Robin Burgess (joint with Philippe Aghion, Stephen Redding et al): ''The Unequal Effects of Liberalization: Evidence from Dismantling the License Raj"

A paper by Robin Burgess (joint with Philippe Aghion, Stephen Redding and Fabrizio Zilibotti) "The Unequal Effects of Liberalization: Evidence from Dismantling the License Raj in India," has recently been accepted for publication in the American Economic Review 2008

The authors study whether the effects on registered manufacturing output of disman- tling the License Raj - a system of central controls regulating entry and production activity in this sector - vary across Indian states with different labor market reg- ulations. The effects are found to be unequal across Indian states with different labor market regulations. In particular, following delicensing, industries located in states with pro-employer labor market institutions grew more quickly than those in pro-worker environments.

Henrik Kleven: 'Evaluation of Four Tax Reforms in the United States: Labour Supply and Welfare Effects for Mothers', Journal of Public Economics

A paper by Henrik Kleven, (joint with Nada Eissa and Claus Thustrup Kreiner) "Evaluation of Four Tax Reforms in the United States: Labour Supply and Welfare Effects for Mothers," has recently been published in the Journal of Public Economics,92, 2008, pp.795-816.

An emerging consensus is that labor force participation is more responsive to taxes and transfers than hours worked. To understand the implications of participation responses for the welfare analysis of tax reform, this paper embeds this margin of labor supply in an explicit welfare theoretic framework. The authors apply the framework to examine the welfare effects on single mothers in the United States following four tax acts passed in 1986, 1990, 1993, and 2001. They propose a simulation method combining features of fully structural microsimulation studies and simple deadweight loss calculations. Their approach accounts for the observed heterogeneity in the microdata, but is simple to implement because we do not need to specify utility functions and estimate utility parameters. They find that each of the four tax acts created substantial welfare gains, and that the gains were concentrated almost exclusively on the participation margin. Their results imply that standard approaches not modeling the participation decision can make large errors.

Gerard Padro-i-Miquel: The Control of Politicians in Divided Societies: The Politics of Fear, Review of Economic Studies, October 2007

A paper by Gerard Padró-i-Miquel, "The Control of Politicians in Divided Societies: The Politics of Fear," has recently been published in The Review of Economic Studies, October 2007

Autocrats in many developing countries have extracted enormous personal rents from power. In addition, they have imposed ineficient policies including pervasive patronage spending. The author presents a model in which the presence of ethnic identities and the absence of institutionalized succession processes allow the ruler to elicit support from a sizeable share of the population despite large reductions in welfare. The fear of falling under an equally ineficient and venal ruler that favors another group is enough to discipline supporters. The model predicts extensive use of patron- age, ethnic bias in taxation and spending patterns and unveils a new mechanism through which economic frictions translate into increased rent extraction by the leader. These predictions are consistent with the experiences of bad governance, ethnic bias, wasteful policies and kleptocracy in post-colonial Africa.

Tim Besley elected to serve as President of the European Economic Association

Tim Besley, Kuwait Professor of Economics and Political Science, has been elected to serve as President of the European Economic Association for the period 2008-2011. Serving on the EEA's Executive Committee for a total of four years, Tim will undertake the roles of Vice President in January 2008, and then President - Elect in 2009 followed by President in 2010.

Tim will be succeeding Nick Stern who will be President in 2009.

Oriana Bandiera has been awarded the IZA Young Labour Economist Award 2007

Dr Oriana Bandiera has been awarded the IZA Young Labor Economist Award (2007) during an IZA reception held at the Annual Meetings of the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) in New Orleans. The award honors Dr Bandiera along with her co-authors, Iwan Barankay (University of Warwick) and Imran Rasul (University College London), for their joint paper "Social Preferences and the Response to Incentives: Evidence from Personnel Data" (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005).

The IZA Young Labor Economist Award is presented to young researchers who have written and published an outstanding paper in labor economics. Nominations for the award are sent by IZA Research Fellows, these are then screened by the IZA Program Directors, who each propose three papers. On the basis of these proposals, the prize-winner(s) are selected.

More information on the award can be found at http://www.iza.org/ylea.

Journal Editorship: Oriana Bandiera

Starting January 2008, Oriana Bandiera will be taking up the position of Co‐Editor of BE Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy and the position of Associate Editor, Economic Journal