The International Spillover of Monetary Policy Shock: New Evidence from Nighttime Light
We revisit the international spillover effects of US monetary policy using a new nighttime light (NTL) big data as a high-frequency, granular proxy for real economic activity. By merging this data with firm-level and transaction-level datasets on land auction and bond issuance by Chinese firms, we find that an unexpected U.S. monetary tightening significantly reduces its output via a novel construction ...
Kaiji Chen, Emory University
Thursday, Dec 18, 2025 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 337
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Optimal Distinctiveness: Theory and Measurements
This presentation traces the origin, historical evolution, and current status of research on optimal distinctiveness. Building on this foundation, it highlights two frontier studies that advance theoretical understanding and refine measurement in this domain.
Eric Zhao, University of Oxford
Wednesday, Dec 17, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 337
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Same Dollar, Different Impact: Investor Demand Is Not Equally Price-Moving
Mutual fund flows generate substantial price impact, amplify fragility, and trigger fire sales. We document a stark contrast for separate accounts—the dominant institutional investment vehicle: their flows generate essentially no price impact, fragility, or fire-sale risk. This pattern holds within mutual fund–separate account twins managed under identical strategies and is not driven by liquidity ...
Hong Xiang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Wednesday, Dec 17, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 339
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Reimagining Computational Multimodal Analysis in Social Science Research
Social science researchers are increasingly leveraging large-scale video data and computational methods to examine key concepts and questions. Yet much existing work relies on a narrow set of video features and focuses mainly on text or static visuals, leaving other high-dimensional features and modalities underexamined. This talk addresses the gap by presenting two empirical studies that use large ...
Yingdan Lu, Northwestern University
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 333
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Patent Hunters
Analyzing millions of patents granted by the USPTO between 1976 and 2020, we find a pattern where specific patents only rise to prominence after considerable time has passed. Amongst these late-blooming influential patents, we show that there are key players (patent hunters) who consistently identify and develop them. Although initially overlooked, these late-blooming patents have significantly more ...
Katie Moon, University of Colorado Boulder
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 339
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Can AI Master Econometrics? Evidence from Econometrics AI Agent on Expert-Level Tasks
Can AI effectively perform complex econometric analysis traditionally requiring human expertise? This paper evaluates AI agents' capability to master econometrics, focusing on empirical analysis performance. We develop ``MetricsAI'', an Econometrics AI Agent built on the open-source MetaGPT framework. This agent exhibits outstanding performance in: (1) planning econometric tasks strategically, (2)...
Ye Luo, Hong Kong University
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2025 | 2:00pm-3:30pm | Room 337
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On Rent Dissipation in Dynamic Multi-battle Contests
We study dynamic contests in which players vie for a prize through a sequence of battles. We examine how contest rules—mappings from outcome histories to the winner—shape dynamic incentives and govern rent dissipation. A strong discouragement effect arises in common formats such as tug-of-war and best-of-K, preventing full rent dissipation. We trace this effect to a structural property of these rules,...
Shanglyu Deng, University of Macau
Wednesday, Dec 3, 2025 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 339
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Not So Timely: Screen-On Push Notifications and User Engagement
We study how the timing of mobile push notifications affects user engagement. Industry practice assumes that delivering messages precisely when users are active—such as at screen-on moments—maximizes effectiveness. Using large-scale data from a leading push notification platform in China, we challenge this assumption through two complementary quasi-experiments. A regression discontinuity design around ...
Zachary Zhong, University of Toronto
Wednesday, Nov 26, 2025 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 335
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Platform Leakage: Disintermediation and Decentralization in Two-Sided Markets
Leakage happens when buyers and sellers coordinate outside the platform, usually to avoid fees. Despite platforms’ concerns about losing revenue, leakage---by its very nature---is difficult to measure and mitigate. Using geolocation data from an on-demand delivery service, we identify offline transactions that are hard to track in online marketplaces. We exploited a quasi-experiment that gradually ...
Yingkang Xie, Washington University
Thursday, Nov 20, 2025 | 10:30am-12:00pm | Room 335
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