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Center for Public Policy Events

The Hobby School of Public Affairs invites you to attend the Center for Public Policy speaker events.

 

Upcoming Speakers

 

Hobby School of Public Affairs

Center for Public Policy Speaker Series

juan-dubra.pngJuan Dubra, PhD., Professor of Economics, Universidad de Montevideo.

Date: Tuesday, April 2, 2024 

Time: 4:00pm

Location: BL-213

Paper title: Incentives and Burnout: Dynamic Compensation Design With Effort Cost Spillover

Abstract: Employee burnout has long plagued firms and salespeople are particularly susceptible. The prevalence of burnout indicates that work-related effort is not only costly in the present but has carryover effects into the future. The single-period principal-agent model commonly used to study sales force compensation design cannot fully account for this, as it effectively treats periods as independent. We incorporate ‘effort cost spillovers’ in a dynamic, two-period principal-agent model, with the salesperson’s effort cost in the second period increasing in both her second-period and first-period efforts. We use this model to explore optimal compensation design and to consider the connection between incentives and burnout. If the firm and salesperson are forward-looking, we find that the firm can achieve its first-best outcome by committing to a contract for both periods in advance. Without commitment, the first-best remains achievable when effort spillovers are sufficiently small. Surprisingly, when the first-best is not achievable, the firm’s equilibrium strategy may be to induce the salesperson to burn out in the first period (working so hard that she rejects any second-period contract that the firm would offer). This holds even when the salesperson cannot be replaced in the second period and the first-best outcome requires her to work in both periods.

 

Hobby School of Public Affairs
Center for Public Policy Speaker Series

Date: Friday, April 12, 2024 

Time: 11:00am

Location: TBD

Paper title: The Gender Digital Divide and Gender Gaps in Collective Action.

Paper Authors: Tiffany D. Barnes, Emily Rains, Jakana Thomas, and Jingwen Wu

Paper abstract: Existing research finds both that women are less likely to protest than men and cellphone access increases protest participation. Yet, no work asks whether gulfs in mobile ownership between men and women can, in part, explain protest turnout gaps. Our research examines this relationship, showing that the growing gender digital divide in cellphone ownership exacerbates the participation gap. Using survey data from 37 African countries, we show that women protest significantly less than men where they own relatively fewer cellphones. We probe one mechanism underpinning this relationship demonstrating that women who do not own cellphones face a political information disadvantage that limits their engagement. Further, we demonstrate that the gender digital divide also produces gender disparities in other, less costly forms of political engagement. Our study suggests unequal cellphone access further entrenches women’s position on the political margins.

   

Department of Economics and Hobby School of Public Affairs
Political Economy Speaker Series

raquel-fernandez.jpgRaquel Fernandez, PhD., Silver Professor of Economics, New York University.

Date: Friday, September 27, 2024 

Time: TBD

Location: TBD

Paper title: TBD

 

Hobby School of Public AffairsCenter for Public Policy Speaker Series

elder-todd.jpgTodd Elder, PhD,  Professor, Department of Economics, Michigan State University.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location: TBD

Paper title: TBD

About the speaker: Todd Elder is a Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Economics at Michigan State University. His primary research interests lie in health economics and the economics of child development. He is currently studying skill formation and learning disability diagnoses among school-age children, with a focus on the influence of malleable school and classroom factors on the diagnoses of neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism and ADHD. Elder has also written extensively on the identification of the economic returns to private education and related measurement issues in the economics of education. Elder enjoys teaching courses that introduce students to measurement and identification issues, especially disentangling causal relationships from correlations found in observational data.