4 March 2020: Missing Women

Siwan Anderson
University of British Columbia

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center on collaboration with IWWAGE

Chair:
Yamini Atmavilas, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Abstract:
In developed countries, given similar conditions and care, women tend to live longer than men. By contrast, there is an extreme demographic deficit of women in many parts of the developing world. Estimates suggest that there are up to 200 million women who are “demographically” missing due to gender discrimination. This talk will explore the age at which these women are “missing”, where in the developing world they are located, which disease environments are most relevant, and cultural factors that might contribute to this alarming female deficit. It will also point to some policy changes that can help to ameliorate this extreme gender discrimination.

Date: March 4, 2020
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Auditorium,
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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13 November 2019: The Turn-of-the-Year Effect before Income Taxes or Modern Institutional Investors

Vikas Mehrotra
Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
Favoured explanations for the large and persistent turn-of-the-year effect in stock returns are tax-loss selling and institutional investor window-dressing. A new dataset of pre-CRSP NYSE daily stock-level total returns reveals a statistically significant 2.2 percent turn-of-the-year market return between 1874 and 1917, a period preceding income taxes and modern institutional investors in the U.S. The turn-of- he-year return is higher for small, growth and extreme winner and loser stocks. Our evidence implies that taxes cannot be the sole explanation for the turn-of-the-year effect. Either some form of window-dressing predates modern institutional investors, or other explanations for the anomaly must be sought.

Date: November 13, 2019
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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25 October 2019: Strategy of Conquest

Marcin Dziubinski
University of Warsaw

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
We develop a theoretical framework for the study of war and conquest. The analysis highlights the role of three factors – the technology of war, resources, and contiguity network – in shaping the dynamics of appropriation and the formation of empires. The world of many kingdoms is characterized by incessant fighting. After an initial phase of uncertain and gradual growth, the expansion of the winning kingdom speeds up, and it grows rapidly through contiguous expansion. The size of the empire is limited by the connectivity of the network. These dynamics are consistent with the rise of the First Chinese Empire.

Date: October 25, 2019
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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27 September 2019: Women's labor force participation and household technology adoption

Tarun Jain
IIM Ahmedabad

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
We examine how women's employment leads to household technology adoption in the context of mid-century United States. We posit a non-monotonic relationship between women's education and household technology adoption, with middle education households purchasing appliances and high education households hiring domestic workers. Using WWII factories and draft rates as instruments for female labor demand, we find that a standard deviation increase in female labor force participation increases washing machine ownership by 0.413 standard deviations. Substitution of employed domestic labor with appliances is an important channel.

Date: September 27, 2019
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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25 September 2019: Migrants and Firms: Evidence from China

Clément Imbert
University of Warwick

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
How does rural-urban migration shape urban production in developing countries? We use longitudinal data on Chinese manufacturing firms between 2001 and 2006, and exploit exogenous variation in rural-urban migration induced by agricultural price shocks for identification. We find that, when immigration increases, manufacturing production becomes more labor-intensive in the short run. In the longer run, firms innovate less, move away from capital-intensive technologies, and adopt final products that use low-skilled labor more intensively. We develop a model with endogenous technological choice, which rationalizes these findings, and we estimate the effect of migration on factor productivity and factor allocation across firms.

Date: September 25, 2019
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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9 August 2019: Overconfident Directors, CEO compensation and turnover

Jaideep Chowdhury
James Madison University, USA

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
In this paper, we examine the impact of overconfident directors on the board on CEO compensation, turnover and the firm performance. We find that overconfident boards reward the CEOs with higher option based and equity-based compensation, and these CEOs’ remuneration exhibit higher pay-performance sensitivity (i.e., delta). We utilize two natural experiments, namely, SOX and FAS123R, and establish a causal relationship between overconfident boards and option and equity-based compensation of the CEO. There is empirical evidence about how overconfident CEOs are rewarded with higher option and equity intensive compensation. We establish another channel through which the CEOs are offered higher equity and option intensive compensation. This channel is the channel of overconfident directors. Even if the CEOs are not themselves overconfident, they may still be offered higher option and equity intensive compensation if the directors are overconfident about the future prospects of the firms. We report that overconfident boards are less likely to remove the CEOs. More importantly, these firms exhibit lower turnover sensitivity to stock return performance. Lastly, we provide evidence that firms with overconfident directors on the board tend to perform better as measured by the operating profits, ROA and the Tobin’s Q. To the best of our knowledge, our paper is the first that develops a measure of board of directors’ overconfidence using the BoardEx dataset.

Date: August 9, 2019
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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8 August 2019: Does Inflation Targeting Anchor Inflation Expectations? Evidence from India

Shekhar Tomar
Indian school of Business (ISB), Hyderabad

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
We use a novel survey data on inflation expectations of households to evaluate the role of inflation targeting (IT) regime in achieving anchored inflation expectations. This data is available both before and after the adoption of IT by India in 2015 and allows comparison of inflation expectations between the two periods. We find evidence for anchored inflation expectations in every component of consumer price inflation, headline, food and non-food, only during the IT period. More importantly, we find a muted spillover from food inflation to both food and non-food inflation expectations in this period. The lack of spillover from food inflation, which remained equally volatile in both periods, explains the anchored expectations and improved inflation performance under the IT regime.

Date: August 8, 2019
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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7 August 2019: Corruption and stock price volatility: Firm-level evidence

Chandan Kumar Jha
Le Moyne College, USA

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
This paper assesses the effects of corruption on firm-level equity price volatility using a sample of over 3,000 firms from 31 countries around the world over the period of 2003–2014. We find that corruption, constructed using the responses from the World Bank Enterprise Survey to match the firm’s size, industry, location, and country, is positively associated with equity price volatility. We further find that equity price volatility decreases with the asset size in the presence of corruption, indicating that smaller firms are disproportionately affected by corruption. We also find evidence of a positive association between corruption measured at the country level and stock price volatility, however, the effect of country-level corruption is found to be worse for firms with larger asset sizes.

Date: August 7, 2019
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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15 July 2019: Incentivizing Effort in Peer Grading

Anujit Chakraborty
UC Davis

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) pose a great challenge for grading the answer- scripts at a high accuracy. Peer grading is often viewed as a scalable solution to this challenge, which largely depends on the altruism of the peer graders. In this paper, we introduce a mechanism, TRUPEQA, that (a) uses a small, constant number of instructor-graded answer scripts to quantitatively measure the accuracies of the peer graders and corrects the scores accordingly, (b) penalizes underperforming, and (c) vastly reduces the total cost of arriving at the true grades. Our human subject experiments show that our mechanism improves the grading quality over the mechanisms currently used in standard MOOCs.

Date: July 15, 2019
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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30 April 2019: Are Transparency and Accountability Enough? Open Corruption and Why it Exists

Ajay Shenoy
University of California, Santa Cruz

Organised by
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi Center

Abstract:
The global movement against corruption has long assumed its demise lay in transparency and accountability. We test this assumption by measuring whether highly accountable Indian village council presidents favor their own households while making observable allocations of public works jobs. We link millions of public works records to election outcomes. We find that winners of close elections receive 3 times as many days of labor as losers, earning excess wages equaling two-thirds of the median president’s salary. Using an original survey of council presidents we find suggestive evidence that corruption is “performance pay” used to attract talented candidates into office.

Date: April 30, 2019
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

Location:

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27 March 2019: Consequences of son preference in India

Seema Jayachandran
Northwestern University

Organised by
ISI (Indian Statistical Institute) Delhi Center, in collaboration with IWWAGE at IFMR (Institute for Financial Management and Research)

Chair:
Madhuri Mukherjee, IWWAGE (Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy)

Abstract:
This talk will provide an overview of the links between economic factors and gender inequality, as well as the role of cultural norms in perpetuating gender gaps. Prof. Jayachandran will then discuss the ways in which gender inequality in India is more severe than in most other societies. One such way is the pronounced favoritism towards sons. She will discuss implications of son preference and some potential solutions aimed at expanding opportunities for women and girls.

Date: March 27, 2019
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Room, Administration Block,
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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15 February 2019: Out-of-merit costs and blackouts: Evidence from the Indian electricity market

Louis Preonas
University of Chicago

Abstract:
In the United States, demand for electricity among utilities in the wholesale spot market is assumed to be perfectly inelastic. Consumers therefore face power outages only as a result of infrastructure failure – never because a utility does not purchase enough electricity to satisfy demand. This also implies that inefficiencies on the generation side of the market which raise price do not impact quantity consumed by retail customers. In this paper, we provide evidence that utilities participating in the Indian wholesale market are extremely price elastic: as prices rise, they purchase less power on the wholesale market, meaning that load shedding increases. Using data on plant-specific marginal costs, we document substantial deviations from first-best electricity generation, half of which can be explained by plant outages. These inefficiencies increase the wholesale price, and therefore contribute substantially to rampant blackouts.

Date: February 15, 2019
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room 2,
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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18 October 2018: Incentives for Corporate Social Responsibility in India: Mandate, Peer Pressure or a Crowding-Out Effect

Madhu Khanna
UIUC

Abstract:
The Companies Act of 2013 went into effect in India on April 1, 2014 making it the first law in the world to mandate that companies commit 2% of their profits on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. However, the Act did not impose penalties on firms that failed to do so, requiring them only to disclose the reasons for non-compliance publically. We use panel data for 39,736 firms with a difference-in- difference model to estimate the average treatment effect of the Act on firms ‘eligible’ for compliance with the Act and in particular to investigate the role of peer pressure in influencing a firm’s response to the Act in 2015 and 2016. We also apply the Regression Discontinuity Design method to estimate the average effect of treatment assignment for units near the threshold of eligibility for compliance with the Act. We find that the Act led to a statistically significant increase in the likelihood of reporting of CSR expenditures and in the level of CSR expenditures by eligible firms and this increase was not accompanied by crowding out of other charitable donations by firms. The effect of the Act was also positive and statistically significant on firms at the threshold of criteria for compliance with the Act. In addition to the direct effect of the Act on CSR expenditures, we find strong evidence of peer pressure in motivating CSR by firms and of these peer pressures being stronger on eligible firms.

Date: October 18, 2018
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room 2,
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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8 December 2017: Mahalanobis and Fisher: Mathematical Statistics as a Global Enterprise

Stephen Stigler
University of Chicago, U.S.A.

Abstract:
Between 1930 and 1950, P. C. Mahalanobis played a crucial role in the global development of mathematical statistics and its practical application. The talk will focus particularly on the story of his relationship with Ronald A. Fisher over this period.

Date: December 8, 2017
Time: 03:00 P.M.

Venue:
Auditorium,
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

Note:
For registration please click at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OnE3YDD3c4uCNBSGlNbhYFxXbd4p4ru3Bc5sPgJJF5g/viewform?edit_requested=true

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11 October 2017: How to fit a jump diffusion model to return prices?

Francine Diener
Laboratoire Jean Dieudonné, Nice, France

Abstract:
In 1976, R. C. Merton extended the classical (continuous) Black-Scholes model for return prices to models known as jump diffusion models for which the return prices have large jumps intersperced with small continuous movements. Useful, for example, for commodity prices, especially when they are not very liquid, their main disad vantage is that it is not easy to calibrate the parameters of the model to existing data. Indeed introduction of jumps adds three extra parameters, λ, m and s to the original Black-Scholes ones, μ and σ.

In this talk, we introduce a new method to estimate the three jump-parameters and show how to do on an example of rubber return prices on the Thai market.

Date: October 11, 2017
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall,
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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10 October 2017: Microcredit: stochastic et statistical approaches for understanding and rating

Marc Diener
Laboratoire Jean Dieudonné, Nice, France

Abstract:
Microcredit has been invented in the Indian subcontinent and is still getting more and more popular, even if facing a lot of critisism. I will explain how, in Nice, we understand this still unusual financial activity and the kind of elementary mathematical research we perform. We will begin with an example given by M. Yunus that shows that the expected interest rate in this example is 3% less than the admitted 20%. Then we will come up with a Markov chain model directly inspired by G. Tedeschi that can explain why a borrower prefers to pay what she owes. O. Khodr could then adress the question of modelling joint-lending. We will improve this model into Nahla Dhib’s model for improving the microcredit activity into a path to Inclusion (into the regular banking system). We will also present the result of P. Mauk’s research on Ahlin and Townsend’s data from Thailand on selecting parsimoniously variables for estimating the probability of default of a borrower that can’t produce a credit-history. If time allows we will describe Tedeschi’s statistical approach of impact assessment

Date: October 10, 2017
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Conference Hall,
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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7 September 2017: Mutual Fund Flows and Funds Strategic Behavior When Investors Are Inattentive

Apoorva Javadekar
CAFRAL

Abstract:
The paper builds on a simple yet novel idea that the way investors react to the recent mutual fund performance depends largely upon the long-term historical performance of that fund. In particular, I find that investors react more actively to the funds recent performance in case of the funds with good performance history. I show that these effects are strongest for funds which are likely to attract attentive investors such as funds having more visibility or funds with high entry loads. Next, I show that investors who are less responsive to the fund performance are also less responsive to the changes in fund fees which suggest that \textit{investor inattention} rather than any other rational decision-making process that explains the sluggish capital flows. I build a model which shows how the concentration of attentive investors within fund rise with the historical performance which feeds into more reactive capital flows. I provide evidence that mutual funds are aware of the varying degree of investor responsiveness and they adjust their pricing and portfolio risk to maximize the revenue.

Date: September 7, 2017
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room No. 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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5 May 2017: The Business of Religion and Caste in India

Manaswini Bhalla
IIM Bangalore

Abstract:
We show that boards of directors of large Indian firms are characterized by high levels of cultural proximity, with members on a board belonging overwhelmingly to the same religion or caste. Using a unique database of self-reported religions and caste from matrimonial websites, we develop a novel methodology to proba- bilistically map individuals last names to religions and castes. We also develop a new homophily index to measure cultural proximity of board members. Results show few signs of increase in cultural diversity on boards during 1999-2012. Modest heterogeneity exists across firms, sectors, and states, however. Better performing firms have more diverse boards. Board diversity also increased in sectors and states that witnessed the largest increases in output. Rigorous instrument variable analysis demonstrates that lack of diversity on boards is causally associated with lower firm performance.

Date: May 5, 2017
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Class Room No. 14
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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28 April 2017: Corruption in the Supreme Court of India

Madhav S Aney
Singapore Management University

Abstract:
We investigate whether judicial decisions are affected by career concerns of judges by analysing two questions: Do judges respond to pandering incentives by ruling in favour of the government in the hope of receiving jobs after retiring from the Court? Does the government actually reward judges who ruled in its favour with prestigious jobs? To answer these questions we construct a dataset of all Supreme Court of India cases involving the government from 1999 till 2014, with an indicator for whether the decision was in its favour or not. We find that pandering incentives have a causal effect on judicial decision-making. The exposure of a judge to pandering incentives in a case is jointly determined by 1) whether the case is salient (exogenously determined by a system of random allocation of cases) and 2) whether the judge retires with enough time left in a governments term to be rewarded with a prestigious job (date of retirement is exogenously determined by law to be their 65th birthday). We find that pandering occurs through through the more active channel of writing favourable judgements rather than passively being on a bench that decides a case in favour of the government. Furthermore, we find that deciding in favour of the government is positively associated with both the likelihood and the speed with which judges are appointed to prestigious post-Supreme Court jobs. These findings suggest the presence of corruption in the form government influence over judicial decision-making that seriously undermines judicial independence.

Date: April 28, 2017
Time: 11:30 A.M.

Venue:
Class Room No. 14
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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7 March 2017: Financing Micro and Small firms during the Great Recession

Megha Patnaik
Stanford University

Abstract:
I examine the role of bank lending frictions and the housing-collateral lending channel for small business credit in the US during the Great Recession. I use a new dataset from a leading online accounting software with millions of financial transactions, links to banks, and owner and firm addresses for small businesses. Using the failure of banks and movements in house prices in the business owners home ZIP code during this period as shocks to credit supply, I find that bank failures are associated with declines in credit for small firms (small businesses with 10 to 250 employees) but not micro firms (those with 2 to 10 employees). In contrast, movements in house prices at the owners location are positively associated with credit for micro firms but not small firms. The results suggest differences within small businesses in the channels used to overcome asymmetric information. Micro firms may depend more on personal housing collateral and small firms on lending relationships, consistent with the associated costs to lenders.

Date: March 7, 2017
Time: 03:30 P.M.

Venue:
Seminar Room No. 2
Indian Statistical Institute Delhi Centre,
7, S. J. S. Sansanwal Marg,
New Delhi-110016 (INDIA)

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