Seminario de Economía ciclo 2010

• 1ro. de Octubre. Facundo Albornoz (Birmingham y UBA). Incentives, Resources and the Organization of the School System.

  We study a model where student eort and talent interact with parental and teachers’ investments, as well as with school system resources. The model is rich, yet sufficiently stylized to provide novel implications. We can show, for example, that an improvement in parental outside options will reduce parental and school effort, which are partially compensated through school resources. In this way we provide a rationale for the ambiguous existing empirical evidence on the effect of school resources. We also provide a novel microfoundation for peer effects, with empirical implications on welfare and on preferences for sorting across schools.

• 27 de Agosto. Guillermo Vuletin (Colby College) (expositor) y Carlos A. Végh (University of Maryland and NBER). Unsticking the Flypaper Effect Using Distortionary Taxation.

  The flypaper effect is a widely-documented puzzle that refers to the fact that the propensity of sub-national governmental units to spend out of unconditional transfers is higher than the propensity to spend out of private income. We show that a simple Ramsey model of optimal fiscal policy can explain this puzzle as spending out of private income requires imposing tax distortions. Our model generates two testable implications: (i) there should be a positive association between the degree of the flypaper effect and the level of the tax rate, and (ii) the flypaper effect should be more important the lower the elasticity of substitution between private and public spending. We show that these hypotheses hold for a sample of Argentinean provinces, Brazilian states, and American cities.

• 2 de Julio — 13:00 horas. Sebastián Galiani (Washington University in Saint Louis, Investigador Asociado del CEDLAS – UNLP). Autocracy, Democracy and Trade Policy.
• 25 de Junio. Juan Carlos Hallak. Firms’ Exporting Behavior under Quality Constraints.
• 21 de Abril — 19:00 horas. Sebastián Campanario. Economía de lo Insólito.
• 19 de Marzo. J. Daniel Aromí (PhD Unversity of Maryland). El Regreso (formalizado) a la Apertura: Una Contribución Cuantitativa a la Historia del Pensamiento Económico.