MIT: Independent Activities Period: IAP

IAP 2017 Activities by Sponsor - Economics

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Climate Science: Mankind's First Good Forecast

Spencer Glendon, Wellington Management Company LLP

Jan/30 Mon 01:00PM-02:30PM E51-335

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

Economists and investors try to make an extremely complex system tractable through theory, equations, and data analysis. This enormous enterprise yields valuable, often marginal insights but rarely produces good forecasts. For over 40 years climate scientists have also sought to understand a complex system using theory, equations, and data analysis. Their research has yielded startlingly clear results and mankind’s first good forecast. Spencer Glendon will compare climate research with social science, share what climate science teaches us about economic history and specialization, and discuss why economics and finance are so reluctant to embrace climate science.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Consequences of the Declining Marriage-Market Value of Men for Marriage, Fertility, and Children's Living Circumstances

David Autor, Ford Professor of Economics, Assoc. Department Head

Jan/24 Tue 01:00PM-02:00PM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

The structure of marriage and child-rearing in U.S. households has undergone two marked shifts in the last three decades: a steep decline in the prevalence of marriage among young adults, and a sharp rise in the fraction of children born to unmarried mothers or living in single-headed households. One potential contributor to both phenomena is the declining labor market opportunities faced by non-college males, which make them less valuable as marital partners. But is this hypothesis relevant, or rather a bunch of bad journalism dressed up in economic terminology? This IAP talk will offer both theory and evidence on the role that the falling marriage-market value of young men may have played in the rising rate of out-of-wedlock childbearing and single-headed childrearing in the United States.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Data Visualization Done Differently

Jonathan Schwabish, Senior Research Associate at Urban Institute

Jan/26 Thu 01:00PM-02:30PM E51-325

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

The data visualization field combines data analysis, graphic design, journalism, and statistics and aims to help analysts in a variety of fields provide their audience with greater insights into their research or products. In this presentation, I lay the groundwork for how to use data visualization to more effectively communicate. This presentation will demonstrate different types of visualizations and their uses, as well as how to avoid creating graphics that result in ineffective and inaccurate perceptions of data. These guidelines will prepare you to create clearer, more accurate, and more visually appealing graphics.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Disaggregating the Matching Function

Peter Diamond, Institute Professor and Professor of Economics, Emeritus

Feb/01 Wed 10:30AM-12:00PM E51-151

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

The focus of this paper is on gross hires relative to the tightness of the labor market, the aggregate matching function. The paper considers various decompositions of aggregate hires to see how the hiring process differs across different groups of workers and different groups of firms, Decompositions include worker employment status in the previous month, along with age, gender and education. Another decomposition separates hiring between part-time and full-time jobs, which show different patterns in the current recovery. Shift-share analyses are done based on industry, firm size and occupation to show how much of the size of the residual of the aggregate hiring function can be explained by the composition of vacancies across these dimensions. The paper also includes some issues in the modeling of the labor market. The paper briefly notes that the hiring process appears to shift as a recovery starts, coinciding with shifts in the Beveridge curve.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Discussion and Film: "The Strange Case of the Water That Went up the Great-Grandfather's Arse and Other Stories of Democracy" (by Abhijit Banerjee)

Abhijit Banerjee, Ford International Professor of Economics

Feb/02 Thu 01:00PM-02:30PM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

Democracy is humanity’s bravest experiment. The idea that everyone–women and men, poor and rich, illiterate and educated–should be in charge of shaping the state and society they live in, is at once totally obvious and deeply radical. And yet, the lived experience of democracy is almost always disappointing. Corruption is often the rule and change is slow and difficult.

This film is about living this tension, through the eyes and voices of every day participants in the world’s largest democracy, India. Using unique footage that we shot in dozens of locations all over the country over eight years, with interviews with everyone from theorists to thugs (who are sometimes the same people), we document how profoundly the so-called bit-players in the democratic narrative—the often semi-literate voters, the local activists and the small-time leaders–have absorbed the democratic ethos. For all their cynicism and fear, it is for the poor, the marginalized and the powerless that the idea of democracy matters the most, what gives them the greatest hope for the future.

Combining animation, folk music and street plays with casual conversations at street corners, expert analyses and stump speeches, this is a documentary about a nation, a people and one extraordinary idea.

A presentation of clips from The strange case of the water that went up the great-grandfather’s arse and other stories of democracy followed by a discussion on populism and democracy.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Economics and Politics of Brexit

John Van Reenen, Professor of Applied Economics

Jan/20 Fri 01:00PM-02:00PM E51-149

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

What are likely to be the economic consequences of Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union (“Brexit”) on the UK and the rest of the world. Van Reenen will discuss the role of trade, investment, immigration and other changes. He will also look at the reasons that Britain voted to leave and what it means for the future of Western democracies.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Equilibrium Shifts, Model Uncertainty and Global Games

Muhamet Yildiz, Professor of Economics

Jan/11 Wed 02:30PM-04:00PM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

I will present some recent research on global games with an application to causes of equilibrium shifts in dynamic coordination games. I will introduce rank beliefs (i.e. conditional expectation of players' own percentiles) and describe the central role they play in the analyses of global games. Using rank beliefs one can extend the risk-dominant selection results in global games literature to arbitrary type spaces (including multi-dimensional type spaces that are common in practice). With model uncertainty, under canonical global games setup, rank beliefs take a specific shape. In that case, small shocks to the fundamentals shift the equilibrium to a latent solution. Consequently, one can identify the kind of shocks that are effective--in shifting to a "bad equilibrium" as in crises or shifting to a "good equilibrium" as in recovery.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Health Care Reform: Where to Now?

Jonathan Gruber, Ford Professor of Economics

Jan/25 Wed 10:30AM-12:00PM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

Professor Gruber will discuss the issues facing health care reform in the new Trump Administration.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Housing Recovery - what's different this time

William Wheaton, Professor of Economics and Urban Studies

Jan/31 Tue 01:00PM-02:30PM E51-376

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

This recovery in the housing market has been unusually slow, with low construction and only a few markets recovering to date back to 2007 price levels. A number of alternative explanations will be analyzed with conventional forecasting tools critiqued. Future scenarios will be examined.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


IAP 2017: Making the leap from student to thesis writer: How to write a dissertation while maintaining your sanity

Amy Finkelstein, John & Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics, Esther Duflo, Abdul Latif Jameel Prof. of Poverty Alleviation & Dev. Econ, Drew Fudenberg, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, Alp Simsek, Rudi Dornbusch Career Development Associate Prof. of Econ., Isaiah Andrews, Silverman (1968) Family Career Development Assistant Prof.

Jan/19 Thu 01:00PM-02:30PM E51-151

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

The transition from course-taking to dissertation-writing is one of the most difficult parts of graduate school.  A faculty panel will describe strategies for navigating this transition.  They will discuss where to turn for help and guidance, pitfalls to avoid, and distill lessons from their own experiences as students and as advisers.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Minimizing Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans OneApp

Parag Pathak, Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor

Jan/27 Fri 01:00PM-02:00PM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

In 2011, New Orleans' Recovery School District became the first in the nation to adopt a unified enrollment system for admissions to traditional public and charter schools.  This talk will describe the assignment mechanism underlying New Orleans system, and show new formal results about its envy-minimizing properties.  We also discuss why the city adopted a new mechanism after one year, and lessons for economic design.

 

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


News, Opinion, and the Importance of the Medium

Sara F. Ellison, Senior Lecturer in Economics

Jan/12 Thu 02:00PM-03:30PM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

We will discuss how economic characteristics of media markets can drive content.  The talk will bring in recent economic research and examples from historic and current media markets.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Technological Improvement, Regulatory Avoidance, and the Case of Ride-hailing Services

Sara F. Ellison, Senior Lecturer in Economics

Jan/10 Tue 02:00PM-03:30PM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

We'll discuss the history of for-hire transportation and the economic and technological forces that have led to the remarkable success of ride-hailing services such as Uber.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


The Economic State of the World

Olivier Blanchard, Robert M. Solow Professor, Emeritus

Jan/23 Mon 01:00PM-02:30PM E51-315

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

How the future looked before the US elections, and how the elections have changed it.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU


Understanding Jobs for Economics Professors in Business Schools

Robert Gibbons, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, Roberto Rigobon, Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management

Jan/24 Tue 09:00AM-10:30AM E52-432

Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)

We will discuss (1) differences across business schools, including how faculty are evaluated in terms of research versus teaching, as well as (2) differences within business schools, including how economists working on different topics might fit in different faculty groups.

Sponsor(s): Economics
Contact: Beata Shuster, E52-439A, 617 253-8883, BSHUSTER@MIT.EDU