Tag Archives: UPF

note on beliefs and expectation

Yesterday and today I spend several hours on the conference held by Crei,

Information, Beliefs and Expectations in Macroeconomics

20 & 21 May 2011

Organized by Kristoffer Nimark (CREI & UPF) and Bartosz Maćkowiak (European Central Bank).

To be honest, I have waited for the conference for a while, as I was writing things on beliefs and expectations. However, this conference is a little bit out of my expectation - so again, my expectations deviates from the truth. My poor background in macro is definitely not enough to support me for understanding the presentations, and among all of them, I picked a few to stay and thus make myself confused. They were:

Exogenous Information, Endogenous Information, and Optimal Monetary Policy
Luigi Paciello | Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance
*Mirko Wiederholt | Northwestern University
Discussant: Jordi Galí | CREI & Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Learning about Consumption Dynamics
Michael Johannes | Columbia U., Columbia Business School
Lars Lochstoer | Columbia U., Columbia Business School
*Yiqun Mou | Columbia U., Columbia Business School
Discussant: Francisco Barillas | Emory U., Goizueta Business S.

Public’s Inflation Expectations and Monetary Policy
Leonardo Melosi | London Business School
Discussant: Francesco Bianchi | Duke University

Just as I had expected, it was too easy for me to get lost in these presentations. In a few minutes I got the feeling that I don't know what's going on so ever. well...Except for the fantastic graphs I have seen, I haven't gained much intuition from them.

A noteworthy point is in Mou's presentation, he empirically showed the convergence to rational expectation. I should admit I don't really understand the techniques he utilized, and so are the debates afterwards. After his presentation, I talked to him with the learning process a little bit, but haven't benefited a lot... there is still a long way to go.

Also, I found another interesting book to read,

1587, a year of no significance : the Ming dynasty in decline / Ray Huang

Very nice book on history. I really treasure this period of time that I have got enough space to read and think across different subjects. As planned before, I also found Keynes' book,

A Treatise on probability

Things are so beautiful!

A Piece of Note

Just a quick piece of note before the intensive exam time.

I did not really remember how many seminars I went in the past month... well, anyway. Here is just a note that I have been to Thijs' seminar:

Labour/Public/Development Lunch

Benedikt Herz and Thijs van Rens (UPF)

"Structural Unemployment"

That's really all.... no time to say more, and next week a plenty of interesting seminars are waiting... however, all the exams are waiting there as well... what a painful dilemma~~~

Vertical Foreclosure and Risk Aversion, from Hansen and Motta

I swear it is the last time for me to go to the seminars and write posts before the final exams. Eh... But I cannot stop myself from going to this talk: first, it is from my dear micro teacher Hansen; second, it is somehow related to behavioral economics... So how can I keep on staying in my room?

As before, here is the basic information:

Vertical Foreclosure and Risk Aversion
Massimo Motta and Stephen Hansen (UPF and Barcelona GSE)
UPF Micro and Behavior Economics Seminar

Apparently, the topic was related to vertical foreclosure and risk aversion.  In his model the influence of risk aversion behaviors on principal's optimal contract choice has been considered. Although he only used typical P-A model and profit-max, the results turn to be really beautiful, especially when he generalizes the number of firms to a bigger size, and infinite.

The only thing I can think of is that if there is additional management/transaction cost when N goes lager, will there be an optimal size N? Although it is not the main point that he wants to stress, it is still somehow valuable to take in to account, since in the real world no body can ignore the transaction costs. But, anyway, his beautiful results are enough for me to enjoy~

Fine, I need to keep things short and efficient. After the exam, I will begin to work on my master project and read more papers. Hopefully it is possible to finish what I want to do in the final project in the next spring. Time always goes too fast...

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