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DateRoomPresenterTitleAbstract
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For past presentations, click here.
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30 SeptemberConference roomCarolina BiliottiGender Differences in the Production and Reception of Surprising ScienceWe explore the relationship between gender differences in kinds of innovation and scientific rewards. Combining multiple data sources, we find that women are more likely to innovate by connecting previously disconnected scientific literature, indicating a higher propensity for interdisciplinary ideas. Women's most innovative work of this kind outperforms men's in terms of disruption. However, they receive less recognition for this kind of innovation than men, and in more routine work their papers are also less disruptive. Men are more likely to innovate by combining previously disconnected scientific terms, and they are more likely to benefit from it. For equally innovative science, women's articles are usually placed in journals of lower prestige. Our work provides insights into the complex dynamics of gender, innovation, and recognition within the scientific community, highlighting the different contributions of gender to innovation with asymmetric returns
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07 OctoberConference roomRohit TickuDeforestation and DiseasesThis paper examines how deforestation in the tropics contributes to the spread of infectious animal diseases. Using geo-referenced data on disease outbreaks and forest loss across 60 countries from 2004 to 2018, we show that a 1% increase in deforestation in neighbouring areas leads to a 1.6% rise in animal infections. An instrumental variable design that exploits international crop price shocks as exogenous drivers of deforestation confirms the causal relationship. We find that two mechanisms underpin this effect: (i) habitat destruction increases wildlife-livestock interaction, and (ii) deforestation-linked infrastructure enhances market access, facilitating the transmission of pathogens through animal trade. We also investigate potential zoonotic spillovers. While deforestation on average does not translate into zoonotic transmissions, large shocks contribute to long- lasting increases in human infections. Our findings quantify a negative externality of land-use change and underscore how global agricultural demand and infrastructure development can create health risks for animals and humans, highlighting a novel trade-off between economic development and biosecurity.
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14 OctoberConference roomAndrea TizzaniThe Paradox of Charisma: Garibaldi and the Disillusionment of Italian UnificationDo charismatic leaders raise expectations of political reform, and what happens when those expectations go unmet? I study Giuseppe Garibaldi’s 1860 campaign that led to Italian unification. After conquering Sicily, he advanced to the mainland as a liberator and pledged sweeping reforms. Yet he soon ceded power to the monarchy, leaving those promises unmet. I exploit an unanticipated halt in his planned route to compare municipalities he visited with similar ones he intended to reach but did not. Visited towns initially aligned more with unification and experienced less violent resistance in 1861. Over time, however, they became more politically disengaged: turnout was lower in the 1913 election under universal male suffrage, they sent fewer volunteers to Garibaldi’s corps in 1866, and they were less responsive in 1948 to a party campaigning on his image. The pattern extended to elite formation: visited municipalities were more likely to produce parliamentary deputies in the first post-unification legislature, but this advantage had turned negative by 1870. Effects were strongest where his redistributive promises were most salient. The results show that charisma acts as an expectations multiplier: it accelerates mobilization but, when delivery fails, magnifies disillusionment, leaving lasting legacies for nation-building, participation, and collective memory.
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21 OctoberConference roomFrancesco Drago - Armando Miano (p) - Giovanni ImmordinoOrganized Crime and the Supply and Demand of Good PoliticiansOrganized crime infiltrates local political institutions to divert public resources. Since local politicians are elected, such infiltration may arise from a scarce supply of honest candidates, a weak voter demand for them, or both. We study this issue using two large-scale surveys covering about 12,000 respondents across all Italian provinces. On the supply side, we measure individuals’ willingness to run for mayor and link it to traits such as honesty (via a dice-guessing game), tolerance toward organized crime, risk attitudes, and professional background. We find that those more inclined to consider candidacy are younger, more skilled, and more risk-loving, but also more dishonest and more tolerant of organized crime. In provinces with high mafia infiltration, these traits are more prevalent, yielding a candidate pool of lower quality. On the demand side, we use a conjoint experiment to measure voters’ preferences over candidates’ traits. Voters place a strong negative premium on connections to organized crime, and this aversion is even stronger in mafia-affected areas. Preliminary results therefore suggest a mismatch: voters strongly dislike corrupt or mafia-tolerant candidates, yet such individuals are disproportionately represented among those willing to run, especially in high-risk provinces. Ongoing work focuses on refining the measurement and quantification of this mismatch.
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28 OctoberConference roomYusuf AguşPeer Ability and Dynamics of Classrooms This study examines how peer ability shapes students’ skill development and the social dynamics of classrooms. Leveraging the random assignment of students to classrooms in Turkish primary schools, I show that exposure to higher-ability classmates raises fluid intelligence, cognitive empathy, and academic achievement from the first grade onward. These gains emerge alongside shifts in how students form friendships: peer ability reshapes classroom networks, increasing homophily among high-ability students while reducing it among low-ability students, revealing social ties as a central mechanism through which peers influence skill development. These findings highlight that the effects of peers extend beyond test scores to deeper cognitive abilities, and that the structure of students’ social networks is a key channel through which classroom composition matters for learning.
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04 NovemberConference roomLuca LorenziniPeer Quality, Learning, and Firm Performance: Evidence from Unexpected Worker DeathsI study how exogenous worker exits affect co-workers' wages and productivity through within-firm spillovers and learning. Using administrative matched employer–employee data and balance-sheet information from Italy, I analyze 33,000 unexpected deaths of non-managerial workers as shocks to firms’ workforce composition. I identify worker types using AKM decompositions and classify each death relative to the firm’s average worker type (left vs. right tail). The exit of a low-type worker raises firm revenue productivity, while the loss of an above-average worker has the opposite effect. Firms take substantial time to replace deceased workers, yet experience higher survival rates following such exits—especially when the death involves a left-tail worker. Coworker wages increase after the exit of low-type workers, and these effects persist over time without mean reversion, whereas no effects arise from right-tail deaths. Taken together, the findings reveal strong within-firm productivity spillovers mediated by peer quality and learning, underscoring how workforce composition shapes firm performance and wage dynamics.
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11 NovemberConference roomMarta KorczakLosing Capital Status: Does it Matter for a City’s Development?How do changes in the administrative hierarchy of cities impact their development? This paper focuses on the loss of regional capital status, using the context of the 1999 administrative reform in Poland. Exploiting variation in administrative status, I compare ex-capitals to control cities to construct a causal estimate of the loss of capital status. I find that ex-capital cities experienced a persistent decline in public sector activity, female employment, fertility, and local public good provision, despite receiving higher central government transfers relative to control cities. These results are consistent with a simple theoretical model in which a decline in administrative capacity induces sectoral employment reallocation and delayed migration responses. The findings highlight that administrative status is crucial for city-level development and that the loss of such status has negative consequences, even when accompanied by increased fiscal autonomy.
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18 NovemberConference roomNoa De La VegaWhen a child falls ill: Parental leave flexibility and its effects on caregiving and labor market outcomesThis study focuses on Israel’s 2016 reform of the Temporary Parental Leave (TPL) policy, which regulates paid leave for parents caring for a sick child. Before the reform, the TPL compensation scheme created costs for fathers and mothers who wished to share caregiving days. The reform modified the TPL compensation, making it jointly calculated and thereby enabling parents to divide the leave more flexibly. Using data from Israel’s Labor Force Survey and a difference-in-differences approach, I find that the reform led to a more equitable allocation of TPL, increasing fathers’ participation in caregiving. However, it did not impact parents’ traditional labor market outcomes, such as employment or working hours, for parents already in the labor force. I also find that mothers in households where fathers were affected by the reform became more likely to work outside their home district, suggesting that the possibility of sharing TPL may increase mothers’ willingness to commute.
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25 NovemberConference roomMiguel Blanco Welfare Implications of Subsidy Design with Intertemporal Price DiscriminationI study the impact of different subsidy designs for consumers in settings where firms have market power and exercise intertemporal price discrimination, such as airlines and hotels. Certain subsidy designs can steer demand toward high-priced products, increasing government spending as an unintended consequence. Using as a case study the subsidies for residents in remote territories in the Spanish airline industry, I develop a dynamic discrete choice model and estimate the demand parameters of forward-looking consumers who decide on the timing of their purchases. Combining the estimated demand parameters with a supply model in which multiproduct firms choose prices in every period, I perform a counterfactual analysis to evaluate the impact of changing the subsidy design from the current ad valorem design to a unit design. I show that accounting for price discrimination is important when analyzing the question of unit versus ad valorem designs. I also show that changing to a unit design would generate almost 15% savings for the government due to the shift in consumption patterns toward cheaper options.
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02 DecemberConference roomLuis MenéndezThe Impact of Political Campaigns on Demand for Partisan NewsI explore how electoral campaigns affect the market for partisan news in Spain. I use machine learning and large language models (LLMs) to build a novel slant index that I match to high-frequency audience-meter data on television consumption. This allows me to compare how the same story is framed across outlets and how many people watched it. I integrate these measures into a structural model of news demand and supply. Outlets choose the political framing of the news and viewers select their preferred information source based on it. To identify viewers’ preferences for political content, I exploit exogenous changes in the mix of political events that constrain what outlets can cover. During the campaign period, demand becomes more polarized: viewers strongly screen out favorable coverage of the party they oppose. On the supply side, outlets specialize and face lower costs of producing slanted coverage that aligns with their political stance. I evaluate the effects of a proportional airtime requirement, the standard rule in television regulation during campaigns. Outlets comply by becoming more partisan, resulting in a more polarized media environment.
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09 DecemberConference roomMustapha KokumoThe Effect of an Immigration Shock on the Integration of Earlier MigrantsAs European societies become increasingly culturally diverse, a crucial question for social cohesion is how settled immigrants respond to the arrival of new immigrant groups. While natives’ reactions have been examined extensively, few studies consider incumbents’ responses, typically treating inflows as from a single origin. This paper studies how different incumbent immigrant groups in Germany adjusted their social integration in response to the arrival of large and diverse numbers of asylum seekers during the 2014–2016 European Refugee Crisis. Using the quasi-random allocation of asylum seekers across German states and a social integration index constructed from SOEP survey questions, I show that responses depend both on the origin of the incoming group and the cultural distance of the incumbent group to Germans. On average, an increase in asylum seekers from the Middle East—a culturally distant group—leads incumbent immigrants to increase their integration. In contrast, arrivals from the Western Balkans, a culturally closer group, generate a negative but statistically insignificant average response. These averages conceal meaningful heterogeneity. The behavioural adjustments are driven by immigrants at an intermediate cultural distance to Germans: this group increases its integration when Middle Eastern asylum seekers arrive, but reduces integration when Western Balkan arrivals rise. I provide evidence that the arrival of a more distant group improves natives’ perceptions of culturally distant communities, thereby raising the incentives of intermediate groups to integrate.
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16 DecemberOnlineMarco SanfilippoOil Spills, Water Networks, and Local Economic Development
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13 JanuaryConference room
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20 JanuaryConference roomDaniel Erich ProsiFDI, Forward Linkages and Services Inputs
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27 JanuaryConference roomFrancesco Saverio Lenzi
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03 FebruaryConference roomJavier ViviensEstimating the intensive margin with changes-in-changes
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10 FebruaryConference room
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17 FebruaryConference room
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24 FebruaryConference room
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03 MarchConference roomMarlene Thomas
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10 MarchConference roomSaúl MartínezVote as you pray: Exposure to Catholic identity and political preferences
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17 MarchConference roomLorenzo Alderighi
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24 MarchConference room
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31 MarchConference room
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07 AprilConference room
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14 AprilConference room
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21 AprilConference room
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28 AprilConference roomMafalda Batalha
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05 MayConference room
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12 MayConference room
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19 MayConference room
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26 MayConference room
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02 JuneConference room
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09 JuneConference room
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