Université de Lausanne
Ecole des HEC
Département d'économétrie et d'économie politique

SEMINAIRE BROWNBAG
Extraordinary meeting

Mercredi 11 juin 2008, 12h00
Extranef, salle 126

Arindrajit DUBE
(U.C. Berkeley, USA)

Minimum Wage Effets across State Borders: Estimates using Contiguous Counties

Abstract
Most local case studies of minimum wages do not find significant employment effects, while studies using national data find some negative effects for teenagers. We develop and apply two local estimators that compare all contiguous counties or metro areas in the U.S. that straddle a state-based minimum wage differential. The local estimators show no adverse employment effects. Moreover, we reconcile the local and national level estimates by showing that the negative elasticities in national panel models are generated by unobserved spatial heterogeneities in employment trends that are unrelated to minimum wage policies. We can also rule out other explanations for the difference between local and national level estimates, such as lagged or longterm effects of minimum wages.

Web site of the seminar (with paper online): http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/evenements-english/e-sem-all-2007-08.htm

eptembre 2007, 12h15
Internef, salle 123

Francesco FURLANETTO
(CREI, Barcelona and Norges Bank, Oslo)

Rule-of-thumb Consumers
and the Business Cycle

Abstract

In this paper we study the transmission mechanism of productivity shocks in a model with rule-of-thumb consumers. In the literature, this financial friction has been studied only with reference to fiscal shocks. As a consistency exercise we show that the presence of rule-of-thumb consumers is very helpful also in accounting for recent influential empirical evidence on productivity shocks. Rule-of-thumb agents, together with nominal and real rigidities, play an important role in explaining the negative reponse of hours and the zero reponses of output and consumption after a productivity shock.

Site web du séminaire (avec texte en ligne): http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/evenements/Brownbag2007-08.htm