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Stanford logoEvery summer, Stanford Economics hosts a series of workshop sessions in economic theory and mathematical economics. This program is known as the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE).

Each SITE session combines leading senior researchers in the session topic with economists newer to the field who would benefit from attending. We make a special effort to identify those newer economists and offer assistance to attend. With overall direction by Professor Avner Greif, sessions are organized in a decentralized fashion by small groups of economists including selected senior collaborators from outside Stanford.

SITE Summer Workshops 2017

2017 SITE Attendee Registration Form

 

2017 Sessions

Session 1: Empirical Implementation of Theoretical Models of Strategic Interaction and Dynamic Behavior

July 10-12, 2017

Schedule posted, to access click on session title

 

The location for this session will be Landau Economics Bldg, Lucas Conference Room A, 579 Serra Mall.

The papers for this session are invited from the fields of empirical Industrial Organization (IO), Labor Economics, Public Finance, and Health Economics, Environmental and Energy Economics, and Development Economics. The unifying feature of the papers should be that they each contain a theoretical model of an economic interaction and an empirical implementation of this theoretical model using actual data. Popular topics for papers from previous years—the empirical implementation of models of auction market equilibrium, discrete choice models of differentiated product demand and oligopoly equilibrium, dynamic models of individual and group behavior, and analysis of experiment data of policy interventions in circumstances of non-random assignment or self-selection. A clear link between the theoretical economic model and econometric model should be a hallmark of the papers presented.

 

Organized by:
  • Frank Wolak (Stanford University)
  • Mar Reguant (Northwestern University)

Session 2: Labor and Finance

July 31 - August 2, 2017

Schedule posted, to access click on session title

The location for this session will be Landau Economics Bldg, Lucas Conference Room A, 579 Serra Mall.

The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE), in cooperation with the Center for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), and the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), invites paper submissions on the relationships between labor and finance.  Possible issues include:

  • role of employees in the governance and financing of companies,
  • response of wages and employment to financial shocks,
  • risk sharing arrangements between firms and workers,
  • financial development, job reallocation and employment growth,
  • effects of regulation of financial markets on industrial relations,
  • human capital, portfolio choice and asset pricing.

The conference aims to bring together researchers from labor and financial economics to discuss issues from the point of view of both disciplines. 

Organized by:
  • Jonathan Berk (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
  • Luigi Pistaferri (Stanford University)
  • Philip Bond (University of Washington)
  • Claudio Michelacci (Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance)
  • Marco Pagano (University of Naples Federico II, Center for Studies in Economics and Finance and EIEF)

Session 3: Dynamic Games, Contracts, and Markets

August 2-4, 2017

Schedule posted, to access click on session title

The idea of this session is to bring together microeconomic theorists working on dynamic games and contracts with more applied theorists working in macro, finance, organizational economics, and other fields. First, this is a venue to discuss the latest questions and techniques facing researchers working in dynamic games and contracts. Second, we wish to foster interdisciplinary discussion between scholars working on parallel topics in different disciplines, in particular, helping raise awareness among theorists of the open questions in other fields. We’re aiming for a roughly even split between micro theory papers and papers from other areas. Specific topics likely to be covered include repeated and stochastic games, dynamic optimal contracts, dynamic market pricing, reputation, search, and learning and experimentation.

Organized by:
  • Andrzej Skrzypacz, Takuo Sugaya (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
  • Simon Board (University of California, Los Angeles)
  • Joyee Deb (Yale School of Management)
  • Alex Frankel (Chicago Booth School of Business)
  • Rahul Deb (University of Toronto)

Session 4: New Thinking about Economic Challenges in the Design and Implementation of Programs to Stabilize the Climate

August 8-10, 2017

o   The session will be held in Lucas Conference Room A, in the Landau Economics Building, 579 Serra Mall, on the Stanford University campus.

The purpose of the proposed workshop is to assemble a selection of young economists whose research has featured new thinking on challenging theoretical and empirical questions bearing on the design and implementation of practical and economically efficient programs aimed at stablizing the rise in radiative forcing due to the increased concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the Earth's atmosphere.  Focused attention to answering these questions potentially could make important contributions to securing an open path to sustainable development and global economic growth - while we still have time.

Full Workshop Proposal

For a quick listing of specific research topics that are particularly germane for presentation and discussion in this Workshop session, click on the link (below) labelled "Focal Topics List". Further details regarding the Workshop's motivating purposes, and the principle topical areas that are of particular interest to the organizers can be found from the text extracts at the link to  the "Full Workshop Proposal." 

Focal Topics -- Quick List

Organized by:

Paul A. David (Stanford) and Peter J. Hammond (Stanford & University of Warwick), with Graciela Chichilnisky (Columbia University & Stanford -SIEPR Visiting Professor)

Session 5: Financial Regulation

August 14-15, 2017

Schedule posted, to access click on session title

The location for this session will be Landau Economics Bldg, Lucas Conference Room A, 579 Serra Mall.

This session is dedicated to exploring the latest advances in theoretical and empirical issues related to financial regulation. Topics will include, but will not be limited to the regulation of markets for household financial products, as well as financial intermediation more broadly, both in and outside the US.

Organized by:

Amit Seru (Stanford Graduate School of Business);  Gregor Matvos (University of Chicago)

Session 6: Experimental Economics

August 21-22, 2017

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.

Organized by:
  • Christine Exley (Harvard Business School)
  • Muriel Niederle,  Al Roth (Stanford University)
  • Judd Kessler (The Wharton School)
  • Lise Vesterlund (University of Pittsburgh)

Session 7: Psychology and Economics

August 23-25, 2017

This workshop will focus on recent research in behavioral economics. While the standard model of economic decision-making has proven useful in a wide variety of settings, its limitations are also well-documented. The field of behavioral economics seeks to enrich the standard model, thereby improving its descriptive and predictive accuracy, by incorporating insights from Psychology and other disciplines, and to examine the implication of those enriched models for a wide variety of important economic issues, such as the effects of policies affecting spending, saving, labor supply, and investment. While considerable progress has been made in this subfield, our theoretical and empirical understanding of economic behavior remains incomplete.

 

 

Organized by:
  • B. Douglas Bernheim (Stanford University)
  • John Beshears (Harvard Business School)
  • Vincent Crawford (University of Oxford)
  • David Laibson (Harvard University)
  • Ulrike Malmendier (University of California, Berkeley)

Session 8: Macroeconomics of Uncertainty and Volatility

August 28-30, 2017

Schedule posted

The session will cover recent work on the causes and effects of changes in volatility and uncertainty in the aggregate economy, which remain topical given the recent Brexit and Trump election outcomes. Many observers, including policymakers such as Bernanke, Summers, and Romer, have highlighted that these have been major driving factors in the recent credit-crunch recession and advanced heuristic arguments of why this might have been the case. Unfortunately, our theoretical and empirical understanding of these topics is limited since only recently have macroeconomists started working on these issues from a more systematic basis. Nevertheless, changes in volatility and uncertainty similar to the ones observed for the U.S. economy can be shown to be quantitatively significant factors in business cycle fluctuations and a key element in a successful explanation of aggregate fluctuations. Moreover, the presence of changes in volatility and uncertainty has important implications for the design of optimal policies and for our assessment of the responses of central banks and fiscal authorities to recent developments in the world economy. Therefore, the session will aim to include about 14 recent papers on these topics. Our goal is to have a balanced mix of theoretical and empirical papers and a strong interest in applications to policy.

 

Organized by:
  • Nick Bloom (Stanford University)
  • Steve Davis (University of Chicago)
  • Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde (University of Pennsylvania)

Session 9: Development Economics

August 31 - September 1

The purpose of this session is to bring together researchers working on both theoretical and empirical analyses of economic development. The theme for this year is “labor markets in developing countries”. Questions regarding barriers to labor market integration, discrimination in the labor market, dual labor markets and labor rationing are being given a fresh look with new data and methods and it seems time to take stock.

Organized by:
  • Prashant Bharadwaj (University of California, San Diego)
  • Arun Chandrasekhar, Pascaline Dupas and Melanie Morten (Stanford University)
  • Seema Jayachandran (Northwestern University)
 

`Session 10: New Models of Financial Markets

September 6-8, 2017

This session will cover recent approaches in financial economics. After the financial crisis, there has been a new focus on frictions in financial markets, market incompleteness, the behavior of banks and other experts, stock and house price volatility, foreign exchange markets, mortgage design and securitization, risk taking through financial derivatives, and investor heterogeneity.

Organized by: Hanno Lustig, Arvind Krishnamurthy (Stanford Graduate School of Business), Carolin Pflueger (University of British Columbia)