Seminar Series

Seminar Series Fall 2024

Organizers: Utteeyo Dasgupta and Pablo Schenone

September 3 | 4:00 p.m. | CANCELLED

Seminar Title: Who You Gonna Call? Gender Inequality in External Demands for Parental Involvement

Abstract: Gender imbalance in time spent on child rearing causes gender inequalities in labor market outcomes, human capital accumulation, and economic mobility. We investigate a novel source of this inequality: external demands for parental involvement. We pair a theoretical model with a large-scale field experiment with a near-universe of US schools. Schools receive an email from a two-parent household with a general inquiry and are asked to call one of the parents back. Mothers are 1.4 times more likely than fathers to be contacted. We decompose this inequality into discrimination stemming from differential beliefs about parents’ responsiveness versus other factors, including gender norms and link it to the gender earnings gap and other labor market outcomes. Our findings underscore a process through which agents outside the household contribute to within-household gender inequalities.

Speaker: Laura Gee (Associate Professor of Economics, Tufts University).

Laura K. Gee is an Associate Professor of Economics at Tufts University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego, and her B.A. from Barnard College at Columbia University. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals including the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, Management Science, and Experimental Economics. Her research has also been covered in the popular press in outlets such as CBS News, Fast Company, Forbes, the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal. She currently has two main lines of research. One is about the relationship between behavioral factors and labor markets with an emphasis on inequalities. The second is about the provision of public goods including charitable contributions. Her studies rely on both lab and field experiments, as well as observational data.

September 10 | 4:00 p.m. | In-person & Zoom option

Seminar Title: African Mining Economies and the Gender Gap in Female Political Participation

Abstract: There is a significant gender gap in political participation in Africa. Concurrently, many African economies are heavily reliant on traditionally male-dominated extractive industries. We investigate whether mining activities influence the gender gap in political participation at the local level using Afrobarometer data for 150,000 respondents with precise geo-located information on mining. The gender gap decreases across four dimensions of political participation in proximity to mining: the gap in discussing politics drops by 18.4%,voting 67%, attending community meetings 28%, accepting women as leaders 95%. Women near active deposits are more politically active than those living further away. However, we detect no change in the gender gap in attending protests, although this gap does widen in high conflict areas. We explore several mechanisms and find employment, but not community grievances or migration, to be an important channel explaining the changes.

Speaker: Anja Benshaul-Tolonen (Assistant Professor, Barnard College, Columbia University).

Anja Benshaul-Tolonen is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University. She works on the intersection of natural resource economics and development economics. One strand of her work focuses on the local welfare effects of extractive industries in Africa, including employment, women’s empowerment, infant health and criminality. She uses mixed methodologies, including statistical analysis of natural experiments and randomized control trials. Professor Benshaul-Tolonen is an external research member at Oxford Center for Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (OxCarre), and affiliated faculty at Columbia Center for Development Economics and Policy and Columbia Population Research Center. She received her Ph.D. from University of Gothenburg in 2015 and has been a visiting researcher at University of Oxford, University of California at Berkeley, New York University and Princeton University.

September 17 | 4:00 p.m. | In-person & Zoom option

Seminar Title: The Reducators: Political Persecution in Academia

Abstract: The McCarthy era is widely understood to be the largest episode of political persecution in US history. The education sector was a major target of this persecution; specifically, academic professors and teachers were singled out. In this paper, we study the impact of McCarthyism on scientific research. Leveraging a detailed dataset of academic publications and biographical information, we provide evidence of a decline in the professional activities of accused scientists, resulting from both the direct impact of McCarthyism on the accused scholars, as well as an indirect impact from the reaction of their community, stemming from the fear of being persecuted themselves, and consequently being associated with accused communists.

Speaker: Sahar Parsa (New York University).

Sahar Parsa is an applied economist with interests in political economy and finance. Her research has investigated both the determinants of political and cultural institutions and the consequences of these institutions. Her research interests has led her to a wide variety of settings, from economic history and politics to financial markets. She has also used a variety of methodologies to answer her research questions, with a focus on causal identification. As an applied econometrician, she has used quasi-experimental methodologies, lab experiments, and more recently, machine learning methods in research. That said, the primary motivation behind her research lies not in the application of methods but in the questions, which concern the interaction between culture, politics, social attitudes, and economic outcomes.

September 24 | 4:00 p.m. | In-person only

Seminar Title: Best Complete Approximations of Incomplete Preferences

Abstract: We investigate the problem of approximating an incomplete preference relation ≥ on a finite set by a complete preference relation. We aim to obtain this approximation in such a way that the choices on the basis of two preferences, one incomplete, the other complete, have the smallest possible discrepancy in the aggregate. To this end, we use the top-difference metric on preferences, and define a best complete approximation of ≥ as a complete preference nearest to ≥ relative to this metric. We prove that such an approximation must be a maximal completion of ≥, and that it is, in fact, any one completion of ≥ with the largest index. Finally, we use these results to provide a sufficient condition for the best complete approximation of a preference to be its canonical completion. This leads to closed-form solutions to the best approximation problem in the case of several incomplete preference relations of interest.

Speaker: EFE OK (Professor of Economics, NYU and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences).

EFE OK isa professor of economics and mathematics at the department of economics at NYU and at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. His principal areas of research in economics is individual decision theory and its behavioral applications. In mathematics, he works on order-theoretical functional analysis and topology.

October 1 | 4:00 p.m. | In-person & Zoom option

Seminar Title: Economic Shocks and Mental Health: Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract: There has been limited research that attempts to examine the impact of economic shocks on mental health outcomes in the context of developing countries. We use panel data from Bangladesh to examine the impact of shocks on anxiety and depression. We find evidence that economic shocks, like pests in crops, diseases of livestock, and fall in agricultural output prices increase depression and anxiety among household members. We find that the most economically vulnerable households are the likeliest to be affected by the increased depression and anxiety.

Speaker: Shamma A. Alam (Associate Professor of Economics, Dickinson College).

Shamma Alam’s research focuses on development economics, health economics, and economics of the household. He has previously worked as a Consultant with different development organizations. He served as a Consultant at the World Bank several times, including in their Economic Policy, Poverty and Gender Group, Development Data Group, and East Asia and Pacific Region group. He also previously served as a consultant in the Agriculture Policy Team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition to teaching at Dickinson, He serves as a Research Associate at the CEQ Institute at Tulane University and at Evans School Policy Analysis and Research Group (EPAR), Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington-Seattle.