Conferences: Fall, 2013

Tax Policy and the Economy

NBER Research Associate Jeffrey Brown of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign organized an NBER conference on "Tax Policy and the Economy" which took place in Washington on October 3, 2013. These papers were discussed:

• Douglas Shackelford, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and NBER, and Kevin Markle, Dartmouth College, "The Impact of Headquarter and Subsidiary Locations on Multinationals' Effective Tax Rates"
• Annette Alstadsæter, University of Oslo; Wojciech Kopczuk, Columbia University and NBER; and Kjetil Telle, Statistics Norway, "Are Closely-Held Firms Tax Shelters?"
• Christopher Knittel, MIT and NBER, "The Political Economy of Gasoline Taxes: Lessons from the Oil Embargo"
• David Albouy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and NBER, and Andrew Hanson, Marquette University, "Tax Benefits to Housing and Inefficiencies in Location and Consumption"
• Joshua Rauh and Jules van Binsbergen, Stanford University and NBER; and Robert Novy-Marx, University of Rochester and NBER, "Financial Valuation of PBGC Insurance with Market-Implied Default Probabilities"

The Health Transition: A Conference in Memory of Robert Fogel

An NBER Conference "The Health Transition: A Conference in Memory of Robert Fogel," organized by NBER Research Associate Dora Costa of the University of California, Los Angeles, took place in Chicago on October 4, 2013. These papers were discussed:

• Hoyt Bleakley, University of Chicago and NBER; Dora Costa; and Adriana Lleras-Muney, University of California-Los Angeles and NBER, "Health, Education and Income in the United States, 1820- 2000" (NBER Working Paper No. 19162)
• Bernard Harris, University of Strathclyde, "Food for Thought: Comparing Estimates of Food Availability in the UK, 1700-1914"
• Tommy Bengtsson, Lund University, "The Mortality Transition in Sweden: Diet or Disease?"
• James Heckman, University of Chicago and NBER; John Eric Humphries, University of Chicago; and Gregory Veramendi, Arizona State University, "The Effects of Educational Choices on Labor Market and Health Outcomes"
• Jay Olshansky, University of Illinois-Chicago, "The Future Course of Longevity and Health in the U.S."

Hospital Organization and Productivity

The NBER held a conference on "Hospital Organization and Productivity" on October 4 and 5, 2013. The organizers were NBER Research Associates Amitabh Chandra and David Cutler of Harvard University, Research Associate Robert Huckman of Harvard Business School, and Elizabeth Martinez of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The following papers were discussed:

• Julia Adler-Milstein, University of Michigan; Kirstin Woody Scott, Harvard University; and Ashish Jha, Harvard School of Public Health, "Leveraging Electronic Health Records to Improve Hospital Performance: The Role of Management"
• Elizabeth Munnich, University of Louisville, and Stephen Parente, University of Minnesota, "Costs and Benefits of Competing Health Care Providers: Trade-Offs in the Outpatient Surgery Market"
• Caroline Carlin, Medica Research Institute; and Roger Feldman and Bryan Dowd, University of Minnesota, "The Impact of Provider Consolidation on Price: Horizontal Integration and Tied Purchasing"
• David Cook, Jeffrey Thompson, Elizabeth Habermann, Sue Visscher, William Bertschinger, Joseph Dearani, Veronique Roger, and Bijan Borah, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, "Disruption of the Solution Shop as a Hospital Organizational Structure: Outcomes, Cost, and Cultural Change: A Mayo Clinic Case Study"
• Laurence Baker, Kate Bundorf, and Daniel Kessler, Stanford University and NBER, "The Effects of Vertical Integration on Hospital Prices, Spending, and Volume"
• Kate Ho, Columbia University and NBER, and Ariel Pakes, Harvard University and NBER, "Hospital Choices, Hospital Prices and Financial Incentives to Physicians" (NBER Working Paper No. 19333)
• David Meltzer, University of Chicago and NBER, and Greg Ruhnke, University of Chicago, "Reducing Hospital Costs by Reorganizing Physician Staffing: Design and Implementation of a CMMI Innovation Challenge Award to Study Comprehensive Care Physicians"
• Nicholas Bloom, Stanford University and NBER; Raffaella Sadun, Harvard University and NBER; and John Van Reenen, London School of Economics and NBER, "Does Management Matter in Healthcare?"

Sovereign Debt and Financial Crisis

The NBER held a conference on "Sovereign Debt and Financial Crises" in Cambridge on October 18 and 19, 2013. The organizers were NBER Research Associates Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan of the University of Maryland, and Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University. The following papers were discussed:

• Òscar Jordà, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Moritz Schularick, University of Bonn; and Alan Taylor, University of California-Davis and NBER, "Sovereigns versus Banks: Credit, Crises, and Consequences" (NBER Working Paper No. 19506)
• Jack Favilukis, London School of Economics; and Sydney Ludvigson and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, New York University and NBER, "Foreign Ownership of U.S. Safe Assets: Good or Bad?"
• Galina Hale, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Maurice Obstfeld, University of California-Berkeley and NBER, "The Euro and the Geography of International Debt Flows"
• Fabrizio Balassone, Maura Francese, and Angelo Pace, Bank of Italy, "Economic Performance in a High Debt Country: The Case of Italy"
• Graciela Kaminsky, George Washington University and NBER, and Pablo Vega-García, George Washington University, "Varieties of Sovereign Crises: Latin America, 1820-1931"
• Mark Aguiar, Princeton University and NBER; Manuel Amador, University of Minnesota and NBER; and Emmanuel Farhi and Gita Gopinath, Harvard University and NBER, "Coordination and Crisis in Monetary Unions"
• Pablo D'Erasmo, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and University of Maryland, and Enrique Mendoza, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Distributional Incentives in an Equilibrium Model of Domestic Sovereign Default" (NBER Working Paper No. 19477)
• Yusuf Soner Baskaya, Central Bank of Turkey, and Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, "Are Government Bonds Bad for Banks? Evidence from a Rare Fiscal Shock"
• Carmen Reinhart, Harvard University and NBER; Vincent Reinhart, American Enterprise Institute; and Kenneth Rogoff, "Debt Hangovers"
• Cristina Arellano, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; Xavier Mateos-Planas, Queen Mary University of London; and José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, University of Minnesota and NBER, "Partial Default"

Lessons from the Financial Crisis for Monetary Policy

NBER Research Associate Mark Gertler of New York University organized a conference on "Lessons from the Financial Crisis for Monetary Policy" which took place in Boston on October 18 and 19, 2013. The following papers were discussed:

• Aloísio Araújo and Susan Schommer, Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada; and Michael Woodford, Columbia University and NBER, "Conventional and Unconventional Monetary Policy with Endogenous Collateral Constraints"
• Mark Gertler, and Peter Karadi, European Central Bank, "Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity"
• Simon Gilchrist, Boston University and NBER; and David López-Salidoand Egon Zakrajšek, Federal Reserve Board, "Monetary Policy and Real Borrowing Costs at the ZLB"
• Lars Svensson, Stockholm University and NBER, "Forward Guidance as a Monetary Policy Tool in Theory and Practice: The Swedish Experience"
• Lawrence Christiano and Martin Eichenbaum, Northwestern University and NBER; and Mathias Trabandt, Federal Reserve Board, "Understanding the Great Recession"
• Olivier Coibion, University of Texas, Austin and NBER, and Yuriy Gorodnichenko, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Is the Phillips Curve Alive and Well After All? Inflation Expectations and the Missing Disinflation"
• Jordi Galí, CREI and NBER, and Luca Gambetti, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, "The Effects of Monetary Policy on Asset Price Bubbles: Some Evidence"
• Markus Brunnermeier, Princeton University and NBER, and Yuliy Sannikov, Princeton University, "Capital Controls: Growth versus Stability"

CRIW Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs

The NBER hosted a Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (CRIW) meeing in Washington on "Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs" on October 18 and 19, 2013. The organizers were Ana Aizcorbe of Bureau of Economic Analysis, Colin Baker of the National Institute of Health, and NBER Research Associates Ernst Berndt of MIT and David Cutler of Harvard University. The following papers were discussed:

• Hitoshi Shigeoka, Simon Fraser University, "The Effect of Patient Cost Sharing on Utilization, Health, and Risk Protection"
• Colin Baker, and Ralph Bradley, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Simultaneous Effects of Obesity, Insurance Choice, and Medical Visit Choice on Healthcare Costs"
• Frank Lichtenberg, Columbia University and NBER, "The Impact of Biomedical Knowledge Accumulation on Mortality: A Bibliometric Analysis of Cancer Data"
• Brian Chansky, Corby Garner, and Ronjoy Raichoudhary, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Measuring Output and Productivity in Private Hospitals"
• Jacob Glazer, Boston University; Thomas McGuire, Harvard University and NBER; and Julie Shi, Harvard University, "Risk Adjustment of Health Plan Payments to Correct Inefficient Plan Choice from Adverse Selection"
• Paul Schreyer, OECD, and Matilde Mas, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas (IVIE) and University of Valencia, "Measuring Health Services in the National Accounts: An International Perspective"
• Pinar Karaca-Mandic, University of Minnesota and NBER; Jean Abrahamand Roger Feldman, University of Minnesota; and Kosali Simon, Indiana University and NBER, "Going into the Affordable Care Act: Measuring the Size, Structure and Performance of the Individual and Small Group Markets for Health Insurance"
• Armando Franco, University of California, Berkeley; Dana Goldman, University of Southern California and NBER; Adam Leive, University of Pennsylvania; and Daniel McFadden, University of California-Berkeley and NBER, "A Cautionary Tale in Comparative Effectiveness Research: Pitfalls and Perils of Observational Data Analysis"
• Murray Aitken and Michael Kleinrock, IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics; Ernst Berndt; Barry Bosworth, Brookings Institution; Iain Cockburn, Boston University and NBER; Richard Frank, Harvard University and NBER; and Bradley Shapiro, MIT, "The Regulation of Prescription Drug Competition and Market Responses: Patterns in Prices and Sales Following Loss of Exclusivity" (NBER Working Paper No. 19487)
• Didem Bernard and Thomas Selden, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; and Yuriy Pylypchuk, Georgetown Public Policy Institute, "The Distribution of Public Spending for Health Care in the United States in 2010"
• Rena Conti, University of Chicago, and Ernst Berndt, "Firm Entry, Exit and Price Competition in the Market for Multisource Specialty Drugs, 2006‒2012"
• Chris Stomberg, Bates White Economic Consulting, "Drug Shortages, Pricing, and Reimbursement"
• Anne Hall and Tina Highfill, Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Calculating Disease-Based Medical Care Expenditure Indexes for Medicare Beneficiaries: A Comparison of Method and Data Choices"
• David Cutler, "A Health Account for the Elderly"
• Abe Dunn and Eli Liebman, Bureau of Economic Analysis; and Adam Shapiro, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, "Defining Disease Episodes and the Effects on the Components of Expenditure Growth"
• Laurence Baker and Kate Bundorf, Stanford University and NBER; and Anne Royalty, Indiana University, "Measuring Physician Practice Competition Using Medicare Data"

High Skill Immigration in the Global Economy

An NBER Conference on "High Skill Immigration in the Global Economy" organized by NBER Faculty Research Fellow William Kerr of Harvard University and Research Associate Sarah Turner of the University of Virginia was held in Cambridge on October 25, 2013. The following papers were discussed:

• Petra Moser, Stanford University and NBER; Alessandra Voena, University of Chicago and NBER; and Fabian Waldinger, University of Warwick, "German-Jewish Émigrés and U.S. Invention"
• William Kerr, "Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns"
• Ajay Agrawal, University of Toronto and NBER; John McHale, National University of Ireland; and Alexander Oettl, Georgia Institute of Technology, "Does a Decline in Star Immigration Help or Harm U.S. Science?"
• Shulamit Kahn, Boston University, and Megan MacGarvie, Boston University and NBER, "Do Return Requirements Increase International Knowledge Diffusion?"
• Sarah Turner, "College in the States: Foreign Student Demand and Higher Education Supply in the U.S."
• Alberto Alesina, Harvard University and NBER; Johann Harnoss, University of Lille; and Hillel Rapoport, Bar Ilan University, "Birthplace Diversity and Economic Prosperity" (NBER Working Paper No. 18699)

Economics of Commodity Markets

An NBER conference on the "Economics of Commodity Markets" organized by NBER Research Associates Kenneth Singleton of Stanford University and Wei Xiong of Princeton University was held in Cambridge on October 25 and 26, 2013. The following papers were discussed:

• Suman Banerjee, Nanyang Business School, and Ravi Jagannathan, Northwestern University and NBER, "Destabilizing Commodity Market Speculation"
• John Birge and Ignacia Mercadal, University of Chicago; Ali Hortaçsu, University of Chicago and NBER; and Michael Pavlin, Wilfrid Laurier University, "The Role of Financial Players in Electricity Markets: An Empirical Analysis of MISO"
• Eugenio Bobenrieth, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Juan Bobenrieth, Universidad del Bío-Bío; and Brian Wright, University of California, Berkeley, "Bubble Troubles? Rational Storage, Mean Reversion and Runs in Commodity Prices"
• Alexander David, University of Calgary, "Exploration Activity, Long Run Decisions, and Roll Returns in Energy Futures"
• Wenjin Kang and Ke Tang, Renmin University of China; and Geert Rouwenhorst, Yale University, "The Role of Hedgers and Speculators in Liquidity Provision to Commodity Futures Markets"
• Yu-chin Chen, University of Washington, and Dongwon Lee, University of California, Riverside, "What Makes a Commodity Currency?"
• Domenico Ferraro and Pietro Peretto, Duke University, "Commodity Prices, Long-Run Growth and Fiscal Vulnerability"
• Martijn Boons and Frans de Roon, Tilburg University; and Marta Szymanowska, RSM Erasmus University, "The Stock Market Price of Commodity Risk"
• Gurdip Bakshi, Xiaohui Gao, and Alberto Rossi, University of Maryland, "A Better Specified Asset Pricing Model to Explain the Cross-section and Time-series of Commodity Returns"
• Anh Le, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Haoxiang Zhu, MIT Sloan School of Management, "Risk Premia in Gold Lease Rates"
• Robert Ready, University of Rochester; Nikolai Roussanov, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; and Colin Ward, University of Pennsylvania, "Commodity Trade and the Carry Trade: A Tale of Two Countries" (NBER Working Paper No. 19371)

Personal Retirement Challenges

An NBER Conference on "Personal Retirement Challenges" took place in Cambridge on November 1, 2013. The organizers were Zvi Bodie of Boston University and Research Associates Andrew Lo and Robert Merton, both of MIT. These papers were discussed:

• John Beshears, David Laibson, and Brigitte Madrian, Harvard University and NBER; James Choi, Yale University and NBER; and Stephen Zeldes, Columbia University and NBER, "What Makes Annuitization More Appealing?" (NBER Working Paper No. 18575)
• Lans Bovenberg, Tilburg University, and Roel Mehlkopf, Ministry of Social Affairs, The Netherlands, "Variable Annuities in Pension Schemes with Risk Sharing: Valuation, Investment and Communication"
• Veronika Pool and Irina Stefanescu, Indiana University; and Clemens Sialm, University of Texas, Austin and NBER, "It Pays to Set the Menu: Mutual Fund Investment Options in 401(k) Plans" (NBER Working Paper No. 18764)
• Ralph Koijen, London Business School and NBER; Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, New York University and NBER; and Motohiro Yogo, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, "Health and Mortality Delta: Assessing the Welfare Cost of Household Insurance Choice" (NBER Working Paper No. 17325)
• Rik Dillingh and Henriëtte Prast, University of Tilburg; Mariacristina Rossi, University of Turin; and Maria Cesira Urzì Brancati, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, "The Psychology and Economics of Reverse Mortgage Attitudes: Evidence from the Netherlands"
• Robert Novy-Marx, University of Rochester and NBER, and Joshua Rauh, Stanford University and NBER, "Funding Soft Liabilities"

Changing Financing Market for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The NBER held a conference on the "Changing Financing Market for Innovation and Entrepreneurship" in Half Moon Bay, California, on November 8 and 9, 2013. The organizers were NBER Research Associates Antoinette Schoar of MIT, Malcolm Baker and Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School, and Faculty Research Fellow David Sraer of Princeton University. The following papers were discussed:

• Ajay Agrawal, University of Toronto and NBER; Christian Catalini, MIT; and Avi Goldfarb, University of Toronto, "Crowdfunding's Role in the Rate and Direction of Innovative Activity"
• Thomas Hellmann, University of British Columbia and NBER; and Paul Schure and Dan Vo, University of Victoria, "Angels and Venture Capitalists: Complements or Substitutes?"
• Michael Ewens, Carnegie Mellon University; Ramana Nanda, Harvard University; and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, Harvard University and NBER, "Entrepreneurship and the Cost of Experimentation"
• Thomas Chemmanur, Boston College; Tyler Hull, Norwegian School of Economics; and Karthik Krishnan, Northeastern University, "Do Local and International Venture Capitalists Play Well Together? Venture Capital Investments and the Development of Venture Capital Markets"
• Marco Da Rin and María Fabiana Penas, Tilburg University, "Understanding Business Angel Networks"
• Sen Chai and Willy Shih, Harvard University, "From Bench to Product: Bridging Science and Technology through Academic-Industry Partnerships"
• Ulf Axelson and Milan Martinovic, London School of Economics, "European Venture Capital: Myths and Facts"

Enterprising America: Business, Banks, and Credit Markets in Historical Perspective

The NBER held a conference on "Enterprising America: Business, Banks, and Credit Markets in Historical Perspective" in Nashville on December 14, 2013. NBER Research Associates William Collins of Vanderbilt University and Robert Margo of Boston University organized the meeting. The following papers were discussed:

• Naomi Lamoreaux, Yale University and NBER, "Revisiting American Exceptionalism: Business Organizational Forms and Corporate Governance in Comparative Perspective"
• Eric Hilt, Wellesley College and NBER, "Corporate Governance and the Development of Manufacturing Enterprises in Nineteenth-century Massachusetts"
• Robert Margo, "Economies of Scale in Nineteenth Century American Manufacturing Revisited: A Resolution of the Entrepreneurial Labor Input Problem" (NBER Working Paper No. 19147)
• Alan Olmstead, University of California-Davis, and Paul Rhode, University of Michigan and NBER, "Were Antebellum Cotton Plantations Factories in the Field?"
• Howard Bodenhorn, Clemson University and NBER, and Eugene White, Rutgers University and NBER, "The Evolution of Bank Boards of Directors in New York, 1840‒1950"
• Jeremy Atack, Vanderbilt University and NBER; Peter Rousseau, Vanderbilt University; and Matthew Jaremski, Colgate University and NBER, "Did Railroads Make Antebellum U.S. Banks More Sound? Linking Rail Locations with Bank Balance Sheets and Survival Rates"
• Mary Hansen, American University, "Differences in Sources of Credit by Sector: An Exploration of Bankruptcy Records from Mississippi, 1929-1936"