When Consumers Prefer Labor (vs. Material) Cost Justifications for Price Increases
Sometimes, firms justify price increases by citing an increase in their material costs; at other times, they justify the increases by citing an increase in their labor costs. Which justification – material or labor costs – is preferred by consumers? Previous theories suggest that material cost justifications are preferred because material costs tend to be more aligned, transient, and uncontrollable....
Rajesh Bagchi, "Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University"
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 335
More Details
Extracting Extrapolative Beliefs from Market Prices: An Augmented Present-Value Approach
We propose a latent-variables approach to recover extrapolative beliefs from asset prices. We estimate a present-value model of the price–dividend ratio of the market that embeds both return extrapolation and cash-flow extrapolation, alongside discount rates and rational expectations of dividend growth. This approach allows us to measure extrapolation bias without having to rely on survey data, and ...
Yan Liu, Tsinghua University
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 339
More Details
Optimal Income Redistribution
We study whether a redesign of the social security and income tax-and-transfer systems can deliver significant welfare gains. Our rich quantitative model features both realistic inequality over the life-cycle and the key main channels through which redistributive policies can distort aggregate allocations. We find that there are two distinct ways to achieve significant welfare gains with joint policy ...
Arpad Abraham, University of Bristol
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 337
More Details
Synthetic Media and AI Governance: Mapping the Risks and Responses to Misinformation in the LLM Era
The generative power of large language models (LLMs) is reshaping the information ecosystem, enabling not only enhanced communication but also the production of misinformation at scale. This talk examines emerging patterns in AI-generated misinformation, its diffusion across platforms, and the communicative risks it poses to public trust, epistemic stability, and information integrity. Drawing on recent ...
Celine Yunya Song, HKUST
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 333
More Details
From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China
In merely two decades, China has transformed from a digital newcomer to the world’s largest e-commerce market, with 800 million users and nearly 50% of global retail sales. In From Click to Boom, Lizhi Liu examines how China’s e-commerce boom is inherently "paradoxical," why it addresses a core political economy question of institutional development, and how it illuminates a digital development path ...
Lizhi Liu, Georgetown Univeristy
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 335
More Details
Corporate Taxation, Investment Frictions, and Macroeconomic Dynamics
We study how corporate tax reforms affect aggregate capital fluctuations in a general equilibrium dynamic investment model with firm heterogeneity, capital adjustment costs, and irreversibility wedges. We show that corporate tax changes influence capital misallocation and the propagation of aggregate shocks across tax regimes. Using microdata, we quantify these effects through after-tax investment ...
Isaac Baley, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 337
More Details
Building Public Trust in AI-Driven Futures Through Effective Communication and Innovation
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly prevalent in everyday life, AI-powered applications—such as autonomous vehicles and drones—are expected to revolutionize industries and transform how we live, work, and engage with the world around us. However, the success of these technologies hinges not just on their technical capabilities but also on public perception, with trust playing a critical ...
Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 333
More Details
Broker-Dealers and Executive Private Benefits: Evidence from Tax-Saving Stock Gifts
We study how financial intermediary external oversight affects managerial self-dealing. Following an increase in external scrutiny of broker-dealers in the early 2010s, we document a decline in the backdating of executive stock gifts. This reduction amounts to approximately \$100,000 in lost tax benefits per executive annually. Treatment effects are stronger for broker-dealers with weaker pre-existing ...
Ben Charoenwong, INSEAD
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 339
More Details
Tough Talk: The Fed and the Risk Premium
We study how monetary policy affects financial risk premia. Unlike existing studies, we focus on the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC’s) forward-looking policy stance, beyond the current announcement and macroeconomic forecasts, which we derive from the policymakers' private deliberations. A more hawkish policymakers’ stance in the FOMC meeting predicts lower risk premia during the intermeeting ...
Michael McMahon, University of Oxford
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 337
More Details
ESG Metrics in Executive Compensation:a Multitasking Approach
We model the multitasking nature of managerial incentives when ESG metrics are introduced jointly with standard financial or accounting metrics in executive compensation. Building on insights from multitasking theory, we predict that pay-performance sensitivity or dollar delta of standard metrics should optimally decrease when value-adding but less measurable ESG goals are introduced in executive pay....
Vikas Agarwal, Georgia State University
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 339
More Details
