"Calamity, Aid and Indirect Reciprocity: the Long Run Impact of Tsunami"

"Measuring Welfare: Random Scale Models for capabilities. An application to freedom of movement of Italian women." (Note: the seminar is on Thursday) abstract Sen’s capability approach distinguishes between what people are free to do and to be (their ‘capabilities’) and what they do and who they are (their ‘functionings’). In the capability approach, individuals’ well-being…

"Optimal Criminal Behavior and the Disutility of Jail: Theory and Evidence On Bank Robberies" abstract Based on unique data on individual bank robberies, this paper estimates the distribution of criminals' disutility of jail. The identification rests on the money versus risk trade-off that criminals face when deciding whether to stay an additional minute while robbing…

"Assignment procedure biases in randomized policy experiments" abstract Randomized controlled trials (RCT) have become a dominant empirical tool in applied economics. The internal validity of RCTs crucially depends on the (implicit) assumption that the procedure assigning subjects to treatment and control groups has no effect on behavior. We show theoretically that this assumption is violated…

"Does Information Matter for Women Decisions? Experimental Evidence from Childcare" abstract Gender stereotypes are well eradicated also among women. Yet, a recent literature suggests that learning from other women experience about the effects of maternal employment on children outcomes may increase female labor force participation. In this paper, we design a survey experiment to provide…

"Statistical hypothesis testing and private information" Abstract This paper provides a rationalization for using classical one-sided hypothesis tests for approving innovations (e.g., new pharmaceuticals, new government programs). I consider this problem of statistical decision making in a setting where proponents of innovations (i) stand to benefit from approval decisions even if their innovations have a negative effect, (ii) possess private…

"Rel(a)ying on your team-mates is not enough: On sequential contributions to team production under competition" abstract Many tasks require the input by more than one person very often with members of the team contributing sequentially. However, team production is plagued by disincentive problems. In this paper we investigate individual incentives to team production with sequential contributions and competing teams.…

"Decision-Making Under Subjective Risk" Abstract: The primary objective of this paper is to develop a framework in which a decision-maker may have subjective beliefs about the "riskiness'' of prospects, even though the risk structure of these prospects is objectively specified. Put differently, we investigate preferences over risky alternatives by postulating that such preferences arise from…

"Overbooking" Abstract We consider optimal pricing policies for airlines when passengers are uncertain at the time of ticketing of their eventual realized willingness to pay for air travel. Auctions at the time of departure efficiently allocate space and a profit maximizing airline can capitalize on these gains by overbooking flights and repurchasing excess tickets from…

cancelled

"How Do Elected and Appointed Policymakers Act When in Office?Citizens, Candidates, and Leaders"

"When Warm Glow Burns: Motivational (mis)allocation in the non-profit sector"

"Equilibrium price of immediacy and infrequent trade" abstract The paper studies the equilibrium value of bid-ask spreads and time-to-trade in a continuous-time, intermediated financial market. The endogenous spreads are the price at which brokers are willing to offer immediacy. In case intermediaries pay trading costs, it includes them too. We determine equilibrium trading policies, returns…

"On the Identification of Production Functions: HowHeterogeneous is Productivity?" (Note: the seminar is on Thursday) abstract The estimation of production functions suffers from an unresolved identification problem caused by flexible inputs, such as intermediate inputs. We develop an identification strategy for production functions based on a transformation of the firm’s short-run first order condition that solves…

"Crime is Terribly Revealing: An Evaluation of Predictive Policing" abstract An increasing number of police departments around the world are trying to use predictive policing as a way to improve clearance rates at times of shrinking budgets. The police department of Milan has been working on a software that predicts future crime since 2008. This…

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