5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences, August 19-23

I'll be travelling to Germany to meet with students from many universities around the world at the

5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences

19-23 August 2014

Lindau Meeting of the Laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

The 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences will provide an open exchange of economic expertise and inspire cross-cultural and inter-generational encounters among economists from all over the world. The diverse methodological approaches to economics will be widely discussed between the Laureates and the young participants.

There will be approximately 450 young economists from more than 80 countries participating in the 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences.

Programme

The scientific programme of the 5th Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences will comprise lectures and panel discussions (accessible for all registered meeting participants and guests), as well as discussion sessions and master classes (both accessible only for participating Nobel Laureates and young scientists).

A detailed version of the programme including all lecture titles of the participating laureates with links to their abstracts is available in the Lindau Mediatheque. To get an overview of the meeting schedule you can also download the programme structure.

Here's the formal part of the program:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20TH

08:30 - 09:00	Lecture	Lars Peter Hansen Uncertainty and Valuation
09:00 - 09:30	Lecture	Alvin E. Roth Repugnant Markets and Prohibited Transactions
09:30 - 10:00	Lecture	Edmund S. Phelps Bringing Dynamism, Homegrown Innovation and Human Flourishing into Economics
10:00 - 10:30	Coffee Break
10:30 - 11:00	Lecture	Christopher A. Sims Inflation, Fear of Inflation, and Public Debt
11:00 - 11:30	Lecture	Vernon L. Smith Rethinking Market Experiments in the Shadow of Recessions: The Good and the Sometimes Ugly; Propositions on Recessions
11:30 - 14:00	Lunch Break
14:00 - 15:00	Opening Ceremony
15:00 - 15:30	Break
16:00 - 17:30	Discussion	Discussions  Discussions with Laureates Hansen, Phelps, Roth, Sims, Smith
17:00 - 20:00	Break
20:00 - 23:00	International Get-Together

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21ST

07:00 - 09:00	Discussion	Science Breakfast Paths to Innovation: Restoring Grassroots Dynamism to Address Global Challenges; Hosted by Mars, Incorporated - Upon invitation only
09:00 - 09:30	Lecture	Joseph E. Stiglitz Inequality, Wealth, and Growth: Why Capitalism is Failing
09:30 - 10:00	Lecture	Eric S. Maskin Why Haven’t Global Markets Reduced Inequality in Developing Economies?
10:00 - 10:30	Lecture	Finn E. Kydland Economic Policy and the Growth of Nations
10:30 - 11:30	Coffee Break
11:30 - 12:00	Lecture	Robert J. Aumann Collectives as Individuals
12:00 - 12:30	Lecture	Reinhard Selten From Learning Direction Theory to Generalized Impulse Balance
12:30 - 13:00	Lecture	William F. Sharpe Economic Analysis of Retirement Income Strategies
13:00 - 15:00	Lunch Break
15:00 - 16:30	Discussion	Panel Discussion The Future of Econometrics: Structural Restrictions, Parametric Methods and Big Data; Panelists Hansen, McFadden, Sims
16:30 - 17:00	Break
17:00 - 18:30	Discussion	Master Classes Master Classes with Myerson and Hansen
17:00 - 18:30	Discussion	Discussions  Discussions with Laureates Aumann, Kydland, Maskin, Selten, Sharpe, Stiglitz
18:30 - 19:00	Break
19:00 - 20:00	Lecture	Mario Vargas Llosa A Panoramic View on the Situation and Perspectives in Latin America
20:00 - 23:00	Dinner and Free Evening

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22ND

07:00 - 09:00	Discussion	Science Breakfast Innovation from the Edge - How could we possibly solve the “Innovator’s Dilemma” through the Power of Diversity?; Hosted by SAP SE - Upon invitation only
07:00 - 09:00	Discussion	Science Breakfast Banking and Banking Regulation after the Financial Crisis; Hosted by UBS AG - Upon invitation only
09:00 - 09:30	Lecture	Robert C. Merton Measuring the Connectedness of the Financial System: Implications for Systemic Risk Measurement and Management
09:30 - 10:00	Lecture	Daniel L. McFadden The New Science of Pleasure
10:00 - 10:30	Lecture	Sir James A. Mirrlees Some Interesting Taxes and Subsidies
10:30 - 11:30	Coffee Break
11:30 - 12:00	Lecture	Roger B. Myerson Moral-Hazard Credit Cycles with Risk-Averse Agents
12:00 - 12:30	Lecture	Edward C. Prescott The Revolution in Aggregate Economics
12:30 - 13:00	Lecture	Peter A. Diamond Unemployment
13:00 - 15:00	Lunch Break
15:00 - 16:30	Discussion	Panel Discussion Strategic Behavior, Incentives, and Mechanism Design; Panelists Maskin, Mirrlees, Myerson
16:30 - 17:00	Break
17:00 - 18:30	Discussion	Discussions Discussions with Laureates Diamond, McFadden, Merton, Mirrlees, Myerson, Prescott
18:30 - 20:00	Break
20:00 - 23:00	Bavarian Evening supported by the Free State of Bavaria

SATURDAY, AUGUST 23RD

07:15 - 10:20	Boat Trip to Mainau Island supported by SAP SE
11:00 - 13:00	Discussion	Panel Discussion How Useful is Economics - How is Economics Useful? Panelists Diamond, Merton, Roth
13:00 - 15:15	Lunch Break
15:15 - 15:45	Farewell Ceremony
16:15 - 18:30	Boat Trip to Lindau supported by SAP SE

ASSOCIATED DATA

Meeting Programme (2014 Economic Sciences) Meeting Programme of the 5th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

PDF

4.51 MB

Here's a link to the 'Nobel Labs 360' set of photographic, clickable interviews (including mine) in which you can direct some of the action and fly around the room using your mouse...

Immigration of scientists

In http://nypost.com/2014/06/08/the-science-of-immigration/, the NY Post notes that, since 2000, "immigrants have been awarded 24 of the 68 Nobel Prizes won by Americans in chemistry, medicine and physics."

My colleague Petra Moser looks particularly at the wave of immigration of German Jews after the Nazis took power: German Jewish Émigrés and U.S. Invention

"Our research provides new evidence on this question by examining the impact on innovation of German Jewish scientists who fled from Nazi Germany to the United States after 1932. Historical accounts suggest that these émigrés revolutionized U.S. innovation. In physics, for example, émigrés such as Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, and Hans Bethe formed the core of the Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb. In chemistry, émigrés such as Otto Meyerhof (Nobel Prize 1922), Otto Stern (Nobel Prize 1943), Otto Loewi (Nobel Prize 1936), Max Bergmann, Carl Neuberg, and Kasimir Fajans “soon effected hardly less than a revolution. … Their work … almost immediately propelled the United States to world leadership in the chemistry of life” (Sachar 1992, p. 749).

Alternative accounts, however, suggest that émigrés’ contributions may have been limited due to administrative hurdles and antisemitism. Jewish scientists met with a “Kafkaesque gridlock of seeking affidavits from relatives in America [and] visas from less-than-friendly United States consuls” (Sachar 1992, p. 495). Once they were in the United States, a rising wave of antisemitism made it difficult for these scientists to find employment; in “the hungry 1930s, antisemitism was a fact of life among American universities as in other sectors of the U.S. economy” (Sachar 1992, p. 498).

Our paper presents a systematic empirical analysis of how German Jewish émigrés affected U.S. innovation. Taking advantage of the fact that patents are a good measure of innovation in chemistry, because chemical innovations are exceptionally suitable to patent protection (e.g., Cohen, Nelson, and Walsh 2002; Moser 2012), we focus on changes in chemical inventions. By comparison, the contributions of émigré physicists (including those who worked on the Manhattan Project) are difficult to capture empirically because they produced knowledge that was often classified and rarely patented.
...
"In sum, our research shows that high-skilled German Jewish immigrants created large and persistent benefits for innovators in the United States. In interpreting these results it is important to keep in mind that the émigrés in our data were exceptionally qualified scientists comparable to present-day academic superstars. Our analysis indicates that policies, which encourage the immigration of such scientists, can be an effective mechanism to encourage innovation.

This Research Brief is based on Moser, Voena, and Waldinger (2013), available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w19962. All works cited are provided there."

Competition, Market Design, and Medicare Part D

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has a new report about Competition and the Cost of Medicare's Prescription Drug Program:

 "Medicare Part D was designed to foster competition between plan sponsors to constrain drug spending. In assessing the impact of competition, CBO found that a larger number of plan sponsors in a region was associated with lower bids, on average, for the group of plans analyzed. … However, between 2007 and 2010, the average total number of plan sponsors per region fell by 4 (from 22 to 18), because more sponsors exited the market or merged with other sponsors than entered the market; that decrease in competition is associated with higher bids and higher government spending. … As Part D is currently structured, two features of the program could be changed to encourage plan sponsors to submit lower bids for their plans. First, in the component of Part D that serves low-income beneficiaries, the government usually pays the full amount of a plan's bid up to a threshold, regardless of whether other plans bid lower. Second, low-income beneficiaries enrolled in plans whose bid rises above the threshold are automatically reassigned in equal proportions to plans with bids below the threshold (unless a beneficiary has actively signed up for a particular plan). Both of those features encourage plans to set their bids close to (though below) the threshold. … The rules of the program could be altered, however, in ways that would continue to protect low-income beneficiaries but would also lower bids and government spending. For example, the government could adopt a reassignment mechanism that preferentially assigned low-income beneficiaries to the plans with premiums furthest below the benchmark; that approach would provide a stronger incentive to plans to submit low bids and would reduce the government’s spending even if plans did not alter their bids."

The full report is here:
Competition and the Cost of Medicare’s Prescription Drug Program
http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45552-PartD.pdf 

and an accompanying technical working paper on competition here:

Examining the Number of Competitors and the Cost of Medicare Part D
by Andrew Stocking, James Baumgardner, Melinda Buntin, and Anna Cook