Research Seminars

Research Seminar Series offers a unique opportunity for our Faculty to engage with leading international scholars. Distinguished researchers from the world's top universities are invited to present their latest research and engage in lively discussions on the latest trends and developments in various areas of economics. All seminars are conducted in English and are comprised of a 50-minute presentation followed by a 10-minute discussion session. These seminars are open to the public, and we warmly welcome spontaneous attendance.

Coordinators: Martin Guzi, Štěpán Mikula, Miloš Fišar, and Luca Fumarco.

Upcoming seminars

12 Dec
2013

Does Financing of Public Goods by Lotteries Crowd Out Pro-Social Incentives?

Peter Katuščák (CERGE-EI) ESF Room P403

We investigate the extent to which lottery financing of public goods crowds out voluntary contributions driven by social preferences. On average, we find presence of such crowding out effect. We then classify subjects by the strength of their conditional cooperation and find that the extent of crowding out is increasing with the the level of conditional cooperation, especially under a higher lottery prize. We interpret this finding as crowding-out of voluntary contributions driven by reciprocity.

31 Oct
2013

Train Commuters' Scheduling Preferences: Evidence From a Large-Scale Reward Experiment

Stefanie Peer (Vienna University of Economics and Business) ESF Room S309

We investigate the trip scheduling behavior of Dutch train commuters, using data collected during a large-scale reward experiment with more than 1000 participants. Railway subscription owners were invited to join an experiment where they could earn (distance-based) monetary rewards if they traveled outside the (morning and evening) peak hours. A dedicated smartphone app was used to observe the trip timing and routing behavior of the participants. Compared to the pre-measurement, the share of peak trips decreased by ca. 20% during the reward period, and by 9% during the post-measurement. We estimate departure time choice models, drawing from multiple data sources to compute the attribute values for all choice alternatives. We are able to derive plausible revealed preference (RP) values for the participants' willingness-to-pay for reducing travel time, schedule delays, the number of transfers and crowdedness, and for increasing reliability.

3 Oct
2013

Corruption and Manipulation of Public Procurement: Evidence from the Introduction of Discretionary Thresholds

Filip Pertold (CERGE-EI) ESF Room S309 Personal website

We present a methodology for detecting manipulation of public procurement and evidence showing how policies that create discontinuous incentives to avoid transparent competition lead to manipulation and active waste by procurement officials. Our methodology exploits a natural experiment in which new discretionary thresholds in the anticipated value of procurements were established. Manipulations reveal through bunching of procurements below the new thresholds and affect 11% of relevant contracts. Manipulations lead to increases in the chance of allocating contracts to anonymously owned firms often related to corrupt behavior, increases in the final prices of procurements and preferential prices for anonymous contractors.