Tag: Brown Bag Seminar

Brown Bag Seminar | Social Capital, Government Expenditures and Growth

qmulcgrLeave a comment

This Monday 1st of October, Dr. Ugo Troiano will be presenting his research. Dr  Troiano works at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor of Economics. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow NBER in Political Economy and Public Economics, Research Associate at the Office of Tax Policy Research and Faculty Associate in the Institute for Social Research CPS.

Abstract

This paper shows that social capital increases economic growth by raising government investment in human capital. We present a model of stochastic endogenous growth with imperfect political agency. Only some people correctly anticipate the future returns to current spending on public education. Greater social discussion of information makes this knowledge more widespread among voters. As a result, we find it alleviates myopic political incentives to underinvest in human capital, and it helps the selection of politicians that ensure high productivity in public education. Through this mechanism, we show that social capital raises the equilibrium growth rate of output and reduces its volatility. We provide evidence consistent with the predictions of our model. Individuals with higher social capital are more informed about their government. Countries with higher social capital spend a higher share of output on public education.

Brown Bag Seminar | Social protection and child poverty risk: does persistence matter?

qmulcgrLeave a comment

Next Wednesday 16th of May, Dr Elena Bárcena Martín will be presenting her research. Dr  Elena Bárcena Martín works at the University of Malaga as an Associate Professor of Statistic and Econometrics. She has been research visitor at Columbia University and LSE where she studied the Master of Science in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse to what extent the previous status of children in poverty affects current child poverty, even when we control for observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity and treat the initial condition problem. On the basis of Wooldridge’s (2005) methodology, we estimate a dynamic random effects probit model considering three levels due to the hierarchical structure of our data: observations for each year (level 1) of the children (level 2) nested into countries (level 3). We corroborate the relevance of lagged status in poverty and assess the role of context variables in explaining differences across countries in child poverty dynamics. In particular, we highlight the significance of family benefits in reducing child poverty and assess which features of these benefits are more effective to reduce child poverty. This way, some key insights are provided to design more effective public policies to alleviate child poverty.

Email: barcenae@uma.es

Read More »

Brown Bag Seminar | Collateral Damage? Labour Market Effects of Competing with China – at Home and Abroad

qmulcgrLeave a comment

On Wednesday 7th of March, Professor Pedro Martins (SBM) will be presenting his research.

Abstract

The increased range and quality of China’s exports is a major ongoing development in the international economy with potentially far-reaching effects, including in labour markets. On top of the direct effects of increased imports from China studied in previous research, in this paper we also examine the indirect labour market effects stemming from increased export competition in third markets. Our evidence, based on matched employer-employee panel data from Portugal covering 1991-2008 period, indicates that workers’ earnings and employment are significantly negatively affected by China’s imports, but essentially only through the indirect, ‘market-stealing’ channel. The results are robust to a number of checks, including an alternative measure of the indirect effects, and are found to be stronger for women, older and less educated workers, and workers in domestic firms.

Cabral, S., Martins, P., dos Santos, J. and Tavares, M. (Feb, 2018)

Brown Bag Seminar | Wider impacts of high-technology employment

qmulcgrLeave a comment

Next Wednesday 14th of February, Dr. Thomas Kemeny (SBM) will be presenting his research about “Wider impacts of high-technology employment”.

Abstract

Innovative, high-technology industries are commonly described as drivers of regional development. ‘Tech’ workers earn high wages, but they allegedly generate knock-on effects throughout the local economies that host them, producing new jobs and raising wages in nontradable activities. At the same time, in iconic high-tech agglomerations like Silicon Valley, the success of the tech industry creates tensions, in part as living costs rise beyond the reach of many non-tech workers. Across a large sample of US cities, this paper explores these issues systematically. Combining annual data on wages, employment and prices from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Consumer Price Index, it estimates how growth in tradable tech employment affects the real, living-cost deflated wages of local workers in nontradable sectors. Results indicate that high-technology employment has positive but substantively modest effects on the real wages of workers in nontradable sectors, and that tech does not generate atypical effects compared with other tradable activities.

Brown Bag Seminar | Can non-cognitive interventions improve academic outcomes? The first CGR brown-bag presents experimental evidence on this question

qmulcgrLeave a comment

The Centre for Globalisation Research will launch on May 14th its ‘Brown-bag’ seminar series, which seeks to discuss the new research of CGR members. The workshop will be inaugurated by Prof Pedro Martins who will present his latest CGR working paper: “(How) Do Non-Cognitive Skills Programs Improve Adolescent School Achievement? Experimental Evidence”.

Read More »