CV Packet 2013 PDF

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Department of Economics
Job Market Candidates
2012-2013
Barron, Daniel
Chan, David
Chetverikov, Denis
Di Maggio, Marco
Di Tella, Sebastian
Kermani, Amir
Larreguy, Horacio
Larsen, Brad
Leight, Jessica
Leiserson, Greg
Peck, Jennifer
Pinkovskiy, Maxim
Ralston, Laura
Shapiro, Joseph
Walters, Christopher
Wang, Xiao Yu
Williams, Tyler
Xandri Antuna, Juan Pablo
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P= Primary Field, S= Secondary Field
DANIEL BARRON
dbarron@mit.edu
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

OFFICE CONTACT INFORMATION
MIT Department of Economics
50 Memorial Drive, E51-090
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
765-427-1981
dbarron@mit.edu
HOME CONTACT INFORMATION

49 Saint James Ave
Somerville, MA 02144-2929
Mobile: 765-427-1981
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/dbarron
MIT PLACEMENT OFFICER
Professor Benjamin Olken
617-253-6833
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
bolken@mit.edu
MIT PLACEMENT ADMINISTRATOR

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

PhD, Economics, Expected completion June 2013
DISSERTATION: Essays in Cooperation and Repeated Games
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE AND REFERENCES
Professor Robert Gibbons
MIT Sloan School of Management
100 Main Street, E62-524
617-253-0283
rgibbons@mit.edu
Professor Juuso Toikka

50 Memorial Drive, E52-371a
617-324-3666
toikka@mit.edu
Professor Glenn Ellison

50 Memorial Drive, E52-380A
617-253-8702
gellison@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
B.A. in Economics (honors, highest distinction)

B.S. in Mathematics (honors, highest distinction)
CITIZENSHIP
USA
FIELDS
Primary Field: Theory

Secondary Field: Organizational Economics
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Contract Theory (graduate)

Teaching Assistant to Professor Bengt Holmstrom
Organizational Economics (graduate)
Teaching Assistant to Professor Robert Gibbons
Intermediate Microeconomics (undergraduate)
Teaching Assistant to Professor Juuso Toikka
Indiana University
Indiana University
2008
2008
Fall
2010, 2011, 2012
Fall
2012
Fall
2010, 2011
DANIEL BARRON
OCTOBER 2012 -- PAGE 2
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant to Professor Robert Gibbons

Research Assistant to Professor Parag Pathak
2010-2011
2009-2010
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
James A. and Ruth Levitan Teaching Award (MIT)

James E Moffat Outstanding Senior (IU Economics)
Cora B. Hennel Memorial Scholarship (IU Mathematics)
Phi Beta Kappa
RESEARCH
PAPERS
The Allocation of Future Business: Dynamic Relational Contracts with

Multiple Agents (Job Market Paper) (with Isaiah Andrews)
Consider a principal who motivates several agents using relational contracts. In a
repeated game with imperfect private monitoring, we show that future business is
allocated among agents as a form of collateral to make promised bonuses credible.
We calculate when first-best can be attained and characterize a dynamic relational
contract that does so by rewarding high output with additional future business.
When players are impatient and first-best unattainable, we consider relational
contracts that reveal the true history to each player. An optimal contract in this
class entails the eventual deterioration of some relationships into temporary or
permanent low effort. When first-best cannot be attained, the principal can
sometimes improve surplus by concealing information from the agents. We
consider communication between agents, expand the model to include learning
about agent productivity, and discuss the role of innovation in easing scarcity
constraints.
2011
2008
2008
2008
Attaining Efficiency with Imperfect Public Monitoring and Markov

Adverse Selection
I prove an efficiency result for dynamic games of imperfect public monitoring in
which one player's utility is privately known and evolves according to an
irreducible Markov process. Under assumptions about the set of payoffs, patient
players are able to attain approximately Pareto efficient payoffs in equilibrium. The
public signal must satisfy a pairwise full rank condition that is somewhat
stronger than the related condition required in the Folk Theorem proved by
Fudenberg, Levine, and Maskin (1994). My proof is partially constructive and uses
a novel technique to mitigate the impact of private information about utility on
continuation payoffs. Under stronger assumptions, the efficiency result partially
extends to games in which the private information affects every player's payoff.
Putting the Relationship First: Relational Contracts and Market Structure
I examine relational contracts and investment in a market for intermediate goods
using a tractable game of imperfect private monitoring. A downstream firm
requires one of several products in each period from a market of suppliers. If
output is not contractible, I show that the downstream firm relies on a small
network of suppliers relative to first-best. These upstream firms choose to put the
relationship first. By investing to produce many of the products that may be
required by the downstream firm, they lock themselves into the relationship,
thereby increasing effort provision. Using this framework, I consider why
suppliers might resist socially efficient legal reform, and discuss implications for
employment and ex ante human capital investments.
DANIEL BARRON
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Reel Authority (with Robert Gibbons, Ricard Gil, and Kevin Murphy)
Motivated by exhibitor-distributor contracts in the movie industry (and especially
by renegotiation of revenue-sharing contracts after the movie completes its run),
we analyze a model of formal and relational contracts and test its implications
using data for movie releases in Spain. A distributor and exhibitor can formally
contract on total box office revenue, but they cannot contract on the other movies
that the exhibitor might show - that is, on the opportunity cost of showing this
distributor's movie. The optimal relational contract compensates the exhibitor for
playing the distributor's movie when doing so is efficient but the formal contract
alone would make an alternative movie more attractive. Consistent with this
theory, we find that ex post renegotiations occur more frequently and involve
larger concessions by the distributor when the exhibitor has a more valuable
outside option.
DAVID C. CHAN
d_c_chan@mit.edu

50 Memorial Drive, E52-243D
909-556-9530
d_c_chan@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/d_c_chan

29 Otis Street, Unit 404
Cambridge, MA 02141
Mobile: 909-556-9530

617-253-6833
bolken@mit.edu

Ms. Beata Shuster
617-324-5857
bshuster@mit.edu
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

DISSERTATION: Essays on Physician Behavior and Health Care Delivery
Professor Jonathan Gruber
617-253-8887
gruberj@mit.edu
Professor Robert Gibbons

MIT Sloan School of Management and
617-253-7006
rgibbons@mit.edu
Professor David Cutler

Harvard University Department of
Economics
Littauer Center 230
1805 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-496-5216
dcutler@harvard.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
M.D. Medicine (University of California, Los Angeles, 2005)

M.Sc. Economics for Development (Oxford University, 2003)
M.Sc. International Health Policy (London School of Economics and
Political Science, 2002, distinction)
B.A. Mathematics and Economics (University of California,
Riverside, 1999, summa cum laude)
CITIZENSHIP
United States
LANGUAGES
English (native), Mandarin Chinese (fluent)
DAVID C. CHAN
OCTOBER 2012 PAGE 2
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Health Economics and Organizational Economics

Secondary Fields: Public Finance and Industrial Organization
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Hospitalist, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Instructor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Research Fellow, Brigham and Womens Hospital
Entrepreneur in Residence, The White House
Staff Physician, Brigham and Womens Hospital
Research Assistant to Jonathan Gruber
Staff Fellow, US Food and Drug Administration
Medical Device Fellow, US Food and Drug Administration
Resident Physician (Internal Medicine), Brigham and
Womens Hospital
State Coordinator for Health (Iowa), Democratic National
Committee
Consultant, World Bank
Consultant, L.E.K. Consulting
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
PUBLICATIONS
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Ruth

L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship F32-HS021044
Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship
National Bureau of Economic Research Fellowship in Aging
and Health Economics NIA T32-AG000186
George and Obie Schultz Fund Award (MIT)
Harvard Medical School Faculty Development Fellowship in
General Medicine (Brigham and Womens Hospital)
Diplomate, American Board of Internal Medicine
Martin P. Solomon Education Grant, Brigham and Womens
Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Neil R. Powe Award for Epidemiology and Outcomes
Research (Johns Hopkins University)
William N. Valentine Award for Highest Scholarly
Distinction in Internal Medicine (UCLA)
British Marshall Scholarship
George Webb Medley Grant (Oxford)
Brian Abel-Smith Prize for best dissertation (LSE)
Rhodes Scholarship National Finalist
Mark P. Hanna Award for best graduating mathematics major
(UC Riverside)
Regents Scholarship (UC Riverside)
2010-present
2010-present
2010-present
2011-2012
2008-2010
2008-2010
2008-2010
2007-2008
2005-2008
2004
2002
2000
2011-2013
2011-2013
2011
2011
2008-2011
2008
2007
2006
2005
2001-2003
2002-2003
2002
2001
1999
1995-1999
Chan DC, Joynt KE, Orav EJ, Jha AK. The Impact of Massachusetts
Healthcare Reform on Preventable Hospitalizations for Previously Insured
Medicare Patients. Health Affairs (revise and resubmit).
Chan DC, Gruber J. How Sensitive Are Low Income Families to Health Plan
Prices? American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 2010 May;
100(2):292-6.
DAVID C. CHAN
OCTOBER 2012 PAGE 3
Chan DC, Shrank WH, Cutler D, Fischer MA, Brookhart MA, Avorn J,
Solomon D, Choudhry NK. Patient, Physician, and Payment Predictors of
Statin Adherence. Medical Care 2010 Mar; 48(3):196-202.
Jha AK, Chan DC, Ridgway A, Franz C, Bates DW. Improving Safety and
Eliminating Redundant Tests: Cutting Costs in US Hospitals. Health Affairs
2009; 28(5):1475-84.
Chan DC, Pollett PK, Weinstein MC. Quantitative Risk Stratification in
Markov Chains with Limiting Conditional Distributions. Medical Decision
Making 2009; 29:532-540.
Chan DC, Heidenreich PA, Weinstein MC, Fonarow GC. Heart Failure
Disease Management Programs: A Cost-effectiveness Analysis. American
Heart Journal 2008; 155(2):332-8.
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Organizational Structure and Moral Hazard among Emergency

Department Physicians (Job Market Paper)
How does organizational structure affect physician behavior? I investigate this
question by studying emergency department (ED) physicians who work in two
organizational systems that differ in the extent of physician autonomy to
manage work: a traditional system in which physicians are assigned patients
by a triage nurse manager, and a self-managed system in which physicians
decide among themselves which patients to treat. Taking advantage of several
sources of quasi-random variation, I estimate that the self-managed system
increases throughput productivity by 10-13%. Essentially all of this net effect
can be accounted for by reducing a moral hazard I call foot-dragging:
because of asymmetric information between physicians and the triage nurse,
physicians prolong the length of stay of patients in order to appear busier and
avoid getting new patients. I show that foot-dragging is sensitive to the
presence of and relationship between peers. Finally, I show evidence
consistent with theory that predicts more efficient assignment of new patients
in the self-managed system.
Learning and Authority: The Dynamics of Housestaff Physician Practice
Styles
Although a large medical literature documents variation in spending across
areas, relatively little is known about the microfoundations of underlying
variation at the individual provider level. I study internal medicine physicians
in training (housestaff) at a single institution and measure the dynamics of
their spending practice styles. Despite similar training experiences, housestaff
physicians exhibit significant and growing variation in practice styles
throughout their training. In particular, first-year housestaff (interns) 1
standard deviation above mean spend 15-30% more; second- and third-year
housestaff (residents) that are 1 standard deviation above mean spend 5580% more. The increased variation occurs discontinuously as interns become
residents, suggesting that physician authority is important for the size of
practice style variation. Practice styles become more stable with time, but
stability is not monotonic with cumulative experience, as practice styles also
become less stable with less practice. Practice styles are poorly explained by
DAVID C. CHAN
OCTOBER 2012 PAGE 4
rotation categories, consistent with highly individualized learning. However,
rotating to an affiliated community hospital decreases intern spending at the
main hospital by more than half, reflecting an important and lasting effect of
institutional norms. Pre-training characteristics as measures of intrinsic
heterogeneity have a minor influence on practice styles.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Cherry Picking and Matching in the Emergency Department

Do physicians choose patients that they are better at seeing, or do physicians
all simply prefer and compete for the same types of patients? I estimate
emergency department (ED) physician preferences by the likelihood that
physicians choose a given patient type, when given the choice, and then
determine whether patient outcomes are better for these patients when they are
assigned patients of a similar type. I find that preferences are associated with
improved efficiency in terms of length of stay when assigned patients with
similar types. However, physician preferences are relatively homogeneous. As
future research, I will account for rich information in chief complaints,
which are highly informative free-text reasons of a patients visit and likely
reflective of true heterogeneity. I will investigate whether outcomes are better
when physicians with similar or different preferences are working together.
Clocking Out: Behavioral Effects Associated with Shift Work
Work is often performed in shifts, yet little is known about behavioral
responses to the timing of work relative to the shift. I study emergency
department (ED) physicians who work in shifts with patients arriving
exogenously to their shift times and evaluate throughput, quality, and financial
outcomes. Physicians are expected to stay until they complete seeing all
patients, even if work lasts past the end of their shift. Physicians assigned
patients at the end of their shifts discharge the patients 40% sooner, with a
minor decrease in revenue and costs per patient. The distribution of discharges
suggests that physicians time their discharges right before the end of their
shifts. Physicians also avoid choosing patients near the end of their shift, if
allowed to choose. As future research, I will attempt to identify mechanism(s)
behind these behavioral effects, such as fatigue and moral hazard. I will
explore whether behavioral effects are sensitive to social incentives and
whether it is heterogeneous among physician types.
The Effect of the Doctor-patient Relationship on Birth Outcomes (with
Erin Johnson)
Access to an outpatient physician is thought to be important for quality care.
This study tests whether this is because the doctor-patient relationship allows
physicians to attain better outcomes for patients that they know. Using quasirandom variation in the timing of unscheduled deliveries, we ask whether
patients who are delivered by their prenatal obstetricians have different
outcomes than those who are delivered by another physician in the group with
access to their patient records. We evaluate outcomes such as cesarean sections
and complications from delivery. While non-prenatal obstetricians do not have
a previous relationship with the patients they are delivering, prenatal
obstetricians may face a pressure to deliver before their shifts end.
DENIS CHETVERIKOV
dchetver@mit.edu

339-203-8132
dchetver@mit.edu

540 Memorial Drive, Apt 1507
Cambridge, MA 02139
Mobile: 339-203-8132
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/dchetver/
617-253-6833
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
bolken@mit.edu

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857

DISSERTATION: Essays on Testing Problems in Econometrics
Professor Victor Chernozhukov
50 Memorial Drive, E52-361B
617-253-4767
vchern@mit.edu
Professor Anna Mikusheva

617-324-5459
amikushe@mit.edu
Professor Whitney Newey

617-253-6420
wnewey@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
M.A. Economics, New Economic School (Moscow, Russia), 2007

M.Sc. and B.Sc. Applied Physics, Moscow Institute of Physics and
Technology, 2007
CITIZENSHIP
Russia
LANGUAGES
English (fluent), Russian (native)
FIELDS
Primary Field: Econometrics
DENIS CHETVERIKOV
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
14.384 Time Series Analysis

Teaching assistant to Professor Anna Mikusheva
14.382 Econometrics
Teaching assistant to Professor Jerry Hausman
14.385 New Econometric Methods
Teaching assistant to Professor Whitney Newey
14.381 Statistical Method in Econ
Teaching assistant to Professor Victor Chernozhukov
14.385 New Econometric Methods
Teaching assistant to Professor Victor Chernozhukov
14.30 Intro Statistical Meth in Econ
Teaching assistant to Professor Panle Jia Barwick
Fall
2010, 2011, 2012
Spring
2011
Spring
2011
Fall
2011
Spring
2012
Fall
2012
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research assistant to Professor Anna Mikusheva

Research assistant to Professor Victor Chernozhukov
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
Patinkin Award, New Economic School, 2007

MIT Presidential Fellowship, 2008-2010
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
Referee for
Econometric Theory, Journal of Econometrics.
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Testing Regression Monotonicity in Econometric Models (Job Market

Paper)
Monotonicity is often a key qualitative prediction of a wide array of economic
models derived via robust comparative statics. It is therefore important to
design effective and practical econometric methods for testing this prediction
in empirical analysis. This paper develops a general nonparametric framework
for testing monotonicity of a regression function. Using this framework, a
broad class of new tests is introduced, which gives an empirical researcher a
lot of flexibility to incorporate ex ante information she might have. The paper
also develops new methods for simulating critical values, which are based on
the combination of a bootstrap procedure and new selection algorithms. These
methods yield tests that have correct asymptotic size and are asymptotically
nonconservative. It is also shown how to obtain an adaptive rate optimal test
that has the best attainable rate of uniform consistency against models whose
regression function has Lipshitz-continuous first-order derivatives and that
automatically adapts to the unknown smoothness of the regression function.
Simulations show that the power of the new tests in many cases significantly
exceeds that of some prior tests, e.g. that of Ghosal, Sen, and Van der Vaart
(2000). An application of the developed procedures to the dataset of Ellison
and Ellison (2011) shows that there is some evidence of strategic entry
deterrence in pharmaceutical industry where incumbents may use strategic
investment to prevent generic entries when their patents expire.
2010-2011
2011-2012
DENIS CHETVERIKOV
Adaptive Test of Conditional Moment Inequalities

In this paper, I construct a new test of conditional moment inequalities based
on studentized kernel estimates of moment functions. The test automatically
adapts to the unknown smoothness of the moment functions, has uniformly
correct asymptotic size, and is rate optimal against certain classes of
-1/2
alternatives. Some existing tests have nontrivial power against n
-local
alternatives of the certain type whereas my method only allows for nontrivial
testing against (n/log n)-1/2-local alternatives of this type. There exist, however,
large classes of sequences of well-behaved alternatives against which the test
developed in this paper is consistent and those tests are not.
Central Limit Theorems and Multiplier Bootstrap when p is much larger
than n (with Victor Chernozhukov and Kengo Kato)
We derive a central limit theorem for the maximum of a sum of high
dimensional random vectors, namely we show that the distribution of the
maximum is approximated by the maximum of a sum of the Gaussian vectors
with the same covariance as the original vectors. The key innovation of our
result is that it applies even if the dimension of random vectors, p, is much
larger than the sample size, n. In fact, the growth of p could be exponential in
some fractional power of n. We also show that the distribution of the
maximum of a sum of the Gaussian vectors with unknown covariance can be
estimated by the distribution of the maximum of the (conditional) Gaussian
process obtained by multiplying the original vectors with i.i.d. Gaussian
multiplers. This is the multipler bootstrap procedure. We prove that our
distributional approximations, either Gaussian or conditional Gaussian, yield a
high-quality approximation for the distribution of the original maximum, often
with at most a polynomial approximation error. These results are of interest in
numerous econometric and statistical applications. In particular, we
demonstrate how our central limit theorem and the multiplier bootstrap can be
used for high dimensional estimation, for multiple hypothesis testing, and for
adaptive specification testing.
IV Quantile Regression for Group-Level Treatments (with Brad Larsen
and Christopher Palmer)
We propose a simple minimum-distance approach for estimating the causal
effects of group-level treatments on the distribution of within-group outcomes.
While standard quantile regression is inconsistent in the presence of grouplevel additive shocks, our estimator is consistent even if the shocks are
correlated with the treatment variable. Monte Carlo simulations confirm the
superior performance of this grouped instrumental-variables quantile
regression estimator to traditional approaches. An empirical application
measures distributional treatment effects in settings where the unobserved
shock is either exogenous or endogenous to the treatment of interest.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Anti-Concentration of Gaussian Processes and Honest Adaptive

Confidence Bands (with Victor Chernozhukov and Kengo Kato)
Modern construction of uniform confidence bands for nonparametric densities
(and other functions) often relies on the Smirnov-Bickel-Rosenblatt (SBR)
DENIS CHETVERIKOV
condition; see e.g. Gine and Nickl (2010). This condition requires existence of
a limit distribution of an extreme value type for a supremum of a studentized
empirical process (equivalently, for a supremum of a Gaussian process with an
equivalent covariance kernel). The principal contribution of this paper is to
remove the need for SBR condition. We show that a weaker sufficient
condition is the anticoncentration inequality for the supremum of the
approximating Gaussian process, and we derive such an inequality under weak
assumptions. Our new result shows that the supremum does not concentrate
too fast around its expected value. We then apply this result to derive a
Gaussian bootstrap procedure for constructing honest and adaptive confidence
bands for nonparametric density estimators, completely avoiding the need for
SBR condition. An essential advantage of our approach is that it applies even
in those cases where the limit distribution does not exist (or is unknown).
Furthermore, our approach provides an approximation to the exact finite
sample distribution with an error that converges to zero at a fast, polynomial
speed (with respect to the sample size). In sharp contrast, the Smirnov-BickelRosenblatt approach provides an approximation with an error that converges to
zero at a slow, logarithmic speed.
MARCO DI MAGGIO
dimaggio@mit.edu

50 Memorial Drive, E52-262G
857-928-2146
dimaggio@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/dimaggio

929 Mass Avenue, Apt. PHA
Cambridge, MA 02139
Mobile: 857-928-2146

Professor Ben Olken
bolken@mit.edu
617-253-6833

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

DISSERTATION: Essays on Amplification Mechanisms in Financial Markets
Professor Daron Acemoglu
617-253-1926
daron@mit.edu
Professor Abhijit Banerjee

617-253-8855
banerjee@mit.edu
Professor Stephen Ross

617-258-8371
sross@mit.edu
Professor Andrey Malenko

617-324-3666
amalenko@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
B.A., Economics, Federico II University, 110/110 cum laude

Northwestern University, Visiting Scholar
M.Sc., Economics, Federico II University, 110/110 cum laude
CITIZENSHIP
Italy
LANGUAGES
Italian, English
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Financial Economics

Secondary Fields: Macroeconomics
GENDER: MALE
2003-2006
2006-2007
2006-2008
YEAR OF BIRTH: 1985
MARCO DI MAGGIO
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Intermediate Macroeconomics (undergraduate, MIT course 14.05),

Teaching Assistant to George-Marios Angeletos
Political Economy of Institutions and Development (PhD, MIT course
14.773), Teaching Assistant to Daron Acemoglu and Abhijit Banerjee
Applied Economics for Managers (MBA, MIT Sloan course 15.024),
Teaching Assistant to Michael Chapman
Organizational Economics (MBA, MIT Sloan course 15.903),
Teaching Assistant to Robert Gibbons
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Associate, Credit Suisse, New York, NY

Research Assistant to Professor Robert Gibbons
Research Assistant to Professors Marco Pagano and Tullio Jappelli
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
Dissertation Grant, Shultz Fund

American Finance Association, PhD Travel Grant
European Economic Association, Travel Grant
George and Obie Shultz Fund Grants
"F. Adipietro" Prize for an outstanding research thesis
MIT Department of Economics, Supplemental Fellowship
"Giovanna Crivelli" Fellowship, Unicredit Group
"Ando-Modigliani" Fellowship, Bank of Italy (declined)
2012
2011
2011
2010
2010
2010
2007-2008
2012
2012
2011
2009
2009
2008
2008
2008
PROFESSIONAL Presentations:
North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society, Evanston, IL, 2012
ACTIVITIES
MOOD 12th Doctoral Workshop in Economic Theory and Econometrics, June 2012
CREI-CEPR conference on "Decision Theory and its Applications to Economics and
Finance", June 2012
Workshop on Information in Networks, New York University (Stern School of Business),
September 30th-October 1st, 2011
NBER Summer Institute 2011, Cambridge, MA July 22 - 23, 2011
European Finance Association. Stockholm, Sweden, 2011
European Economic Association, Oslo Norway from August 25-29, 2011
Conference on The Economics of Intellectual Property, Software and the Internet, Toulouse
MIT Field Lunch Workshops (Finance, Macroeconomics, Theory, Org. Economics)
MARCO DI MAGGIO
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Market Turmoil and Destabilizing Speculation (Job Market Paper)

This paper shows how, in periods of market turmoil, speculators may play a destabilizing role
and amplify negative shocks by selling assets with the expectation of buying them back at a
capital gain. It can provide empirical evidence in support of various predictions of the model
using data on money market mutual funds (MMMF). The model posits long-term investors and
speculators, who both participate in a market with trading frictions. During periods of market
turmoil created by a short-term negative shock (which can be interpreted as an uncertainty
shock), speculators react to declining asset prices by liquidating asset holdings to pursue future
capital gains. I show that lower trading frictions lead to more severe fluctuations in asset prices.
At the root of this result are the strategic complementarities between speculators expected to
follow similar strategies in the future. I measure the strength of the strategic interactions among
funds with the number of funding relationships each issuer has with MMMFs. Using a novel
dataset on MMMFs' portfolio holdings during the European debt crisis, I show that funds are
more likely to liquidate the assets of issuers that have fewer funding relationships with other
funds, suggesting that price destabilization is greater for assets characterized by greater
complementarity among funds. As a result, the maturity of these issuers' assets significantly
shortens, and yields increase during periods of market turmoil.
Financial Disclosure and Market Transparency with Costly Information Processing
(with Marco Pagano)
We study a model where some investors ("hedgers") are bad at information processing, while
others ("speculators") have superior information-processing ability and trade purely to exploit
it. The disclosure of financial information induces a trade externality: if speculators refrain
from trading, hedgers do the same, depressing the asset price. Market transparency reinforces
this mechanism, by making speculators' trades more visible to hedgers. As a consequence, asset
sellers will oppose both the disclosure of fundamentals and trading transparency. This policy is
socially inefficient if a large fraction of market participants are speculators and hedgers have
low processing costs. But in these circumstances, forbidding hedgers' access to the market may
dominate mandatory disclosure.
Information Sharing, Social Norms and Performance (with Marshall Van Alstyne)
What drives workers to seek information from their peers? And how does communication
affect employee performance? Answers have proven elusive due to problems obtaining precise
measures of white-collar output and of observing the information individuals consume. We
address these questions using an original panel data set that includes all accesses to an
information-sharing platform, together with performance measures of all loan officers at a
major Japanese bank. This paper makes three contributions. First, we show that skill level
differences, job rotation, and differences among branches each affect the demand for
information. There also exists substitution between an agent's ability and the amount of
information consumed. Low-skill agents benefit the most from consuming others' information.
Second, restricting attention to officers who switched branches, we show that they perform on
average significantly worse than before the switch, suggesting that job rotation destroys
specialized human capital. We also find that an officer who shares information increases his
chances of promotion rather than competes for promotion less effectively. Third, we measure
MARCO DI MAGGIO
the size of productivity gains based on consuming shared information. After controlling for
unobserved heterogeneity over time, between branches, and among officers, a standard
deviation increase in information access increases performance by roughly ten percent. By
instrumenting the demand for information with the exogenous variation arising from cultural
differences among branches, we are able to assess the causal effect of communication on
performance.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Adverse Targeting, Housing Prices and Foreclosure Externality (with Abhijit Banerjee)
We analyze the contracting features and loan-repayment behavior that emerge in a
competitive mortgage market when borrowers have self-control issues and housing prices are
time-varying. When banks' monitoring effort influences borrowers' expenditures, teaser rates
and balloon payments might be optimal as they relax banks incentive compatibility
constraint. However, the banks equilibrium behavior and the borrowers probability of
default crucially depend on the expectations about the housing market. When housing prices
are expected to rise, the interest rates and the loan amount are inefficiently high, and
borrowers who are unable to repay are forced to resell their house at a loss, which is not
internalized by the banks. Consistent with the events of the recent financial crisis, when
housing prices plummet, the banks over-monitor by tightening the credit available to
borrowers, especially when borrowers can strategically default. Finally, we show that an
externality among banks naturally emerges when foreclosure costs depend on the fraction of
houses foreclosed, as the lower expected value of the house increases the borrowers incentive
to strategically default, which further depresses banks incentive to grant credit. The model
can guide the discussion on the recent policy debate on mortgage relief programs.
Reputation Traps, Tail Risk and the Business Cycle
Reputation concerns are important sources of discipline for institutional investors, but the
effectiveness of these concerns varies along the business cycle. We propose a dynamic model
of reputation formation in which investors learn about fund managers' skill upon observing
past returns. Managers can generate active returns at a disutility and determine the fund's
exposure to tail risk. The model delivers rich dynamics for managers' behavior. Good
reputation managers exploit their status by extracting higher rents from investors, while
intermediate-reputation managers tend to improve their returns to attract more funds. Finally,
for bad performers there exists a reputation trap: their perceived low quality prevents them
from attracting investors' capital and then also from improving their track record.
Furthermore, when the economy is subject to aggregate shocks, fund managers tend to
exacerbate fluctuations by hoarding excess liquidity to preserve their reputation or by
exposing the fund to tail risk to increase short-term returns. The model provides a framework
to analyze the investment strategies adopted by mutual funds and hedge funds during the
recent financial crisis.
SEBASTIAN DI TELLA
sditella@mit.edu

202-290-4254
sditella@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/sditella

4 University Road, Apt. 402
Cambridge, MA 02138
Mobile: 202-290-4254

617-253-6833
bolken@mit.edu

Ms. Beata Shuster
617-324-5857
bshuster@mit.edu
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

DISSERTATION: Essays in Macroeconomics
Professor Ivan Werning
617-452-3662
iwerning@mit.edu
Professor Guido Lorenzoni

Northwestern Department of
Economics
2001 Sheridan Road,
Evanston, IL 60208-2600
847-491-8217
guido.lorenzoni@northwestern.edu

617-253-1927
daron@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
Universidad de Buenos Aires

Licenciatura en Economia
2006
CITIZENSHIP
Argentina
LANGUAGES
English and Spanish
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Macroeconomics
GENDER:
Male
SEBASTIAN DI TELLA
Secondary Fields: Finance

TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Advanced Macroeconomics (PhD, MIT course 14.461)

Teaching Assistant to Ivan Werning and Guido Lorenzoni
2010
Economic Growth (PhD, MIT course 14.452)

Teaching Assistant to Oded Galor
2010
Economic Growth (PhD, MIT course 14.452)

Teaching Assistant to Daron Acemoglu
2011
Principles of Macroeconomics (undergraduate, MIT course 14.02)

Teaching Assistant to Refet Gurkaynak
2011
Statistical Inference (masters, Universidad Di Tella)

Teaching Assistant to Andrea Rotnitzky
2007
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant for Ivan Werning
2010
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
MIT Department of Economics Fellowship
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Uncertainty Shocks and Balance Sheet Recessions (Job Market Paper)

This paper investigates the origin and propagation of balance sheet recessions
in a dynamic general equilibrium setting with moral hazard. I show that
uncertainty shocks can help explain the disproportionate risk taking that drives
financial crises. I first show that in standard models driven by TFP shocks, the
balance sheet channel completely disappears when agents are allowed to write
optimal contracts on the aggregate state of the economy. Furthermore, optimal
contracts are simple to implement using standard financial instruments such as
equity and a market index. In contrast, an aggregate shock that increases
idiosyncratic risk will create a balance sheet recession with depressed growth
and asset prices. It will endogenously increase aggregate volatility and trigger
a flight to quality event with low interest rates and high risk-premia. These
results suggest that uncertainty shocks and balance sheet recessions are more
closely connected than previously thought.
Dynamic Moral Hazard with Re-Contracting
I study a continuous-time moral hazard problem where the agents private
benefits are purely pecuniary. When the agent can commit to a long-term
contract that can monitor his consumption, the first best can be achieved. I then
explore the implications of lack of commitment to long-term contracts. The
agent can make a take-it or leave-it offer to the principal, who cannot commit
to refuse a mutually beneficial offer. I characterize the optimal contract as the
SEBASTIAN DI TELLA
solution of a constrained portfolio problem.

Moral Hazard and the Balance Sheet Channel
This paper uses a standard continuous-time growth model to study the
interaction between moral hazard and the balance sheet channel. I allow agents
to write contracts on all observable variables. I find that a balance sheet
channel arises only when the private action exposes the agents private benefit
to aggregate risk. The contract can deter the agent from taking the inefficient
private action by overexposing him to aggregate risk. This creates a tradeoff
between aggregate and idiosyncratic risk sharing. The resulting overexposure
to aggregate risk drives a balance sheet amplification channel. In contrast,
when moral hazard does not affect the exposure to aggregate risk of the agents
private benefit, the balance sheet channel vanishes.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Optimal Financial Regulation

I study optimal financial regulation in a model of financial crises. The financial
friction is derived from a moral hazard problem with limited commitment, and
balance sheet recessions are driven by uncertainty shocks. I study several
policy tools. When the government can regulate the exposure to aggregate risk
of agents, preliminary results suggest the equilibrium with balance sheet
recessions is constrained efficient. On the other hand, a policy of subsidizing
the price of capital can improve idiosyncratic risk sharing.
What is the Value of Commitment during a Liquidity Trap? (with Juan
Passadore and Su Wang)
When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is binding, the central
bank can still stimulate the economy by committing to keep interest rates low
after the liquidity trap in order to create inflation and an output boom in the
future. Without commitment, the central bank would revert to an optimal
policy right after the liquidity trap, eliminating this policy tool. However, to
the extent that the economy remains weak and at risk of falling back into a
liquidity trap, the central bank might find it optimal to keep interest rates low
for purely forward looking motives. We explore how this affects the value of
commitment during liquidity traps.
AMIR KERMANI
kermani@mit.edu

50 Memorial Drive,E51-090
kermani@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/kermani

60 Wadsworth Street
Apt. 24 F
Cambridge, MA 02142
Mobile: 727-537-6264

617-253-6833

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
bolken@mit.edu

DISSERTATION: Essays in Macroeconomics and Finance
(617) 253-1927
daron@mit.edu
Professor Robert Townsend

50 Memorial Drive, E52-251C
617-253-3722
rtownsen@mit.edu
Professor Simon Johnson

(617) 290-9618
sjohnson@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
MSc
(with Distinction)
Economics
London School of
Economics
2007-2008
BSc
Electrical
Engineering
Tehran University
2002-2006
CITIZENSHIP
Iran
GENDER: Male
LANGUAGES
English, Farsi
FIELDS
Primary Field: Macroeconomics

Secondary Field: Finance
YEAR OF BIRTH
1984
AMIR KERMANI
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
International Economics II (Graduate, MIT course 14.582),

Teaching assistant to Prof. Costinot and Prof. Lorenzoni
Advanced Macroeconomics I (Graduate, MIT course 14.461),
Teaching assistant to Prof. Acemoglu and Prof. Townsend
Advanced Macroeconomics II (Graduate, MIT course 14.462),
Teaching assistant to Prof. Acemoglu and Prof. Townsend
Spring 2012
Principles of Macroeconomics (Undergraduate, MIT course

14.02), Lecturer
Spring 2012
Fall 2010
Fall 2012
Spring 2011
Graduate Analyst at Federal Reserve Bank of New York,

Structured Products Group
Research Assistant to Prof.Simon Johnson
Research Assistant to Prof. Daron Acemoglu
Research Assistant to Prof. Robert Townsend
2011-2012
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
MIT Department of Economics Fellowship

HAND Foundation Scholarship
Ithmaar Bank Scholarship
Gold Medal of 33rd International Physics Olympiad (IPhO 2002)
2008-2009
2008
2007
2002
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Cheap Credit, Collateral and the Boom Bust Cycle (Job Market Paper)
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
2011-2012
2009-2010
2010
This paper proposes a model of booms and busts in housing and non-housing
consumption driven by the interplay between relatively low interest rates (in an
open economy) and an expansion of credit, perhaps triggered by financial
innovations relaxing collateral requirements. When credit becomes available,
households would like to borrow in order to frontload consumption, and this
increases demand for housing and non-housing consumption. If the increase in
the demand for housing translates into an increase in prices, then credit is
fueled further, this time endogenously, both because of the wealth effect (the
existing housing stock is now more valuable) and because housing can be used
as collateral. Because a lifetime budget constraint still applies, even in the
absence of a financial crisis, the initial expansion in housing and non-housing
consumption will be followed by a period of contraction, with declining
consumption and house prices. My mechanism clarifies that boom-bust
dynamics will be accentuated in regions with inelastic supply of housing and is
muted in elastic regions. I provide evidence that the 2000-2006 boom and the
subsequent bust in housing and consumption across US counties (depending
on their supply elasticity of housing and initial relaxation of collateral
constraints) are qualitatively consistent with the dynamics implied by my
model. I then quantitatively evaluate the predictions of my model and use it to
assess the role of the drying up of consumer and mortgage credit after 2007.
The model generates patterns quantitatively in the ballpark of the data, even
without the change in credit conditions, though the fit of the model does
improve considerably when the impact of this change in credit conditions is
factored into the implied dynamics of the model.
AMIR KERMANI
The Value of Political Connections in the United States, joint with Daron
Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, James Kwak and Todd Mitton.
The announcement of Timothy Geithner as President Obamas nominee for
Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return
for Geithner- connected financial firms of around 15 percent from day 0 (when
the announcement was first leaked) to day 10. Using synthetic control method
as well as OLS, we find a quantitative effect that is comparable to standard
findings in emerging markets with weak institutions, and much higher than
previous studies have found for the United States or other relatively rich
democracies. The results hold across a wide range of robustness checks,
including when we control for how much firms were affected by the financial
crisis,. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms
when the news broke that Geithners confirmation might be derailed by tax
issues. Since the Geithner nomination announcement, policy has been
supportive of the financial services sector and Geithner-connected firms have
continued to show positive cumulative abnormal returns, but there is no
compelling evidence that Treasury implemented the exact form of favoritism
implied by the stock market reaction. Our results pick up market expectations
and the perceived value of connections at a moment of intense financial crisis,
rather than how policy was subsequently designed or implemented.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Securitization Chain: Moral Hazard Exacerbation or Gains from

Specialization?
A central question related to the recent financial crisis is whether the originateto-distribute model of financial intermediation exacerbated moral hazard
among financial intermediaries and resulted to origination of loans with low
quality. In this paper we develop a model of a competitive economy in which
financial intermediation requires a combination of screening and monitoring
activities. We consider two types of intermediation: when the loans
originator remains responsible for servicing the loan as well (Affiliated loans)
and when the originator outsources the servicing to a specialized servicer
(Unaffiliated loans). In the competitive equilibrium, the gains from
specialization exceed the cost of separating the originator from the servicer
only for loans with lower probability of repayment. The inferior performance
of unaffiliated loans results from the optimal market structure rather than
providing evidence of lax screening by originators. Evidence from loan-level
data supports the models predictions. Moreover structural estimation of the
model shows specialized servicers were on average 40-70% more efficient in
servicing the loans and this, on average, lowered by 20-40 bps the interest rate
paid by borrowers with lower credit quality. Regulations banning the
separation of servicer from originator would only exclude 1.5-2.5% of
borrowers with the lowest quality -- but would result in higher interest rates for
more than half of all subprime and Alt-A borrowers.
AMIR KERMANI
The Rise of CDOs and the Inferior Performance of Securitized Assets,
joint with Adam Ashcraft and Kunal Gooriah
This paper investigates whether the rise of CDOs contributed to the lower
performance of securitized assets by enabling asset securitizers to sell their
equity holding in the securitized assets and reducing their skin in the game.
We construct a comprehensive dataset of all commercial real estate CDOs
(CRE CDO), all commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS), and all of
their underlying commercial loans since 1999. Deals in which securitizers sold
a higher fraction of the equity tranche into a CRE CDO had worse
performance. However investors in these bonds were not compensated for this
lower performance. Constructing a loan level model of default, we show both
lower credit enhancements and lower quality of underlying loans contributed
to the weaker performance of these deals. A significant fraction of the surplus
from risk-mispricing by investors was passed to commercial loan borrowers. In
general our result highlights the importance of risk retention rules in reducing
the extent of moral hazard in the securitization process.
HORACIO LARREGUY
larreguy@mit.edu

30 Wadsworth Street, E53-389
617-999-3276
larreguy@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/larreguy

784 Main Street, Apt 6
Mobile: 617-999-3276

617-253-6833

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
bolken@mit.edu

DISSERTATION: Essays on Political Economy of Development and Institutions
PRIOR
EDUCATION

617-253-1927
daron@mit.edu
Professor Esther Duflo

617-253-7013
eduflo@mit.edu
Professor James Snyder Jr.

Harvard University
Department of Government
1737 Cambridge Street, CGIS
Knafel Building Room 413
617-496-1089
jsnyder@gov.harvard.edu
Professor Tavneet Suri

617-253-7159
tavneet@mit.edu
Center of Monetary and Financial Studies

Master in Economics and Finance (Distinction)
University of Buenos Aires
Bachelor of Science in Economics (Honors)
CITIZENSHIP
Argentina, Spain
LANGUAGES
English and Spanish (fluent), French (intermediate)
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Political Economy, Development Economics

Secondary Fields: Experimental Economics
GENDER:
Male
2005-2007
2001-2004
HORACIO LARREGUY
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS AT MIT:

Pol. Econ. of Institutions and Development (graduate)
TA to Professors Daron Acemoglu and Ben Olken
Spring 2012
Psychology and Economics (graduate)

TA to Professor Drazen Prelec
Spring 2012
Collective Choice (graduate)

TA to Professor James Snyder
TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS AT UBA:
Econometrics (undergraduate)
TA to Professor Eva Cattaneo
Fall 2004
Spring 2003
Math for Economists (undergraduate)

TA to Professor Alicia Bernardello
Fall 2003
Spring 2003
Math Analysis II ( undergraduate)

TA to Professor Andrea Parma
Spring 2002
OTHER EXPERICENCE:
Evaluating Social Programs, Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Executive Education, Teaching Assistant
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Fall 2009
Summer 2009
Research Assistant to Professor Dave Donaldson at MIT
Spring 2011
Research Assistant to Professor James Snyder at MIT
Fall 2008
Summer 2008
Research Assistant to Agustin Maravall at the Bank of Spain
Summer 2006
Junior Consultant at Mazars Argentina
May 2002
October 2004
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
Consortium on Financial Systems and Poverty Seed Grant (2010-$40,000)

Russell Sage Behavioral Economics Grant (2010-11-$10,000)
MIT CIS Summer Study Grant (2010-12-$5,300)
EHA Exploratory Travel and Data Grant (2010-$2,500)
MISTI Award (2009-12~ $15,000)
George and Obie Shultz Fund (2009-12~$15,000)
Caja Madrid Foundation Graduate Studies Scholarship (2009-11~$100,000)
Bank of Spain Graduate Studies Scholarship (2007-09~$110,000)
Carolina Foundation Graduate Studies Scholarship (2005-07~$60,000)
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:
Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference (2010, 2012)
ITAM (2012)
JPAL Seminar at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (2010)
2010 Econometric Society World Congress (2010)
NSFAERCIGC Technical Session on Agriculture and Development (2010)
Referee for American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Spanish
Economic Review
HORACIO LARREGUY
RESEARCH
PAPERS
POLITICAL ECONOMY
"The Monitoring of Clientelistic Networks: Evidence from Communal
Lands in Mexico" (Job Market Paper)
This paper studies how a political party uses electoral data to monitor the
performance of its clientelistic networks. We focus on clientelistic networks
that, for historical reasons, developed and operate in communal lands in Mexico
and are largely controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). For
clientelism to work in this context, the PRI must not only (a) be able monitor
the performance of its clientelistic networks but also (b) control the resources
required to mobilize the networks and reward voters. Guided by a simple
model, we compute two measures of the informativeness of electoral data for
the PRI, based on how well the available electoral data and the clientelistic
network correspond together. We compare the vote share for the PRI in
communal lands where the electoral data enables either high or low PRI
monitoring capacity, both when the PRI does and does not have access to
resources. The results show that the ability to monitor clientelistic networks
contributes significantly to the enforcement of clientelistic transactions.
"Mobilizing Investment Through Social Networks: Evidence from a Lab
Experiment in the Field," with Arun Chandrasekhar and Emily Breza
In the absence of strong formal institutions, social networks play a significant
role in contract enforcement and in determining the scope of co-investment. We
shed light on the effects of network characteristics on investment decisions
through a framed field experiment. Our laboratory protocol builds on a basic
two-party trust game with a sender and receiver. In some treatments, we
introduce third-party monitors or punishers that may or may not be identifiable
by the other two participants. We find that the social network interacts with the
play of the game in economically meaningful ways. First, social proximity
mitigates the co-investment problem: both senders and receivers in socially
close pairs make larger transfers to each other. Second, while on average, thirdparty punishment decreases the size of investments made by the sender, socially
important punishers are efficiency-enhancing. Third, characteristics such as
caste and elite status affect play, but in ways distinct from network centrality.
Elites benefit from higher partner transfers, but do not use their status to
increase total surplus. Finally, we use our results to provide the first assessment
of institutional structures as a function of network shape. Typically, socially far
judges encourage efficient behavior, while socially close judges are prone to
collusion. However, high centrality judges are able to resist proximity-based
collusion and restore high levels of investment.
DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
Informal Insurance, Social Networks, and Financial Access: Evidence
from a Lab Experiment in the Field, with Arun Chandrasekhar and Cynthia
Kinnan
Social networks are understood to play an important role in smoothing
consumption risk, particularly in developing countries where formal contracts
are limited and financial development is low. Yet understanding why social
HORACIO LARREGUY
networks matter is confounded by endogeneity of risk-sharing partners. This

paper, first, examines the causal effect of close social ties between individuals
on their ability to informally insure one another. Second, we examine how the
interaction of social proximity and access to savings affects consumption
smoothing. Theoretically, they could be complements or substitutes. Savings
access may crowd out insurance unless social proximity is high, in which case it
benefits the highly connected. Or savings may crowd out risk sharing among
the highly connected while helping the less connected smooth risk
intertemporally. By conducting a lab experiment in the field in Karnataka,
India, we study the relationships between inability to commit to insurance,
ability to save, and social proximity. We find that limited commitment reduces
risk sharing, but social proximity substitutes for commitment. On net, savings
allows individuals to smooth risk that cannot be shared interpersonally, with the
largest benefits for those who are weakly connected in the network.
"Information, Networks and Informal Insurance: Evidence from a Lab
Experiment in the Field, with Arun Chandrasekhar and Cynthia Kinnan
When communities engage in risk-sharing with asymmetric information,
wherein a member of a risk-sharing group is unable to verify the income and
shocks experienced by the others, they are unable to achieve full smoothing of
income risk (Thomas and Worrall 1990). The frictions that drive the possible
negative impacts of hidden income are likely to be mediated by the
relationships among a risk-sharing groups members in the social network.
Using a laboratory experiment in Karnataka, India, we study the interaction of
informal insurance with hidden income, hidden savings, and social networks.
Hidden income significantly reduces risk sharing: transfers between partner
falls by ~40% on average when income is hidden, though the effect of hidden
income is mitigated when player can chose their risk-sharing partners. Among
self-selected dyads, there is a strong correlation between social proximity and
better risk-sharing. However, social proximity does not improve risk sharing
when partners of the same distance are randomly assigned. This suggests that
aspects of social networks beyond geodesic proximity matter for risk sharing
when information is hidden. Finally, for pairs with low social proximity,
removal of commitment on top of hidden income and savings appears to further
crowd out interpersonal risk-sharing, while pairs who are closely connected via
the networks appear less affected by removal of commitment.
"Testing Models of Social Learning on Networks: Evidence from a Framed
Field Experiment," with Arun Chandrasekhar and Juan Pablo Xandri Antuna
Theory has focused on two leading models of social learning on networks:
Bayesian and DeGroot rules of thumb learning. These models can yield greatly
divergent behavior; individuals employing rules of thumb often double-count
information and may not exhibit convergent behavior in the long run. By
conducting a unique lab experiment in rural Karnataka, India, set up to exactly
differentiate between these two models, we test which model best describes
social learning processes on networks. We study experiments in which seven
individuals are placed into a network, each with full knowledge of its structure.
The participants attempt to learn the underlying (binary) state of the world.
Individuals receive independent, identically distributed signals about the state in
HORACIO LARREGUY
the first period only; thereafter, individuals make guesses about the underlying
state of the world and these guesses are transmitted to their neighbors at the
beginning of the following round. We consider various environments including
incomplete information Bayesian models and provide evidence that individuals
are best described by DeGroot models wherein they either take simple majority
of opinions in their neighborhood.
"Informal Insurance, Caste Networks, and Financial Development:
Evidence from the Indian Social Banking Experiment"
This paper develops a simple model of informal interpersonal insurance in
caste-based networks to analyze the impact of access to banking on insurance.
In the model, individuals are able to share idiosyncratic risk and are subject to
limited commitment, which they mitigate through punishment that is mediated
by their caste-based network. The model illustrates that, although the effect of
banking on overall insurance is ambiguous, it should be more beneficial to
smaller caste groups. The reason is that smaller caste groups have denser
networks that make them better able to deal with limited commitment, which is
exacerbated by their access to banking. We empirically test the model
predictions by exploiting the fact that places with more caste fragmentation are
formed by a larger number of smaller caste groups. Following an empirical
strategy in the spirit of Burguess and Pande (2005) and Jayachandran (2006),
results indicate that, while access to banking improves overall insurance, it is
more beneficial in places with more caste fragmentation. Moreover, there is
evidence that banking may crowd out insurance in places with caste
homogeneity.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
POLITICAL ECONOMY
"The Role of Media Networks in Compensating Political Disadvantages:
Evidence from Radio Networks in Brazil," with Joana Monteiro.
A central question in political economy is how to incentivize politicians to
provide resources for those in need. Research has shown that, while political
rivalry leads central governments to transfer fewer funds to non-aligned
constituencies, media presence is instrumental in accessing resources. This
study evaluates how these two phenomena interact by analyzing the role of
media in compensating for political disadvantages. In particular, we analyze
how media presence, connectedness and ownership affect the distribution of
federal drought relief transfers to Brazilian municipalities. We find that
municipalities that are not aligned with the federal government have a lower
probability of receiving funds conditional on experiencing low precipitation.
However, we show that the presence of radio stations compensates for this
disadvantage. This effect is driven by municipalities that have radio stations
connected to a regional or national network rather than by the presence of local
radio stations. This finding suggests that media presence is important because it
increases the salience of disasters, making it harder for the federal government
to ignore non-allies. We confirm this hypothesis by showing that the effect of
media increases with the network coverage. Additionally, politician
connectedness to media does not affect the transfers of resources.
BRADLEY LARSEN
blarsen@mit.edu

blarsen@mit.edu

11 Audrey St. Apt. A3
Cambridge, MA 02139
Mobile: 801-623-0706
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/blarsen
617-253-6833
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
bolken@mit.edu

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857

DISSERTATION: Essays in Industrial Organization
Professor Glenn Ellison
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
617-253-8702
gellison@mit.edu
Professor Stephen Ryan

University of Texas at Austin
2225 Speedway Stop C 3100, BRB 3.134D
Austin, TX 78712 -1690
512-425-8543
sryan@utexas.edu
Professor Panle Jia Barwick

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
50 Memorial Drive, E52-262F
617-253-7229
pjia@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
Brigham Young University (BYU), 2008

BA in Economics, BS in Mathematics
Summa cum Laude, Economics Department Valedictorian
CITIZENSHIP USA
GENDER: M
LANGUAGES English (native); Spanish (fluent)

FIELDS
Primary Field: Industrial Organization

Secondary Fields: Econometrics, Applied Microeconomic Theory
BRADLEY LARSEN
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Industrial Organization II (Regulation and antitrust; graduate;

MIT course 14.272). Teaching Assistant to Professor
Stephen Ryan
Advanced Topics in Industrial Organization (Structural IO;
graduate; MIT course 14.273). Teaching Assistant to
Professor Stephen Ryan
Principles of Microeconomics (undergraduate; MIT course
14.01). Teaching Assistant to Professor Jeffrey Harris
Industrial Organization I (IO Theory; graduate; MIT course
14.271). Teaching Assistant to Professors Alessandro
Bonatti and Nancy Rose
Spring 2012
Spring 2011
Fall 2010
Fall 2010
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant for Josh Angrist and Parag Pathak, MIT

Research Assistant for Nancy Rose, MIT
Research Assistant for Whitney Newey, MIT
Research Assistant for James McDonald, BYU
Analyst, Goldman Sachs Quantitative Strategies, New York
Research Assistant for Richard Butler, BYU
2010
2009
2009
2006-2008
Summer 2007
2006
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Graduate Fellowship
Department of Labor Employment and Training Research
Program Fellowship
Humane Studies Fellowships
MIT Presidential Fellowship
National Merit Scholarship
BYU Presidential Scholarship
BYU Office of Research and Creative Activities Grant
2009-2013
2012
2011-2012
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
PUBLICATIONS
2009-2013
2008-2009
2002-2008
2002-2008
2007
PRESENTATIONS
Occupational Licensing and Quality: Distributional and
Heterogeneous Effects in the Teaching Profession, US
Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration
Briefing Series, Washington, D.C.
The Efficiency of Dynamic, Post-Auction Bargaining: Evidence from
Wholesale Used-Auto Auctions, International Industrial
Organization Conference Rising Stars Session, Arlington, VA
A Test of the Extreme Value Type I Assumption in the Bus Engine
Replacement Model, Institute for Computational Economics,
University of Chicago
2012
2012
2010
A Test of the Extreme Value Type I Assumption in the Bus Engine

Replacement Model (with Florian Oswald, Gregor Reich, and Dan
Wunderli), Economics Letters 116 (2) (2012), 213-216
This paper tests the assumption of dynamic discrete choice models that
underlying utility shocks are distributed extreme value type I. We find that
extreme value type I shocks cannot be rejected in most specifications of the
Rust (1987) bus engine replacement model.
BRADLEY LARSEN
PUBLICATIONS
(CONTINUED)
Partially Adaptive Econometric Methods for Regression and

Classification, (with James Hansen, James B. McDonald, and Peter
Theodossiou), Computational Economics 36 (2010), 153-169
This paper presents adaptive methods for both regression and classification
problems using flexible families of distributions which are distinguished by
modifications of simple parameters. The paper shows several example
applications and computational details illustrating the methods.
RESEARCH
PAPERS
The Efficiency of Dynamic, Post-Auction Bargaining: Evidence from

Wholesale Used-Auto Auctions (Job Market Paper)
This study examines the efficiency of the bargaining which often occurs at
wholesale used-auto auctions: when the auction price fails to reach a secret
reserve pricewhich happens 82% of the timethe seller and high bidder
may participate in an alternating-offer bargaining process mediated by the
auction house. The study presents empirical evidence building on theoretical
results from Myerson and Satterthwaite (1983) and Williams (1987), which
derive the efficient frontier for bilateral trade under two-sided uncertainty. This
study develops a model and nonparametric estimation approach for
determining where this real-world, post-auction bargaining lies relative to the
efficient frontier. The approach relies on moment inequalities to estimate the
distributions of buyer and seller valuations and surplus using a new dataset of
over 300,000 auction/bargaining sequences from auto auctions. Findings
indicate that the observed auction-followed-by-bargaining mechanism lies
close to the efficient frontier. However, both the level of trade and gains from
trade could be improved by committing to an auction followed by either a
static revelation mechanism or a double auction.
Occupational Licensing and Quality: Distributional and Heterogeneous
Effects in the Teacher Profession
This paper studies two questions: first, how occupational licensing laws affect
the distribution of quality, and second, how the effects of licensing on quality
vary across regions of differing income levels. The paper uses variation in state
licensing requirements for teachers and two national datasets on teacher
qualifications and student outcomes from 1983-2008. Two measures of quality
are used: the qualifications of candidates entering the occupation (input quality)
and the quality of service provided (output quality). Results show that more
restrictive licensing laws raise some quantiles of the teacher input quality
distribution, including some quantiles in the lower half of the distribution. The
distribution of student test scores also increases with stricter occupational
licensing, primarily in the upper half of the distribution. For most forms of
licensing studied, input and output quality improvements due to stricter
licensing requirements occur in high-income rather than low-income school
districts.
BRADLEY LARSEN
RESEARCH
PAPERS
(CONTINUED)
IV Quantile Regression for Group-level Treatments

(with Denis Chetverikov and Christopher Palmer)
We propose a simple minimum-distance approach for estimating the causal
effects of group-level treatments on the distribution of within-group outcomes.
While standard quantile regression is inconsistent in the presence of group-level
additive shocks, our estimator is consistent even if the shocks are correlated
with the treatment variable. Monte Carlo simulations confirm the superior
performance of this grouped instrumental-variables quantile regression
estimator to traditional approaches. An empirical application measures
distributional treatment effects in settings where the unobserved shock is either
exogenous or endogenous to the treatment of interest.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
A Good Auctioneer Goes a Long Way: The Effect of Auctioneers on

Auction Outcomes
This study examines a new dataset from wholesale auto auctions, where, as in
traditional ascending auctions, a human auctioneer interacts with bidders and
calls out bids in a fast-paced, rhythmic chant, attempting to create a feeling of
urgency among bidders in order to raise prices. The dataset records the identity
of the auctioneer for over 300,000 auction sales. After controlling for
observables, the auctioneer who performs a given sale is as good as randomly
assigned, and the effect of individual auctioneers on auction prices can be
measured. This study also presents an approach for measuring the causal effect
on seller revenue of increased competition from one additional bidder
participating, an effect which Bulow and Klemperer (1996) argue must
dominate the effect of setting an optimal reserve price. Findings indicate that
this competition effect is dominated by the effect of employing a highperforming auctioneer.
Toward a More Ideal Demand System: Imposing Negative
Semidefiniteness of the Slutsky Matrix
This paper builds on the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) of Deaton and
Muellbauer (1980) by imposing directly that the Slutsky matrix be negative
semidefinite, a condition implied by theory but rarely imposed by empirical
researchers. The application is taken from Chaudhuri, Goldberg, and Jia
(2006), studying international patent protection for pharmaceuticals in India. In
the unconstrained model, half of the eigenvalues of the Slutsky matrix are
positive at nearly every point in the data, violating negative semidefiniteness.
After imposing negative semidefiniteness only at one point, the condition is
satisfied at every data point. However, imposing the condition does not change
policy implications significantly.
BRADLEY LARSEN
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
(CONTINUED)
Consumer Responses to Airport Delays

(with Panle Jia Barwick and Steven Puller)
This project examines how consumer demand patterns respond to expected
delays, instrumenting for delay using weather conditions. The project
combines data from online ticket purchases with data on airport delays
recorded by the Department of Transportation. Preliminary results indicate
that, on a given route from origin to destination, passengers are more likely to
avoid the most popular connecting airport as expected delays at the connecting
airport increase. When expected delays at the origin airport increase, travelers
are more likely to choose to fly early in the day or to choose a nonstop flight,
presumably to avoid missing a connection. These consumer responses can be
used to estimate the costs of delay to consumers.
JESSICA LEIGHT
jeleight@mit.edu

100 Landsdowne St.
Apt. 1008
Cambridge, MA 02139
Mobile: 857-234-0495

617-324-4465
jeleight@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/jeleight
617-253-6833
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
bolken@mit.edu

DISSERTATION: Essays in Economic Development and Political Economy
617-253-8855
banerjee@mit.edu

617-258-7013
eduflo@mit.edu
Professor Rohini Pande

Harvard John F. Kennedy School
of Government
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-384-5267
Rohini_Pande@harvard.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
M.Phil. in Economics
B.A. summa cum laude
Ethics Politics & Economics
Oxford University
Yale University
CITIZENSHIP
United States
LANGUAGES
English, Spanish (fluent), Mandarin Chinese (proficient)
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Development

Secondary Fields: Political Economy
GENDER:
Female
2008
2006
JESSICA LEIGHT
MIT Course 14.33 (Undergraduate, Research & Communication

in Economics)
Teaching Assistant for Professor Sara Ellison
MIT Course 14.01 (Undergraduate, Principles of Economics)
Teaching Assistant for Professor Jeffrey Harris
MIT Course 14.01 (Undergraduate, Principles of Economics)
Head Teaching Assistant for Professor Jonathan Gruber
2012
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research assistant for Professor Rohini Pande

Research assistant for Professor Esther Duflo
2009
2008
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
NBER Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Aging and Health

Harvard Weatherhead Center Grant (PI, $20,700)
Fondation de France Grant (PI, 10,000)
Macarthur Foundation Grant (PI, $979,883)
MIT Presidential Fellow
Webb Medley Prize (proxime accessit): best M. Phil. performance
Rhodes Scholarship
Yale College, Alpheus Henry Snow Prize top-ranked graduate
Yale College, Warren Prize top-ranked humanities graduate
Yale College, Richard U. Light Fellowship for study in Asia
Yale College, Distinction in Ethics, Politics and Economics
Yale College, Hart Lyman Prize top-ranked junior
Phi beta kappa (junior)
Yale College, Robert C. Bates Fellowship
Yale College, George Leitner Grant in Political Economy
Yale College, Richter Fellowship
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
Presentations: NEUDC 2012, NEUDC 2010

Referee for American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
PUBLICATIONS
Chile: The Conundrum of Inequality, Harvard Business School Case

907 411. 2007. (with Bruce Scott)
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
2011
2010
2010-2
2012
2012
2009-13
2008-9
2008
2006-8
2006
2006
2006
2006
2005
2005
2005
2004
2004
The Political Dynamics of Agricultural Liberalization in the U.S.-Chile

Free Trade Agreement, Journal of Latin American Studies. 2008. 40: 225249.
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Reallocating Wealth? Insecure Property Rights and Agricultural

Investment in Rural China (Job Market Paper)
This paper evaluates the impact of village-level land reallocations in China on
household economic outcomes. Since land was decollectivized in China in
1983, village leaders have implemented regular forced reallocations of land
designed to increase equity and attain other policy goals. I estimate the impact
of insecure tenure using the past history of land shifts as an instrument for
current tenure insecurity, and find that an increase in the probability of losing
JESSICA LEIGHT
the current plot yields a decrease in agricultural inputs and production of
around one standard deviation. Though the costs of insecure tenure are high,
structural estimates of the varying cost of reallocation across different villages
suggest the choice to reallocate does reflect an optimizing process on the part
of village officials, who reallocate where the net benefit is larger. However,
the observed pattern of reallocations would be optimal only given an objective
function for the village leader that places an extremely high weight on equity,
and even given this objective function, there is evidence that officials may be
making some costly mistakes.
The Regulation of Land Markets: Evidence from Tenancy Reform in
India (joint with Timothy Besley, Rohini Pande and Vijayendra Rao)
Given that land is the most important asset in developing economies, land
reform can have a large impact on both equity and economic welfare. This
paper exploits a natural experiment provided by the redrawing of state borders
in south India in 1956 to analyze the economic impact of tenancy reforms. We
identify linguistically matched pairs of localities within border districts that
were assigned to different states in 1956, subsequently experiencing different
land reform policies. Assuming the assignment of localities to states is quasirandom and the only channel through which this assignment affects land
inequality is land reform, this identification strategy generates unbiased
estimates of the impact of land reform employing matched pair fixed effects.
The results show that land reform yields a decrease in measures of inequality
in landownership of around 20%, primarily via transfers of land from upper
caste landowners to middle caste tenants. However, the poorest households
exhibit increased landlessness and dependence on agricultural labor, though
they also benefit from an increase in agricultural wages. While the effect of
land reform is substantial and persistent, the welfare implications are uncertain,
particularly for the poorest households.
Sibling Rivalry: Ability and Intrahousehold Allocation in Gansu
Province, China
This paper evaluates the strategies employed by households in rural China to
allocate educational expenditure to children of different initial endowments,
examining whether parents use educational funding to reinforce or compensate
for these differences. Empirical results obtained employing early-childhood
climatic shocks as an instrument for endowment, measured as both height-forage and cognitive ability, indicate that parental expenditure is preferentially
directed to the relatively weaker child. In response to the mean difference in
endowment between siblings, parents redirect between 10 and 20% of
discretionary educational spending to the child with lower endowment, and
this effect is robust across multiple measures of endowment and multiple
measures of climatic shocks. This analysis is consistent with the hypothesis
that parents use the intrahousehold allocation of resources to compensate for
differences in endowment and thus in expected welfare among their children.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Grain into Gold? The Impact of Shocks to Agricultural Income in Rural

China
JESSICA LEIGHT
Despite a longstanding debate about the relationship between agricultural and
industrial development, a paucity of microeconomic evidence has largely
rendered well-identified analyses of the impact of increases in agricultural
income on growth in other sectors impossible. Between 1990 and 2005,
policymakers in China systematically raised the prices paid to rural households
for mandatory grain quota sales to the state. This paper exploits the interaction
between climatic variation correlated with the size of the grain quota and the
variation in quota price over time to identify an exogenously shifting
component of quota revenue, and to estimate the impact of shifts in quota
revenue on household economic activities. The results indicate that higher
agricultural income leads to a decrease in agricultural investment and
increased investment in household industrial enterprises and employment
outside the household, as well as substantial increases in consumption of nonstaple goods and borrowing. These estimates are consistent with the
hypothesis that higher rural income in China will yield a shift of capital and
labor to non-agricultural sectors.
Value for Money in Purchasing Votes: A Lab Experiment in the Field
(joint with Rohini Pande)
Vote-buying, in various forms, is rampant in democracies all over the world.
However, empirical data on the operation of vote-buying and its implications
for democratic decision-making remains limited. The objective of this project
is to analyze the behavior of voters under a regime of vote-buying in a lab
experiment implemented in the Harvard Decision Sciences Laboratory and in
the field in Kenya and India. A laboratory experiment provides a controlled
environment allowing for the testing of basic hypotheses about voters'
response to the offer of direct monetary incentives for their votes, measured in
their response in subsequent rounds of voting and their willingness to employ
their vote to censure an incumbent politician for his or her conduct. The
hypothesis to be tested is that voters who receive a payment from politicians
are less likely to use their votes as a mechanism of retrospective
accountability, even when the vote is unverifiable. Additional analysis will
test whether the impact of vote-buying varies according to the framing of the
vote payment and the size of the public good open to expropriation by the
politician.
JESSICA LEIGHT
Strengthening the Midwife Service Scheme with Community Focused
Interventions: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Field Trial in
Nigeria (Joint with Martina Bjorkman and Vandana Sharma)
Northern Nigeria is one of the highest maternal-mortality regions in the world,
and it is characterized by stubbornly low rates of facility births and skilled
attendance at birth despite the recent widespread deployment of midwives to
rural health centers. This randomized controlled trial, financed by the Mac
Arthur foundation and currently in the field, aims evaluate the impact of three
community-based interventions aimed at providing information about and
increasing the acceptability of facility-based births: a community health
worker program, the provision of a safe birth kit, and community engagement
activities targeted at male opinion leaders. The key research hypothesis of
interest is that information delivered by a culturally acceptable messenger will
induce parents to optimize care decisions by considering the long-term costs of
home deliveries for both the mother and child. Outcomes will be measured in
a baseline and endline survey, and via ongoing surveillance of vital events for
two years employing a RapidSMS monitoring system.
GREG LEISERSON
gleiser@mit.edu

202-365-1855
gleiser@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/gleiser

123 Highland Ave, Apt 25
Mobile: 202-365-1855

617-253-6833
bolken@mit.edu

Ms. Beata Shuster
617-324-5857
bshuster@mit.edu
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

Ph.D., Economics, Expected completion June 2013
DISSERTATION: Essays on the Economics of Public Sector Retirement Programs
Professor James Poterba
617-253-6673
poterba@mit.edu
Professor Jonathan Gruber

617-253-8892
gruberj@mit.edu
Professor Peter Diamond

617-253-3363
pdiamond@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
Swarthmore College
B.A., Economics (high honors), 2006
CITIZENSHIP
USA
FIELDS
Primary Field: Public Finance

Secondary Field: Labor Economics
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Public Finance (undergraduate, MIT course 14.41)

Teaching Assistant to Amy Finkelstein
Urban Economics (graduate/undergraduate, MIT course 14.51/573)
Teaching Assistant to William Wheaton
Public Finance I (graduate, MIT course 14.471)
Teaching Assistant to James Poterba and Ivn Werning
Fall 2011
Spring 2011
Fall 2010
GREG LEISERSON
Research Assistant to Ivn Werning
Research Assistant to Peter Diamond
Research Assistant to James Poterba
Research Associate II, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center,
The Urban Institute, Washington, DC
Research Associate, The Massachusetts Institute
for a New Commonwealth, Boston, MA
2010-2011
2009-2011
2008-2009
2006-2008
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
NBER Fellowship in Aging and Health Economics

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Graduate Fellowship
Phi Beta Kappa
2011-2013
2011
2006
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
Referee for the Journal of Public Economics
JOURNAL
PUBLICATIONS
The AMT: Whats Wrong and How to Fix It (with Leonard Burman, William
Gale, and Jeffrey Rohaly). National Tax Journal 60 (3), September 2007, 385-405.
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
2004-2006
The Presidents Proposed Standard Deduction for Health Insurance: Evaluation

and Recommendations (with Leonard Burman, Jason Furman, and Roberton
Williams). National Tax Journal 60 (3), September 2007, 433-454.
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Retiree Health Insurance and Job Separations: Evidence from Pennsylvania

State Employees (Job Market Paper)
This paper documents the central role that eligibility for subsidized retiree health
insurance plays in retirement decisions. Using administrative records obtained from the
Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System, the analysis finds that the welldocumented spike in the separation rate at the normal retirement age almost completely
disappears in the population of workers not yet eligible for subsidized retiree health
insurance. Similarly, workers eligible for subsidies before the normal retirement age
separate at much greater rates than comparable workers who are not eligible. A second
set of results exploits quasi-experimental variation in plan design to show that
increasing the service requirement for subsidized retiree health insurance stretches the
distribution of separations: early separations occur earlier and late separations occur
later. However, younger employees respond exclusively by delaying separation.
Finally, simulations of alternative eligibility requirements for subsidies reveal
important financial links between the health and pension plans. Restricting eligibility
before the normal retirement age encourages continued work when pension accruals
are highest. The resulting increase in pension obligations partially offsets the savings
obtained from reduced health benefits.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
The Design of Public Sector Pension Benefits

Public sector pension plans create complicated incentives in favor of continued work at
some ages and in favor of retirement at others. The strength of these incentives depends
on many factors, including the age at which an employee begins working for the
government, the number of years she remains on the job, and the rate at which her
earnings grow over time. Because employees differ along all of these dimensions, the
value of pension benefits earned over the course of a career varies substantiallyeven
among retirees with the same total earnings. This paper investigates the incentive
GREG LEISERSON
effects and distributional consequences of several common plan designs. It derives
simple formulas for the incentives generated by final average salary and career average
salary plans and explores how the formulas change in the presence of other common
elements, such as non-actuarial adjustments for early and delayed retirement and caps
on replacement rates. It then discusses plan designs that simultaneously (i) provide
retirement security to the workforce, (ii) limit arbitrary redistributive patterns across
employees, and (iii) limit incentives for individuals to manipulate earnings and labor
supply in ways that do not advance public policy objectives.
A Structural Analysis of Retirement with Retiree Health Benefits
Eligibility for retiree health benefits is a crucial determinant of retirement behavior, but
existing models of the retirement decision typically treat eligibility as a fixed
characteristic of the worker rather than one that evolves over the career. Furthermore,
analyses often simplify the structure of pension plans to make estimation more
tractable at the expense of a substantial reduction in accuracy. This paper estimates a
structural model of life-cycle labor supply using administrative data for the
Pennsylvania state workforce while maintaining a complete representation of the rich
individual-level variation in health and pension benefits. The estimates are then used to
simulate labor supply behavior under different health and pension policies.
SELECT POLICY Problems with State-Local Final Pay Plans and Options for Reform (with Peter
PUBLICATIONS Diamond, Alicia Munnell, and Jean-Pierre Aubry). Chestnut Hill, MA: The Center for
Retirement Research at Boston College, August 2010.
Technical Analysis of the Special Commission to Study the Massachusetts Contributory
Retirement System (with Peter Diamond). October 2009.
A Simple, Progressive Replacement for the AMT (with Leonard Burman). Tax
Notes, June 4, 2007, pp. 945-955.
Paying for College: The Rising Cost of Higher Education (with Dana Ansel and
Bridget Terry Long). Boston, MA: The Massachusetts Institute for a New
Commonwealth, April 2006.
The Changing Face of Massachusetts (with Frimpomaa Ampaw, Dana Ansel, Ishwar
Khatiwada, Sheila Palma, Andrew Sum, Paulo Tobar, and Johan Uvin). Boston, MA:
The Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, June 2005.
JENNIFER R. PECK
jpeck1@mit.edu

30 Wadsworth Street, E53-394
jpeck1@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/jpeck1

9 Cornelius Way
Cambridge, MA 02141
Mobile: 617-682-0342

bolken@mit.edu
617-253-6833

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

DISSERTATION: Essays on Oil, Conflict, and Development in Resource-Based
Economies
Professor Michael Greenstone
617-452-4127
617-258-7013
mgreenst@mit.edu
eduflo@mit.edu
Professor Christopher Knittel
617-324-0015
knittel@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
B.A. with Highest Honors Economics;

Greek
Swarthmore College
CITIZENSHIP
USA
GENDER
LANGUAGES
English (native), Arabic (beginner)
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Energy and Development

Secondary Field: Labor
Female
2006
JENNIFER R. PECK
OCTOBER 2012-- PAGE 2
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
MIT Graduate Student Teaching Certificate Program (Participant)

Principles of Microeconomics (undergraduate, MIT course 14.01)
Lecturer / Head Teaching Assistant to Professor Jonathan Gruber
Environmental Policy and Economics (undergraduate and
graduate, MIT course 14.42/14/420) Teaching Assistant to
Professor Hunt Allcott
Introductory Economics, Intermediate Microeconomics,
Intermediate Macroeconomics, and Statistics for Economists
(undergraduate, Swarthmore College Department of Economics)
Teaching Assistant to Professors Thomas Dee, Larry Westphal,
Mark Kuperberg and Julie Becher
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant, Center for Complex Engineering Systems

MIT and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology
Research Assistant to Professor Michael Greenstone
Assistant Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Research Intern, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Research Intern, Mathematica Policy Research
Spring 2012
Fall 2010,
Fall 2011
Spring 2011
2004-2005
2012
2008-2010
2006-2008
2005
2004
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
Summer Study Grant, MIT Center for International Studies (2011)

George and Obie Shultz Research Support Grant (2011)
MIT Presidential Fellowship (2008)
Adams Prize in Econometrics, Swarthmore College (2006)
Phi Beta Kappa, Swarthmore College (2008)
RESEARCH
PAPER
Do Foreign Gifts Buy Corporate Political Action? Causes and

Consequences of the Saudi Crude Discount Program (Job Market Paper)
Between 1991 and 2003, Saudi Aramco sold its crude to U.S. refineries at a
substantial discount relative to Asian refineries at a total cost of approximately
8.5 billion USD. Using variation in discount receipts across refineries over time,
I find that the discount rents were entirely captured by refiners as profits and
were not passed through to consumers in the form of lower retail gasoline prices.
There is also evidence that the discount policy affected refiners' political action.
In particular, I find that discount receipts are associated with an increase in
refiners' overall political donations, and that other types of profit shocks were not
associated with changes in political giving. This suggests that the effect of the
discount was not simply a consequence of the increase in refining profits.
Finally, I show that the discount resulted in a reallocation of contributions
toward members of congressional committees that reviewed bills of interest to
Saudi Arabia and away from those who received donations from pro-Israel
interest groups.
JENNIFER R. PECK
OCTOBER 2012-- PAGE 3
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Can Hiring Quotas Work? The Effect of the Nitaqat Program on the Saudi
Private Sector
In the past two years, Saudi Arabia has dramatically extended its active labor
market policies in order to address the issue of growing youth unemployment
and low Saudi participation in the private sector workforce. This paper studies
the 2011 introduction of the Nitaqat policy, which imposed a quota system for
Saudi hiring at private firms. We use a unique dataset from the Saudi Ministry
of Labor on the full universe of Saudi private-sector firms to examine the effects
of this quota policy on nationalization, firm size, and firm exit.
Import, Baby, Import: The Economic Impact of Global Conflict on the
U.S. Domestic Refined Product Market
One of the primary arguments in favor of the expansion of offshore drilling in
the U.S. is that energy independence would make the U.S. less vulnerable to
supply disruptions due to international and civil conflict in oil-exporting
countries. This study uses variation in the sources of oil supplies across
refineries to estimate the effect of conflict in exporting countries on refiner
profits and local retail gasoline prices. Preliminary results suggest that large
conflicts do cause supply interruptions, but that these disruptions have little
differential effect on the refiners and markets supplied by countries in which
conflicts occur.
The Impact of Global Climate Change on Mortality and Health
(with Laura Ralston)
This paper estimates the impact of climate change on global health-related
welfare. In particular, we examine the relationship between annual climate
fluctuations and human mortality, electricity consumption, net migration, and
overseas development aid (ODA). We use historical temperature and
precipitation fluctuations within countries to identify the effect of climate
changes on these outcomes, and then use two different climate models to predict
the effects on future mortality and other outcomes. The results show a strong
impact of extreme temperatures on mortality, with cold days associated with an
increase in mortality among infants and the elderly and hot days increasing
mortality in all age groups. Electricity usage is highest in years with more cold
days in poor countries and lowest for years with more hot days. Precipitation
fluctuations are correlated with migration and aid flows, with low precipitation
leading to greater migration out of autocratic nations and greater ODA directed
to Asian nations, while high precipitation is associated with an increase in per
capita ODA to poor countries.
MAXIM PINKOVSKIY
maxim09@mit.edu

617-253-3364
maxim09@mit.edu

100 Memorial Drive, Apt. 8-2C
Cambridge, MA 02142
Home: 617-945-2630
Mobile: 718-687-3493
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/maxim09

Professor Ben Olken
bolken@mit.edu
617-253-6833
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857

DISSERTATION: Essays in Public Finance and Political Economy
Cambridge, MA 02142
617-253-1927
daron@mit.edu
Professor Jerry Hausman

Cambridge, MA 02142
617-253-3644
jhausman@mit.edu
Professor Amy Finkelstein

Cambridge, MA 02142
617-253-4149
afink@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
Columbia University, B.A., summa cum laude, Economics-Mathematics, 2008
CITIZENSHIP
USA
LANGUAGES
English (native), Russian (native), French (advanced), Spanish (working)
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Public Economics, Political Economy
GENDER: M
YEAR OF BIRTH
Secondary Fields: Health Economics, Econometrics

TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Teaching Assistantship at MIT:

Game Theory (advanced undergraduate, 14.12), Fall 2011.
1986
MAXIM PINKOVSKIY
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant to Professor James Snyder at MIT, June-August 2009

Research Assistant to Professor Daron Acemoglu at MIT, January 2009
Research Assistant to Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin at Columbia, 2006-2008
Research Assistant to Professor Michael Woodford at Columbia, Spring 2007
Research Assistant to Drs. Hamid Mehran and Kenneth Garbade,
at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Summer 2006
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
Humane Studies Fellow, 2010-2012

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, 2008-2011
Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, 2008-2009
International Atlantic Economic Society (IAES) EconSources.com Best
Undergraduate Paper Competition Winner, 2008.
MIT Presidential Fellow, 2008
Columbia College Valedictorian, 2008
Sanford S. Parker Prize (outstanding economics student at Columbia), 2008
Romine Prize, Best Honors Thesis in Economics, Columbia, 2008
Junior Phi Beta Kappa, 2008
PUBLICATIONS
World Welfare is Rising: Estimation Using Nonparametric Bounds on

Welfare Measures, forthcoming, Journal of Public Economics
I take a new approach to measuring world inequality and welfare over time by
constructing robust bounds for these series instead of imposing parametric
assumptions to compute point estimates. I derive sharp bounds on the Atkinson
inequality index that are valid for any underlying distribution of income
conditional on given fractile shares and Gini coefficient. While the bounds are
too wide to reject the hypothesis that world inequality may have risen, I show
that world welfare rose unambiguously between 1970 and 2006. This
conclusion is valid for alternative methods of dealing with countries and years
with missing surveys, alternative survey harmonization procedures, alternative
GDP series, or if the inequality surveys used systematically underreport the
income of the very rich, or suffer from nonresponse bias.
Rational Inattention and Choice Under Risk: Explaining Violations of
Expected Utility Through a Shannon Entropy Formulation of the Costs of
Rationality Atlantic Economic Journal 37, no. 1: 99-112, May 2009
(Winner of IAES Competition)
I propose a model of stochastic choice in which the error term is
derived from a maximizing framework in which it is costly for agents to make
decisions optimally. I argue that the model has testable implications, and is
closely related to other models used in the literature on choice under risk. I test
this model over experimental data, replicate some conclusions of the existing
literature, and show this model to perform well against current models in use.
MAXIM PINKOVSKIY
RESEARCH
PAPERS
The Impact of the Managed Care Backlash on Health Care Costs (Job
Market Paper)
During the late 1990s, there was a substantial cultural, media and legal backlash
against the cost-containment practices of managed care organizations
(particularly, HMOs). Most states passed a variety of laws in this period that
restricted the cost-cutting measures that managed care firms could use. I exploit
panel variation in the passage of these regulations across states and over time to
investigate the effects of the managed care backlash, as proxied by this
legislation, on health care cost growth. I find that the backlash had a strong
effect on health care costs, and can statistically explain most of the rise in health
spending as a share of U.S. GDP between 1993 and 2005 (amounting to 1% 1.5% of GDP). I also investigate the effects of the managed care backlash on
intensity of care, hospital salaries and technology adoption. I conclude that
managed care was largely successful in keeping health care costs on a
sustainable path relative to the size of the economy.
Economic Discontinuities at Borders: Evidence from Satellite Data on
Lights at Night
Using a new methodology for the computation of standard errors in a
regression discontinuity design with infill asymptotics, I document the
existence of discontinuities in the levels and growth rates of the amount of
satellite-recorded light per capita across national borders. Both the amount of
light per capita and its growth rate increase discontinuously upon crossing a
border from a poorer (or lower-growing) into a richer (or higher-growing)
country. I argue that these discontinuities form lower bounds for
discontinuities in economic activity across borders, which suggests the
importance of national-level variables, such as institutions and culture, relative
to local-level variables, such as geography, for the determination of income
and growth. I do not find commensurate discontinuities in local public goods at
borders. Institutions of private property are helpful in explaining differences in
growth between two countries at their joint border, while contracting
institutions, local and national levels of public goods, as well as education and
cultural variables do not explain border differences in output. Finally, I show
that neither the magnitude of discontinuities at borders nor the variables that
affect border discontinuities are changed by accounting for the economic
proximity of the bordering countries.
Voter Learning in State Primary Elections, with Shigeo Hirano, Gabriel
Lenz and James Snyder.
Using both existing polling data and data collected from our own
internet survey, we find evidence that voters learn about the ideologies of
candidates during statewide primary election campaigns and this learning
affects their voting decisions. We also find evidence that voters are more
likely to learn when a substantial ideological gap exists or when they have
incorrect beliefs or low information about the candidates' ideologies at the
MAXIM PINKOVSKIY
start of the campaign. We find this effect only for open seat senate and
gubernatorial races and not for down-ballot races or races with an incumbent.
African Poverty is FallingMuch Faster than You Think! with Xavier
Sala-i-Martin. NBER Working Paper #15775
We estimate income distributions, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare
indices for African countries for the period 1970-2006. We show that: (1)
African poverty is falling and is falling rapidly; (2) if present trends continue,
the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people
with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time; (3) the
growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead
of increasing it; (4) African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot
be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing
some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic.
Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income with
Xavier Sala-i-Martin. NBER Working Paper #15433
We use a parametric method to estimate the income distribution for 191
countries between 1970 and 2006. We estimate global and regional poverty
rates, counts, income inequality and welfare. Using the official $1/day line, we
estimate that world poverty rates have fallen by 80% between 1970 and 2006.
Correspondingly, the total number of poor has fallen by 617 million people
over this period. Our estimates of global count in 2006 are much smaller than
found by other researchers. We find that various measures of global inequality
have declined substantially and measures of global welfare increased
significantly. Finally, we show that our results are robust to sensitivity tests
involving functional forms, data sources for the largest countries, methods of
interpolating and extrapolating missing data, and possible sources of survey
misreporting.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Leaving Democracy: A Path Dependent Model of Regime Transitions

A surprising feature of many transitions from democracy to nonrepresentative
forms of government is that they occur with substantial popular support. Using
a Baron-Ferejohn model of legislative bargaining over the allocation of tax
revenue to public goods or personalized transfers, I show that public goods
provision is increasing in the wealth of the poorest members of the electorate.
Therefore, a majority of the electorate may support restricting suffrage to a
rich elite to improve public goods provision, despite the distortions that such
an elite may create through other policies. In a dynamic model of economics
and politics, in which there are random shocks to the marginal value of public
goods, the equilibrium outcome is path dependent, with society either
consolidating democracy or voting itself into oligarchy depending on the
ordered sequence of public goods shocks.
MAXIM PINKOVSKIY
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
A Nonlinear Least Squares Approach to Estimating Fixed Effects Panel

Data Models with Lagged Dependent Variables with Jerry Hausman.
Traditionally, fixed effects panel data models with lagged dependent variables
have been estimated by instrumental variables methods, which are known to be
biased especially when the dependent variable is persistent (Hausman, Hall
and Kuersteiner 2007). We seek to overcome this problem by positing an
estimator of the classical dynamic panel data model with fixed effects that is
based on recursively substituting out the lagged dependent variable and
solving the resulting equation by nonlinear least squares. Preliminary results
suggest that our estimator yields superior performance in the case of high
persistence of the dependent variable. We also provide versions of our
estimator that are valid when regressors are predetermined rather than strictly
exogenous.
LAURA RALSTON
lralston@mit.edu

617-324-4465
lralston@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/lralston

20 Marney St Apt # 1
Cambridge
MA 02141
Mobile: 617-620-3652

617-253-6833

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
bolken@mit.edu

DISSERTATION: Less Guns, More Violence: Evidence from Disarmament in
Uganda
617-258-7013
eduflo@mit.edu
Professor Ben Olken

617-253-6833
bolken@mit.edu

617-452-4127
mgreenst@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
MSc. Economics
BSc. Economics
(First Class Honors)
London School of Economics 2007

London School of Economics 2005
CITIZENSHIP
UK
GENDER:
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Development

Secondary Fields: Experimental, Environmental
Female
LAURA RALSTON
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
14.160 Experimental and Behavioral Economics

14.137 Psychology for Economists
14.73 Undergraduate Development Economics
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
World Bank, Short-term Consultant

RA to Professor Michael Greenstone, MIT
RA to Professor Nicholas Stern, LSE
Asian Development Bank, Intern
2010
2009-10
2007-08
2007
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
MIT Martin Fellowship

George and Obie Schultz Fund Grants
Kennedy Scholarship
ESRC Research Fellowship
LSE Economic Department Prize
2011-12
2010-12
2008-09
2006-08
2005
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Less Guns, More Violence: Evidence from Disarmament in Uganda

(Job Market Paper)
This paper studies the effect of Uganda's 2006 disarmament policy in the
Karamoja region in East Africa, a traditional tribal area that is one of the most
violent places in the world. From 2004 to 2009, the homicide rate was more
than ten times as high as the US rate and three times as high as the Mexican
rate. Most of these deaths occurred during livestock raids that impacted 3-5%
of the total livestock in the region each year. The disarmament policy greatly
reduced the guns of tribes in the Ugandan districts of the region but not in the
Kenyan districts. The theoretical impact of the disarmament is ambiguous,
however, since guns can be used for deterrence as well as helping aggressors
carry out raids. For example, the disarmament could reduce the advantage of
heavily armed tribes over weakly armed tribes and lower the number of tribes
willing to carry out raids. At the same time, it will also lower the expected cost
of confrontations for all tribes, which may lead to more tribes initiating raids,
particularly if weakly armed tribes begin to raid. Empirically, I find that the
disarmament campaign had the unintended effect of increasing the frequency
of raids in Uganda by about 40%, while, consistent with the idea that
disarmament reduced the costs of raiding, I find no impact on the monthly
death rate. Moreover, this increase in raids in Uganda was driven by an
increase in Ugandan initiated raids on other Ugandans, not an increase in
Kenyan initiated raids on Ugandans, suggesting that in this context the
deterrent effect of guns outweighs their impact as a tool of aggression.
How does stress affect social interactions? (with Johannes Haushofer)
This paper studies the impact of stress on social behavior by exogenously
stimulating the two biological systems associated with stress: the
hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) and noradrenergic (NA) system
and measuring behavior in interactive tasks in a laboratory experiment. Our
preliminary findings suggest that activation of the NA system through the
LAURA RALSTON
administration of 20mg yohimbine led to more pro-social behavior through an

increase in trustworthiness showed in the Trust Game, while activation of the
HPA axis through the administration of 60mg of hydrocortisone led to greater
anticipated generosity in the Dictator Game. The concurrent stimulation of
both systems did not affect behavior in any of the social tasks, but did manifest
in lower opinions of the trustworthiness and fairness of other people, as well as
a decrease in the value associated with helping other people, as measured
through a visual analog scale survey. Given these initial results, we find some
evidence for a relationship between stress and anti-social behavior as revealed
through lower beliefs on social standards, while also finding that activation of
the NA and HPA systems in isolation may lead to more pro-social outcomes.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Conflict and Climate Variation: A Micro-level Analysis

Several studies have identified the impact of adverse economic shocks on civil
conflict using rainfall variation as an instrument for income or growth. This
paper contributes to this literature by carrying out a micro-level analysis on the
relationship between climate and resource variation with armed conflict using
a novel dataset on inter-tribal violence manifested through livestock raids in a
pastoral-dependent region of East African. Consistent with previous work, I
find that across the region there is a negative relationship between both forage
and rainfall with conflict. In particular, a standard deviation decrease in
average level of forage across the region leads to a 13.5% increase in the total
number of raids per month and a 10% increase in the proportion of land with
no rainfall leads to a 4.7% increase. I posit three potential explanations for
these findings: (1) desperate times lead to desperate measures, such that tribes
under resource strain will resort to predation regardless of the resource
condition of the tribes they target, (2) the most resource-scarce tribes are
driven to predation, but they preferentially target tribes with higher resources,
(3) strategic predation drives conflict, such that resource-rich tribes prey on the
most vulnerable tribes in times of stress. Using tribe-level variation in rainfall
and forage, I try to identify which of these explanations is most relevant. I find
that decreases to a tribe's own rainfall and increases to their target's rainfall
lead to an increased probability that they will raid. Similarly, I find that tribes
are most vulnerable to attack when they experience negative rainfall
deviations. Thus, in this context it appears that violence is most likely to occur
when tribes are resource-scarce and the marginal gains to raiding are greatest.
Estimating the Impacts of Global Climate Change (with Jennifer Peck)

This paper estimates the impact of climate change on global health-related
welfare. In particular, we examine the relationship between annual climate
fluctuations and human mortality, electricity consumption, net migration and
overseas development aid (ODA). We use historical temperature and
precipitation fluctuations within countries to identify the effect of climate
changes on these outcomes, and then use two different climate models to
predict the effects on future mortality and other outcomes. The results show a
strong impact of extreme temperatures on mortality, with cold days associated
LAURA RALSTON
with an increase in mortality among infants and the elderly and hot days
increasing mortality in all age groups. Electricity usage is highest in years
with more cold days in poor countries and lowest for years with more hot days.
Precipitation fluctuations are correlated with migration and aid flows, with low
precipitation leading to greater migration out of autocratic nations and greater
ODA directed to Asian nations, while high precipitation is associated with an
increase in per capita ODA to poor countries.
JOSEPH S. SHAPIRO
shapiroj@mit.edu

617-821-4333
shapiroj@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/shapiroj

66 Callender St #2
Cambridge, MA 02139
Mobile: 617-821-4333

Professor Ben Olken
617-253-6833
bolken@mit.edu

Ms. Beata Shuster
617-324-5857
bshuster@mit.edu
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

DISSERTATION: Essays on Trade, CO2, and the Environment
Professor Arnaud Costinot
617-452-4127
617-324-1712
mgreenst@mit.edu
costinot@mit.edu
Professor David Autor
617-258-7698
dautor@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
M.Sc. in Statistics with Distinction

M.Sc. in Economics for Development
with Distinction
B.A. in Economics with Distinction
London School of Economics

University of Oxford
2007
2006
Stanford University
2003
CITIZENSHIP
USA
GENDER: M
LANGUAGES
English (native), Spanish (fluent), French (basic)
FIELDS
Primary: Environment/Energy, Public

Secondary: Trade
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Energy Economics (undergraduate/graduate, MIT Course

14.44/444), Teaching Assistant to Professor Gilbert Metcalf
Spring 2011
JOSEPH S. SHAPIRO
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant to Michael Greenstone

Research Assistant to Michael Kremer
Research Assistant to Paul David
Research Assistant to Stefan Dercon
Junior Professional Associate and Consultant, World Bank
2008-2009
2007-2008
2006-2007
2006
2003-2005
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Graduate Fellow

Energy Fellow, MIT Energy Initiative
Martin Family Fellowship for Sustainability
MIT Economics Department Graduate Fellowship
Marshall Scholarship
George Webb Medley Prize for Best Performance in M.Sc.,
Oxford
Phi Beta Kappa, Stanford
Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities,
Stanford
2010-2013
2009
2009
2007-2009
2005-2007
2006
2003
2003
PROFESSIONAL Referee for: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics; Economics of

Education Review; Economic Journal; Journal of Human Resources; Journal of
ACTIVITIES
Population Economics; Journal of Public Economics; Review of Economics and
Statistics; World Bank Economic Review
Presentations: Energy Institute at Haas Camp (2012), NBER Summer Institute
Discussant (2012), EPA STAR (2011), NBER Summer Institute (2011), Federal
Reserve Bank of Atlanta (2011), US Census Bureau (2010)
JOURNAL
PUBLICATIONS
Globalization and the Role of Public Transfers in Redistributing Income

in Latin America and the Caribbean (with Emmanuel Skoufias and Kathy
Lindert). 2010. World Development Special Issue 38(6): 895-907.
The Benefits of Delayed Primary School Enrollment: Discontinuity
Estimates Using Exact Birth Dates (with Patrick J. McEwan). 2008. Journal
of Human Resources 43(1): 1-29.
Community-Based Production of Open-Source Software: What do We
Know About the Developers who Participate? (with Paul A. David). 2008.
Information Economics and Policy Special Issue 20(4): 364-398.
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Trade, CO2, and the Environment (Job Market Paper)

This paper puts the gains from trade and the environmental costs of trade on the
same theoretical and empirical footing in order to provide a more complete
measure of trade's welfare effects. To undertake this analysis, the paper
describes a model of trade and the environment, compiles new data on the CO
emissions from intranational and international shipping, and estimates the
model's key parameters using instrumental variables. Two key findings emerge.
First, the gains from international trade exceed the environmental costs of
international trade by two orders of magnitude. Second, a global carbon tax of
$20 per ton on the CO emissions from all air and sea shipping would decrease
international trade by about half a percentage point, increase global welfare, and
JOSEPH S. SHAPIRO
have regressive global incidence. Proposed EU and US taxes on the CO2

emissions from shipping increase unregulated CO emissions, divert trade to
unregulated routes, and also have regressive incidence, but they too increase
global welfare.
Defensive Investments and the Demand for Air Quality: Evidence from
the NOx Budget Program and Ozone Reductions (with Olivier Deschnes
and Michael Greenstone). Submitted.
Willingness to pay for air quality is a function of health and the costly defensive
investments that contribute to health, but there is little research assessing the
empirical importance of defensive investments. The setting for this paper is a
large US emissions cap and trade market the NOx Budget Trading Program
(NBP) that has greatly reduced NOx emissions since its initiation in 2003.
Using rich quasi-experimental variation, we find that the reductions in NOx
emissions decreased the number of summer days with high ozone levels by about
25%. The NBP also led to reductions in expenditures on prescription
pharmaceutical expenditures of about 1.9%. Additionally, the summer mortality
rate declined by approximately 0.5%, indicating that there were about 2,200
fewer premature deaths per summer, mainly among individuals 75 and older.
The monetized value of the reductions in pharmaceutical purchases and mortality
rates are each roughly $900 million annually, suggesting that defensive
investments are a significant portion of willingness to pay for air quality.
Finally, we cautiously conclude that the reductions in ozone are the primary
channel for these reductions in defensive investments and mortality rates, which
indicates that willingness to pay for ozone reductions is larger than previously
understood.
Adapting to Climate Change: Evidence from Long-Run Changes in the
Weather-Mortality Relationship in the 20th Century United States (with
Alan Barreca, Karen Clay, Olivier Deschnes, and Michael Greenstone)
Given the failure of numerous international efforts to negotiate global
regulation of CO2 emissions, adaptation is virtually guaranteed to be an
important response to the threat of climate change in the coming decades.
However, there is scant empirical evidence on its potential benefits. Using
newly compiled US state-month data on mortality for the entire 20th century and
the presumably random month-to-month variation in temperature, we find that
the effect of an extremely hot day on mortality rates declined dramatically
between 1900-1960 and 1960-2004. By comparison, the effect of cold
temperature on mortality has remained relatively constant over the whole 20th
century. These facts provide direct evidence that Americans have adapted to
extreme heat. In the second part of the paper, we quantify the extent to which
three health-related innovations in the 20th century United States have
contributed to reducing the mortality effect of temperature extremes.
Specifically, we examine the role of electrification, increased access to health
care, and the introduction of residential air conditioning in muting the effect of
extreme heat on mortality. We find that increased access to health care, and
especially the spread of residential air conditioning that started in the early
1960s, explain almost all the decline in heats effects on mortality. The
protective effect of residential air conditioning is even more pronounced when
JOSEPH S. SHAPIRO
the analysis focuses on the more vulnerable groups in the US population.

RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
US Air Pollution, Productivity, and Trade (with Reed Walker)

This paper examines how international trade affects US air quality. Empirical
research has found that opening to trade increases the market share of more
productive firms. This paper first analyzes whether firms with greater total
factor productivity emit relatively less of local pollutants like NOx, SO2,
particulates, and toxic matter. To this end, it compiles new data linking the
productivity of US manufacturing firms with plant-level pollution emissions.
With this relationship in hand, we investigate the extent to which trade
liberalization increases the market share of more productive firms and affects
associated pollution emissions. We study NAFTA and the Free Trade Area of
the Americas. Finally, using trade theory and existing estimates of the social
cost of local pollution emissions, the paper compares the gains from trade and
environmental costs of trade due to these policies.
Why Does Electricity Matter? Evidence from the US Rural Electrification
Act
This paper uses newly recovered archival data on US electrification to measure
rural demand for electricity and to quantify the share due to agricultural
production. One and a half billion people around the globe cannot access
electricity. Providing them with electricity will provide benefits but will also
require considerable infrastructure costs. To learn about the welfare gains from
rural electrification, I study one of the largest electrification episodes in
historythe US Rural Electrification Act, which connected 12 million
Americans to the electric grid over 20 years. I obtain detailed maps and annual
statistical reports from federal archives. The data record electricity prices and
coverage separately by year and county for the period 1938-1957. I measure the
effect of electricity access on land values, which makes it possible to quantify
the aggregate welfare gains from rural electrification. I also separately assess
the effect of electricity access on agricultural production, which makes it
possible to learn about the source of demand for rural electricity.
Long-Run Consequences of the Clean Water Act
This paper constructs extensive data on US river pollution since 1968 in order
to assess trends and causes of water pollution. Data are compiled for all the
major pollutants regulated by the 1972 Clean Water Act. Ambient levels of
these pollutants were declining even before the Clean Water Act and national
trends did not change after the Act. Detailed data on two major activities of the
Act grants for wastewater treatment plants and plant-level regulation of
industrial discharges suggest that public subsidies for wastewater treatment
decreased ambient fecal coliform concentrations. The only measure of water
quality which has continually worsened since before the Clean Water Act is
water temperature, which has most likely increased due to climate change.
OTHER
Special Sworn Status, US Census Bureau
CHRISTOPHER WALTERS
crwalt@mit.edu

540-392-5641
crwalt@mit.edu

23 Lanark Road #4
Brighton, MA 02135
Mobile: 540-392-5641
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/crwalt/
Professor Benjamin Olken bolken@mit.edu
617-253-6833
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857

DISSERTATION: Essays on the Economics of Education
Professor Joshua Angrist
617-258-7698
angrist@mit.edu
Professor Parag Pathak

617-253-7458
ppathak@mit.edu
Professor David Autor

617-253-8909
dautor@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
BA with Highest
Distinction
Economics;
Philosophy
CITIZENSHIP
United States
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Labor Economics
University of Virginia
GENDER
Male
Secondary Fields: Economics of Education, Econometrics
2008
CHRISTOPHER WALTERS
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Labor Economics I (graduate, MIT course 14.661), Teaching

Assistant to Professor Parag Pathak and Professor Daron
Acemoglu
Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy (undergraduate, MIT
course 14.03), Teaching Assistant to Professor Stephen Ryan
Labor Economics I (graduate, MIT course 14.661), Teaching
Assistant to Professor Joshua Angrist
Labor Economics and Public Policy (undergraduate, MIT course
14.64), Teaching Assistant to Professor Joshua Angrist
2011
2011
2010
2010
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant to MIT Professor Joshua Angrist

Research Assistant to UVA Professor Edgar Olsen
2008-2010
2006-2008
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship

Edgar F. Shannon Award for Best UVA Arts and Sciences
Student
Outstanding Major Award, UVA Economics Department
Outstanding Major Award, UVA Philosophy Department
Best Thesis Award, UVA Economics Department
Sheri Gayle Richman Memorial Scholarship
Phi Beta Kappa
2012
2008-2012
2008
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
PUBLICATIONS
Presentations:
Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness Spring
Meeting, Washington, DC
Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fall
Research Conference, Boston, MA
Econometric Society World Congress, Shanghai, China
American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association MidYear Meeting, Washington, DC
2008
2008
2008
2008
2007
2012
2011
2010
2008
Who Benefits from KIPP? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management

31(4), 2012 (with Josh Angrist, Sue Dynarski, Tom Kane, and Parag
Pathak).
Inputs and Impacts in Charter Schools: KIPP Lynn, American
Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 100(2), 2010 (with Josh Angrist,
Sue Dynarski, Tom Kane, and Parag Pathak).
Do Subsidized Housing Units Depreciate Faster than Unsubsidized
Ones? Journal of Housing Economics 18(1), 2009.
RESEARCH
PAPERS
A Structural Model of Charter School Choice and Academic

Achievement (Job Market Paper)
Lottery-based instrumental variables estimates show that Boston's charter
schools substantially increase test scores and close racial achievement gaps
among their applicants. A key policy question is whether charter expansion is
CHRISTOPHER WALTERS
likely to produce similar effects on a larger scale. This paper uses a structural
model of school choice and academic achievement to extrapolate from IV
estimates and predict the effects of charter expansion for the citywide
achievement distribution in Boston. Estimates of the model suggest that charter
applicants are negatively selected on achievement gains: low-income students
and students with low prior achievement gain the most from charter
attendance, but are unlikely to apply to charter schools. This form of selection
implies that charter schools are likely to produce substantial gains for marginal
students drawn in by expansion. Simulations suggest that realistic expansions
will reduce gaps in math scores between Boston and the rest of Massachusetts
by 10 percent, and reduce racial achievement gaps by 5 percent. Nevertheless,
the estimates also imply that perceived application costs are high and that most
students prefer traditional public school to charter schools, so large expansions
are likely to leave many charter seats empty. These results suggest that the
potential gains from charter expansion may be limited as much by demand as
by supply.
Explaining Charter School Effectiveness (with Joshua Angrist and Parag
Pathak, revise and resubmit at American Economic Journal: Applied
Economics)
Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost
student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. Using the
largest available sample of lotteried applicants to charter schools, we explore
student-level and school-level explanations for this difference in Massachusetts.
In an econometric framework that isolates sources of charter effect
heterogeneity, we show that urban charter schools boost achievement well
beyond that of urban public school students, while non-urban charters reduce
achievement from a higher baseline. Student demographics explain some of
these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and lowbaseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly
ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity
within the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban
charters with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger
score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery
records. Finally, we link charter impacts to school characteristics such as peer
composition, length of school day, and school philosophy. The relative
effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by these schools'
embrace of the No Excuses approach to urban education.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Dynamics of Family Structure and Educational Attainment: Evidence

from the NLSY
Educational attainment for children from low-income households in the United
States has stagnated in recent decades, while the fraction of children living in
two-parent households has fallen sharply. Using data from the 1979 and 1997
National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY), I document the relationship
between family structure and educational attainment for cohorts born between
CHRISTOPHER WALTERS
1957 and 1984. This analysis reveals that over time, attainment for children
from single-mother households has fallen dramatically relative to attainment
for children from two-parent households. For cohorts born between 1957 and
1965, children from single-mother households were nine percentage points less
likely to graduate from college than their counterparts from two-parent
households; for cohorts born between 1980 and 1984, this gap grew to more
than twenty percentage points. Similar patterns exists in all demographic
groups, for both genders, and for several alternative measures of attainment. I
conclude with a discussion of possible mechanisms that may drive changes in
the relationship between family structure and educational attainment over time.
Achievement Effects of Public Preschool: Evidence from the Boston
Public Schools Match (with Parag Pathak)
We estimate the achievement effects of Boston's publicly provided early
childhood education program, which enrolls an increasing share of the city's
children. To evaluate the program's impact, we isolate random variation in the
opportunity to attend public preschool due to the institutional features of the
Boston Public Schools match algorithm. We find no evidence that attending
public preschool has an impact on subsequent test scores in any subject, grade,
or demographic group. These results suggest that publicly provided early
childhood education programs that expand access without providing sufficient
quality may have little effect on student achievement.
Fundamental Welfare Reform (with Edgar Olsen)
Low-income households in the United States are typically eligible for many
transfer programs. The interactions of these programs create highly complex,
nonlinear budget spaces, with uncertain consequences for household choices.
Though these interactions seem likely to be important, most studies of the
effects of taxes and transfers consider only one or two programs at a time.
Using Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data from 1993 and
1994, we develop and estimate a structural model of labor supply, housing
choice, and goods consumption that simultaneously takes into account the
effects of three major transfer programs: Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC), food stamps, and public housing. The model also
incorporates the key features of the state and federal income tax systems,
including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). We use estimates of the
model to simulate the effects of policy changes on consumption and labor
supply, and compare the consequences of these changes to those of the actual
reforms implemented in the mid-1990s.
XIAO YU WANG
xiaoyu88@mit.edu

xiaoyu88@mit.edu
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/xiaoyu88

20 Marcella Street, Apartment 6
Mobile: 856-264-7449

bolken@mit.edu
617-253-6833

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

DISSERTATION: Essays on Institutions in Developing Economies
617-253-8855
617-452-3722
banerjee@mit.edu
rtownsen@mit.edu
617-258-7013
eduflo@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
University of Wisconsin-Madison, May 2008

B.A. with Honors in Economics
B.A. with Honors in Mathematics
and with Honors in the Liberal Arts
PLACE OF
BIRTH
Manhattan, Kansas
CITIZENSHIP
United States
LANGUAGES
English (native), Spanish (fluent), Mandarin Chinese (fluent speaking)
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Development, Theory

Secondary Field: Political Economy
GENDER
Female
YEAR OF BIRTH
1988
XIAO YU WANG
OCTOBER 2012 PAGE 2
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Statistical Methods in Economics (graduate core probability and

econometrics, MIT Course 14.381)
-Teaching Assistant to Professor Anna Mikusheva and Professor Victor
Chernozhukov
-Evaluated: 6.4/7 (mean rating: 5.6)
Math Camp (MIT preparation course for incoming PhD students in
Economics and in Sloan)
-Instructor
-Evaluated: 9/10
Creative Writing: The Short Story (MIT summer class)
-Instructor
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant to Professor Abhijit Banerjee

Research Assistant to Professor Robert Townsend (employed by
the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago)
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS

MIT Department of Economics, Supplemental Fellowship
Phi Beta Kappa (second year)
F. Chandler Young Award for the most outstanding graduating
honors student, UW-Madison
Gerald G. Somers award for the best economics thesis, UW-Madison
Mark Ingraham award for the best undergraduate math majors, UWMadison
Trewartha grant for an outstanding thesis proposal, UW-Madison
Draminski scholarship for excellence in undergraduate economics,
UW-Madison
Phipps Award for the best sophomore economics major (full tuition),
UW-Madison
Kemper Knapp scholarship for National Merit Finalists and Vilas
Merit Scholar, UW-Madison
Schoenleber scholarship for an incoming freshman in Letters and
Science (full ride), UW-Madison
PROFESSIONAL Presentations:
North East Universities Development Consortium (NEUDC),
ACTIVITIES
Dartmouth College
Households and Risk, Center for the Economic Analysis of Risk,
Atlanta, Georgia
MIT Field Lunch Workshops (Theory, Development,
Organizational)
Service:
Co-President of the MIT Graduate Economics Association
2010
2010
2009
2008-2010
2010-present
2008-2011
2008-2011
2006
2008
2008
2008
2007
2006,2007
2006-2008
2005
2004-08
Nov. 2012
Nov. 2012
2009-2012
2010-2011
XIAO YU WANG
OCTOBER 2012 PAGE 3
RESEARCH
PAPERS:
Endogenous Insurance and Informal Relationships (Job Market Paper)

A rich literature seeks to explain the distinctive features of equilibrium institutions
arising in risky environments which lack formal insurance and credit markets. I
develop a theory of endogenous matching between heterogeneously risk-averse
individuals who, once matched, choose both the riskiness of the income stream they
face (ex ante risk management) as well as how to share that risk (ex post risk
management). I find a clean condition on the fundamentals of the model for unique
positive-assortative and negative-assortative matching in risk attitudes. From this, I
derive an intuitive falsifiability condition, discuss support for the theory in existing
empirical work, and propose an experimental design to test the theory. Finally, I
demonstrate the policy importance of understanding informal insurance as the risksharing achieved within the equilibrium network of partnerships, rather than within a
single, isolated partnership. A hypothetical policy which reduces aggregate risk
improves welfare unambiguously when the network is unchanged, but may adversely
affect welfare, both in an aggregate and in a distributional sense, when the endogenous
network response is taken into account: the least risk-averse individuals abandon their
roles as informal insurers in favor of entrepreneurial partnerships. This results in an
increase in the risk borne by the most risk-averse agents, who must now match with
each other on low-return investments.
Risk, Incentives, and Contracting Relationships"
The aim of this paper is to understand the impact of optimal provision of both risk and
incentives on the choice of contracting partners. I study a risky setting where
heterogeneously risk-averse employers and employees must match to be productive.
They face a standard one-sided moral hazard problem: mean output increases in the
noncontractible input of the employee. Better insurance comes at the cost of weaker
incentives, and this tradeoff differs across partnerships of different risk compositions. I
show that this heterogeneous tradeoff determines the equilibrium matching pattern, and
focus on environments in which assortative matching is the unique equilibrium. I
demonstrate that a policy which subsidizes greater use of inputs (a new technology, for
example) may cause the least risk-averse landowners to switch from working with the
most risk-averse to the least risk-averse farmers. This leaves the most risk-averse
individuals to match with each other in low productivity, low insurance partnerships.
A Note on Moral Hazard and Linear Compensation Schemes
This note identifies a moral hazard environment in which a piecewise linear
compensation scheme is optimal. Both the principal and the agent have CARA utility,
mean output is increasing in the agent's noncontractible input, and output is distributed
according to a Laplace distribution, which resembles a normal distribution (e.g. it is
symmetric about the mean), but has fatter tails. The key property of the Laplace
distribution is that the likelihood ratio is a piecewise constant, where the discontinuity
occurs at the mean.
The value of this approach is twofold: first, a tractable, empirically-observed wage
scheme emerges as the equilibrium in a simple static contracting model. Second, the
optimal piecewise linear scheme cleanly separates insurance and incentive provision.
The linearity at output levels away from the mean captures insurance, while the jump
at the mean captures incentive provision. Hence, this model is ideal for studying a wide
variety of principal-agent problems in risky environments subject to moral hazard,
such as the effect of risk and moral hazard constraints on employment relationships in
XIAO YU WANG
OCTOBER 2012 PAGE 4
developing economies.
Interdependent Utility and Truthtelling in Two-Sided Matching
I study a two-sided, one-to-one matching problem with no side transfers, where utility
is interdependent in the following intuitive sense: an individuals utility from a match
depends not only on her preference ranking of her assigned partner, but also on that
partners ranking of her. I show that a unique stable match exists in a world of
complete information, and is attained by a modified Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance
algorithm. As a result, a stable rule supports truthtelling as an equilibrium strategy,
despite complete information and a potentially small number of players. Hence, these
results offer a new intuition for why stable matching mechanisms seem to work well in
practice, despite their theoretic manipulability: individuals may value being liked.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS:
Information Production and Information Sharing: an Analysis of Credit

Registries (with Rob Townsend)
Credit registries allow borrowers to build reputation collateral, which is particularly
valuable in developing countries, where standard collateral is scarce. This kind of
information sharing can discipline borrowers and allow banks to credibly promise not
to exploit their good borrowers.
We study the impact of information sharing on the pool of information produced in
the first place. We build a two period model with strategic default and moral hazard.
There are two lenders and a continuum of borrowers with binary type: low types are
always unprofitable, while high types realize a positive investment return with
probability increasing in effort exerted. At the beginning of the period, a lender can
pay to receive a signal of borrower type, where accuracy is costly. A lender observes
the performance of her own borrowers. At the end of period 1, borrower performance
and/or any signals gathered are reported truthfully to a credit registry.
Our model yields two key insights. First, in the absence of information sharing, a
lender shifts screening costs to good borrowers. Rather than paying an information
gathering cost herself, the lender sets interest rates and direct screening levels to induce
high types to separate from low types by exerting costly effort. Default is a convincing
signal of low type only if high types exert high effort in equilibrium. This in itself
dampens high types incentives to exert effort. Hence, the information contained in
borrower performance is endogenous to lending policy.
Second, information sharing influences the interest rates and screening levels set by
lenders in period 1, where borrower performance, signals gathered, or both dimensions
must be shared. In general, information sharing causes period 1 interest rates to be
higher and informativeness of borrower performance to be lower, so that the quality of
information entering the credit registry is low. However, banks use this information
anyway, which amplifies the negative effect of low quality information. Empirically
identifying this amplification and solving for the socially optimal design of the
information sharing system are eventual goals of this work.
NONECONOMICS
PAPERS:
Moral Issues, Framing, and Media: The 2004 Presidential Election Campaign
and the Moral Divide (with Denise St. Clair, Yphtach Lelkes, Carly Yuenger,
Patrick Peczerski, Jerilyn Teo, Susanne Ress, and Seung-Hyun Lee), Association for
XIAO YU WANG
OCTOBER 2012 PAGE 5
Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference - Mass
Communication and Society Division: Top 3 Featured Panel, August 2006.
Despite all that was facing the U.S. at home and abroad during the 2004 Presidential
Election campaign, many voters noted moral issues as most important in their voting
decisions. As such, this paper asks: How prominent were moral issues specifically,
same-sex marriage and abortion in domestic and international news coverage of the
campaign, and how were these issues presented in the media? To answer this, we
examine the composition of the coverage through content analysis, and conduct a
textual analysis informed by the theories of value-framing and the politics of framing
put forth by George Lakoff. We find that the agendas of the media and of voters
differed substantiallymoral issues were far from the most prominently covered
issues in the media. However, when covered, the media presented moral issue debates
in terms of right and wrong, effectively removing these issues from the realm of true
public debate.
Media and the 2004 Presidential Campaign: A Case of New York Times
Coverage (with Abhiyan Humane, Carly Yuenger, Daniel Gartenberg, and Porismita
Borah), AEJMC Conference-Newspaper Division, August 2007.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the composition and variation in a set of
standard characteristics of media coverage of the 2004 presidential election by The
New York Times, within the campaign period of July 26, 2004 (DNC) and Nov. 5,
2004 (day after election). Most studies analyzing media coverage generalize their
results to the period of the entire campaign. However, this assumes invariance of a
campaign and static media coverage. Emphasizing the interaction between the
campaign and media coverage, our results indicate that media coverage of issues
(national, foreign policy, and campaign issues) varies considerably during the course of
campaign. The evidence also suggests that the sources, article type, and tone of the
coverage of the Times fluctuate with the course of the campaign.
TYLER WILLIAMS
tkwillia@mit.edu

269-532-2759
tkwillia@mit.edu

254 Summer St
Mobile: 269-532-2759
http://economics.mit.edu/grad/tkwillia/
617-253-6833
DOCTORAL
STUDIES

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
bolken@mit.edu

DISSERTATION: Essays on Labor Economics
Professor Joshua Angrist
617-258-7698
angrist@mit.edu
Professor Robert Stavins

John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University
79 John F. Kennedy Street, Room L-306
617-495-1820
robert_stavins@harvard.edu
Professor Heidi Williams

617-324-4326
heidiw@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
BA, Mathematics and Economics, Summa Cum Laude, Middlebury College,

2006
CITIZENSHIP
United States
FIELDS
Primary Fields: Labor Economics
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
GENDER:
Male
Microeconomics (undergraduate, MIT course 14.01), Teaching

Assistant to Professor Jeffrey Harris
Foundations of Development Policy (undergraduate/graduate, MIT
course 14.74/14.740), Teaching Assistant to Professor Esther
Duflo
2011
2011
TYLER WILLIAMS
Development Economics: Microeconomic Issues and Policy
Models (graduate, MIT course 14.771), Teaching Assistant to
Professor Esther Duflo and Professor Abhijit Banerjee
Quantitative Methods in Economics and Business (undergraduate,
Harvard course S-110), Teaching Assistant to Professor
Subramanian Swamy
2010
2010
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Research Assistant to MIT Professor Joshua Angrist

Senior Research Assistant to Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Economist Lorenz Goette
2009-2010
2006-2008
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS

Alternate, Fulbright Scholarship
Highest Honors, Middlebury College economics thesis
High Honors, Middlebury College mathematics thesis
Phi Beta Kappa, Middlebury College
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
Referee:
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
American Economic Journal: Applied
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Long-Term Mortality Effects of an NFL Career (Job Market Paper)

Professional football is a high profile example of a dangerous industry. Most
National Football League (NFL) players suffer some combination of
concussions, ligament damage, and broken bones. While NFL retirees face
numerous medical issues stemming from their football careers, playing in the
NFL increases lifetime income for most players and may also encourage good
fitness. Therefore, mortality effects of playing in the NFL are unclear.
Analyzing players born between 1939 and 1975, I find that players with longer
NFL careers have slightly lower mortality rates before age 40 but show similar
mortality at ages 50, 60, and 70 (the oldest age in my sample). I use position
played and draft position to control for extant differences in athletic ability.
Since career-shortening injuries may reduce life expectancy, I use career
patterns to identify serious injuries. I also study high-BMI players, for whom
career length may increase mortality at older ages, and positions with a high risk
of injury. Though I cannot comment on quality of life differences, I conclude
that the combined physical and monetary effects of NFL career length on
mortality are negligible.
When Opportunity Knocks, Who Answers? New Evidence on College
Achievement Awards (with Joshua Angrist and Philip Oreopoulos, NBER
Working Paper No. 16643)
We evaluate the effects of academic achievement awards for first and secondyear college students studying at a Canadian commuter college. The award
scheme offered linear cash incentives for course grades above 70. Awards were
paid every term. Program participants also had access to peer advising by
TYLER WILLIAMS
upperclassmen. Program engagement appears to have been high but overall
treatment effects were small. The intervention increased the number of courses
graded above 70 and points earned above 70 for second-year students, but
generated no significant effect on overall GPA. Results are somewhat stronger
for a subsample that correctly reproduced the program rules. We argue that
these results fit in with an emerging picture of mostly modest effects for cash
award programs of this type at the post-secondary level.
Moral Hazard, Peer Monitoring, and Microcredit: Field Experimental
Evidence from Paraguay (with Jeffrey Carpenter, Federal Reserve Bank of
Boston Working Paper 10-6)
Given the substantial amount of resources currently invested in microcredit
programs, it is more important than ever to accurately assess the extent to which
peer monitoring by borrowers faced with group liability contracts actually
reduces moral hazard. We conduct a field experiment with women about to
enter a group loan program in Paraguay and then gather administrative data on
the members repayment behavior in the six-month period following the
experiment. In addition to the experiment which is designed to measure
individual propensities to monitor under incentives similar to group liability, we
collect a variety of the other potential correlates of borrowing behavior and
repayment. Controlling for other factors, we find a very strong causal
relationship between the monitoring propensity of ones loan group and
repayment. Our lowest estimate suggests that borrowers in groups with above
median monitoring are 36 percent less likely to have a problem repaying their
portion of the loan. Besides confirming a number of previous results, we also
find some evidence that risk preferences, social preferences, and cognitive skills
affect repayment.
The Effects of Expectation on Perception: Experimental Design Issues and
Further Evidence (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Working Paper 07-14)
Numerous studies have found that topdown processes can affect perceptions.
This study examines some of the issues involved in designing field
experiments aimed at discovering whether topdown mental processes affect
perceptions, and, if so, how the influence takes place. Lee, Frederick, and
Ariely (2006) (LFA) attempt to go further by testing whether expectations
affect perceptions directly, by altering how sensory receptors and/or the brains
processing centers interpret an outside stimulusor indirectly, for example, by
changing the amount of attention paid to the outside stimulus. In order to test
the robustness of the findings in LFA, this paper reports the results of a field
experiment similar to the one analyzed in LFA. The field experiment, designed
to address some potential confounding factors in this type of research,
confirms that expectations can alter perceptions. However, it also shows that
heterogeneity across individuals can play a role in determining the nature of
this effect, a finding that complicates the interpretation of results such as those
in LFA. To frame the analysis, this paper discusses the difficulties in designing
this type of experiment, makes some improvements to existing designs, and
suggests some ways of eliminating the confounding influences that remain.
TYLER WILLIAMS
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
To Tank or Not to Tank? Firm versus Worker Incentives in the NBA

(with Christopher Walters)
High draft picks are a coveted commodity in the NBA. Teams are often
accused of losing intentionally (tanking) in order to increase their odds of
receiving a favorable pick in the league's draft lottery. This paper answers two
questions related to tanking in the NBA: (1) What is the value of receiving the
first draft pick? (2) Do teams lose intentionally to secure higher draft
positions? We answer the first question by controlling for the probability of
winning the lottery in a linear regression framework. The estimates indicate
that winning the draft lottery increases attendance by 5 percentage points
during the five year period following the draft. Receiving the first pick is also
associated with a small increase in win percentage, though this effect is less
precisely estimated. To answer the second question, we analyze games played
by non-playoff teams near the end of the season. Using a difference in
differences methodology that compares games in which a team can potentially
change its lottery odds to games in which these odds are fixed, we find strong
evidence of tanking. Playoff-eliminated teams are 14 percentage points more
likely to lose a game when doing so increases their chances in the draft lottery.
In light of these findings, we examine whether teams tank by benching star
players (workers), or whether players themselves put in less effort. We
examine the incentives for each party in a principle-agent framework.
Does Player Race Affect Hiring Through the NFL Draft?
Numerous studies have investigated pay differences by race in professional
sports and other industries, with mixed findings. Relatively little research
exists, however, concerning racial bias in hiring. The National Football League
(NFL) is a particularly interesting industry in which to study this issue, since
around 70 percent of the Leagues players are black and hiring data are readily
available. NFL teams hire top young players in an annual draft. Teams take
turns selecting players in the draft, and selection gives the team exclusive
hiring rights. Therefore, each players selection rank in the draft order proxies
for teams valuation of his skill. Using the 1990 to 2009 NFL drafts, I control
for draft position and look for outstanding differences in NFL performance by
race. Black players drafted in the 1990s early in the draft (potential stars) tend
to outperform white players drafted at a similar position. Although this
difference has eroded over time, since 2000, black players drafted late have
been more likely to see some game action compared with similarly drafted
white players. I discuss these differences in the context of racial bias post-hire,
customer-driven discrimination, and racial stereotypes concerning player type
and position.
Steroids, Aging, and Contracts in Major League Baseball
Anecdotal evidence and changes in batting ability suggest that many Major
League Baseball (MLB) players used performance enhancing drugs in the
1990s and early 2000s. Increased testing and penalties starting around 2005,
along with various federal investigations, appear to have decreased steroid use
TYLER WILLIAMS
substantially. Offensive production has dropped steadily and only a handful of
players test positive for banned substances each year. I examine the effects of
this rule change on contracting in MLB. I find that teams signed older star
players during the steroid era anticipating strong performance through players
mid-to-late-30s. As supplement use has decreased, performance by older
players in the top 25th percentile by salary has also decreased dramatically. I
use young star players as a control group in a difference-in-differences
framework to show that this change is largely driven by players above 31 years
old. While teams may not have anticipated the end of the steroid era in
baseball, I find surprising evidence that teams continue to sign older players to
unfavorable long-term contracts. I discuss these findings as they relate to team
time preferences and the team-player principle-agent relationship.
JUAN PABLO XANDRI

jxandri@mit.edu

30 Wadsworth, E53-389
jxandri@mit.edu

100 Memorial Drive
Apt 8-9A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Mobile: 617-913-6239

617-253-6833

Ms. Beata Shuster
bshuster@mit.edu
617-324-5857
DOCTORAL
STUDIES
bolken@mit.edu

DISSERTATION: Essays in Development Macroeconomics
617-452-3722
rtownsen@mit.edu
Professor Muhamet Yildiz
Cambridge MA 02142-1347
617-253-5331
myildiz@mit.edu
PRIOR
EDUCATION
Professor Ivn Werning

617-452-3662
iwerning@mit.edu
Cambridge MA 02142-1347
617-253-8855
banerjee@mit.edu
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella,

2007, MA in Economics
Universidad de Montevideo,
2004, BA in Economics,
CITIZENSHIP
LANGUAGES
FIELDS
Uruguay
GENDER:
Male
English, Spanish, Portuguese

Primary Fields: Macroeconomics, Development Economics
JUAN PABLO XANDRI

Secondary Fields: Microeconomic Theory

TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
RELEVANT
POSITIONS
Lecturer of Mathematics and Probability Theory

(graduate, Universidad de Montevideo)
Macroeconomic Growth (graduate, MIT Course 14.452),
Teaching assistant to Professor Daron Acemoglu
Macroeconomic Crisis (graduate, MIT Course 14.454),
Teaching Assistant to Professor Roberto Caballero
Microeconomic Theory I (graduate, MIT Course 14.121),
Teaching Assistant to Professor Robert Townsend
Principles of Microeconomics (undergraduate, MIT Course
14.01), Teaching Assistant to Professor Jeffrey Harris
Statistical Methods in Economics (graduate, MIT Course
14.381), Teaching Assistant to Professors Anna Mikusheva
and Victor Chernozhukov
Lecturer Mathematical Economics I (undergraduate,
Universidad de Montevideo
Introduction to Economics (undergraduate, Universidad
Torcuato Di Tella), Teaching Assistant
Mathematical Economics II (undergraduate, Universidad de
Montevideo), Teaching Assistant to Ing. Mario Tascende
Mathematical Economics I (undergraduate, Universidad de
Montevideo), Teaching Assistant to Professor Juan Dubra
Research assistant to Professor Robert Townsend

Research assistant to Professor Ivan Werning
Research assistant to Sergio Schmukler and Claudio Raddatz,
World Bank, Development Research Group
Research Assistant to Professors Alfredo Canavese and
Hildegart Ahumada, Universidad Torcuato di Tella
Research assistant to Professor Juan Dubra, Universidad de
Montevideo
2008-2012
Fall 2012
Spring 2011
Fall 2010
Spring 2010
Fall 2009
Fall 2006
Spring 2005
Fall 2003
Fall 2003
2009-2011
2008
2007
2005-2007
FELLOWSHIPS,
HONORS, AND
AWARDS
George and Obie Schultz Fund Grant, 2011

Best Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year, 2011
Russell Sage Foundation Small Grant in Behavioral Economics, 2011
Russell Sage Foundation Small Grant in Behavioral Economics, 2009
MIT Department of Economics Fellowship, 2007-2013
Universidad de Montevideo Escolaridad por Excelencia 2001-2004
Universidad de Montevideo Best Economics Student Award, 2004.
PROFESSIONAL
ACTIVITIES
Workshop on Networks and Applied Micro (Brown University), 2012

North East Universities Development Consortium (NEUDC, Yale), 2011
2004
JUAN PABLO XANDRI

XXVI Jornadas Anuales de Economa (Banco Central del Uruguay), 2011
RESEARCH
PAPERS
Credible Reforms and the Reputations of Policy Makers : a Robust

Mechanism Design Approach (Job Market Paper)
We study the problem of a government with low credibility, who decides to
make a reform to remove ex-post time inconsistent incentives. If the public
believed the reform solved this time inconsistency problem, the policy maker
could achieve complete discretion. However, if the public does not believe the
reform to be successful, some discretion must be sacrificed in order to induce
public trust. With repeated interactions, the policy maker can build reputation
about her reformed incentives. However, equilibrium reputation dynamics are
very sensitive to assumptions about the public beliefs, particularly after
unexpected events. To overcome this limitation, we study the optimal robust
policy, that implements public trust for all rationalizable beliefs.
When focusing on robustness to all extensive-form rationalizable beliefs, the
robust policy exhibits both partial and permanent reputation building along its
path, as well as endogenous transitory reputation losses. We then show that,
almost surely the policy maker eventually convinces the public she does not
face a time, and this happens with an exponential arrival rate. This implies that
as policy makers become more patient, the payoff of robust policies converge
to the complete information benchmark. We finally explore how further
restrictions on beliefs alter optimal policy and accelerate reputation building.
Testing Models of Social Learning on Networks: Evidence From a
Framed Field Experiment with Arun Chandrasekhar and Horacio Larreguy
Theory has focused on two leading models of social learning on networks:
Bayesian and DeGroot rules of thumb learning. These models can yield greatly
divergent behavior; individuals employing rules of thumb often double-count
information and may not exhibit convergent behavior in the long run. By
conducting a unique lab experiment in rural Karnataka, India, set up to exactly
differentiate between these two models, we test which model best describes
social learning processes on networks. We study experiments in which seven
individuals are placed into a network, each with full knowledge of its structure.
The participants attempt to learn the underlying (binary) state of the world.
Individuals receive independent, identically distributed signals about the state
in the first period only; thereafter, individuals make guesses about the
underlying state of the world and these guesses are transmitted to their
neighbors at the beginning of the following round. We consider various
environments including incomplete information Bayesian models and provide
evidence that individuals are best described by DeGroot models wherein they
either take simple majority of opinions in their neighborhood
JUAN PABLO XANDRI

Network Financial Centrality and the Linking Value of Traders with

Arun Chandrasekhar and Robert Townsend
We study a model of risk sharing in an endowment economy with an
exogenously specified social network which affects the degree to which
insurance can be sustained. We explicitly recognize the interconnected of
agents (traders, financial institutions) as participants in a market and allow for
limited market participation and we allow for idiosyncratic risk and for
aggregate shocks that come from two sources: variation in individual and
aggregate (average endowment) and variation in market participation (again,
markets can be thin).
The network determines the likelihood that participants are contacted and are
able to get to the market to make trades. Agents are not exchangeable and
some traders are more centrally located than others. We ask what is the value
of a named trader in this set up, namely how eager are people are willing to
trade now in that persons debt, recognizing these personalized debts will not be
paid in future markets at a given date where that agent/institution is unable to
participate, due to market participation shocks (this a kind of involuntary
default). We find that the marginal valuation of the debt (or loan) is intimately
related to what we term financial centrality, which is a combination of the
unconditional probably of being in a market, where the social networks direct
the stochastic process governing that probability, as well as the covariance
between the inverse size of the market and propensity to be in the market. The
value of a given agent is not an otherwise obvious calculation as it depends on
the interpersonal relations within which the agent is immersed and how that
person's existence affects social welfare broadly.
However, we are able to show that the agent's value can simply be
characterized by a few key, measurable attributes: (a) the unconditional
probability of an agent being in a market and (b) how likely an agent is to be in
smaller markets. Moreover, how much (a) versus (b) contributes to financial
centrality depends on the coefficient of variation of the income process,
relative risk aversion, and prudence. That is, (b) matters more to financial
centrality when the income process is riskier or individuals are more risk (or
higher order moment) averse.
A Note on Payments in Experiments of Infinitely Repeated Games with

Discounting with Arun Chandrasekhar
It is common for researchers studying repeated and dynamic games in a lab
Experiment to pay participants for all rounds or a randomly chosen round. We
argue that these payment schemes typically implement different set of
subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) outcomes than the target game.
Specifically, paying a participant for all rounds or for a randomly chosen round
makes the game such that early rounds matter more to the agent, by lowering
discounted future payments. In addition, we characterize the mechanics of the
JUAN PABLO XANDRI

problems induced by these payment methods. We are able to measure the

extent and shape of the distortions. We also establish that a simple payment
scheme, paying participants for the last (randomly occurring) round,
implements the game. The result holds for any dynamic game with time
separable utility and discounting. A partial converse holds: any payment
scheme implementing the SPE should generically be history and time
independent and only depend on the contemporaneous decision
Regulation and the Optimal Design of Financial Markets with Robert

Townsend
We study a static version of a Diamond-Dybvig economy, where ex-ante
identical households face ex-post idiosyncratic and aggregate risk. We
introduce minimum scale restrictions on the set of available technologies,
creating a need for coordinating investment. We focus on the case where all
feasible allocations have some measure of uninsurable systemic risk.
We solve for the optimal mechanism design problem of providing
idiosyncratic and aggregate insurance to households with private information.
We find the unique efficient investment allocation that implements the optimal
insurance contract, which consists of an unbalanced investment portfolio, to
get a larger number of projects. We also provide a market based
implementation of this allocation, where commercial banks (broker-dealers)
sell insurance contracts to households, and finance firms investments. We
allow free entry in both the commercial banks and firms sectors. This
decentralized market arrangement implements the optimal allocation as its
unique equilibrium, provided the following trading restrictions: (a) Households
cannot engage in informal risk sharing (b) Firms get financing from at most
one commercial bank and (c) Households cannot invest directly in firms, either
by buying equity or bonds. However, regulation on commercial bank
investments is not desirable, since it does not allow them to benefit from crosssubsidization strategies. This simple model gives some stark yet intuitive
policy recommendations for regulation of financial markets.
RESEARCH IN
PROGRESS
Informal Risk Sharing and Bargaining Power

The standard models of risk sharing focus on the testable implications if
constraint efficient informal insurance allocations of output, labor and
consumption. These allocations may be different among otherwise
homogeneous households, an asymmetry typically measured by the estimated
Pareto weights of the observed allocation. However, these are endogenous to
the environment itself, and may not be good measures of the implied
bargaining power amongst households. Our first contribution is to provide
testable implications on the implied Pareto Weights of different models of
cooperative bargaining solutions. Specifically, we consider the ex-ante and expost bargaining solutions of Nash (1950) and Kalai and Smorodinsky (1975),
JUAN PABLO XANDRI

which specify how relative risk preferences, productivity and income streams
of households determine their shares in the informal risk sharing agreement.
Our second contribution consists on defining measures of bargaining power
that are theoretically orthogonal to the risk sharing environment description.
These are obtained by fitting the observed data to the asymmetric versions of
the cooperative bargaining solutions studied, thus delivering relative
bargaining weights implied by the observed allocation. Under the hypothesized
bargaining solution concept, these measures should be invariant to changes in
the physical environment, and hence may be interpreted as household specific
bargaining power. This could be related to some other observable
characteristics, like political power and relative network centrality.
A Note on Rationalizability in Infinite, Dynamic Games

with Incomplete Information
I extend the main results of Battigalli (2003) and Battigalli and Siniscalchi
(1999, 2003) to environments with compact topological spaces of actions and
payoff parameters, with potentially infinitely lived agents. This is necessary to
be able to deal with continuum of action and payoff types, which are
widespread in the literature on repeated oligopoly competition, risk sharing,
dynamic contracting and dynamic mechanism design in general, among other
applications. Under continuity at infinity and topological compactness
assumptions, we provide an analog to their Universal Type Space Theorem,
and prove basic topological properties of the sets of Weak and Strong
Rationalizable Strategies.

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P= Primary Field, S= Secondary Field

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