Termine

Vortrag – Leider abgesagt!

Marius Brülhart (Université de Lausanne):

Who Bears the Burden of Local Taxes?

We study the incidence of local taxes on the welfare of heterogeneous residents. A structural model of imperfectly mobile households who differ in terms of income and family status allows us to back out preferences for local public goods and mobility parameters that vary by family status. We calibrate the model with plausibly causal tax-base and housing-price elasticity estimates. Based on municipality-level data for Switzerland, we find that households with children have stronger preferences for locally provided public services and are less mobile than households without children. This in turn implies that the burden of local taxes is mainly borne – linearity of taxes and capitalization into lower housing notwithstanding – by above-median income households without children.

With Jayson Danton, Raphaël Parchet and Jörg Schläpfer.

Leider muss der Vortrag auf Grund unvorhersehbarer Umstände ausfallen! Wir entschuldigen uns für die Unannehmlichkeiten.

Vortrag

Melika Liporace (Università Bocconi):

4 Things Nobody tells you about Online News: A Model with Social Networks and Competition

Social media create a new type of incentives for news producers. Consumers share content, influence the visibility of articles and determine the advertisement revenues ensuing. I study the new incentives created by sharing and evaluate the potential quality of ad-funded online news. Producers rely on a subset of rational and unbiased consumers to spread news articles. The resulting news has low precision and ambiguous welfare effects. Producers’ incentive to invest in news quality increases with the private knowledge of the topic; hence, when information is most needed, the generated news tends to be of lesser quality. Competition does not necessarily improve news quality – it does so only if the sharing network is sufficiently dense. While ad-funded online news occasionally helps consumers take better decisions, it creates welfare mostly through entertainment. Some interventions, such as flagging wrong articles, substantially improve the outcome; other approaches, such as quality certification, do not.

Der Vortrag wird am Donnerstag, den 4. November 2021, von 12:00-13:30 s.t. stattfinden (Rempartstraße 16, Seminarraum 01012, 1.Stock). Zudem kann der Vortrag online besucht werden. Für die Zugangsdaten kontaktieren Sie gerne info@fww-ev.de.

Mitgliederversammlung des FWW 2021

In unserer Weihnachtspost haben wir bereits angekündigt, dass wir uns dieses Jahr auf eine digitale Mitgliederversammlung einstellen werden. Leider hat die Entwicklung der Pandemie den Vorstand dazu veranlasst auf ein solches Format zurückzugreifen.

Daher laden wir Sie hiermit herzlich zur digitalen Mitgliederversammlung des FWW am Samstag, dem 11. September 2021  von 10:00 – 11:30 Uhr ein.

Wir freuen uns auf ein digitales Wiedersehen mit Ihnen. Für die Mitgliederversammlung 2022 ist – unter gegebenen Umständen – ein Treffen in Freiburg mit einem gewohnten Rahmenprogramm fest vorgesehen.

Für den Zoom-Link und die Zugangsdaten schreiben Sie uns gerne eine E-Mail an info@fww-ev.de.

Digitale Vortragsreihe Sommersemester 2021

wir möchten Sie herzlich zu den folgenden Vorträgen im Rahmen der Seminarreihe des FWW sowie des Forschungskolloquiums des Instituts für Wirtschaftswissenschaften einladen:

20. Mai 2021 Christina Felfe (Universität Würzburg)

10. Juni 2021 André Gröger (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

17. Juni 2021 Patrycja Klusak (University of East Anglia)

08. Juli 2021 Malte Dold (Pomona College)

Da wir nach wie vor keine Gäste vor Ort empfangen können, werden die Vorträge alle online, jeweils Donnerstags von 12:00 bis 13:00 Uhr (s.t.), in Zoom stattfinden.

Vortrag

Malte Dold (Pomona College):
„F.A. Hayek on the Political Economy of Endogenous Preferences: An Historical Overview and Contemporary Assessment“

In this paper, we analyse Hayek’s views on endogenous preferences. Perhaps surprisingly in the light of his remarks that economists ought to take people’s preferences as given, there are several places in Hayek’s economics and political economy where preference endogeneity plays a significant role. We begin by documenting those cases, providing an historical overview of Hayek’s views on preference endogeneity. We then go on to argue that in his work on theoretical psychology Hayek provides an account of the causal mechanisms through which people’s preferences can change in response to their social context. Finally, we assess Hayek’s views on preference endogeneity in the light of more recent work on the topic in behavioural economics, before going on to consider what Hayek’s analysis can add to contemporary debates in political economy.

Vortrag

André Gröger (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona):
„Immigration, Labor Markets and Discrimination: Evidence from the Venezuelan Exodus in Peru“

Venezuela is currently experiencing the biggest crisis in the history of Latin America. This has led to a large increase in emigration. According to recent estimates, there are a total of 5.2million Venezuelan immigrants worldwide with over 700,000 now living in Peru, which has led to an over 2 percent increase in the country’s population. Unlike in many other episodes of refugee migration, Venezuelan migrants are not only very similar in cultural terms, but are, on average, also more skilled than Peruvians. In this paper, we examine hostility and discrimination against Venezuelans in Peru. First, we examine Venezuelan’s perceptions about being discriminated against in Peru. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we document a causal relationship between the level of employment in the informal sector –where most immigrants are employed– and reports of discrimination. We then turn to study local’s labor market outcomes, reported crime rates and attitudes using a variety of data sources. Our findings show that a higher number of immigrants cause an improvement in labor market outcomes for locals, a decrease in reported crime, but still, locals in locations with higher number of immigrants have less trust in their neighbors, less community attachment and think they have a worse economic situation.

Vortrag

Christina Felfe (Universität Würzburg):
„Caught between Cultures: Unintended Consequences of Improving Opportunity for Immigrant Girls“
mit Gordon B. Dahl, Paul Frijters und Helmut Rainer

What happens when immigrant girls are given increased opportunities to integrate into the workplace and society, but their parents value more traditional cultural outcomes? We answer this question in the context of a reform which granted automatic birthright citizenship to eligible immigrant children born in Germany after January 1, 2000. Using survey data we collected from students in 57 schools and comparing those born in the months before versus after the reform, we find the introduction of birthright citizenship lowers measures of life satisfaction and self-esteem for immigrant girls by .32 and .25 standard deviations, respectively. This is especially true for Muslims, where parents are likely to prefer more traditional cultural outcomes than their daughters. Moreover, we find that Muslim girls granted birthright citizenship are less integrated into German society: they are both more socially isolated and less likely to self-identify as German. Exploring mechanisms for these unintended drops in well-being and assimilation, we find that immigrant Muslim parents invest less in their daughters’ schooling and that these daughters receive worse grades in school if they are born after the reform. Parents are also less likely to speak German with these daughters. Consistent with a rise in intrafamily conflict, birthright citizenship results in disillusionment where immigrant Muslim girls believe their chances of achieving their educational goals are lower and the perceived odds of having to forgo a career for a family rise. In contrast, immigrant boys experience, if anything, an improvement in well-being, integration, and schooling outcomes. Taken together, the findings point towards immigrant girls being pushed by parents to conform to a role within traditional culture, whereas boys are allowed to take advantage of the opportunities that come with citizenship. To explain these findings, we construct a simple game-theoretic model which builds on Akerlof and Kranton (2000), where identity-concerned parents constrain their daughter’s choices, and hence lower their daughter’s well-being, when faced with the threat of integration. Alternative models can explain some of the findings in isolation.