Publications

Abstract We study candidates' position adjustments in response to information about voters' preferences. Repositioning allows candidates to move closer to the median voter, but it incurs financial and electoral costs. In a subgame-perfect equilibrium, candidates diverge from the center ex ante if the costs of adjustment are sufficiently large. This allows them to increase the chances of a costless victory when the information is strongly in their favor. Our theory highlights a dynamic of moderation during the campaign stage in competitive elections, as well as a prominent role for minor adjustments made preemptively by the favored candidate. JEL Classification: C72, D72, D82 Model. We enrich the Downs-Hotelling framework by introducing an information shock, creating a two-stage game. The shock reveals the location of the median voter. This captures the idea that voters' aggregate preferences fluctuate over time and that their current leanings are disclosed during the electoral cam-This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Keywords Re-positioning, Spatial voting, Imperfect information, Flip-flop
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Abstract Background: Breast cancer and its treatment may contribute to an increased risk of unemployment, influenced by both disease-related factors and socioeconomic determinant. Few longitudinal studies have examined employment outcomes among women diagnosed with cancer. This retrospective study investigated long-term employment among breast cancer survivors (BCS) and assessed disease specific and socioeconomic factors associated with employment. Design and methods: Registry-based data included working age BCS in Norway 2004–2008 alive at 6 years follow-up ( N = 3560). The employment status on each BCS was compared to two matched non-cancer controls ( N = 7081) by means of logistic regression analyses with marginal effects. Separate analyses by employment status at the time of diagnosis were conducted. Results: Among BCS employed at diagnosis, 73.7%, 71.5% and 71.8% of BCS were in employment at 1, 2 and 6 years after diagnosis, respectively. BCS employed at diagnosis had significantly lower probability of being employed at all follow-up time points, compared to controls. BCS outside employment at the time of diagnosis experienced lower probability of employment compared to controls. BCS with secondary or higher education had higher probability of employment compared to BCS with basic education, and BCS living in families with children were more likely to enter employment during follow-up compared to BCS without children. Conclusions: BCS employed at diagnosis had a subsequent risk of unemployment, and BCS not employed at diagnosis had lower probability of entering employment. Additional risk factors are high age, low education, and being single without children. Significance for public health: The risk of unemployment after a breast cancer diagnosis was increased. Job loss is costly economically and socially, both for individuals and for society. Early focus on employment particularly among employees with low education and with little family support may alleviate this problem.
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Abstract Climate change is a global phenomenon that has a significant impact on commodity prices. This paper analyzes the impact of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on global commodity prices, using a Global Factor Local Projections (GFALP) model. Firstly, we demonstrate that unanticipated ENSO movements contribute to commodity price volatility asymmetrically during El Niño and La Niña periods. Secondly, climate change might disrupt ENSO patterns. We compare the current situation with potential climate change outcomes to evaluate its impact on commodity price stability. We compute an index measuring commodity price exposure to these disruptions. We demonstrate that in most cases, these shifts exacerbate commodity price volatility. Finally, we explore several avenues to explain the observed heterogeneity in the exposure of commodity prices to the evolution of ENSO that could result from climate change, and we highlight the crucial role of international commodity markets in adapting to climate change.
Keywords Climate change, Agriculture, Energy, Commodity Price, ENSO
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Abstract We test for cheap talk between husbands and wives in farm households. In a labin-the-field experiment, husbands allocate inputs between their own plot and their wife's higher-return plot. We vary how returns on the wife's plot are communicated. Across all treatments, husbands underinvest in their wife's land. We model this with limited enforcement of marital agreements and derive additional predictions. Allocative inefficiencies are greater when women hold private information, especially in households with low resource sharing under full information. Communication only partly offsets inefficiencies, and only when information is verifiable ex post.
Keywords Household behavior, Lab-in-the-field experiment, Cheap talk, Asymmetric information
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Abstract This paper studies the main determinants of bilateral financial flows in the euro area to achieve sustainable and fair financing opportunities. We revisit the modern theory of the optimal currency area considering the impact of heterogeneity in inequality measures, within and across countries, on cross border financial flows. To do so, we introduce financial and social fragmentation in gravity models of European capital flows. We use data from 19 Eurozone countries from 2000 to 2021 and show how fragmentation impacts capital flows, namely foreign direct investment, cross-border loans as well as portfolios, equity and bond flows. Since capital is, in principle, free to flow in the Eurozone, our analysis directly identifies the roles of potential sources of fragmentation: social inequalities, lack of market openness, and domestic regulations such as macroprudential controls. Overall, our results show that financial integration in Europe entails more capital flows of any type while social fragmentation across European countries is detrimental to capital flows, no matter which type. This is strong evidence of the importance of financial and social fragmentation in the Eurozone on the distribution of capital.
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Abstract While men and women make joint decisions about fertility, women give birth and are more likely to learn about a significant cost of childbearing-maternal health risk. Within couples in Zambia, men have systematically lower awareness of maternal risk factors and a higher desire for children than their wives. We develop a model in which information asymmetries between partners regarding maternal health risk can persist in equilibrium as the result of strategic incentives and can generate disagreement over fertility that cannot be resolved with transfers. To study the effect of communication barriers on fertility, we design an experiment that varies whether the husband or the wife receives information about maternal health risk. One year after the intervention, directly treated men exhibit significant gains in knowledge, report lower demand for children, and communicate this information to their wives, who also update their beliefs. Pregnancy falls significantly, while transfers remain unchanged relative to the control group. Meanwhile, when women are treated directly, they update their own beliefs, but fail to transmit the information to their husband, who do not change their demand for children. While pregnancy also falls among these couples, the decline is accompanied by a significant reduction in transfers and support from husband to the wife. When childbearing costs, particularly those borne by one party, cannot be easily communicated within the household, targeting information can help overcome asymmetries and improve household decision-making.
Keywords Household decision-making, Fertility, Communication
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Abstract Research on cognitive effort has produced a vast scientific literature. In this paper, we propose a roadmap to describe key developments over the past 70 years. We highlight a shift from a research landscape dominated by questioning "What happens when we engage in effort?"to "Why we engage in effort?" The first question generates a research framework that we call the arousal framework, where effort is seen as a state of increased physiological activation. Research within this framework has flourished following the discovery of the ascending reticular activating system and has focused on the role of locus coeruleusnoradrenargic pathway in modulating the intensity of cognitive control. The second question has been central to research driven by neuroeconomics and advances in neuroimaging and computational neuroscience, leading to what we call the valence framework. In this perspective, it is assumed that effort is inherently aversive, and that individuals engage in effort only if the benefits outweigh the costs. Within this framework, research seeks the neural correlates of expected value of cognitive control, with a spotlight on basal gangliaprefrontal dopaminergic pathways. We describe exemplar work pertaining to each framework, highlighting their key epistemological features. We argue that future research on cognitive effort should aim to understand the complementarity and interactive nature of valence and arousal, integrating the two questions of "what happens" and "why". We also argue that understanding effort requires looking more specifically into how individuals execute cognitively demanding tasks, that is which solution strategies they adopt.
Keywords Cognitive effort, Attention, Arousal, Neuroeconomics, Valence, Neuroergonomics
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Abstract Drift and volatility are two mainsprings of asset price dynamics. While volatilities have been studied extensively in the literature, drifts are commonly believed to be impossible to estimate and largely ignored in the literature. This paper shows how to detect drift using realized autocovariance implemented on high-frequency data. We use a theoretical treatment in which the classical model for the efficient price, an Itō semimartingale possibly contaminated by microstructure noise, is enriched with drift and volatility explosions. Our theory advocates a novel decomposition for realized variance into a drift and a volatility component, which leads to significant improvements in volatility forecasting.
Keywords Volatility Forecasting, Serial Covariance, High-frequency Data, Drift
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Abstract The Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) model is a well-established local technique for analyzing spatial heterogeneity and temporal dependence in georeferenced data. It is recognized for its ability to represent real-world settings. In this study, we expand upon the GTWR model by incorporating spatio-temporal noise that is colored in space and fractional in time. Under this formulation, we derive the Weighted Least Squares (WLS) estimator and formally establish its convergence rate. To evaluate the performance of the WLS estimator, we implemented a simulation study with five defined scenarios. The simulation results indicate that the model residuals exhibit small variations around zero, which suggests the accuracy of the estimator. Finally, we applied the estimator to real data on the incidence of respiratory diseases. Analyzing the residuals in this empirical application allows us to evaluate the ability of the model to capture the spatio-temporal structure of the data.
Keywords Consistency, Fractional Colored Noise, Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression
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Abstract Not all barrels of oil are created equal: their extraction varies in both private cost and carbon intensity. Leveraging a comprehensive micro-dataset on world oil fields, alongside detailed estimates of carbon intensities and private extraction costs, this study quantifies the additional emissions and costs from having extracted the “wrong” deposits. We do so by comparing historical deposit-level supplies to counterfactuals that factor in pollution costs, while keeping annual global consumption unchanged. Between 1992 and 2018, carbon misallocation amounted to at least 11.00 gigatons of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2eq), incurring an environmental cost evaluated at $2.2 trillion (US$ 2018). This translates into a significant supply-side ecological debt for major producers of high-carbon oil. Looking forward, we estimate the gains from making deposit-level extraction socially optimal at about 9.30 GtCO2eq, valued at $1.9 trillion, along a future aggregate demand pathway coherent with the objective of net-zero emissions in 2050, and document unequal reserve stranding across oil nations.
Keywords Misallocation, Stranded assets, Carbon mitigation, Oil
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