The Halle Institute for Economic Research, the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative (CIREQ) and the George Washington University – The Center for Economic Research (GW) are organizing the 19th IWH-CIREQ-GW Macro­econometric Workshop to be held in Halle (Saale), Germany on December 12-13, 2018.
The workshop provides a platform to discuss new developments in the field of empirical and applied macroeconomic modelling and aims at bringing together academic researchers and practitioners. We invite applied and theoretical papers dealing with time series, business cycles, economic uncertainty and expectations. Papers that explicitly cover the macroeconomic modelling on uncertainty and expectations are particularly welcome.
Each conference day is opened by an invited speaker followed by contributed papers, discussants and posters.
Please note that the keynote addresses will be closed to media and off the record.
The workshop fee for participants is EUR 130 (reduced fee for PhD students EUR 95). The fee covers conference materials, coffee breaks, the lunch break (Thursday), and the conference dinner (Wednesday). Please note that all participants have to cover their accommodation and travel expenses themselves.
Information on previous IWH-CIREQ-GW Macroeconometric Workshops can be found here.
Please submit your paper or an extended abstract in PDF format along with information on paper title, name(s) of author(s) and contact details to: https://en.xing-events.com/GQQLNVR.
We assume that by submitting your paper and personal data, you agree that these information will be used exclusively for purposes of conference planning. The data and your paper will be passed to the scientific committee for the review process. After the conference, these data will be deleted.
The submission deadline is October 10th, 2018. Authors will be informed by October 25th, 2018. Registration will be possible from October 25th, 2018.
Agricultural Subsidies : Cutting into Forest Conservation?
RÉSUMÉ : Energy prices are volatile, affect every consumer and industry in the economy, and are impacted by regulations including gas taxes and carbon pricing. Like the pass-through literature in general, the growing energy pass-through literature focuses on marginal prices. However, multi-part pricing is common in energy retail pricing. I examine the retail natural gas market, showing that while marginal prices exhibit full or nearly full pass-through, fixed fees exhibit negative pass-through. This is consistent with the stated desire by utilities and regulators to prevent “bill shock.” I discuss implications for pass-through estimation and for proposed alternative pricing structures for regulated utilities.
RÉSUMÉ : Given the recent resurgence of climate skepticism and denial south of the border, it is more important than ever to clearly articulate the scientific evidence that supports the need to decarbonize the global energy economy. In this presentation, I will outline the state of this evidence, beginning with the scientific foundation of global warming, and moving through some of the current challenges and uncertainties in the field of climate science. I will conclude by touching on my own research, which can be used to inform what level of emissions reductions would be consistent with maintaining global warming “well below 2°C” above pre-industrial temperatures, the climate target that the world has adopted under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
RÉSUMÉ : We provide the first evidence that air pollution causes economy-wide reductions in pro- ductivity and economic activity. We combine satellite-based measures of air pollution with statistics on regional economic activity throughout the European Union since 2000. We use an instrumental variables approach, based on both thermal inversions and the direction of pre- vailing wind, to identify the causal impact of air pollution on economic activity. We estimate that a 1μg/m3 increase in fine particulate matter concentrations causes a 1.1% reduction in gross domestic product, with 90 percent of this impact due to reductions in productivity and the remaining 10 percent due to reductions in population. Our estimates suggest that the economic benefits of reducing air pollution are much larger than previously thought, and of similar magnitude to the benefits associated with reductions in mortality.
RÉSUMÉ : Contingent valuation (CV) studies often adopt public programs in the scenario designs in order to increase credibility and to ensure incentive compatibility. However, such scenario designs can introduce biases in willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimations due to the potential distrusts of respondents in the governments who are responsible for implementing the public programs. In this study, a joint selection modeling strategy, which accommodates both valuation protests and WTP adjustments, is developed for identification and calibration of the potential biases in WTP estimations caused by the public distrust in government. The joint selection model of WTP with public distrust in government is applied to two CV studies conducted in China on air quality improvements. Both channels through which public distrust in government can affect WTP estimation, valuation protest and WTP adjustment, are empirically identified, and the potential biases in WTP estimation caused by the public distrust in government can be as high as 20%.
RÉSUMÉ : We investigate whether the presence of conflict in foreign countries affects fish catches in OECD countries. We make use of country-level data on fish catches dating back to the 1950s, combined with conflict data. Our work is inspired by Hendrix and Glaser (2011) who have obtained that a country’s maritime fish catches tend to decrease when there is a conflict onset within the same country. Our results indicate that there may be a significant diversion effect. The analysis seeks to better inform policy-making devoted to the sustainable management of world fisheries.