Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
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The objective of this event is to bring distinguished researchers in Macroeconomics in the relaxed and fruitful atmosphere of Salento, the peninsula located in the southernmost region of Apulia, Italy. The Programme Committee welcomes submissions of theoretical or empirical papers addressing issues including (but not limited to):
The deadline for paper submissions is 31 March 2019.
Orazio Attanasio, Peter Levell, Hamish Low, Virginia Sánchez Marcos, 10 November 2018
Economists disagree on the size of labour supply elasticities. The column uses a model of female labour supply to show that there is substantial heterogeneity in both cross section and over the business cycle. It is not possible to think about labour supply elasticity as a unique structural parameter. To understand the consequences of income tax changes, for example, we need to be explicit about whose tax is changing.
Hans Holter, Dirk Krueger, Serhiy Stepanchuk, 20 February 2015
Since the Global Crisis, debt sustainability has received increasing attention. This column argues that the maximum sustainable debt level depends negatively on the progressivity of the tax system. The authors estimate that the US is still relatively far from the peak of its Laffer curve and from its maximally sustainable debt level. However, adopting a flat tax would raise the maximum sustainable debt from 330% to more than 350% of benchmark GDP, whereas adopting Danish-style progressivity would lower it to less than 250%.
Abigail Adams, 03 February 2015
In setting tax levels, governments around the world must predict how consumers will respond. This is a surprisingly difficult problem to solve – consumer preferences vary significantly across individuals and cannot be directly observed. This column suggests that these challenges for accurate demand prediction are best overcome using nonparametric methods, and outlines a flexible approach for recovering the distribution of consumer preferences that can be used to predict individual demand responses as required for policy analysis.
Joseph Aldy, Seamus Smyth, 14 August 2014
Increasing longevity yields large economic benefits. However, public policies do not take into account the heterogeneity in these benefits across the population. This column presents simulated experimental findings about the heterogeneity in the value of statistical life. There is heterogeneity over the life-cycle, as well as prominent ‘black-white’ and ‘female-male’ gaps in the value of life, driven by differences in the labour income across these groups. The findings suggest that one-size-fits-all policies would not correctly reflect the individual willingness to pay to reduce mortality risk.
Andrew Bernard, Andreas Moxnes, Karen-Helene Ulltveit-Moe, 15 November 2013
Discussions of international trade often focus on aggregate trade flows, but it is firms that trade, not countries. This column presents evidence from Norwegian export data showing that larger exporters have more customers and greater dispersion in customer size. Moreover, exporters with many customers tend to sell to importers with few suppliers. These stylised facts are captured by a model in which finding a buyer is costly. The model’s prediction that export responses are amplified in destinations with less buyer dispersion is confirmed in the data.
