FCA publication with contributions by Lorenzo Migliaccio ’14 (Competition and Market Regulation)
FS19/5 in the context of FCA work across the pension saving value chain . Source: FS19/5
The Financial Conduct Authority has published three pensions papers covering advising on pension transfers, the retirement outcome review, and effective competition in non-workplace pensions. The last one – which I’ve contributed to – outlines a number of proposals to improve competition in the non-workplace pensions market in the UK.
To share my Head of Department’s words, ‘this has been one of the most challenging data gathering exercises I have been involved in’, with more than 100 firms providing input for our analysis.
We found similar weaknesses to those the OFT identified in the DC workplace pension market in 2013, ie demand-side weaknesses and reduced competition on charges.
We now invite stakeholders’ views and welcome alternative suggestions for the way we and the industry can address the issues identified. Here you can find more information and download the feedback statement (pdf).
Economics master project by Oriol González, Marko Irisarri, Santiago Iglesias, Asier Beristain and Manuel Cabado ’19
Editor’s note: This post is part of a series showcasing BSE master projects. The project is a required component of all Master’s programs at the Barcelona School of Economics.
Abstract
Weak identification is known to yield unreliable standard instrumental variables (IV) inference. A large literature has focused on addressing this issue by proposing methods to detect weak instruments, mainly through the first-stage F-statistic. Our paper evaluates the weak identification in two leading empirical analyses by using the novel alternative approach developed by Ganics, Inoue and Rossi (2018), who base their tests on confidence intervals for the bias of the two-stage least squares estimator, and the size distortion of the associated Wald test. We illustrate the behavior of the tests in empirical settings, and compare how the conclusions differ to those using the standard tests. Our findings suggest that, in our empirical application, the results obtained using this approach are in line with those using previous tests in the literature, confirming it to be a robust alternative. An R package to directly compute these novel tests is also presented.
Main conclusions
The contribution of our paper is mainly twofold. On the one hand, we aim at motivating the usefulness of the novel approach developed by Ganics et al. (2018) to evaluate the robustness of empirical analyses to the potential presence of weak instruments. On the other hand, we make these tests accessible to researchers via the proposed R function. The paper shows how recent tests applied to previous literature unveil new interesting information about the results obtained and hence the conclusions drawn from them. We highlight the consequences of IV estimates displaying both high sampling uncertainty and high specification uncertainty, as minor specification changes can lead to very different estimates, which is in line with current findings in the IV literature (see Yogo, 2004; Kleibergen and Mavroeidis, 2009; Mavroeidis, 2010; Mavroeidis et al., 2014; Ganics, 2017; or Barnichon and Mesters, 2019). Another remarkable issue that arises, mirroring the recent findings in Young (2019), is the importance of the baseline assumptions on the structure of the error variance to correctly interpret the estimation results.
Output retrieved by the proposed girtest function in R
References
Barnichon, R. and Mesters, G. (2019), ‘Identifying modern macro equations with old shocks’, Barcelona GSE Working Paper Series (Working Paper n◦1097).
Ganics, G. (2017), Essays in macroeconometrics, PhD thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Ganics, G., Inoue, A. and Rossi, B. (2018), ‘Confidence intervals for bias and size distortion in IV and local projections-IV models’, Banco de España Working Paper.
Kleibergen, F. and Mavroeidis, S. (2009), ‘Weak instrument robust tests in gmm and the new keynesian phillips curve’, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 27(3), 293-311.
Mavroeidis, S. (2010), ‘Monetary policy rules and macroeconomic stability: some new evidence’, American Economic Review 100(1), 491-503.
Mavroeidis, S., Plagborg-Møller, M. and Stock, J. H. (2014), ‘Empirical evidence on inflation expectations in the new keynesian phillips curve’, Journal of Economic Literature 52(1), 124-88.
Yogo, M. (2004), ‘Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution when instru- ments are weak’, Review of Economics and Statistics 86(3), 797-810.
Young, A. (2019), ‘Consistency without inference: Instrumental variables in practical application’, Unpublished manuscript.
Forthcoming publication by Federico Lubello ’12 (Economics)
My paper, “Bank Assets, Liquidity and Credit Cycles” with Ivan Petrella (Warwick and CEPR) and Emiliano Santoro (University of Copenhagen) has been accepted at the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. In the paper, we uncover a close connection between the collateralization of bank loans, macroeconomic amplification and the degree of procyclicality of bank leverage.
Abstract
We study how bank collateral assets and their pledgeability affect the amplitude of credit cycles. To this end, we develop a tractable model where bankers intermediate funds between savers and borrowers. If bankers default, savers acquire the right to liquidate bankers’ assets. However, due to the vertically integrated structure of our credit economy, savers anticipate that liquidating financial assets (i.e., loans) is conditional on borrowers being solvent on their debt obligations. This friction limits the collateralization of bankers’ financial assets beyond that of real assets (i.e., capital). In this context, increasing the pledgeability of financial assets eases more credit and reduces the spread between the loan and the deposit rate, thus attenuating capital misallocation as it typically emerges in credit economies à la Kiyotaki and Moore (1997). We uncover a close connection between the collateralization of bank loans, macroeconomic amplification and the degree of procyclicality of bank leverage.
Hrvoje Stojić (Economics ’11 and GPEFM ’17) is co-author on a new paper, “Uncertainty in learning, choice and visual fixation,” now available in pre-print on PsyArXiv.
Hrvoje Stojić (Economics ’11, GPEFM ’17) is a researcher at UCL. He is an alum of the Barcelona GSE Master’s in Economics and PhD from GPEFM (UPF and Barcelona GSE).
IDB publication co-authored by Miguel Angel Santos (ITFD ’11, Economics ’12)
After a lengthy review process we are proud to announce that our book “City Design, Planning, Policy Innovations: The Case of Hermosillo” is published and available for download from the Inter-American Development Bank. Cutting edge research on cities featuring my work with Douglas Barrios, my colleague at the Center for International Development’s Growth Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School. Thanks to Andreina Seijas and Diego Arcia for the superb coordination and editing work.
About the book
This publication summarizes the outcomes and lessons learned from the Fall 2017 course titled “Emergent Urbanism: Planning and Design Visions for the City of Hermosillo, Mexico” (ADV-9146). Taught by professors Diane Davis and Felipe Vera, this course asked a group of 12 students to design a set of projects that could lay the groundwork for a sustainable future for the city of Hermosillo—an emerging city located in northwest Mexico and the capital of the state of Sonora. Part of a larger initiative funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and the North-American Development Bank in partnership with Harvard University, ideas developed for this class were the product of collaboration between faculty and students at the Graduate School of Design, the Kennedy School’s Center for International Development and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Speech by Gavin Jackson ’12 (Economics) to the Oxford Economics Society
Image: OES
This June, Gavin Jackson ’12 (Economics) returned to his undergrad alma mater, University of Oxford, and gave a talk to the Oxford Economics Society about the slowdown in productivity in the United Kingdom and where productivity in the UK might be headed.
He listed five contributing factors to the slowdown: “changes in financial regulation, the patent cliff, mismeasurement of telecommunications, attempts to cope with climate change, and the troubles with getting more oil out of the North Sea.”
Looking ahead, he remarked, “I don’t think we can or should go back to the past. We do not want to go back on environmental on financial regulation, as the US is doing right now. But what we can do as a society is try to be open to new opportunities and technologies that are coming along and that means investing in the basics of education, infrastructure and research to make sure that we are able to make the most of things like e-commerce and working out what to do about those who lose out from these transitions.”
Blog post for AIER by Brian C. Albrecht ’14 (Economics of Public Policy)
Brian Albrecht is a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota and a graduate of the Barcelona GSE Master’s Program in Economics of Public Policy, as well as a past editor of the Barcelona GSE Voice. He is also a contributor to the Sound Money Project, a blog from the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).
In a recent post, Brian talks about a recent paper by Barcelona GSE professors Davide Debortoli, Jordi Galí, and Luca Gambetti, “On the Empirical (Ir)Relevance of the Zero Lower Bound Constraint.” He writes:
Many economics writers, including Ben Bernanke, Neil Irwin, and Justin Wolfers, worry that the Fed will not be able to combat the next recession. Current interest rates, the sad story goes, are already close to zero. Since a downturn will push the economy to the zero lower bound (ZLB), the Fed will not be able to lower rates further, thereby prolonging the recession.
Of course, for such a story to make sense, the ZLB must be a fundamental constraint that inhibits monetary policy. In a new NBER working paper, Davide Debortoli, Jordi Galí, and Luca Gambetti consider whether the ZLB was actually the problem during the last recession. They say the ZLB was irrelevant. The authors come to this conclusion by studying two types of evidence: measures of macro volatility, and the response of macro variables to aggregate shocks through a vector autoregression.
Read Brian’s full post on this paper and find a list of all his recent posts over on the AIER website.
Brian C. Albrecht ’14 is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Minnesota. He is an alum of the Barcelona GSE Master’s in Economics of Public Policy.
Master’s students Analía García ’19 (ITFD) and Lorena Franco ’19 (Economics) organized the seminar to highlight research by female PhD students and professors
This May, BGSE Master’s students Analía García ’19 (ITFD) and Lorena Franco ’19 (Economics) organized the Women in Economics two-day seminar, which meant to highlight female PhD students and faculty members’ research.
Three students and four Barcelona GSE Affiliated Professors presented their work, which varied from family economics to political economics and experimental economics. More information of the speakers and their topics below.
Organizers Analía García ’19 and Lorena Franco ’19
These efforts, nonetheless, started over two months ago when both students, who are from Latin America and the Caribbean, organized an open forum on International Women’s Day. Having prior work experience and noting the clear lack of female representation in economics and academia, they wanted to expand the conversations on the topic and discuss what we could do to potentially “make it better” within their parameters. The Women in Economics seminar was born from the conversations during the first and second open forums, and thanks to the ideas of Marta Morazzoni and Claudia Meza, both PhD students at GPEFM (UPF and Barcelona GSE).
Putting this together was a challenge given this had not been done at BGSE before, but the organizers hope this was insightful for all those who attended.
More female and racial diversity in economics and academia, please!
The speakers and the titles of the work were the following (listed alphabetically):
PhD Students
Marta Morazzoni“Family Dynamics in Macroeconomics: when the representative household does not represent us anymore”
Marta Santamaría“The Gains from Reshaping Infrastructure: Evidence from the Division of Germany”
Alina Velias“When to Tie Odysseus to the Mast: Costly Commitment Under Biased Expactations”
Professors
Enriqueta Aragonés“Stability of a Multi-level Government: A Catalonia in Spain”
Rosa Ferrer“Consumers’ Costly Responses to Product-Harm Crises” and “Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers”
Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell“Relative Deprivation in Tanzania”
Rosemarie Nagel“Regularities in the Lab, Brain, and Field: A Cognitive Reasoning Model”
Publication by Orestis Vravosinos ’18 (Economics) with Kyriakos Konstantinou
Comic author: Zach Weinersmith
A paper by Orestis Vravosinos (Economics ’18, UPF MRes in Economics ’19) and Kyriakos Konstantinou (LSE) has just been published in the Review of Behavioral Economics. Below is an overview of the paper.
The Ultimatum Game
Given that in experiments ultimatum game outcomes are often significantly different from Nash equilibrium predictions under standard assumptions on preferences, many studies have examined the impact of fairness on players’ considerations and how the effect of the sense of fairness on players’ actions may vary, while other factors change. It has been argued that increased stakes (larger sum of money distributed) can reduce sensitivity to fairness of player 2 making it more likely that she accepts lower shares of the total sum, thus, giving player 1 the opportunity to offer a lower share.
Social Distance
Social distance has also been found to affect fairness. In the existing literature, social distance commonly varies only from players being close relatives or friends to complete strangers, even though negatively-valenced relationships can be important from an economic point of view. Our study aims to fill this gap by introducing negatively-valenced relationships between the players. We argue that altruistic and empathetic behavior of the proposer towards the responder may not vary (increase) as significantly in the region of negative relationships compared to the region of positive relationships. Similarly, social distance effects stemming from reciprocity may vary less in the region of negative relationships. Thus, we hypothesize that in the ultimatum game social distance effects are asymmetric with their magnitude varying more in the spectrum of positively compared to negatively-valenced relationships.
Our experimental results support this hypothesis; in the region of positively-valenced relationships, the proposers increase the percentage they offer as relationship quality increases more drastically compared to when the relationship is negatively-valenced, in which case they appear more invariant to relationship effects. Also, by eliciting a minimum share which the responder is willing to accept out of the total sum, we provide clearer results on the social distance and stakes effects on the latter’s behavior. Last, we find a negative effect of relationship quality on the minimum acceptable share. This contradicts a strand of the literature which suggests that closer-“in-group” individuals may be punished more severely, so that cooperation in a group is maintained.
Economics ’18 master project turned working paper by alumni Mariel Bedoya, Karen Espinoza, Bruno Gonzaga, and Alejandro Herrera Jiménez
What started out as a Barcelona GSE master project has developed into a full-fledged working paper by four alumni of the Master’s in Economics Class of 2018: Mariel Bedoya, Karen Espinoza, Bruno Gonzaga, and Alejandro Herrera Jiménez.
The team after submitting their Economics master project, June 2018
The paper, “Setting an example? Spillover effects of Peruvian Magnet Schools,” is now part of the Development Research Working Paper Series of the Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD), a research center in La Paz, Bolivia.
Mariel explains that the idea to research this topic occurred to her because before doing the master in BGSE, she worked in the Ministry of Education of Peru, in the Impact Evaluation Division.
“The topic was interesting for us because although there is plenty of literature studying these selective schools’ first order effects (that is, effects on the students who directly benefited from the creation of these schools), we found scarce evidence about second-order effects (effects on students who shared environments with the high achieving student previously). Even more, analyzing externalities seemed of importance for a program such as COAR in Peru since the expenditure per student for the program is relatively high,” Mariel says.
The team has presented their research in three seminars so far, two in Peru and one in Bolivia.
“We aim to continue this research project in the near future. We got the opportunity of presenting findings of our research for public servants within the Ministry of Education last year, including the Director of the Division of Specialized Education Services, who is in charge of the COAR Program. This research complements ongoing efforts of the Ministry of Education of evaluating COAR’s first order effects. They seemed keen on helping us, especially because we do not have yet the necessary data to conclude on the mechanisms that may be driving the results we find, and they would like us to tell them more about this point in particular. We hope to have a new version of this paper by the end of the year.”
Alejandro Herrera Jiménez ’18 is an Associate Researcher at INESAD in Bolivia. LinkedIn | Twitter
Karen Espinoza ’18 is Coordinator of the Innovation Lab of the Ministry of Education in Peru (MineduLAB). LinkedIn
We use our own and third party cookies to carry out analysis and measurement of our website activities, in order to improve our services. Your continuing on this website implies your acceptance of these terms.
