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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 Villanova’s teacher-scholar model.

FALL 2024 SEMINAR SERIES

Sabrin Beg presents: Learning Beyond School for Adolescent Girls (with Anne Fitzpatrick and Adrienne M. Lucas)

Out of school adolescent girls have almost no opportunities to improve their numeracy and literacy. Based on a 140 village randomized controlled trial across two districts in Punjab, Pakistan we find that an out of school bootcamp increased literacy and numeracy among adolescent girls who had either never attended or dropped out of school. The program increased girls decision making autonomy and degree of socalization and household and village leaders’ beliefs about the correct role for women. It decreased girs’ beliefs in gender equality and their interest in additional schooling.
 

Mariya Brussevich presents: "Bank Financing of Global Supply Chains" (with Laura Alfaro (Harvard Business School), Camelia Minoiu (Atlanta Fed), Andrea Presbitero (IMF))

We study the relationship between financial frictions and trade fixed costs by exploiting the reallocation of global supply chains induced by the 2018-2019 trade tensions between the U.S. and China. We match two administrative datasets—shipment-level import data with the U.S. credit register—to obtain comprehensive information on importer-supplier relations at the firm level and credit relationships at the bank-firm level. Despite the stickiness of trade-supplier relations, We document firm-level evidence of supply chain reallocation by U.S. importers in response to the 2018-2019 tariffs. Firms importing tariff-hit products from China increased credit demand: they increased credit line utilization, took out new loans, and obtained more credit at higher rates. Furthermore, firms with multiple banking relationships or borrowing from specialized banks received credit on relatively advantageous terms and were better able to find new suppliers and increase their import shares outside China. Our results highlight the importance of banking relationships for firms facing search costs related to trade disruptions and for supply chain resilience.
 

Ashley Orr presents: "Job Search from a Distance: Employers Prefer Local Applicants"

Job posting websites have expanded awareness of employment opportunities beyond a worker's location of origin, yet there is persistent heterogeneity in unemployment rates and labor earnings across labor markets in the US. Do employers disregard far applicants? How difficult is job search at a distance in the USA? Using a resume audit methodology, this pre-registered experiment compares the callback rates and likelihood of receiving an interview invitation for fictitious job candidates who apply to local jobs, jobs that are non-local but commutable, and jobs that would require migration. Sending nearly 10,000 resumes to low and middle income jobs, from candidates originating in 36 randomly selected US cities, and applying across the entire USA- I find that candidates that would have to move to accept the job are contacted 3.5 percentage points (or 23%) less and invited to interview 4.2 pp (or 47%) less relative to close candidates. Middle distance/longer commute candidates have a marginally longer duration to contact and are invited to interview 1.5 pp (or 17%) less. While previous research notes that workers may prefer to apply to local jobs (Marinescu and Rathelot, 2018), this research suggests that employers also prefer local applicants. This may be a significant structural barrier for workers and households who find job search at a distance necessary.
 

Stefan Avdjiev presents: New spare tires: local currency credit as a global shock absorber (with John Burger and Bruan Hardy)

It is well-known that dollar credit to emerging market (EM) corporates has expanded dramatically in the past two decades. However, the concurrent expansion of local currency credit, facilitated by more developed domestic financial systems, has been less recognized. This paper first uses data on EM corporates' borrowing through bonds and syndicated loans to show the considerable rise of their local currency debt. It then utilizes comprehensive firm-level data to document that EM corporates' local currency borrowing can offset shocks to their dollar debt, and how this varies across firms and countries. A broad dollar appreciation is associated with a decline in credit to ''local'' firms (smaller, non-exporting, with low profitability) but has no significant impact on ''global'' firms (larger, exporting, highly profitable). Firms in the mid-range (of these dimensions) see lower dollar debt in response to a stronger dollar, but replace it with local currency debt, thus offsetting the shock.
 

Zain Chaudhry presents: Overcoming Intersectarian Divisions through Contact and Leadership: Evidence from a Field Experiment

In the developing world, significant inter-sectarian divisions exist that remain largely unexplored in contrast to ethnic and racial divisions. We run a field experiment with 302 worshipers in 24 mosques in Pakistan to overcome divisions between Shias (the minority sect) and Sunnis (the majority sect) - the two major sectarian groups within Islam. In the first treatment arm, we send volunteer Sunni worshipers to pray in Shia mosques, exploiting the fact that each sect prays in a visibly different way. In the second treatment arm, the leader of the Sunni mosque delivers a religious message in support of intersectarian harmony. In the third treatment arm, we offer both treatments. All treatments are implemented for 12 consecutive days. We find that the combined treatment (but not the stand-alone treatments) reduces prejudice: more Sunni worshipers choose to hire a Shia plumber and purchase books about Shias. We show that the reduction in prejudice is driven by preferences, not beliefs, regarding Shias: post-treatment Sunnis perceive Shias as being more peaceful and reasonable, but our treatment does not change their knowledge about Shias, but do not know more about them.
 

Helene Purcell presents "Too Hot to Think: How temperature and other environmental factors affect cognitive assessment in low-income settings"

As populations age and the prevalence of dementia and other cognitive impairments rise, accurate measurement of cognition through household surveys becomes increasingly vital. While many standardized methods exist for assessing cognition, the influence of environmental factors on the reliability of these assessments is not well understood, particularly in low-income settings where data is often collected in locations without temperature control. This study leverages a decade of longitudinal household survey data from Malawi, spanning from 2012 to 2022, to examine how temperature, rainfall, and the timing of surveys affect cognitive test scores. By integrating meteorological data with survey timing information, we evaluate the extent to which environmental conditions influence the validity and reliability of cognitive assessments. The aim of the paper is to underscore the need to consider environmental context when designing and interpreting cognitive assessments in low-income settings, ensuring more accurate and reliable data collection for informing public health and policy interventions.

Sebastian Anti presents "The impact of improved cookstoves on vegetation cover in Rwanda"

Clean cookstoves are stoves that burn fuel more efficiently and release less particulate matter into the air than traditional stoves used in many households in low-income countries. For these reasons, development agencies have prioritized distributing them over the past decade. Advocates of clean cookstoves make two main claims about their benefits: (1) they result in improved health for households, and (2) they will lead to less deforestation because the stoves do not need as much biomass for fuel as traditional cooking methods. While the former claim has support from a large body of well-designed empirical studies, the latter has received no attention from researchers and the contribution of fuelwood collection to deforestation remains unclear. We examine the effects of a clean cookstove distribution program in Rwanda, Tubeho Neza, from 2014 to present on forest cover and changes in the landscape using remote sensing data from the MODIS and Landsat satellites, within a multiperiod difference-in-differences empirical strategy. Preliminary results using the MODIS data suggest the improved cookstove program has led to meaningful forest recovery in Rwanda starting the fifth year after receipt of the stoves.