Time: 11:00am

Location: Bates Law, Heritage Room

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.

Center for Public Policy Speaker Series

Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2024 

Time: 4:00-5:15pm

Location: Teaching Unit 2 Building Room 211 (TU2 211)

Paper title: Dynamics of Risky Agreements

Paper abstract: We investigate efficiency properties of agreements with the following features: (i)selfenforcing—any agent can walk away from the agreement at any moment; (ii) dynamic—payouts occur stochastically while the agreement is in force; (iii) risky—one agent is more favored by the agreement but the favored agent is unknown ex-ante. These features appear in international economic agreements, entrepreneurial ventures, and research partnerships. Such arrangements have formal or informal mechanisms to resolve disputes that may be more favorable to one agent, but who is favored is learned only as disputes arise. For example, over time the United States perceived they were unfairly treated in dispute rulings at the World Trade Organization (WTO), hence disabled the system they helped create. To model risky agreements we assume each agent has access to a (risky) Poisson bandit arm. An agent’s risky arm is either good—with a high payout rate, or bad—with a low payout rate, but the type of arm is unknown to both agents. Only one agent has a good arm, so the arms are negatively correlated, and good news is not conclusive. We interpret having the good risky arm as being favored by the agreement. The agreement is in force if both agents are pulling their respective risky arms, and an agent can quit any time. If one agent quits, then the agreement is dead and both agents receive the safe payoff. Agents will enter the agreement if sufficiently optimistic that they are favored, and will exit when sufficiently convinced they are not favored. We show that the duration of such agreements is generically inefficient—can last too long, or end too quickly. Increasing “vagueness” reduces the speed of learning and extends agreement duration. This implies that precedent can lead agreements to end sooner than they may have otherwise, because it creates too much certainty in the distribution of future rewards.

About the speaker: Renee Bowen, PhD, is a professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and the Department of Economics at the University of California San Diego. In 2019 she founded the Center for Commerce and Diplomacy (CCD) at GPS, and served as its Director until 2023. She is an Economic Theory Fellow at the Society for the Advances in Economic Theory, is a Council Member of the Game Theory Society, has published in top economics journals including the American Economic Review, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and is on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review: Insights, Journal of Economic Literature and the Review of International Organizations. Her professional memberships include the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Pacific Council on International Relations. She has held positions at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Hoover Institution, the World Bank, J.P. Morgan Securities, the Inter-American Development Bank, and is currently a member of the California Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors, where she chaired the Workforce Development Subcommittee. She holds a PhD in Economics from Georgetown University, and a BSc in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her recent research examines the design of global multilateral institutions and polarization of beliefs in societies.