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This seminar series extends our department's curriculum by welcoming renowned scholars and experts to engage with our faculty and students on cutting-edge research across a wide array of topics related to economics. Through conversations and stimulating presentations, our seminar series exposes students to the advanced knowledge and insights needed to navigate the complexities of today's economic landscape, and reflects and supports ÎÞÂëרÇø’s teacher-scholar model.

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FALL 2025 SEMINAR SERIES

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Andrew Simon presents: The Allocation of State Appropriations and the Productivity of Academic Departments (with Kevin Stange and Travis Triggs)

State investment in public higher education has seen a steady decline since the 1980s. With fewer resources, colleges and universities must choose how to allocate these budget cuts across academic departments. Moreover, with smaller budgets, academic departments then need to decide which inputs to reduce. We estimate the magnitude of these responses from a shift-share design that uses variation across institutions in their historical reliance on state appropriations. We find that, on average, cuts to state appropriations affect department level expenditure and inputs, including the number of tenure and tenure-track faculty. We find that these cuts are unevenly distributed across broad fields of study, with STEM and Health fields exhibiting the greatest sensitivity to fluctuations in state funding. These supply-side changes affect the production of human capital and research. Ìý


Eugen Dimant presents: Investigating Political Polarization Through a Behavioral Economist's Lens

The causes and effects of political polarization have received much attention across behavioral science and related disciplines. In this talk, I’ll present how behavioral economists can advance the knowledge using innovative methods. Drawing on a series of recent studies, I aim to offer insights into the following questions:Ìý

1. How do we navigate polarized environments, and how ‘sticky’ are the existing norms that guide our behaviors?Ìý
2. Can we develop new methods and tools to measure the existing norm-pluralism (coexistence of various social norms) and better understand how we follow and enforce norms in polarized environments?Ìý
3. How do exogenous political shocks (like the outcome of a very close 2024 U.S. presidential election) shift the perceptions of fairness in social interactions?Ìý

Jeehoon Han presents: Asset vs. Income Tests in SNAP: Impacts on Access, Targeting, and Costs

This paper examines how relaxing SNAP income and asset tests affects access, targeting, and costs. Using state variation in Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE) policies and a stacked difference-in-differences design with SIPP and SNAP QC data, we find that income expansions bring in fewer newly eligible households than asset expansions but increase take-up rates more. Newly eligible households under income expansions are more disadvantaged: they are less educated, face more hardships, and have lower homeownership. SNAP benefits for newly enrolled households are similar under both expansions, suggesting comparable program costs.Ìý
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Adrienne Lucas presents: Building opportunity: The long-run and intergenerational effects of Chilean school construction (with Patrick McEwan)

In 1965, Chile built and staffed thousands of new primary classrooms in supply-constrained communities. Using a difference-in-differences design and large census samples, we show that childhood policy exposure substantially increased the schooling and labor market outcomes of adults and closed the persistent female disadvantage in school attainment. Women’s exposure to the policy (but not men’s) had large intergenerational spillovers on their children’s on-time grade progression and completed schooling. The marginal value of public funds is 14 for the first-generation, and 15 when also valuing intergenerational spillovers.Ìý
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Michael F. Lovenheim presents: The Return to University Courses

We use transcript-level administrative data from four-year college students in Texas linked to their K-12 education records and quarterly earnings to examine the effect of courses students take outside of their major on future earnings. We first estimate course value-added, which represents the residual variance across classes with respect to how they lead to future earnings. A one standard deviation increase in course quality value added increases earnings by $576 per quarter, which is 18% of a standard deviation of earnings. The standard deviation of course value-added varies across subjects, ranging from $346 (social science) to $992 (biology and health), but value-added does not vary much by student demographic or academic background. We then estimate the average return to courses by subject relative to liberal arts, with estimates ranging from -$99 (physical science & math) to $535 (business). We also document important differences in course returns across subjects based on a student’s major. Finally, we show evidence that course grades and the level of the course are positively linked to future earnings, both overall and within each subject. Together, our results show that non-major courses vary in their quality and that post-college earnings are strongly influenced by the courses students take outside of their major.Ìý

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Mike Zhiren Wu presents: Wings of Growth: A Mindset Intervention in Rural ChinaÌý

We evaluate the impact of a six-week growth mindset intervention conducted in 18 disadvantaged middle schools in rural China. In the short term, the intervention improved students' socio-emotional skills, including strengthened growth mindset, stronger internal locus of control and moderately enhanced grit. However, we find no significant effects on academic performance or aspirations. At the six-month follow-up, the medium-term effects remained largely sustained, although weakened in size. Short-term benefits were more pronounced among male students, those with better baseline academic performance, and those who received more parenting. In the medium term, treatment effect heterogeneity persisted for baseline academic performance, weakened for parenting, and disappeared across gender.

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Arthur van Benthem presents: An Evaluation of Protected Area Policies in the European Union (with Tristan Grupp, Prakash Mishra, and Mathias Reynaert)ÌýÌý

The European Union designates 26% of its landmass as protected areas, limiting economic development for biodiversity. We use the staggered introduction of protected areas between 1985 and 2019 to study the selection of protected land and the causal effect of protection on vegetation cover and nightlights. Protection did not affect these outcomes in any meaningful way across four decades, countries, protection cohorts, or land characteristics. Specifically, policymakers tend to protect already-green, low-density areas, or opt for weaker forms of protection in densely populated regions. Our findings suggest that the EU does not protect land as a social planner would; instead, a combination of local jurisdictions' limited preferences for biodiversity gains, green-glow, and area-based protection targets can result in policies with minimal effects.Ìý
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Luis A. Lopez presents: Up in Smoke: The Impact of Wildfire Pollution on Healthcare Municipal Finance

Smoke from in-state and out-of-state wildfires is associated with higher borrowing costs in the healthcare industry, amounting to $270 million in incremental costs from 2010--2019. The effects are strongest in high-uninsurance counties, where wildfire smoke increases uncompensated care costs and reduces hospital profits. In California, wildfire prevention expenditures are lower and suppression expenditures are higher, suggesting policy is partially responsible for cross-state borrowing cost externalities. Migration sorting exacerbates the borrowing cost effects by concentrating vulnerable households in high-smoke counties. Our findings underline the importance of interstate coordination to prevent and suppress wildfires and provide guidance on cost-sharing between states. Ìý