Economics Research

External Seminar: Henrik Sievertsen
2023-01-11 14:30 - 15:45 (Europe/London)

External Seminar: Rob Simmons
2023-01-18 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: Stuart Baumann
2023-01-25 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: Ara Jo
2023-02-01 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: Sebastian Schmidt
2023-02-15 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: Seyhun Sakalli
2023-02-22 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: John Forth
2023-03-01 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: Ruijun Bu
2023-03-08 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: Surajeet Chakravarty
2023-03-15 14:00 - 15:45

External Seminar: Aris Syntetos
2023-03-22 14:00 - 15:45

CEIBH-GEAR-NIESR multidisciplinary workshop: "The Impact of Climate on the Economy"
2023-05-12 09:00 - 18:00 | HBS Seminar Room 108, Reading, RG6 6EL, United Kingdom
The multidisciplinary workshop on “The Impact of Climate on the Economy”, organised jointly by the Centre for Economic Institutions and Business History, the Group for Economics Analysis at Reading, both at the University of Reading, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London, in support of the “Prosperity and Resilience” Research Strategy Theme of the University of Reading, will be held on 12 May 2023 at the University of Reading (as a hybrid event). To learn more and register for free attendance, please check the workshop website.

Symposium: New work on enclosure in Britain, c. 1700-1850
2023-05-26 10:30 - 16:00 | HBS Seminar Room G10
Symposium: New work on enclosure in Britain, c. 1700-1850
When: Friday, 26 May 2023, 10:30am-4pm (in-person only)
Where: Room G10, Henley Business School, Whiteknights Campus, University of Reading
Attendance is free
Registration is required
Early registration is encouraged, as spaces are limited (please fill in the form below)
Deadline to register: Sunday, 21 May 2023
Summary
Enclosure is a fundamental process. It is both a simplification of property ownership and a reorganisation of the landscape. Most land in Britain – the uplands apart – has gone through some form of enclosure at some time but the date at which it took place, and the institutional forms that enclosure took, vary enormously from place to place.
Enclosure as a process has largely come to an end. Our understanding of the institutional and legal forms it took, the motives which drove enclosure and its consequences – actual and perceived – are far from perfect. At this meeting we present five papers which give a sense of the state of enclosure studies in Britain at this time and the challenges which remain for historians.
Programme
10.30 ​Coffee and registration
10.45​ Welcome (Professor Richard Hoyle)
11.00​ Paper One: The motives for parliamentary enclosure (Dr. David Brown)
11.45​ Paper Two: The surveys of enclosure of 1800-01 (Professor Richard Hoyle)
12.30​ Lunch
13.30 ​Paper Three: ‘The result never quite equalled the promise’: risk, reward, and reclamation on Exmoor, 1840-1897’ (Professor Henry French)
14.15​ Paper Four: Agrarian reform in a lowland Scottish barony: evolutionary or structural change? (Iain Kirkman)
15.00​ Paper Five: Encroachment: a form of illicit enclosure? (Professor Carl Griffin)
15.45 Concluding comments and discussion (Professor Mark Casson)

5th Reading Experimental and Behavioural Economics Workshop (REBEW)
2023-06-21 09:00 - 17:00
The Department of Economics at the University of Reading is pleased to continue the 5th Reading Experimental and Behavioural Economics Workshop in person this year. The workshop will be held at the University of Reading on Wednesday 21 June 2023.

This year, the keynote speaker is Professor Shakun Mago (University of Richmond),

and regular session speakers are:

Steven Bosworth (University of Reading)
Claudia Cerrone (City, University of London)
Josie Chen (National Taiwan University)
Helena Fornwagner (University of Exeter)
Joo Young Jeon (University of Reading)
George Mackerron (University of Sussex)
Anwesha Mukehrjee (University of Reading)
Abhijit Ramalingam (Appalachian State University)
Hong-il Yoo (Loughborough University)

Please find the details of the programme.
To join the workshop, please register here by 21 May 2023.
If you have any queries, please contact to organisers, Joo Young Jeon (j.jeon@reading.ac.uk) , Steven Bosworth (s.j.bosworth@reading.ac.uk) or Anwesha Mukehrjee (anwesha.mukherjee@reading.ac.uk).

The 9th annual conference “Contests: Theory and Evidence”
2023-06-22 - 2023-06-23
The Centre for Economic Institutions and Business History, the Department of Economics, and the Department of Real Estate and Planning at the University of Reading are pleased to host the 9th annual conference “Contests: Theory and Evidence” on Thursday 22 June and Friday 23 June 2023 in an in-person format.
We cordially invite theoretical, experimental, and empirical work on any aspect of contests including but not limited to economics, management, politics, psychology, sports, biology, neuroscience, computer science, etc.
This year the keynote speaker is Prof Shmuel Nitzan, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Please find the details of the programme.
Submission: Please submit your paper or extended abstract here by Monday 10 April, 2023.
Registration: Please register here by 1 May 2023 (Presenters) / 22 May 2022 (Attendees)

Key dates:
Submission deadline: 10 April 2023
Acceptance decision: 17 April 2023
Registration deadline: 1 May 2023 (Presenters) / 22 May 2023 (Attendees)
Conference: 22 – 23 June 2022

Travel, accommodation, and things to do:
The beautiful town of Reading (of Berkshire county) is located very close to London. It takes about 25 minutes by taxi to arrive from London Heathrow airport, and about 50 minutes by bus. There also are frequent direct trains connecting London Gatwick airport that takes about 90 minutes. Arriving from Central London is also easy, since there are direct trains every 15 minutes from London Paddington station to Reading that can take about 25 minutes. Reading station is also connected with fast trains with other big cities of England with airport such as Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester etc.
There are many accommodation options available in Reading. The usual hotel websites would help.
Very many tourist attractions such as the Windsor Castle, Lego Land, Ascot Racecourse, the city of Oxford, Winchester, South Downs National Park, are also within half an hour commute from Reading.
Useful links: Visit University of Reading, University of Reading Map, Taxi company in Reading, Another taxi company in Reading, Great Western Railways, Bus from Heathrow, things to do in Berkshire.

Further information:
In the case of any other questions, please contact Joo Young Jeon (j.jeon@reading.ac.uk) or Subhasish M. Chowdhury (subhasish.chowdhury@sheffield.ac.uk).
The conference organisers are Joo Young Jeon (University of Reading), Subhasish M. Chowdhury (University of Sheffield), Yiquan Gu (University of Reading), Steven Bosworth (University of Reading), Anwesha Mukherjee (University of Reading).

7th GEAR Quarterly Lecture by Hélène Rey (LBS and CEPR)
2023-09-13 15:00 - 17:00 | HBS 10, United Kingdom
Our 7th GEAR Quarterly Lecture (poster) will be held on 13 September 2023, 3:30-5:00 pm GMT/BST (London time) in the Henley Business School, Room G10, and our speaker is Professor Hélène Rey, London Business School and Centre of Economic Policy Research. Her talk is on “Granular Credit Risk”, drawing on an underlying paper. As usual, the lecture will be in hybrid format, synchronously recorded and available for viewing from the University of Reading’s Research YouTube channel. Here is the MS Teams link to join.

Hélène Rey is the Lord Bagri Professor of Economics at London Business School. Until 2007, she was Professor at Princeton University. Her research focuses on the determinants and consequences of external trade and financial imbalances, the theory and empirics of financial crises and the organization of the international monetary system. She demonstrated that gross external asset positions of countries help predict current account adjustments and the exchange rate. She introduced the concept of Global Financial Cycles and qualified the idea of the Mundellian Trilemma. She has been awarded many prestigious prizes. Professor Rey is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, of the Econometric Society, of the European Economic Association, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association, a correspondant of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. She was made OBE for services to economics. She was on the board of the Review of Economic Studies (2008-2015) and an associate editor of the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. She is a co-editor of the Annual Review of Economics, a Research Fellow and Vice President of CEPR and an NBER Research Associate. She has been elected President of the European Economic Association. Hélène Rey received her undergraduate degree from ENSAE, a Master in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University and her PhDs from the London School of Economics and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

ROSES Seminar by Michael Jetter (University of Western Australia)
2023-09-15 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
Join us at 2:30pm UK time, 9:30am Eastern United States Time, 3:30pm Central European Time, and 9:30pm in Perth, Australia, as we meet on Teams for the 139th Reading Online Sport Economics Seminar.
Title: “Peacefully Demobilizing Rebels: Identity, Emotional Cues, and the FARC”
Abstract: In the early 2000s, the Colombian government aired messages during games of the national football team, urging FARC rebels to demobilize. We first study the strategy’s effectiveness, leveraging game dates, kick-off times, and spatial-temporal variation in rain-induced signal strength in a municipality-day-level panel spanning 2003-2016. Over 1,000 rebels demobilized because of family-themed (but not national-unity-themed) messages, received during unexpected losses (i.e., negative emotional cues). We then model a rebel’s demobilization decision, combining identity salience with their emotional state. Finally, we corroborate the model’s predictions examining family- versus non-family-specific holidays and local climatic anomalies.

ROSES Seminar by Dmitry Dagaev (HSE University & NES)
2023-09-22 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
Our 140th Reading Online Sport Economics Seminar meets at 2:30pm UK time, 9:30am Eastern United States Time, 3:30pm Central European Time, and on Teams.
Title: Compatriot bias in football: Are non-experts subjective?
Abstract: The paper explores the phenomenon of compatriot bias in non-experts’ comments by utilizing data from the FIFA video game, which incorporates crowd-sourced player ratings. We compare the sentiments expressed by compatriots and non-compatriots in the comments section, approximating the nationality of commenters based on their IP addresses. According to our results, compatriots had positive sentiment but for popular players it is lower compared to less popular. This suggests that the size of the compatriot bias depends on player popularity. We provide a theoretical background in the Hotteling-Downs framework to explain the latter effect. Results of this analysis helps to understand the reliability of crowd-sourced player skill estimates and uncover potential nationality-based favoritism among non-experts.

PhD Seminar by Elly Twineyo
2023-10-02 13:00 - 14:00 | Edith Morley 175

External seminar by Camille Terrier (QMUL)
2023-10-04 14:30 - 16:00 | Edith Morley 126, United Kingdom
We are delighted to welcome Camille Terrier to the Department on 4th October, to give the first Department of Economics invited speaker seminar of our Autumn term.

Title: Confidence and College Applications: Evidence from a Randomized Intervention

Abstract: This paper investigates the role played by self-confidence in college applications. Using incentivized experiments, we measure the self-confidence of more than 2,000 students applying to colleges in France. The best female students and students from low socioeconomic status (low-SES) significantly underestimate their rank in the grade distribution compared to male and high-SES students. By matching our survey data with administrative data on real college applications and admissions, we show that miscalibrated confidence affects college choice controlling for grades. We then estimate the impact of a randomized intervention that corrects students’ under- and overconfidence by informing them of their real rank in the grade distribution. The intervention fully offsets the impact of under- and overconfidence for college applications. Providing feedback also makes the best students, who were initially underconfident, apply to more ambitious programs with stronger effects for female and low-SES students. Among top students, our intervention closes 72% of the gender gap in admissions to elite programs, and 95% of the social gap. We conclude that confidence is an important behavioral consideration for the design of college admission markets.

Camille’s latest research and the working paper for this talk are here: https://sites.google.com/view/camilleterrier/accueil

ROSES Seminar by Matteo Picchio (Marche Polytechnic University)
2023-10-06 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
Please join us for our 141st Reading Online Sport Economics Seminar at 9:30am Eastern US, 2:30pm UK, 3:30pm Central Europe, and 9:30pm in Western Australia. We meet on Microsoft Teams.
Speaker: Matteo Picchio, Marche Polytechnic University,
Title: “The Impact of High Temperatures on Performance in Work-related Activities” (work with Jan van Ours)
Abstract: High temperatures can have a negative effect on work-related activities. Labor productivity may go down because mental health or physical health is worse when it is too warm. Workers may experience difficulties concentrating or they have to reduce effort in order to cope with heat. We investigate how temperature affects performance of male professional tennis players. We use data about outdoor singles matches from 2003 until 2021. Our identification strategy relies on the plausible exogeneity of short-term daily temperature variations in a given tournament from the average temperature over the same tournament. We find that performance significantly decreases with ambient temperature. The magnitude of the temperature effect is age-specific and skill-specific. Older and less skilled players suffer more from high temperatures than younger and more skilled players do. The effect of temperature on performance is smaller when there is more at stake. Our findings also suggest that there is adaptation to high temperatures: the effects are smaller if the heat lasts for several days.
Link: https://docs.iza.org/dp16431.pdf

ROSES Seminar by Alex Krumer (Molde University College)
2023-10-13 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams

External Seminar by Agnes Kovacs (King's College London & IFS)
2023-10-18 14:30 - 16:00 | Edith Morley 126, United Kingdom
We will be delighted to welcome Agnes Kovacs to the Department on 18 October 2023, to give a Department of Economics invited speaker seminar.

Title: Financial Innovation, the Decline in Household Savings, and the Trade-off between Flexibility and Commitment

Abstract: This paper investigates the trade-off between two opposing views of financial innovation: the benefit of improved flexibility and the potential cost of weakened commitment.
To disentangle their relative importance, we estimate a model of household behavior that allows for the possibility that housing acts as a savings commitment device. Identification is achieved using novel evidence on consumption growth dynamics. We then use the estimated model to study the macroeconomic and welfare implications of giving households greater access to home equity. We find that the welfare cost of weakened commitment is substantial: approximately 1.7 times larger than the benefit of improved consumption smoothing. Both channels contribute equally to a 2.5 percentage point decline in the personal saving rate. Welfare could be improved using alternative mortgage policies that better balance the trade-off between flexibility and commitment.

Agnes’ latest research is here: https://sites.google.com/site/agneskovacs13/

External Seminar by Xiaochun Meng (University of Sussex)
2023-10-25 14:30 - 16:00 | Edith Morley 126, United Kingdom
We will be delighted to welcome Xiaochun Meng to the Department on 25 October 2023, to give a Department of Economics invited speaker seminar.

Title: Generalized linear pools for combining probabilistic forecasts

Abstract: For many applications, combining the individual probabilistic forecasts can improve their accuracy. The existing literature has extensively explored linear pools of forecasts of cumulative distribution functions or quantile functions. A general framework of combining methods is proposed, which encompasses the existing linear pools. We analyse the statistical properties of the proposed generalized linear pools. The framework and theoretical findings enable the provision of recommendations regarding the choice of combining methods and scores to use in practice. An empirical illustration is provided on simulated and real data.

You can check out Xiaochun’s latest research here: https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p449675-xiaochun-meng

ROSES Seminar by Raphael Flepp (University of Zurich)
2023-10-27 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
Raphael Flepp, University of Zurich, “Replication: Do Coaches Stick With What Barely Worked? Evidence of Outcome Bias in Professional Sports”

ROSES Seminar by Karl Whelan (University College Dublin)
2023-11-03 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
Title: “Disagreement and Market Structure in Betting Markets: Theory and Evidence from European Soccer”
Abstract: Online sports betting is growing rapidly around the world. We describe how the competitive structure of the bookmaking market affects odds when bettors disagree about the probabilities of the outcomes of sporting events. We show that the demand for bets on longshots is less sensitive to the odds than bets on favorites. This means monopolistic bookmakers will set odds exhibiting favorite-longshot bias while competitive bookmaking markets will not have this feature. We develop a version of the model for soccer matches and use these results to explain empirical findings on odds for about 80,000 European soccer games from two different bookmaking markets.
Link: https://www.ucd.ie/economics/t4media/WP23_12.pdf

External Seminar by Sukjin Han (University of Bristol)
2023-11-08 14:30 - 16:00 | Edith Morley 126, United Kingdom
Title: Semiparametric Models for Dynamic Treatment Effects and Mediation Analyses with Observational Data

Abstract: This paper proposes a semiparametric model that captures how a sequence of interventions interacts with a sequence of outcomes. In this setup, the outcome at the given period is affected by the history of treatments and outcomes, directly or indirectly through mediators. The main challenge in understanding various channels of dynamic effects is that, in observational settings, individuals make dynamically endogenous decisions whether to select into treatments. Using the approach of instrumental variables, this paper shows how the average and quantile dynamic treatment effects and mediation effects can be point identified and efficiently estimated in a class of semiparametric models under treatment endogeneity and flexible heterogeneity. Our procedure only requires binary instruments. As a byproduct of our semiparametric specification, we also identify and estimate parameters that reflect the degree of endogenous selection and time-invariant heterogeneity.

You can find out more about Sukjin’s research here: https://sukjinhan.com/

ROSES Seminar by Federico Fioravanti (University of Amsterdam)
2023-11-10 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams

External Seminar by Paul Telemo (University of Strathclyde)
2023-11-15 14:30 - 16:00 | Edith Morley 126, United Kingdom
We will be delighted to welcome Paul Telemo to the Department on 15th November, to give a Department of Economics invited speaker seminar.

Title: Intergenerational Occupational Mobility and Routine-biased Technological Change

Abstract:

This paper analyses intergenerational occupational mobility in the presence of routine-biased technological change (RBTC). During the era of job polarization, fathers in cognitive jobs became relatively more likely to have sons in cognitive jobs, while the rise in low–skilled manual jobs was mainly accounted for by children of routine workers. These facts, among others, are rationalized in an overlapping generations model where both financial resources and learning ability are transferred from parents to their children. Education choices are endogenous, and the cost of education depends on the cognitive wage — hence both parents’ income and the economy-wide cognitive wage premium affect the education decision. The model is calibrated to the US economy and successfully captures key empirical patterns. Despite depressing routine wages, altruistic preferences mean that routine workers born 1950-1965 experienced welfare gains due to RBTC. However, these gains would be larger if the pace of technological change was slowed down.

You can check out Paul’s latest research papers here: https://sites.google.com/view/paultelemo/home

ROSES Seminar by Katrin Scharfenkamp (Bielefeld University)
2023-11-17 14:30 - 16:00 | Microsoft Teams
Katrin Scharfenkamp, Bielefeld University, “The effect of role model’s rise and fall on cultural diversity in female football teams”

External Seminar by William Pouliot (University of Birmingham)
2023-11-22 14:30 - 16:00 | Edith Morley 126, United Kingdom
Title: On kernel regression with NMAR response values

Abstract: We consider the problem of kernel regression estimation in the presence of Not-Missing-At-Random (NMAR), or nonignorable, response variables. Our proposed approach involves two steps: In the first step, we construct a family of models (possibly infinite dimensional) indexed by the unknown nonignorability component of the missing probability mechanism. In the second step, a search is carried out to find the empirically optimal member of an appropriate cover (or subclass) of the underlying family in the sense of minimizing the mean squared prediction error. Our methods use a data-splitting approach which is quite easy to implement. We also derive exponential bounds on the performance of the resulting estimators in terms of their deviations from the true regression curve in general L_p norms, where we also allow the size of the cover or subclass to diverge as the sample size n increases. These bounds together with the Borel-Cantelli lemma immediately yield various strong convergence results for the proposed estimators. As an application of our findings, we consider the problem of nonparametric statistical classification based on the proposed regression estimators and also look into their rates of convergence in different settings.

co-authors: M. Mojirsheibani and A. Shakhbandaryan

You can check out William’s latest research here: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/business/pouliot-william.aspx
