Economics Research

ROSES Seminar by Karl Whelan (University College Dublin)
2023-11-03 14:30 - 16:00 (Europe/London) | 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

External Seminar by Sam Asher (Imperial College London)
2023-11-29 08:00 - 16:00 | Edith Morley 126, United Kingdom
TBA
