{"title":"Collective Information Acquisition","authors":"Ran Eilat, K. Eliaz","doi":"10.1093/jeea/jvac063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvac063","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 We consider the problem faced by a group of players who bargain over what public signal to acquire before deciding on a collective action. The players differ in their privately known state-dependent payoffs from taking the action, and therefore differ also in their willingness to pay for the public signal. We take a mechanism design approach to characterizing the efficient frontier of outcomes achievable via bargaining over information. We identify novel distortions in the optimal information structure that arise from the information asymmetry and from the fact that after the signal is realized, the outcome is determined in equilibrium of a subsequent voting game.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126496172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Affinity, Trust, and Information","authors":"L. Guiso, Alexey Makarin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3686048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3686048","url":null,"abstract":"Mutually beneficial trades often rely on both trust and trustworthiness. In exchanges where no history of behavior is observable, however, where does trust come from? Recent evidence suggests that the level of affinity parties in an exchange feel for each other positively affects trustworthiness and can, therefore, affect trust. We propose a simple model that predicts a positive relationship between trust beliefs, affinity, and trustworthiness and a negative relationship between the dispersion of trust beliefs and affinity level. Furthermore, the model suggests that trust should be slower to update after a shock to trustworthiness when affinity is high. We show that the model's predictions are supported by data from two unrelated datasets-a proprietary survey of Italian entrepreneurs and an extensive international survey (Eurobarometer). Finally, using data on international trade, we show that, in line with our model, adverse shocks to trustworthiness cause a reallocation of trade from low-affinity to high-affinity partners, and especially so in trust-intensive industries.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125543699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Media Capture by Banks","authors":"Ruben Durante, Andrea Fabiani, J. Peydró","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3994484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3994484","url":null,"abstract":"Do banks exploit lending relationships with media companies to promote favorable news coverage? To test this hypothesis we map the connections between banks and the top newspapers in several European countries and study how they affect news coverage of two important financial issues. First we look at bank earnings announcements and find that newspapers are significantly more likely to cover announcements by their lenders, relative to other banks, when they report profits than when they report losses. Such pro-lender bias applies to both general-interest and financial newspapers, and is stronger for newspapers and banks that are more financially vulnerable. Second, we look at a broader public interest issue: the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis. We find that newspapers connected to banks more exposed to stressed sovereign bonds are more likely to promote a narrative of the crisis favorable to banks and to oppose debt-restructuring measures detrimental to creditors.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126716429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zhuoqiong Chen, Christopher Stanton, Catherine Thomas
{"title":"Information Spillovers in Experience Goods Competition","authors":"Zhuoqiong Chen, Christopher Stanton, Catherine Thomas","doi":"10.3386/W28584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W28584","url":null,"abstract":"Trialing an experience good allows consumers to learn their value for the sampled good and also informs beliefs about their value for similar products. These demand-side information spillovers across products create a relatively well-informed group of potential future consumers for rival firms. When both switching consumers and repeat buyers are profitable, firms face reduced incentives to set a low initial price to attract inexperienced consumers. Switchers and repeat buyers are more likely to be profitable in new product categories that build on major innovations and when firms can price discriminate based on purchasing history. We suggest that competing products and services arising from new innovations often have demand-side information spillovers from any product trial and are, hence, settings where competing firms can make overall profits even when selling products that consumers perceive to be indistinguishable prior to initial trial. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy. Funding: This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71903046) and the “Shenzhen Peacock Program” (No. GA11409002). Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.02754 .","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126629030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Gambacorta, Yiping Huang, Zhenhua Li, Hannuo Qiu, Shu Chen
{"title":"Data vs Collateral","authors":"L. Gambacorta, Yiping Huang, Zhenhua Li, Hannuo Qiu, Shu Chen","doi":"10.1093/rof/rfac022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/rof/rfac022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Using a unique dataset of more than 2 million Chinese firms that received credit from both an important big tech firm (Ant Group) and traditional commercial banks, this paper investigates how different forms of credit correlate with local economic activity, house prices and firm characteristics. We find that big tech credit does not correlate with local business conditions and house prices when controlling for demand factors, but reacts strongly to changes in firm characteristics, such as transaction volumes and network scores used to calculate firm credit ratings. By contrast, both secured and unsecured bank credit react significantly to local house prices, which incorporate useful information on the environment in which clients operate and on their creditworthiness. This evidence implies that the wider use of big tech credit could reduce the importance of the collateral channel but, at the same time, make lending more reactive to changes in firms’ business activity.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128178101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Implications of Cheap Oil for Emerging Markets","authors":"A. Kabundi, F. Ohnsorge","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3696979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3696979","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19-triggered collapse in oil prices in March and April 2020 was the seventh, and by far the most severe, in a series of such collapses since 1970. This paper, first, compares this most recent collapse and its drivers with previous ones in an event study. It finds that it was associated with an exceptionally severe plunge in oil demand. Second, in a local projections model, this paper estimates the implications of demand- and supply-driven oil price collapses for growth in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). The paper finds that steep oil price collapses were associated with significant and lasting output losses in energy-exporting EMDEs but no meaningful output gains in energy-importing EMDEs. These results are robust to multiple robustness checks.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124549125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ballot or Bullet: The Impact of Uk's Representation of the People Act on Peace and Prosperity","authors":"D. Rohner, Alessandro Saia","doi":"10.1093/ej/ueac092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac092","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Does democracy curb domestic political violence?bib To study this, we focus on the United Kingdom’s Representation of the People Act of 1867 – which is a critical juncture in the history of democratization. Constructing a novel borough (‘urban center’) level dataset on social conflict events and economic performance around the 1868 Elections (the first elections where newly enfranchised citizens could vote), we exploit arguably exogenous variation in enfranchisement intensity. We find a strong and robust peace-promoting effect of franchise extension and identify as a major channel of transmission the increase of the population’s political influence (voice) and local economic growth.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"328 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123335302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Participation Constraints in Discontinuous Adverse Selection Models","authors":"D. Martimort, Lars Stole","doi":"10.3982/te3030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3982/te3030","url":null,"abstract":"We present a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a class of optimal control problems with pure state constraints for which the objective function is linear in the state variable but the objective function is only required to be upper semicontinuous in the control variable. We apply those conditions to economic environments in contract theory where discontinuities in objectives prevail. Examples of applications include nonlinear pricing of digital goods and nonlinear pricing under competitive threat.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"125 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134383629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration","authors":"Mark Colas, Dominik Sachs","doi":"10.21034/iwp.38","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21034/iwp.38","url":null,"abstract":"Low-skilled immigrants indirectly affect public finances through their effect on native wages & labor supply. We operationalize this general-equilibrium effect in the workhorse labor market model with heterogeneous workers and intensive and extensive labor supply margins. We derive a closed-form expression for this effect in terms of estimable statistics. We extend the analysis to various alternative specifications of the labor market and production that have been emphasized in the immigration literature. Empirical quantifications for the U.S. reveal that the indirect fiscal benefit of one low-skilled immigrant lies between $770 and $2,100 annually. The indirect fiscal benefit may outweigh the negative direct fiscal effect that has previously been documented. This challenges the perception of low-skilled immigration as a fiscal burden.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121785136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Patricia Boyallian, S. Dasgupta, Swarnodeep Homroy
{"title":"Gender Diversity Goals, Supply Constraints, and the Market for Seasoned Female Directors: The U.S. Evidence","authors":"Patricia Boyallian, S. Dasgupta, Swarnodeep Homroy","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3688342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3688342","url":null,"abstract":"We show that over the last decade, growing public pressure for board gender diversity and awareness of gender equality issues in the U.S. has manifested in \"seasoned\" female board members accumulating multiple board appointments at a rate faster than seasoned male directors. The larger firms have been the most active in attracting seasoned female directors, at the expense of the smaller firms. This has likely contributed to the smaller firms lagging behind the larger firms in the pursuit of more gender balance. Our evidence is highly consistent with \"supply constraints\", as reflected in high costs of recruiting first-time female directors, which the larger firms manage to avoid and the smaller firms find too costly to incur. Gender quota mandates are likely to expose the smaller firms even more to these costs; however, the absence of mandates may also not be optimal. Given growing public pressure, it may be necessary to mandate that larger firms maintain the ratio of first-time to seasoned female appointments above some level.","PeriodicalId":121231,"journal":{"name":"CEPR Discussion Paper Series","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133994732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}