Johannes Spinnewijn wins CESifo Affiliate Award

Johannes Spinnewijn has won the Distinguished CESifo Affiliate Award during this year's CESifo Annual Area Conferences.

Each year, the award is presented to a young economist for the " scientific originality, policy relevance and quality of exposition of their paper presented at the conference." in his or her specialist research area.

Johannes Spinnewijn's winning paper for the Employment and Social Protection Research Area was entitled Unemployed but Optimistic: Optimal Insurance Design with Biased Beliefs

Further information about the award can be found on the CESifo website.

EOPP: Recent Publications Gerard Padro-i-Miquel: Conflict and Deterrence under Strategic Risk

A paper by Gerard Padro-i-Miquel (joint with Sylvain Chassang) entitled 'Conflict and Deterrence under Strategic Risk' will be published in Quarterly Journal of Economics.

The authors examine the determinants of cooperation and the effectiveness of deterrence when fear is a motive for conflict. They contrast results obtained in a complete information setting to those obtained in a setting with strategic risk, where players have different information about their environment. These two strategic settings allow them to identify and distinguish the role of predatory and pre-emptive incentives as determinants of cooperation and conflict. In their model, weapons unambiguously facilitate peace under complete information. In contrast, under strategic risk, the authors show that increases in weapon stocks can have a non-monotonic effect on the sustainability of cooperation. They also show that under strategic risk, asymmetry in military strength can facilitate peace, and that anticipated peace-keeping interventions may improve incentives for peaceful behaviour.

EOPP: Recent Publications by Tim Besley, Daniel Sturm, Robin Burgess and Oriana Bandiera

The following papers, by EOPP members, will be published:

Robin Burgess, joint with Dave Donaldson (MIT): Can Openness Mitigate the Effects of Weather Shocks? Evidence from India's Famine Era, is forthcoming in the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings.

Oriana Bandiera, joint with Valentino Larcinese (LSE) and Imran Rasul (UCL): Heterogeneous Class Size Effects: New Evidence from a Panel of University Students, is forthcoming in the Economic Journal.

Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Selim Gulesci and Munshi Sulaiman, joint with Markus Goldstein (World Bank) and Imran Rasul (UCL): Participation in Adolescent Training Programs, is forthcoming in the Journal of the European Economic Association, Papers and Proceedings.

Tim Besley, Daniel Sturm and Torsten Persson (IIES): Political Competition, Policy and Growth: Theory and Evidence from the United States, is forthcoming in the Review of Economic Studies.

For further information and to read abstracts see http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/eopp/_new/publications/recent_publications.asp

Tim Besley receives the John von Neumann Award 2010

The 2010 John von Neumann Award has been given to Prof. Tim Besley for his research on political institutions by the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies at Corvinus University of Budapest. The award was established in 1995 and is presented annually to leading scholars whose influential works have had a substantial impact on the studies and intellectual activity of the students at the College.

Previous award holders include John Harsanyi (UC Berkeley), Hal Varian (University of Michigan), Janos Kornai (Harvard University and Budapest College), Jean Tirole (University of Toulouse), Oliver Williamson (UC Berkeley) Jon Elster (Columbia University), Avinash K. Dixit (Princeton University), Maurice Obstfeld (UC Berkeley), Gary S. Becker (University of Chicago), Glenn C. Loury (Brown University), Matthew Rabin (UC Berkeley), Daron Acemoglu (MIT), Kevin Murphy (University of Chicago) and Philippe Aghion (Harvard University).

Further information on Prof. Besley's research can be found on Tim Besley's website. For more information on the John von Neumann Award see the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies website.

Maitreesh Ghatak: "What crisis has taught economics", The Financial Express, 09 Jan 2010

Maitreesh Ghatak examines the legacy of Paul Samuelson, who pioneered the use of formal models in economics.

Read the full article in The Financial Express at
http://www.financialexpress.com/printer/news/565062/

Tim Besley: State Capacity, Conflict and Development

A paper by Tim Besley entitled "State Capacity, Conflict and Development" (joint with Torsten Persson) will be published in Econometrica.

In this paper, the authors point out that the absence of state capacities to raise revenue and to support markets is a key factor in explaining the persistence of weak states. They report on an on-going project to investigate the incentive to invest in such capacities. The paper sets out a simple analytical structure in which state capacities are modelled as forward looking investments by government. The approach highlights some determinants of state building including the risk of external or internal conflict, the degree of political instability, and dependence on natural resources. Throughout, the authors link these state capacity investments to patterns of development and growth.

Maitreesh Ghatak: "Buying Land and Selling Kidneys", The Financial Express, 09 & 16 Nov 2009

In two articles for the Financial Express Maitreesh Ghatak, looks at the legal and ethical limits of economic transactions by analysing the trade in human organs and finding parallels in coercive land acquisition.

Read the articles:
"Buying land and selling kidneys", published Nov 09, 2009
"Why would you sell your heart?", published Nov 16, 2009