16. December 25, 2014
15. November 21, 2014 (Friday)
14. November 14, 2014 (Friday)
13. November 6, 2014 (Thursday)
12. November 5, 2014 (Wednesday)
11. October 30, 2014 (Thursday)
10. October 23, 2014 (Thursday)
9. October 17, 2014 (Friday)
8. October 9, 2014 (Thursday)
7. September 29, 2014 (Monday)
- Speaker: Asso. Prof. Rong, Kang (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
- Topic: Public Good Provision with Voting
- Time: 15:30--17:00
- Venue: TBA
- Chair: Dr. Sun, Xiang
- Abstract: This paper studies the public good provision problem, in which a public good provision mechanism can be enforced among a group of agents only if the mechanism can be approved by the agents under a prespecied alpha majority rule. We find that as long as the voting rule is not the unanimity rule, then the first-best efficient level of the public good can be achieved even when the economy is large.
15. November 21, 2014 (Friday)
- Speaker: Asso. Prof. Li, Lingfang (Fudan University)
- Topic: Does Money really talk? Evidences from Reward-for-Feedback Mechanism in Taobao.com
- Time: 14:00--15:30
- Venue: Liangsheng Building, B127
- Abstract: We investigate how a seemly-unbiased reward-for-feedback mechanism affect both consumers and sellers' behavior in online market, more specifically, how a seller applies it to manage his reputation as well as to signal his quality, and what are buyers' responses to it. Furthermore, we examine whether the monetary reward bias the nature of feedback. Using a data set collected from September 2012 to February 2013 in Alibaba's C2C market place, Taobao.com, that implemented a “reward-for-feedback" mechanism in March 2012, we implement a “quasi-experiment" identification strategy and find that a seller is more likely to choose the “rebate-for-feedback" option in his earlier stage. Experienced sellers are more likely to choose the rebate option, and experienced buyers are more likely to get rewards. Sales of an item is higher when the seller chooses the rebate option. What is more, rewards induce buyers to write more detailed feedback but not biased toward positive feedback.
14. November 14, 2014 (Friday)
- Speaker: Dr. Zhu, Aiyong (Wuhan University)
- Topic: Joint Audit, Audit Market Structure, and Social Welfare
- Time: 12:30--14:00
- Venue: Liangsheng Building, B127
- Abstract: This paper investigates how introducing a joint audit requirement would affect audit market structure and social welfare. We use a structural model involving three steps. First, we identify the demand fundamentals for audit service in a joint audit regime using data from France. Second, we validate the derived estimates for the demand for individual auditors using data from a single audit regime, namely the UK. Third, we use our estimates for both the demand for individual auditors and pairs of auditors to simulate the effects of introducing a joint audit requirement on the market structure in a single audit regime. We find that medium-sized audit firms and small audit firms gain market share at the expense of three of the Big Four audit firms. Interestingly, the largest audit firm in the UK would be able to maintain its market share. Our approach also enables us to measure welfare effects of the change. Joint audits brings along the economic costs of forbidding firms to give all the audit work to their most preferred audit firm. However, we also identify a novel benefit of joint audits. We find that joint audit regimes has economic benefits of giving firms the additional choice of picking the pair of auditors best suitable for their situation. Overall, we find that the introduction of a joint audit regime would be associated with a substantial welfare loss. Our study provides new empirical evidence for evaluating current policy initiatives promoting joint audits.
13. November 6, 2014 (Thursday)
- Speaker: Dr. Liu, Xiao (Tsinghua University)
- Topic: Competing Openly or Blindly in Crowdsourcing Contests?
- Time: 10:00--11:30
- Venue: Liangsheng Building, B127
- Abstract: Organizations are increasingly outsourcing tasks once performed in-house to wider participants on the Internet by hosting online contests. In practice, two types of mechanisms are used to organize these contests: simultaneous (blind) and sequential (open). In a simultaneous contest, contestants submit their solutions independently without access to one another's submissions, while in a sequential contest, contestants submit their solutions sequentially and each can view all prior submissions before making their decisions. Most prior theoretical and experimental research has focused on simultaneous contests, with only a handful that have studied sequential ones. In this paper, under the condition of incomplete information, we analytically show that simultaneous contests produce higher quality best solutions than sequential contests. Using a laboratory experiment, we test this theoretical prediction as well as the prediction that simultaneous contests are more efficient than sequential contests. Our data support both predictions. We also discover that as the number of contestants increases, the efficiency of sequential contests drops significantly, further reducing their performance relative to simultaneous contests.
12. November 5, 2014 (Wednesday)
- Speaker: Prof. Abdullah Yavas (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
- Topic: Bubbles and Policy Responses
- Time: 15:00--16:30
- Venue: Liangsheng Building, B228
- Abstract: Abdullah Yavas holds the Robert E. Wangard Real Estate Chair and is the department chair of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business. His research focuses on the economics of intermediation broadly defined with a special focus on real estate brokerage. His research interests include real estate brokerage, mortgage contracts, real estate auctions, economics of information, and experimental economics. He also uses laboratory experiments to advance understanding of market players’ deviations from the predictions generated by rational models. Yavas has authored or co-authored more than 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals on real estate, finance, and economics. Yavas is a world-renowned economist. In 2001, he made the World's Top 500 Economists list, according to the number of articles published, prepared by Tom Coupé and sponsored by the European Economic Association.
11. October 30, 2014 (Thursday)
- Speaker: Dr. Xu, Jin (Huazhong University of Science and Technology)
- Topic: Enriching Multi-round Tournament Theory
- Time: 15:30--17:00
- Venus: Liangsheng Building, B249
- Chair: Dr. Sun, Xiang
- Abstract: Empirical organization research has documented convex wage structures for hierarchical firms. We investigate two realistic extensions to Rosen (1986)'s multi-round promotion tournament model, which may separately generate convex wage structures. The first extension, the number of workers competing rises with the hierarchical level, can lead to a convex wage structure. The second extension, the returns of effort increase with the hierarchical level, cannot generate a convex wage structure unless we add further assumptions concerning the production uncertainty and the cost function of effort.
10. October 23, 2014 (Thursday)
- Speaker: Dr. Sun, Yingying (Huazhong University of Science and Technology)
- Topic: Autocontour-Testing in Unstable Environment
- Time: 15:30--17:00
- Venue: Liangsheng Building, A511
- Abstract: In this paper, we propose the out-of-sample density forecasting evaluation method in the presence of the instabilities based on Generalized Autocontour Method. We define the instabilities as time variation in the density function of a stochastic process. These variations include changes of mean, variance and/or the functional form of the underlying density function. To take care of the instability, we evaluate one subsample of the evaluation sample, using data from t−rol+1 up to t, to evaluate the assumed predictive density. According to Generalized Autocontour, for one subsample, we can obtain three different types of statistics to take care of the instabilities. We construct the Sup-type statistic and the Avg-type statistic, which explore the supreme and average behavior of the environmental instabilities. The asymptotic distributions of the statistics constructed in this paper are functional of standard Brownian motions and have good finite sample properties. We have applied our tests to evaluate the density forecast performance of U.S. inflation produced by linear and Markov-switching Philips Curve. We conclude that Markov switching Philip Curve can provide a good out-of-sample density forecast for U.S. inflation in the presence of instabilities.
9. October 17, 2014 (Friday)
- Speaker: Prof. Gong, Qiang (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)
- Topic: 技术创新、股权融资与金融结构转型
- Time: 10:00--11:30
- Venue: Liangsheng Building, B127
- Abstract: 金融体系能否有效支持技术创新,是中国经济转型与产业升级的关键。本文分析了银行贷款和股权融资支持技术创新的不同机制。为技术创新型企业融资存在两种风险:企业的信用风险和创新的不确定性。银行通过资产抵押、违约清算等监管,能够有效克服信用风险,但对于缺乏抵押且不确定性较高的创新企业,银行贷款的回报与承担的风险不相匹配,导致银行缺少激励为创新企业融资。而股权融资中,创新企业能够以新技术新产品的潜在高额回报吸引投资者,企业创新的资金需求和投资者追求高回报、承担高风险的激励相一致,创新企业通过股权融资往往更易获得资金。然而,股权融资的长期性和资金使用的信息不对称,为不法企业攫取股东利益提供了可能,优质的创新企业只有在严格的法律和金融监管制度下,才能获得投资者的充分信任,企业对股权融资的需求才能得到充分满足。本文表明,依靠当前我国银行主导的金融结构,技术创新较难得到有效的金融支持;而发挥股权融资市场对技术创新的重要作用,必须为投资者保护提供优良的制度环境。研究进一步发现,政府对技术创新进行金融扶持时,直接为企业提供研发资助,比为金融机构提供风险投资担保更具效率。
8. October 9, 2014 (Thursday)
- Speaker: Dr. Nie, Jun (Fed Kansas City)
- Topic: Human capital dynamics and the US labor market
- Time: 11:00--12:00
- Venus: Liangsheng Building, B129
- Abstract: The high U.S. unemployment rate after the Great Recession is usually considered as a result of changes in factors influencing either the demand side or the supply side of the labor market. However, no matter what factors have caused the changes in the unemployment rate, these factors should have influenced workers' and firms' decisions. Therefore, it is important to take into account workers' endogenous responses to changes in various factors when seeking to understand how these factors affect the unemployment rate. To address this issue, we estimate a Mortensen-Pissarides style labor-market matching model with endogenous separation decisions and stochastic changes in workers' human capital. We study how agents' endogenous choices vary with changes in the exogenous shocks and changes in labor-market policy in the context of human capital dynamics. There are four main findings. First, once workers have accounted for and are able to optimally respond to possible human capital loss, the unemployment rate in an economy with human capital loss during unemployment will not be higher than in an economy with no human capital loss. The reason is that the increase in the unemployment rate led by human capital loss is more than offset by workers' endogenous responses to prevent them from being unemployed. Second, human capital accumulation on the job is more important than human capital loss during unemployment for both the unemployment rate and output. Third, workers' endogenous separation rates will decline when job finding rates fall. Fourth, taking into account the endogenous responses, UI extensions contributed 0.5 percentage point to the increase in the aggregate unemployment rate in the 2008-2012 period.
7. September 29, 2014 (Monday)
- Speaker: Miss Li, Mengling (Nanyang Technology University)
- Topic: Two-sided many-to-many matching with ties
- Time: 10:00--11:30
- Venue: Liangsheng Building, B127
- Abstract: This paper studies a generalized many-to-many matching problem with ties. When ties are allowed in preferences, a stable outcome needs not be Pareto efficient, resulting in efficiency loss. In such problems, a natural solution concept is Pareto stability, which ensures both stability and Pareto efficiency. Our main technical contribution is a polynomial-time algorithm that computes a Pareto stable many-to-many matching in the presence of ties. For a less generalized problem with homogenous preferences on one side of the market, for example, course allocation with ties, we propose two new competing Pareto stable mechanisms known as Pareto-improving draft and dictatorship mechanisms. Using actual data, our simulations show that both mechanisms can significantly improve overall efficiency and welfare of students when compared with the existing mechanism. Besides, the draft mechanism outperforms the dictatorship mechanism despite its non-strategy proof for the students.