FACHBEREICH WIRTSCHAFTSWISSENSCHAFTEN DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS. Workshops and Seminars Oct 16 20, No. 514

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1 FACHBEREICH WIRTSCHAFTSWISSENSCHAFTEN DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS B ONN E CON N EWS Universität Bonn, Adenauerallee 24-42, D Bonn Redaktion / Editing: Regina Haverkamp, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften Phone: +49 (0) ; Fax: +49 (0) ; econnews@uni-bonn.de No. 514 Workshops and Seminars Oct 16 20, 2017 Monday, Oct 16, 2017 Joint Seminar of the Economics Departments in Bonn & Cologne 16:00 Univ. of Cologne, Hauptgebäude, Neuer Senatssaal Tuesday, Oct 17, 2017 Applied Micro Workshop 17:15, briq, Room No. 9/1.1, Schaumburg-Lippe- Str. 9 Change of Time! Wednesday, Oct 18, 2017 Micro Theory Seminar 16:30, Juridicum, Fakultätszimmer Thursday, Oct 19, 2017 briq Short Lecture Series 10:00 17:30 Macrohistory Seminar 12:15 Kaiserplatz 7 9, Room IZA Brown Bag Seminar 12:15, IZA, Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 9 Macro/Econometrics/Finance Seminar 16:15, Kaiserplatz 7 9, Room Lutz Kilian, Univ. Michigan Lower Oil Prices and the US Economy: Is This Time Different? The Variable Selection Curse Olivier Gossner, LSE An instrumental approach to the value of information 10:00 Subjective causal models 14:00 Individual Decision Making 16:00 Interactive Decision Making Raphael Franck, Hebrew Univ. Jerusalem The Persistent Effect of the Neolithic Revolution on Health and Life Expectancy: A Double-Edged Sword" Andreas Lichter, IZA R & D Investments, Innovation and Corporate Taxation: Evidence from German Municipalities Elmar Mertens, Bank for International Settlements Indeterminacy and Imperfect Information

2 JOINT SEMINAR OF THE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS IN BONN & COLOGNE Lutz Kilian, Univ. Michigan Lower Oil Prices and the US Economy: Is This Time Different? Please see attached flyer APPLIED MICRO WORKSHOP (CHANGE OF TIME!) The Variable Selection Curse (with Kfir Eliaz) We study a model in which a classical statistician takes an action on behalf of an agent, based on a random sample involving other agents. The statistician estimates a predictive model, and the action that he takes is the model s estimate given the agent s disclosed personal characteristics. The estimation procedure involves variable selection (in the spirit of methods like LASSO). We ask the following question: Is truth-telling an optimal disclosure strategy for the agent, given the statistician s procedure? In particular, could the agent be better off by always reporting default values for all personal characteristics? We discuss the possible implications of our theoretical exercise for the increasing reliance on machine learning methods that involve explicit variable selection in various real-life settings, such as online content provision. For further information please refer to: MICRO THEORY SEMINAR Olivier Gossner, LSE An instrumental approach to the value of information (with Michel de Lara) It is common wisdom that information is valueless if it does not impact choices. We elaborate on this intuition. We consider an agent who acquires information on a state of nature from an information structure before facing a decision problem. How much information is worth depends jointly on the decision problem and on the information structure. We sum up the decision problem in the set of all possible payoffs, in every state of nature. Taking the support function of this set (or the Fenchel transform of its characteristic function), we show that we obtain the value of information function --- which maps beliefs to expected payoffs under optimal actions at these beliefs. We then derive global estimates of the value of information of any information structure from local properties of the value function and of the set of optimal actions taken at the prior belief only. BRIQ SHORT LECTURE SERIES 10:00 Subjective causal models 14:00 Individual Decision Making 16:00 Interactive Decision Making PAGE 2

3 In this series of lectures, Ran Spiegler will present a framework for modeling equilibrium behavior when agents form beliefs by fitting a subjective causal model to long-run data. This framework, which borrows basic concepts and techniques from the Statistics/AI literature on "Bayesian networks", enables us to represent causal misperceptions (confusing correlation with causation, getting the direction of causality wrong, neglecting confounding variables, attributing an outcome to the wrong cause) and study their implications for individual and interactive decision making. Ran Spiegler will present the basic theory, go over a few "toy" economic applications, and draw connections with earlier works on equilibrium models with non-rational expectations. Further information available on: MACROHISTORY SEMINAR Raphael Franck, Hebrew Univ. Jerusalem The Persistent Effect of the Neolithic Revolution on Health and Life Expectancy: A Double-Edged Sword" (with Oded Galor, Omer Ozak) This research explores the persistent effects of the Neolithic Revolution on life expectancy. It advances the hypothesis that the Neolithic Revolution has had a non-monotonic effect on life expectancy. In particular, the Neolithic Revolution and the associated increase in infectious diseases triggered a process of natural selection that favored individuals with hyperactive immune systems. This process reduced the mortality from infectious diseases, but increased the probability of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. This trade-off had a positive impact on life expectancy prior to the epidemiological transition, but generated a negative impact on life expectancy after it. IZA BROWN BAG SEMINAR Andreas Lichter, IZA R & D Investments, Innovation and Corporate Taxation: Evidence from German Municipalities (with Ingo Isphording, Max Löffler, Thu Van Nguyen, Felix Pöge, Sebastian Siegloch) Innovation is known to be a key driver of economic growth. At the same time, corporate taxes are oftentimes accused of harming growth by reducing investments in research and development. In this paper, we estimate the effect of corporate taxation on R&D investment and real innovation activities of firms, as measured by the number of patents. We exploit the substantial variation in local business tax rates across German municipalities paired with unique, bi-annual information on firms' R&D investments and administrative patent data. Using event study designs, we confirm theoretical predictions and find a negative effect of corporate taxation on R&D investments and the number of patents filed. MACRO/ECONOMETRICS/FINANCE SEMINAR Elmar Mertens, Bank for International Settlements Indeterminacy and Imperfect Information (with Thomas A. Lubik, Christian Matthes) We study equilibrium determination in an environment where two kinds of agents have different information sets: The fully informed agents know the structure of the model and observe histories of all exogenous and PAGE 3

4 endogenous variables. The less in- formed agents observe only a strict subset of the full information set. All types of agents form expectations rationally, but agents with limited information need to solve a dynamic signal extraction problem to gather information about the variables they do not observe. We show that for parameters values that imply a unique equilibrium under full information, the limited information rational expectations equilibrium can be indeterminate. In a simple application of our framework to a monetary policy problem we show that limited information on part of the central bank implies indeterminate outcomes even when the Taylor Principle holds. Redaktionsschluss / Deadline BONN ECON NEWS No. 515 WEDNESDAY, OCT 18, :00 BONN ECON NEWS by (pdf): send to majordomo@listserv.uni-bonn.de with "subscribe econ-news" or "unsubscribe econ-news" in the body of the PAGE 4

5 JOINT SEMINAR OF THE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS IN BONN & COLOGNE OIL PRICES AND THE U.S. ECONOMY IS THIS TIME DIFFERENT? Lutz Kilian, University of Michigan Montag, den Uhr s.t. Foto: Lukasz Z Fotolia.com Ort: Neuer Senatssaal, Universität zu Köln