Research Seminars Series
MUES Research Seminar Series is a perfect opportunity to connect our Faculty with international scholars. Influential scholars from the world`s top universities are invited to present their latest research and to discuss the current trends and developments in all major areas of economics. In addition to the networking possibilities, this Research Seminar Series helps the Faculty and PhD students to receive early feedback on their own research.
The seminars are held in English. The length of the presentation should be 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of discussion. The seminars are public, please join us spontaneously. If you wish to receive information about seminars subscribe to MUES newsletter or to our google calendar.
Coordinators: Martin Guzi, Štěpán Mikula, Matteo M. Marini and Luca Fumarco.
List of all seminars organized since 2013 is here.
Upcoming seminars:
Real Oil Price Forecasting: Gains and Weaknesses of Text Data
Lecturer: Luigi Gifuni Affiliation: University of Glasgow ESF Room P104 1:00 PM • 5/19/2022-
This paper develops alternative text-based indexes assessing human sentiment and economic uncertainty in the oil market. The text analysis includes the titles and full articles of 138,797 oil related news items which featured in The Financial Times, Thompson- Reuters and The Independent from 1982M1 to 2021M11. Empirical experiments show that, while sentiment indicators are prone to react to economic and geopolitical events affecting oil prices, uncertainty measures may hide structural weaknesses, which create problems when alternative measures of real oil prices are forecast. This work results in a new text-based index that significantly improves the real oil price point forecasts, especially in periods of financial stress, when forecasting matters the most (Paper).
Biology, religion and socioeconomic behavior: connecting our past findings to human health
Lecturer: Maksym Bryukhanov online 6:00 PM • 5/16/2022Is in utero exposure to testosterone correlated with health and healthy lifestyle? Does religiosity have a non-linear effect on illness? We will discuss these research questions in close connection to our previous findings. In the past, using a large sample of individuals from the RMLS-HSE longitudinal survey, we observed clear links between a prenatal testosterone biomarker - measured 2D:4D digit ratios - and the levels of education obtained by men. Statistically significant positive associations of 2D:4D (lower prenatal T) with higher levels of education were found using difference generalized ordered logistic regressions. Moreover, using the same survey, we found that lower digit ratios (higher T) correlated with higher wages for women and for men. There was also some evidence of a potential non-linear, inverse U-effect of digit ratios on wages but this was sensitive to the choice of specification. These findings were consistent with earlier work on prenatal T and success in careers Coates et al. (2009) but inconsistent with the work of Gielen et al. (2016) who found differing effects for men and women. Besides, in our recent work Bryukhanov & Fedotenkov (2021), we documented a strong and causal relationship between religiosity and life satisfaction. Analogous identification strategies can be applied to health outcomes in causal and comparative context. (Paper 1, Paper 2, Paper 3)
Join ZOOM meeting (pass code j2UhB7)
Paternal Circular Migration and Development of Socio-Emotional Skills of Children Left Behind
Lecturer: Davit Adunts Affiliation: CERGE-EI online 5:00 PM • 5/16/2022The study of how paternal absence due to circular migration affects the socio-emotional skills of children left behind is complicated by the potentially offsetting effects of fathers’ absences and remittances. To isolate the effect of a father’s absence, this paper focuses on remittance-receiving households and compares children whose fathers were at home with children whose fathers were still working abroad. Using data from a parent-child linked survey and experiment conducted in Fall 2019 in the Ternopil region of Ukraine, this paper finds evidence of the negative effect of a father’s current absence on children’s perseverance skills. Overall, this result suggests that circular migration is not necessarily a “triple-win” solution that benefits all involved parties. Indeed it can generate unintended consequences for the development of the socio-emotional skills of children left behind if not combined with complementary initiatives aimed at providing high-quality schooling in origin countries. (Paper)
The Impact of Same-Race Teachers on Student Non-Test Academic Outcomes
Lecturer: Bohdana Kurylo Affiliation: CERGE-EI MS-Teams 4:00 PM • 5/16/2022It is well established that students taught by same-race teachers improve their performance on exams. However, little is known about whether the positive impact extends beyond test scores to student non-test academic outcomes, which are known to predict student long-term success. Using the random assignment of teachers within the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, I show that same-race teachers not only improve the test scores of Black students, but also increase the effectiveness of communication as reported by Black students. I find evidence supporting one of three potential underlying mechanisms of the communication effect. Specifically, I find that neither i) higher general communication ability of Black teachers nor ii) more teacher attention directed towards same-race students can explain this effect. Rather, my results suggest that the effect is driven by more effective communication between Black teachers and Black students, which aligns with the literature on culturally relevant pedagogy. Overall, the findings suggest that training non-minority teachers in using culturally relevant pedagogy may improve the performance of disadvantaged minority students in the short term as a complement to diversification of the teacher labor force. (Paper)
Macroeconomic effects of inflation targeting in emerging market economies
Lecturer: Martin Stojanovikj Affiliation: Integrated Business Faculty, Skopje, North Macedonia Online 3:00 PM • 5/12/2022This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of inflation targeting in 44 emerging market economies (EMEs) during 1970–2017. We estimate a dynamic panel data model, taking into account the endogeneity of the inflation targeting regime and controlling for a variety of factors affecting macroeconomic performance in EMEs. The main findings from our empirical investigation are as follows: First, inflation targeting is associated with lower average inflation, though its favorable effects, as compared to alternative monetary strategies, are negligible; second, we provide firm evidence against the proposition that inflation targeting lowers inflation volatility. Our results are robust with respect to various modifications in the estimation procedure and to the inclusion of additional control variables (Paper).
Longer Careers: A barrier to hiring and coworker advancement?
Lecturer: Jan Kabátek Affiliation: University of Melbourne ESF Room S309 2:00 PM • 5/12/2022In response to the increasing fiscal burden imposed by public-pension systems, many countries have successfully encouraged older workers to delay retirement. These career extensions may significantly affect both the hiring and firing decisions of firms and the career progression of younger workers. To study these effects, we leverage reforms in the Netherlands in 2011 / 12 that gradually increased the eligibility age for public-pension benefits across birth cohorts. Using administrative linked employer-employee data, we first show that the reforms have significantly extended careers, doubling employment rates at ages that were directly affected by the reform. Next, we show that firms respond to the career extensions by delaying hiring, and hiring fewer workers overall. Co-workers experience slower earnings growth over the period of career extensions, which is mainly attributable to a reduction in hours worked rather than lower hourly wages, but their separation rates from the firm are not affected. We support these findings with a descriptive analysis of an earlier Dutch reform in 2006, which reduced the share of older workers taking up early retirement and reveals similar dynamics.
This event is both online and in person. Join Teams meeting.
Do Unannounced Visits to Schools Affect Student Performance? Evidence from a Large-scale Monitoring Program in Peru
Lecturer: Irina Valenzuela Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign MS Teams 5:00 PM • 5/10/2022The findings from prior studies on the impact of low-stakes monitoring (monitoring unaccompanied by explicit incentives or punishments) on student achievement in developing countries are mixed. Moreover, as most of these initiatives were conducted on a small scale by non-governmental organizations, their findings may not be generalizable to large-scale government interventions. The current work investigates the educational impact of the Semaforo Escuela program – a large-scale monitoring system in Peru that conducts unannounced monthly school inspections, with the results reported to local education officials. I exploit the random variation in the selection of visited schools in the program’s first year to estimate the causal effects of low-stakes monitoring on student’s math and reading scores. Although I fail to find evidence that a monitoring visit enhances school-level student performance on average, I find that urban schools located at the bottom of the performance distribution or visited in the months preceding the exam date have a significant positive effect on reading test scores. (Paper)
Education and Domestic Violence Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Turkey
Lecturer: Mustafa Özer Affiliation: Kilis Yedi Aralik University MS Teams 2:00 PM • 5/10/2022We utilize a natural experiment, an education reform increasing compulsory schooling from five to eight years in Turkey, to obtain endogeneity-robust estimates of the effect of male education on the incidence of domestic violence against women. We find that husband’s education lowers the probability of physical, emotional and economic violence. Schooling lowers also the likelihood of an arranged marriage, and makes men less inclined to engage in various socially unacceptable behaviors. We show that these findings are very robust, and can be attributed to men’s education rather than to the education of their wives.
Leveling Health Inequalities: Raising the School Leaving Age Reduces the Risk of Diseases and Severe Medical Conditions Related to Genetic Endowment
Lecturer: Jaroslav Groero Affiliation: CERGE-EI MS Teams 1:00 PM • 5/10/2022Health inequality has a significant genetic component and environments such as education can moderate the effects of genes. However, little is known about whether more years of education can effectively moderate the relationship between genetic conditions and severe contemporary diseases and medical conditions. I use UK Biobank data to investigate the relationship between education, genetic endowment, and four health conditions: heart attack, cancer, stroke, and type-2 diabetes. To avoid the potential endogeneity of education, I focus on the long-term health consequences of a 1972 increase in the school-leaving age (ROSLA). As a measure of genetic endowment, I use an index of genetic predispositions for obesity. Genetic predispositions are typically summarised by a weighted average of individual genetic markers, where weights are derived from analyses, performed on different populations, which correspond to select outcomes, such as obesity. This may skew the results of follow up studies of other outcomes, such as cancer. I introduce a two-step method that adjusts the available weights to new outcomes, and show that genetic predisposition for obesity increases the risks of the four diseases I study. The results based on my new method show that the additional year of schooling driven by the ROSLA reform diminished the importance of genetic predispositions for the risks of cancer and heart attack by 40%. The results offer new evidence on how environments moderate the inequalities in health that have been tilted from birth. (Paper)
Prenatal Sex Detection Technology and Mothers’ Labour Supply in India
Lecturer: Isha Gupta Affiliation: University of Padova MS Teams 10:00 AM • 5/10/2022The advent of prenatal sex diagnostic technology (PSDT) in India in the mid-eighties has made it easier for women to identify the sex of children before their birth, giving them an option to attain their desired sex composition of children without having to undergo repeated pregnancies. In this paper, we investigate the impact of this technology on mothers’ labour supply using a triple differences estimator. Our strategy combines supply-driven changes in ultrasound availability over time with plausibly exogenous family-level variation in the incentive to sex-select and son preference at the local level. We find that PSDT had a significant negative impact on mothers’ labour supply. We further investigate various underlying channels linking prenatal sex selection and mothers’ labour supply and identify two important channels: changes in fertility and increased investment in firstborn girls. (Paper)