Tag Archives: gse

[Publication] Perhaps...the first publication under BGSE in Chinese

At the end of last month, I was notified that one of my papers co-authored with my previous advisor, Yue Qiao, was accepted. Today I downloaded an electronic version of it and finally confirmed.

That paper is published with the title The Mechanism Evolution and Information Transmission in Online Markets (我国网上交易的机制演化与信息传导) , at the Journal of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, 2012, 192 (03). At the moment when we submitted the paper, I was studying at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, so interestingly the institution behind my name is BGSE in the published version.

I should say it is an old paper - and I have waited for three years to get it published. It is not a short time period - as I have graduated and have already changed a job. On the other hand, the paper is about mechanisms in online C2C market (Taobao.com as the context), and now I am working at eBay and am committed to C2C behavior analysis. Sounds like a regression, right?

Perhaps it is the version reason why I chose eBay immediately right after I got their offer. Theories need to be examined in the real market environment, and eBay is exactly the right place to do this! I have no reason not to be excited about working here. As the theoretical research is accepted, I should spend more time on the empirical part now. Hopefully, these years of knowledge gaining and work experience will enhance my analytical thinking ability and get a fruitful result afterwards.

I'm going on the way, and there is no word called "give up" in my dictionary.

The print version of this paper in Chinese can be download here: Mechanism_evolution_C2C.pdf

That's Tirole

You know you will not be able to understand some big guys' speech, but you still want to torture yourself and see them. That's exactly what I did last night for Tirole. Well, not until last night had I realized how bad my micro foundation was and how poor my knowledge of finance was.

It was one of the "Barcelona GSE Lecture Series", and

Prof. Jean Tirole (Toulouse School of Economics)

"Regulating systemic risk"

Hence, with the words "risk" and "regulation", you can imagine what he was talking about. I knew so little about finance, and then it became a disaster for me to stay there. In contrast, a friend who sat besides me was really enjoying the lecture and benefited a lot - he is a Ph.D in Econ/Finance. That's fair~

Anyway, it is a little out of my initial expectation but fair, that in UPF, the traditional Macro school, I have touched more macro compared to micro, although I was so interested in micro. Maybe it is a good thing that I do not need to close myself within a narrow room. Who knows? You can never go back and do something different. Whatever I have archived, I appreciate.

Barcelona GSE Lecture Serie"Barcelona GSE Lecture Series

Labor Market Dynamics, Persuasion

As the final exams coming, the time-budget has been more and more tight for me. I really want to go to the seminars, but there is not enough time for me to do that -- I always feel so tired....

Anyway, last Friday there was a workshop I cannot miss:

CREI-CEPR Workshop "Changes in Labor Market Dynamics"

Because Jordi Galí and Thijs van Rens, CREI and CEPR organized it.....And I'm really interested in labor market.

I listened to the first three speeches,

Demand Shocks Trigger Productivity Increases
Yan Bai, Arizona State University | W.P. Carey S. of Business, *José Víctor Ríos Rull, University of Minnesota, Kjetil Storesletten, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

The Vanishing Procyclicality of Labor Productivity
Jordi Galí, CREI, UPF & Barcelona GSE, Thijs van Rens, CREI & UPF

The Demise of Okun’s Law and of Procyclical Fluctuations in Conventional and Unconventional Measures of Productivity
Robert Gordon, Northwestern University

Eh..... Maybe due to the limit of time, they only introduced their works briefly. The problem for me is that I learned more labor related topics in a microeconomic view, not the macro one. Therefore, although the presentations were talking about labor, I still felt unfamiliar. Anyway, listening is a kind of learning and enjoying. Why not?
This afternoon was the regular microeconomics seminar, and it was

Bayesian Persuasion and Competition and Persuasion
[click here to download PDF]
Emir Kamenica (Chicago Booth School of Business)
CREI-CEPR Workshop "Changes in Labor Market Dynamics"

UPF Microeconomics Seminar

Again, I failed to catch up with all of his content. I was enjoying the first 1/3 part of his presentation, and then suddenly I realized that I cannot understand him any more. Haha... The interesting thing was not only me, but also most of the audience in the room kept silent. Nearly no questions, no discussions and no....no answer when the speaker asked something. Haha~ Anyway, perhaps the difference between economics and business are still big, so we don't really understand what's their aim. Or the models are quite different.... I cannot find any more possible explanations. Forgive me!

Ok, this post has successfully become a normal record of my day. I don't really want to lost my feeling for economics, but the problem sets....are still there. No choice.

Back from Barcelona GSE "Trobada" VIII

I have no idea with what "trobada" means, and apparently it is not a spanish word. Yes, it is from Catalan and it means "conference"..... So Barcelona GSE "Trobada" VIII is the annual conference for GSE afflicted professors.

This year it is held in a very beautiful and historical building, Casa Convalescència. Oh, I admit I should have brought my camera there. What a pity! I can only download some pictures from the Internet and paste them here.

Casa Convalescència

1-FOTOS_NUEVAS_HOTEL_010

Today's topics were very interesting. I listened to three presentations.

Prof. Giacomo Ponzetto (CREI-UPF and Barcelona GSE)
"Politics, Asymmetric Information, and Protectionism"

Prof. Johannes Gierlinger (UAB and Barcelona GSE)
"Hedging Priors: On Novel Instruments to Insure against Ambiguity"

Prof. Davide Cantoni (UPF and Barcelona GSE)
"Natural Experiments in Economic History"

I was there because  the last one, natural experiments in economic history, attracted me. It was a very brilliant idea to "design" natural experiment in economic history. Well, one interesting thing is that nearly all people admit that we need to learn economic history, but this course is still not available here (sorry, it is available. I made a mistake), and not many students will actually registered for it, perhaps due to the way it is taught and the form of exam.

Another thing I was considering for the whole morning was that what's the difference between the questions European economists care about and those from U.S. or China. In China we don't need to think about "lobby", since the political system is so different. If institution plays an important role in determining the economic growth speed and pattern, what can we conclude from China's example?  Is the potential lobby power (like the pressure from big companies) growing and influencing policy makers? Will they still consider the global situation and make a wise choice?

A big problem for China now may be the exchange rate. G20 Conference is holding, and everyone is predicting the trend of future's world economy. I have heard that whenever the Chinese department of commerce is going to make a new economic policy, they will face different pressure from all related industries. Therefore, can they still stay balanced and choose the best strategy for the whole economy? It is definitely hard, and we cannot forecast the result. Economic models cannot tell everything in the real world. We can learn from economic theories, or the real history.

[Update 2010.10.24]

1. Thanks for Jodi's email, and now I update the new pictures. For more, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/barcelonagse/sets/72157625216250106/

2. I emailed Prof. Davide Cantoni and got the list of papers he mentioned on the conference (He is really a nice guy, and I do want to take his economic history course now). I'd like to paste the list here, and so, enjoy~~~

Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson, "Colonial Origins of Comparative Development" (http://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v91y2001i5p1369-1401.html)

Jeremiah Dittmar, "Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press" (http://www.jeremiahdittmar.com/research)

James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote, "Colonialism and Modern Income: Islands as Natural Experiments" (http://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v91y2009i2p245-262.html

)

Elise Huillery, "History Matters: The Long Term Impact of Colonial Public Investments in French West Africa" (http://econ.sciences-po.fr/elise-huillery/papers)

Melissa Dell "The Persistent Effects of Peru's Mining Mita" (http://econ-www.mit.edu/grad/mdell/papers)

A paper that gives a good review on this strand of research more generally is Nathan Nunn's contribution to the "Annual Review":

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/nunn/files/Nunn_ARE_2009.pdf