Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics

Summer 2012 Workshop

Call for Papers

Application Procedure

The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE) is organizing an eight-session conference on economic theory and calling for applications. There is a limited budget to help with travel costs. Although some of the presentations will be by invited speakers, we also we encourage relevant submissions by anybody else with valuable contributions to the themes listed below. Junior faculty and scholars (defined as first or second year full-time faculty) as well as postdoctoral scholars and advanced graduate students will be given some priority, but there should be openings for more senior faculty as well.

To apply, please send an email with your paper attached as a PDF file (along with the title of the session that you want to join) to Rafal Klopotowski: rafal54 @stanford.edu

The deadline for applications:

Segments 1 and 2 is March 1.

Segments 3 is April 1.

Segment 4, 5 June 1.

Segment 6 is July 1.

Sessions' Descriptions:

Segment 1: Institutions and Development

June 21 and 22, 2012.

Organized by Frederico Finan and Jeremy Magruder, both University of California, Berkeley, and Giacomo De Giorgi, Pascaline Dupas and Aprajit Mahajan, all Stanford University.

Institutions, whether political, financial or social, have a profound impact on the lives of the poor. The purpose of this segment is to bring together researchers working on theoretical and empirical analyses of the effects of institutions (both formal and informal) on development.

Segment 2: Theory-Based Micro-Economic Modeling

July 9, 10 and 11, 2012.

Organized by Frank Wolak, Stanford University and Robert Porter, Northwestern University.

A unifying feature of the papers for this session are that they each contain a theoretical model of a microeconomic interaction and an empirical implementation of this theoretical model or a descriptive empirical analysis of the implications of this model using actual data.  Popular topics in previous years were the empirical implementation of models of auction market equilibrium and discrete choice models of differentiated product demand and oligopoly equilibrium.  Another population topic is dynamic models of single-agent behavior and strategic economic interaction.   Submissions from all fields of empirical microeconomics are encouraged.

Segment 3: Innovation in Economic History

August 2, 3 and 4, 2012.

Organized by Rick Hornbeck, Harvard University; and Ran Abramitzky, Avner Greif, Petra Moser and Gavin Wright, all Stanford University.

All submitted papers in economic history will be considered, but in 2012 we will give special attention to research on innovation, understood in a broad sense to include not only new technologies, but new organizational forms and ways of doing business.  These topics are intrinsically historical.  Economists are now striving to understand the implications of changing global economic geography for the pace and direction of new technologies.  We believe the first step in this process should be a better understanding of the historical record of how the advanced countries of the world succeeded in generating and adopting innovations with major long-run economic payoffs.  Although our parent discipline is economics, we hope to attract an interdisciplinary group including historians of technology, legal scholars and policy experts, to present papers and exchange ideas on approaches to these issues.

Segment 4: Sovereign Debt and Capital Flows

September 7 and 8, 2012.

Organized by Mark Aguiar, Prinveton University; Cristina Arellano, Federal Reserve bank of Minneapolis and Manuel Amador and Doireann Fitzgerald, both Stanford University.

This SITE segment will bring together economists working  on theoretical, empirical and quantitative models of sovereign debt and capital flows. We are particularly interested in (but not restricted to) papers that study (i) the interactions between sovereign borrowing and private borrowing, (ii) the ex-post bargaining between creditors and sovereign borrowers, (iii) the interactions between monetary and fiscal policy with relation to sovereign borrowing, (iv) capital flows, government policy, current account reversals, and (v) the political economy considerations that arise within a currency union.

Segment 5: Experimental Economics

September 14, 15 and 16, 2012.

Organized by Judd Kesler, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Lise Vesterlund, University of Pittsburgh; and Muriel Niederle and Charles Sprenger, both Stanford University.

This session is dedicated to advances in experimental economics combining laboratory and field-experimental methodologies with theoretical and psychological insights on decision-making, strategic interaction and policy. We invite papers in lab experiments, field experiments and their combination that test theory, demonstrate the importance of psychological phenomena, and explore social and policy issues.

Segment 6: Psychology and Economics, 10.0

September 28, 29 and 30, 2012.

Organized by Vincent Crawford, University of Oxford and University of California, San Diego; David Laibson, Harvard University; Ulrike Malmendier, University of California, Berkeley and B. Douglas Bernheim, Stanford University, Economics Department.

This workshop will focus on evidence of and explanations for non-standard choice patterns, as well as the positive and normative implications of those patterns for important economic choices such as spending, saving, labor supply, and investment.  We encourage submissions that build upon insights from other disciplines, such as psychology and neuroscience.  Theoretical, empirical, and experimental submissions are all welcome.