am - Tuesday, August 22, 2023, 5:00pm

As governments emerge from the pandemic, they are dealing with major challenges in regards to fiscal sustainability. We want to organize a session that focuses on topics at the intersection of monetary policy, fiscal policy and sustainability, and the valuation of government debt. What role do central banks play in creating fiscal space for governments? Is there a possibility of fiscal dominance going forward? How does this possibility affect asset prices and the creation of safe assets? Could the erosion of the U.S. fiscal position threaten its reserve currency role? 

ORGANIZED BY: Francesco Bianchi, Johns Hopkins University  Arvind Krishnamurthy, Stanford University  Hanno Nico Lustig, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 22, 2023

Session 11: Financial Regulation

Monday, August 28, 2023, 9:00am - Wednesday, August 30, 2023, 12:00pm

LOCATION: Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

This session discusses the latest advances in theoretical and empirical issues related to financial regulation, defined broadly. Topics will include, but will not be limited to, connections of regulation for intermediaries, households and policymakers in the US and outside the US. 

ORGANIZED BY:  Gregor Matvos, Northwestern University  Amit Seru, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 29, 2023

Session 12: IO of Healthcare and Credit Markets

Wednesday, August 30, 2023, 1:00pm - Thursday, August 31, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

This session will bring together researchers working on the IO of healthcare and credit markets. These markets share similar features, including selection, market power, behavioral consumers, among others. We believe there are opportunities for fruitful interaction between researchers studying these environments. 

ORGANIZED BY: Jose Ignacio Cuesta, Stanford University  Liran Einav, Stanford University  Gaston Illanes, Northwestern University Pietro Tebaldi, Columbia University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 22, 2023

Session 13: The Macroeconomics of Uncertainty and Volatility

Wednesday, September 6, 2023, 9:00am - Friday, September 8, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building, 366 Galvez Street 

The session will cover recent work on the causes and effects of changes in volatility and uncertainty. This can cover everything from the COVID pandemic, Monetary, Fiscal shocks to Wars, and Regulatory changes. This session will focus on measuring changes in uncertainty, evaluating its mechanisms and impacts on firms, consumers, national or global economies, discussing policy responses and any other related topics. The mix of academics and policy makers across multiple institutions reflects this broad interest. Papers or presentation slides are required (abstracts only will not be accepted).

ORGANIZED BY:  Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University  Steven Davis, University of Chicago  Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, University of Pennsylvania  Zheng Liu, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco  Bo Sun, University of Virginia  Nancy R. Xu, Boston College

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION June 5, 2023

Session 14: New Frontiers in Asset Pricing

Wednesday, September 6, 2023, 9:00am - Friday, September 8, 2023, 5:00pm

This session is for asset pricing papers on the frontier of the discipline. Particular areas of focus are macrofinance, computation, machine learning, and climate finance. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following: asset pricing, investor heterogeneity, learning and ambiguity, new preference structures for pricing models, or using machine learning to understand the cross-section of returns. A particular area of interest is climate finance, where both climate change and the policy responses to climate change present new risks in asset pricing markets.  Topics of interest include asset pricing with heterogeneous agents and disaster risks, credit risk modeling for possibly stranded assets, the implications of integrated assessment models for financial risks, and methodological advances in solution methods for complex analyses of climate finance models. As the analysis of such models often requires the use of computational methods, we encourage submissions that develop and make use of new numerical techniques.

ORGANIZED BY: Kenneth Judd, Hoover Institution at Stanford University Walter Pohl, Norwegian School of Economics Karl Schmedders, IMD Lausanne Ole Wilms, University of Hamburg & Tilburg University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION June 5, 2023

Session 15: The Micro and Macro of Labor Markets

Thursday, September 7, 2023, 9:00am - Friday, September 8, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

The idea of this session is to bring together labor economists and macroeconomists with interests in labor markets with two goals. The first goal is to be a venue to discuss the latest research about labor markets. The second goal is to promote intellectual exchange among scholars working on similar topics, but with different approaches. Specific topics will depend on the submissions. 

ORGANIZED BY: Gregor Jarosch, Duke University  Isaac Sorkin, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION May 15, 2023

Session 16: Frontiers of Macroeconomic Research

Monday, September 11, 2023, 9:00am - Wednesday, September 13, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

The goal of the session is to bring together researchers working in macroeconomics, broadly defined. The session will focus on both short-run macroeconomic fluctuations, as well as open questions in economic growth. We welcome submissions that are quantitative, theoretical or empirical in nature. We hope that the diverse research topics within macroeconomics covered in the session will foster engaging and productive discussion. 

ORGANIZED BY: Adrien Auclert, Stanford University Luigi Bocola, Stanford University  Kurt Mitman, Stockholm University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION June 12, 2023

Session 17: Labor Markets and Policies

Thursday, September 14, 2023, 9:00am - Saturday, September 16, 2023, 5:00pm

This session offers a forum for scholars interested in the use of general equilibrium models disciplined by micro data to carefully analyze important labor market issues and reforms to address them. The use of these models to conduct comprehensive quantitative analyses of policy reforms is still in its infancy. The goal of this session is to bring together a diverse group of scholars, both young and established, engaged in frontier research in this area. The session is organized around three themes, all of which have implications for the observed increase in wage and wealth inequality in the United States. The first theme is about the dynamic effects of increases in the minimum wage and of the taxation of wealth of the types now being discussed and implemented in the United States, in both the short and the long run. The second theme is about how the growth and diffusion of automation will lead to changes in the structure of wages, work, and employment in developed industrial economies. The third theme is about the effect on labor markets of the adoption of trade reforms that differentially expose some sectors of an economy to much more intense international competition.

ORGANIZED BY:  Erik Hurst, University of Chicago  Patrick Kehoe, Stanford University Elena Pastorino, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION June 30, 2023

Session 18: Gender

Friday, September 15, 2023, 9:00am - Saturday, September 16, 2023, 5:00pm

LOCATION: Landau Economics Building, 579 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305

This session will be dedicated to understanding how gender influences economic outcomes and decision-making. We invite submissions of papers whose main focus is on gender, regardless of field, to foster dialogue across fields. In addition to senior faculty members, invited presenters will include junior faculty as well as graduate students. 

ORGANIZED BY:

Alejandro Martinez-Marquina, University of Southern California  Muriel Niederle, Stanford University  Alessandra Voena, Stanford University

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSION June 16, 2023

Return to previous school assignment policies (in some respects) under New York City's new mayor

 In NYC, the pendulum is still swinging between inclusive admissions as measured by demographics and determined by lottery, and meritocratic admissions as measured by tests and grades.

The NYT has the story:

In a Reversal, New York City Tightens Admissions to Some Top Schools. The city loosened selection criteria during the pandemic, policies some parents protested as unfair and others hoped would reduce racial disparities. By Troy Closson

"New York City’s selective middle schools can once again use grades to choose which students to admit, the school chancellor, David C. Banks, announced on Thursday, rolling back a pandemic-era moratorium that had opened the doors of some of the city’s most elite schools to more low-income students.

...

"New York City has used selective admissions for public schools more than any school district in the country. About a third of the city’s 900 or so middle and high schools had some kind of admissions requirement before the pandemic disrupted many measures to sort students by academic performance.

...

"Selective high schools will also be able to prioritize top-performing students.

"The sweeping move will end the random lottery for middle schools, a major shift after the previous administration ended the use of grades and test scores two years ago. At the city’s competitive high schools, where changes widened the pool of eligible applicants, priority for seats will be limited to top students whose grades are an A average.

...

"The announcement came as New York City’s education officials are confronting multiple crises in the wake of the pandemic, complicating a dilemma that has bedeviled previous administrations: how to create more equitable schools, while trying to prevent middle-class families from abandoning the system.

"State standardized test scores released Wednesday showed that many students fell behind, particularly in math, and that many Hispanic, Black and low-income students continue to lag far behind their white, Asian and higher-income peers. At the same time, the district is bleeding students: Roughly 120,000 families have left traditional public schools over the past five years. Some have left the system, and others have gone to charter schools."

*****

And here's the Washington Post:

New York City, embracing merit, rolls back diversity plan for schools By Laura Meckler

"New York City schools announced Thursday they would allow middle schools to consider academics in admitting students to some of the city’s most sought-after programs, unraveling pandemic-era rules aimed at injecting racial and economic diversity into a segregated system.

"High schools would also rely more heavily on merit and less on the luck of a lottery under the new plan, reversing the previous administration’s direction as a new mayor takes command of the nation’s largest school system.

...

"In San Francisco, admissions into the elite Lowell High School were converted from merit-based into a lottery system. As in New York, though, the change was reversed — in this case, after several school board members were recalled, in part over this issue.

"In Northern Virginia, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology also shifted from an admissions test to a “holistic review” that considers several factors, a move that is being challenged in court and has faced resistance from the Republican governor and his administration.

...

"In New York, the debate is particularly fiery because students are required to apply to middle and high school, and before the pandemic, about a third of the city’s 900 middle and high schools included requirements for admission — such as grades, test scores, attendance and behavior records. 

...

"That system was largely converted into a lottery under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

"For high school, applicants were put into tiers based on their grades. But the top tier included about 60 percent of all students, who had the first crack at the top schools. Competitive schools drew acceptances randomly from this group.

...

"Now, under the new system announced Thursday, it will be harder to get into the top tier, though once in that group, it will still be a lottery. To get into the top tier, students must be in the top 15 percent of their school or of the city overall, and they must have at least a 90 percent on grades.

"Test scores, which had been used for years but also criticized as biased, will not be considered. Banks said exam scores are a flawed measure but grades are “still a very solid indicator of how you are showing up as a student,” even for students who face hardships at home."

San Francisco's Lowell High School admissions will return to merit-based system

 The SF Chronicle has the latest twist in this involved story over San Francisco's elite Lowell High School.

Lowell High School admissions will return to merit-based system after S.F. school board vote  by Jill Tucker

"After nearly two years of intense and bitter debate, test scores and grades will once again determine which San Francisco students are admitted to Lowell High School after the city’s school board decided to return to the merit-based admission system Wednesday.

"In a 4-3 vote, the school board decided to restore the previous merit process after two years of using a lottery-based system. The vote will now apply to freshman entering in the fall of 2023 as well as future classes, unless the board takes further action in the future to change the admission process.

...

"The board’s decision was the latest inflection point in the nearly two-year saga featuring feuding public officials, a lawsuit and accusations of racism over which students are eligible to attend Lowell, long considered one of the highest-performing public high schools in the country.

"The board first approved a switch to a lottery system in October 2020, citing a lack of academic data given the switch to distance learning earlier that year.

"A board majority then made that decision permanent four months later, citing a lack of diversity and racism at the elite academic schools. But the hurried vote sparked a lawsuit and then a judge’s ruling that the district violated laws related to the Brown Act, which regulate public meetings.

"The board then had to backpedal, reversing the decision before extending the lottery process for another year."

***********

Earlier:

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Lowell High School principal resigns in San Francisco, in latest setback for elite high school

Lowell High School principal resigns in San Francisco, in latest setback for elite high school

Elite public schools, which admit students by exam, are under attack in many places.

In San Francisco, that would be Lowell high school, whose principal has just resigned.  SFGate has the story.

Principal at Lowell High School abruptly resigns, rebuking SFUSD in resignation email  by Joshua Bote

"The principal of Lowell High School — the highly selective, highly controversial school at the center of this year’s San Francisco school board recalls — has resigned, rebuking the school district in a farewell email sent Wednesday.

...

“While I deeply appreciate you all for the community and support I have received in the last three years, the decision to leave SFUSD is solely based on my desire to apply my passion for education in a district that values its students and staff through well organized systems, fiscal responsibility and sound instructional practices as the path towards equity,” Dominguez wrote in the email.

"Statewide budget cuts, due in large part to decreasing student attendance, have hit San Francisco Unified hard this year, with Lowell being affected by a pause of funding to its Advanced Placement program — perhaps where the allusion to “fiscal responsibility” in Dominguez’s email comes from.

"In the past year, Lowell made national headlines when the decision to replace its GPA- and test score-based admissions policy with a districtwide lottery was approved by the previous school board, receiving criticism from parents who said that they were “caught off guard” by the decision. The move, intended to increase racial equity and diversity on campus, was put on hold by a San Francisco court in November 2021."

**************

Here are some earlier related stories about the troubles at Lowell and in SF:

More School Board Drama Looming, as Lowell High Sticks to Lottery-Based Admissions Another Year  2 DECEMBER 2021

"The SFUSD superintendent says there’s not enough time to implement a court order to re-vote on admissions changes at Lowell. That’s likely to further infuriate the alumni groups that sued the district to win that court order."

 ------------

The SF Chronicle covered the first act of this play in three acts:

S.F.'s elite Lowell High School would permanently switch to lottery admission under fast-track proposal  by Jill Tucker  Jan. 30, 2021

"San Francisco’s elite academic public high school would no longer admit students based on top grades and test scores, and instead use a random lottery system for admission, if the school board approves a measure fast-tracked for a vote."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And here's an earlier post that touches on similar developments in Boston and NYC:

Monday, March 22, 2021

Elite public schools move away from exams

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2021

Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2021

DATE October 21-23, 2021 (Times in EDT)

ORGANIZERS Michael Ostrovsky and Parag A. Pathak

NBER conferences are by invitation. All participants are expected to comply with the NBER's Conference Code of Conduct.

Thursday, October 21

12:00 pm

Randomized FIFO Mechanisms 

Francisco Castro, UCLA

Hongyao Ma, Columbia University

Hamid Nazerzadeh, University of Southern California

Chiwei Yan, University of Washington

12:45 pm

The Value of Excess Supply in Spatial Matching Markets 

Mohammad Akbarpour, Stanford University

Yeganeh Alimohammadi, Stanford University

Shengwu Li, Harvard University

Amin Saberi, Stanford University

1:30 pm

Break

2:00 pm

Choices and Outcomes in Assignment Mechanisms: The Allocation of Deceased Donor Kidneys 

Nikhil Agarwal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Charles Hodgson, Yale University

Paulo J. Somaini, Stanford University and NBER

2:45 pm

Price Discovery in Waiting Lists: A Connection to Stochastic Gradient Descent 

Itai Ashlagi, Stanford University

Jacob D. Leshno, University of Chicago

Amin Saberi, Stanford University

Pengyu Qian, Columbia Business School

3:30 pm

Adjourn

Friday, October 22

12:00 pm

Linear Pricing Mechanisms without Convexity 

Paul Milgrom, Stanford University

Mitchell L. Watt, Stanford University

12:45 pm

The Equilibrium Existence Duality: Equilibrium with Indivisibilities and Income Effects 

Elizabeth C. Baldwin, University of Oxford

Omer Edhan, University of Manchester

Ravi Jagadeesan, Stanford University

Paul D. Klemperer, University of Oxford

Alexander Teytelboym, University of Oxford

1:30 pm

Break

2:00 pm

Flow Trading 

Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

Peter Cramton, University of Cologne

Albert "Pete" Kyle, University of Maryland

Jeongmin (Mina) Lee, Washington University in St. Louis

David Malec, University of Maryland

2:45 pm

Designing a Combinatorial Financial Options Market 

Xintong Wang, Harvard University

David Pennock, Microsoft Research

Nikhil Devanur, Amazon

David M. Rothschild, Microsoft Research

Biaoshuai Tao, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Michael Wellman, University of Michigan

3:30 pm

Adjourn

Saturday, October 23

12:00 pm

Choice Screen Auctions 

Michael Ostrovsky, Stanford University and NBER

12:45 pm

Mechanism Design meets Priority Design: Redesigning the US Army's Branching Process 

Kyle Greenberg, United States Military Academy at West Point

Parag A. Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College

1:30 pm

Break

2:00 pm

Decentralizing Centralized Matching Markets: Implications from Early Offers in University Admissions  

Julien Grenet, Paris School of Economics

Yinghua He, Rice University

Dorothea Kübler, WZB

2:45 pm

Mechanism and Priority Design for Distributional Objectives: An Application to Decrease Inequalities in Access to Experienced Teachers 

Julien Combe, CREST - Ecole polytechnique

Umut M. Dur, North Carolina State University

Olivier Tercieux, Paris School of Economics

Camille Terrier, University of Lausanne

M. Utku Ünver, Boston College

3:30 pm

Adjourn

Peter Lorentzen interviews me about market design (podcast)

 Peter Lorentzen interviews me about market design, and my book Who Gets What and Why. (We have an interesting conversation on market design and my career, not closely related to the book...)

"In our interview, we range far beyond the examples from the book to discuss the implications of his work for the design of tech’s market-making “platform” businesses like Airbnb, Amazon, Lyft, or Uber, the challenges he faces when countries or people view some kinds of transactions as “repugnant” or morally unacceptable, and the reasons why San Francisco’s school district (unlike Boston’s or New York’s) chose not to implement the un-gameable school choice plan his team devised for them.

"Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics."

;

Stanford celebrates Irene Lo

 Stanford's School of Engineering celebrates Irene Lo, in an interview and video:

"Engineer Irene Lo studies markets, but not traditional marketplaces based in cash.

Instead, she studies markets for goods/resources that place a high value on social goods like diversity, fairness and equity.

Thus, Lo came to help San Francisco create an algorithm to assign kids more fairly to public schools across geographic, social, racial and economic boundaries. As it turns out, math is just the first step. The most challenging part was getting families to trust in the system, begetting a multi-year community engagement effort.

Lo is now turning her attention to other markets with social impact, like her work on the system that places medical students in residency programs across the country or one trying to make the palm oil supply chain fairer for farmers.

Listen in as Irene Lo explains the changing face of markets to host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everythingpodcast. Listen and subscribe here."