Category: Uncategorized

We are pleased to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminar and are delighted to welcome Matthias Weber (University of St. Gallen). Matthias Weber (PhD University of Amsterdam) works as assistant professor at the University of St. Gallen, where he is also the executive director of the PhD Program in Finance. His research interests lie in the intersection of behavioral economics with financial markets, public finance, and macroeconomics. He has published in several peer-reviewed academic journals, including in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Economic Journal.

More about the speaker: www.weber-matthias.eu.

Speaker: Matthias Weber (University of St. Gallen)

Title: Intertemporal Prospect Theory (with Immanuel Lampe)

Abstract:

Date: Thursday, April 29

Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

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Meeting ID: 865 6649 0318
Passcode: 256181

We are pleased to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars and are pleased to welcome Eeva Mauring (University of Bergen and CEPR).  Eeva is Associate Professor at the University of Bergen and a CEPR Research Fellow. Her research focuses on  microeconomic theory, industrial organisation and information economics.  She published her work in journals such as the Economic Journal, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Eeva holds a Ph.D. in Economic from the University College London. Before joining the University of Bergen, she was Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna.

More about the speaker:

https://sites.google.com/site/eevamauring/home?authuser=0

Speaker: Eeva Mauring (University of Bergen)

Title: Search and Price Discrimination Online

Abstract: I study limited price discrimination based on search costs.“Shoppers” have a zero and “nonshoppers” a positive search cost. A consumer faces a nondiscriminatory “common” price with some probability, or a discriminatory price. In equilibrium, firms mix over the common and the shoppers’ discriminatory prices, but set a singleton nonshoppers’ discriminatory price. Less likely price discrimination mostly benefits consumers. An individual firm’s profit can increase in the number of firms. These results have important implications for regulations that limit price discrimination via reduced tracking (e.g., EU’s GDPR, California’s CCPA) and for evaluating competition online based on the number of firms.

Date: Thursday, March  25

Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

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Meeting ID: 829 8133 6801
Passcode: 500212

We are pleased to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars and are pleased to welcome Dainis Zegners (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University). Dainis is Assistant Professor at the Department of Technology and Operations Management at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), Erasmus University. Dainis’s research focuses on how firms manage information asymmetries on digital platforms and online marketplaces.  He examines this question in the context of media markets such as the e-book market and online news using both economic modelling and empirical techniques such as machine learning and text mining. Dainis holds a Ph.D. and in Management from LMU Munich and a Diploma (equivalent to M.Sc.) in Economics from the University of Bonn. Before joining the Rotterdam School of Management, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Cologne.

More about the speaker: https://sites.google.com/view/dainiszegners/welcome

Speaker: Dainis Zegners (Erasmus University)

Title: Cognitive Performance in the Home Office – Evidence from Professional Chess (with Steffen Künn and Christian Seel)

Abstract: During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, traditional (offline) chess tournaments were prohibited and instead held online. We exploit this as a unique setting to assess the impact of moving offline tasks online on the cognitive performance of individuals. We use the Artificial Intelligence embodied in a powerful chess engine to assess the quality of chess moves and associated errors. Using within-player comparisons, we find a statistically and economically significant decrease in performance when competing online compared to competing offline. Our results suggest that teleworking might have adverse effects on workers performing cognitive tasks.

Date: Thursday, February 25

Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

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Meeting ID: 825 2375 9398
Passcode: 063832

We are pleased to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars and are pleased to welcome Agne Kajackaite (WZB Berlin Social Science Center). Dr. Agne Kajackaite is a behavioral economist and head of research group”Ethics and Behavioral Economics” at the Berlin Social Science Center. She has received her PhD from the University of Cologne and before joining the Berlin Social Center in 2017 she was a PostDoc at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles. In her research she aims to understand
unethical behavior, particularly lying behavior, by conducting economic
lab experiments. Further topics in her research are cognitive performance,
gender, incentives, risk preferences, and ignorance. She has published papers in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, PLOS ONE and Games and Economic Behavior.

More about the speaker: https://sites.google.com/site/agnekajackaite/home?authuser=0 

Speaker: Agne Kajackaite (WZB Berlin Social Science Center)

Title: Lying for Image

Abstract: The extensive literature on lying in economics has focused nearly
exclusively on lying for monetary rewards. However, in everyday
interactions, lying to gain a social image benefit – to appear to be
better than one is – is ubiquitous, and perhaps even more common than
lying to gain a material advantage. In this paper, we introduce three
novel lab and online experiments to study lying for social image. We show
that social image is a strong driver of lying behavior. In addition, we
show that people are not willing to lie for money, if the lie could hurt
their social image. In particular, the majority of Democrats would rather
leave the experiment empty-handed than state that they preferred Trump
over Obama.

Date: Thursday, January 21

Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

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Meeting ID: 896 1695 5914
Passcode: 715079

The conference was initially planned to take place on October 1-2, 2020. However, due to the current uncertainty related to the Covid-19 pandemics and travel restrictions that may still prevail in autumn, the organizers have made a decision to postpone the conference to May 27-28, 2021. As previously planned, the conference will take place at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga). The updated key dates are:

Deadline for paper submission – January 31, 2021

Notifications of acceptance by February 15, 2021

Registration deadline – April 30, 2021

We are delighted to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars and are pleased to welcome Merike Kukk (Tallinn University of Technology, Bank of Estonia). Dr. Merike Kukk is Associate Professor at Tallinn University of Technology (Taltech), head of the master program in Applied Economics, and a part-time researcher at the central bank of Estonia. Her research topics cover household borrowing, saving, consumption and tax behaviour, gender inequality and intra-household resource allocation, as well as interactions between financial markets and the real economy. She has published her research in the Review of Economics of the Household, in the Review of Income and Wealth, in Public Finance Review, in International Tax and Public Finance, in Journal of Comparative Economics. She is teaching master seminar, microeconomics and public economics in the master program.

More about the speaker: www.taltech.ee/person/merike-kukk

Speaker: Merike Kukk (Tallinn University of Technology, Bank of Estonia)

Title: Joint and individual savings within families: evidence from bank accounts

Co-author: W. Fred van Raaij (Tilburg University)

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the ownership of financial assets within families and how pooling affects the individual savings of the partners. We use anonymised monthly transactional data from ING Bank to observe the financial data of Dutch couples for 2014–2016. We find that savings are quite equally allocated in almost half of households but in one-fifth of households there is only one partner who owns an individual account. The estimations show that joint savings contribute to a more equal division of savings since they are held equally. However, we find larger differences in individual savings among partners who pool, suggesting that the use of joint savings does not lead to individual savings being more evenly distributed, but rather to the opposite. The pattern is more apparent for households in their 20s and for saving accounts. The results of the study highlight the need to understand how families make decisions about applying the sharing rule to joint and individual savings.

Date: Wednesday, December 16

Time: 15:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

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Meeting ID: 812 2454 5047
Passcode: 046509

Passcode: 341510

We are delighted to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars and are pleased to welcome Audinga Baltrunaite (Bank of Italy). Audinga is an economist at the research department of the Bank of Italy, Economics and Law Division. She is also affiliated to the Dondena Gender Initiative, Bocconi University. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES), Stockholm University, and published in journals such as the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Law, Economics and Organization. Her main research areas are public economics, corporate governance and gender economics.

More about the speaker: http://audingabaltrunaite.com

Speaker: Audinga Baltrunaite (Bank of Italy)

Title: Board composition and performance of state-owned enterprises: Evidence from a natural experiment

Co-author: Mario Cannella (Northwestern University), Sauro Mocetti (Bank of Italy) and Giacomo Roma (Bank of Italy)

Abstract: Quality of governance crucially affects corporate outcomes, and may be particularly important for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) not disciplined by market competition forces. We identify companies with stock ownership by the public sector and examine the impact of board composition on their performance. For this purpose, we exploit the gradual introduction of a board gender quota in Italy, which was binding for SOEs, but not for companies with a minority share of public ownership.  The difference-in-differences analysis shows that the reform was effective in increasing female presence on the boards of directors of SOEs. The new female directors have mostly replaced older and less talented men, thereby rejuvenating and improving the quality of the boards. To assess the effects of the law on firm performance, we rely on companies’ balance sheets and on survey information on citizens’ satisfaction with the provision of local public services. Although we do not detect significant changes in economic performance, the evidence of higher satisfaction with public services signals the improved quality of SOEs’ output.

Date: Thursday, December 3

Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

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Meeting ID: 897 3073 5655

Passcode: 341510

Facilitator: Linas Tarasonis (Vilnius University, Bank of Lithuania)

We are delighted to invite you to the next BEA’s Online Research Seminars, and are pleased to welcome Rudolfs Bems (IMF). Rudolfs Bems is an Economist at the Research Department of the IMF. His research interests fall in the general field of international macroeconomics with a focus on applied work. He has published in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of International Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Stockholm School of Economics and an MA in Economics from New York University. Prior to the IMF, he was an Economist at the Research Department of the ECB and has held positions at the University of Tokyo and Bank of Latvia.

More about the speaker: https://sites.google.com/site/rudolfsbems/

Speaker: Rudolfs Bems (IMF)

Title: Measuring trade in value added with Firm-Level Data

Co-author: Ken Kikkawa (UBC Sauder School of Business)

Abstract: Global Value Chains have proliferated economic policy debates. Yet a key concept—trade in value added—is likely mismeasured because of sectoral aggregation bias stemming from reliance on input-output tables. This paper uses comprehensive firm-level data on both domestic and international transactions to study this bias. We find that sectoral aggregation leads to overstated trade in value added and, correspondingly, understated import content of gross exports. The economic magnitude of the estimated bias varies from moderate to large—at 2-5 pp of gross exports for Belgium and 17 pp for China. We study how the interplay between within-sector heterogeneities in firm import and export intensities and firm size determine the magnitude of the sectoral aggregation bias.

Date: Thursday, November 19

Time: 17:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

Zoom Dial-In Details:

Topic: BEA seminar

Time: Nov 19, 2020 05:00 PM Riga/Tallinn/Vilnius

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Meeting ID: 867 3764 0159

Passcode: 114649

Facilitator: Konstantins Benkovskis (Bank of Latvia, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga)

Following the success of the first two BEA seminars back in May/June, we would like to transform these trials into a regular seminar series.

We are pleased to invite you to the first BEA’s Online Research Seminar of this new academic year, and are delighted to welcome Marit Hinnosaar (University of Nottingham and Collegio Carlo Alberto). Marit has published articles in journals such as the European Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization and the Journal of Economics & Management Strategy (forthcoming). After studying at the University of Tartu, she pursued her studies in the USA where she earned a PhD from Northwestern University. Since 2016, Marit is also a CEPR Research Affiliate.

Seminars are scheduled to take place once a month with the purpose of developing personal contacts and promoting joint scholarly research and intellectual exchange between economists of the Baltic region.

Speaker: Marit Hinnosaar (University of Nottingham and Collegio Carlo Alberto, CEPR)

Title: Persistence in alcohol consumption: Evidence from migrants

Co-author: Elaine M. Liu (University of Houston)

Date: Thursday, October 1

Time: 16:00 Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn

Facilitator: Karsten Staehr (Bank of Estonia, Tallinn University of Technology)

Abstract: How malleable is alcohol consumption? Specifically, how much is alcohol consumption driven by the current environment versus individual characteristics? To answer this question, we analyze changes in alcohol purchases when consumers move from one state to another in the United States. Right after moving, movers’ alcohol purchases converge sharply toward the average level in their destination state, implying that the current environment explains about two-thirds of the differences in alcohol purchases. The adjustment takes place both on the extensive and intensive margin.

More about the speaker: http://marit.hinnosaar.net/

Zoom Dial-In Details:

Topic: BEA seminar

Time: Oct 1, 2020 04:00 PM Riga/Tallinn/Vilnius

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The Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and the European Corporate Governance Institute are pleased to invite you to the conference SMEs, Families and Capital Markets, which will be held on Zoom.

Friday, 19 June 2020 | 10:45 EEST | 09:45 CEST | 08:45 BST

Programme
The programme is available on the event page. A printable copy of the programme can also be downloaded here. You are welcome to attend for the whole day or any part thereof. The Zoom link will work throughout the day.