ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

This project examines the normative significance of procreation and parenthood for theories of justice. Important questions of justice about the family arise once we acknowledge and keep in view that procreation and parenthood are both integral to the existence of any society (and therefore, a just society), and that they involve substantial benefits and burdens for parents, children, and society at large. Yet existing theories of justice generally neglect these questions by assuming that the principles they formulate are to regulate the main institutions of societies constituted by fully formed adult individuals whose creation and care are taken as given. The project identifies and analyses three main sets of questions about family justice: 1) Does justice require that parents and non-parents share, and share equally, the costs and benefits of having children, and how do different answers to this question bear on our theory of distributive justice? 2) What are the claims of justice that we have as children, how do they relate to those we have as adults, and who bears the correlative duties? 3) Do all contemporaries, regardless of whether they are parents or non-parents, have the same obligations of justice towards future generations, and how, if at all, are the justification and the content of those obligations affected by considerations about what parents owe their children and parents and non-parents owe to each other? Addressing these questions contributes to developing normative-theoretical framework needed to address pressing public policy concerns, and also turns out to be more central to the formulation of a complete and defensible theory of justice than political philosophers have realised to date.

811 750 €

Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31

Researchers and policymakers alike have highlighted the potential efficiency gains of a global production structure. However, such linkages also raise the possibility of risks. This proposal tackles both empirical and theoretical challenges in incorporating the microeconomic structure of trade and international production networks in the study of the propagation of shocks internationally, and their impact on macroeconomic interdependence. Using newly constructed micro-level datasets, I provide quantitative analysis of the importance of the linkages in multicountry general equilibrium models of trade. First, using firm export and imported-input linkages, I provide a novel model-based estimation strategy to identify the role of country and firm-level shocks, and the implications of these estimates for the transmission of shocks across borders. By using structural trade models to estimate shocks at the firm level and studying the implications for the transmission of shocks across borders, I help bridge the micro-macro nexus in international economics. Second, I take an even more granular focus by studying the role of firm-to-firm production linkages in transmitting shocks across countries. To do so, I exploit a novel matching procedure between a country’s administrative dataset and cross-country firm-level data. I further build on these data by adding in domestic bank-firm relationships. This strategy allows for the study of how financial shocks are exported abroad via firms’ trade and multinational linkages. Third, I incorporate the insights from the empirical work into a full-scale multicountry general equilibrium model of trade, which allows for firm-level heterogeneity and microeconomic and macroeconomics shocks. I use the model for a quantitative study of the cross-country transmission of the different shocks via trade. This allows me to perform counterfactuals and examine the impact of policies, such as how opening to trade impacts macroeconomic interdependence.

1 381 250 €

Start date: 2017-05-01, End date: 2022-04-30

Much research has shown that judgments are the products of imperfect information processing heuristics. Recently, an alternative theoretical perspective has been proposed. It emphasizes that people form judgments by observing information samples about the alternatives. Sampling-based theories can explain numerous judgment patterns such as risk aversion, overconfidence, illusory correlations, the in-group out-group bias, or social influence. The sampling approach has illustrated how these and other important patterns of human judgments can be parsimoniously explained by assuming a common source of bias. But at least two important questions remain: 1. How do sampling explanations for judgment biases can be integrated with explanations that focus on information-processing biases in order to explain judgment patterns in naturally occurring environments? 2. What are the implications of selective information sampling for collective judgments and the distribution of beliefs and attitudes over social networks? I set to answer these pressing questions by (1) developing integrative belief formation models that incorporate both sampling-based mechanisms and information processing-based mechanisms; (2) collecting and analyzing experimental and field data to test these integrative models and uncover how the two classes of mechanisms interact; (3) building on these insights to develop models that lead to testable predictions about collective judgments and test these predictions with field and experimental data; (4) running experiments to measure the extent to which social network driven information sampling can contribute to opinion polarization. The project will carry novel prescriptions to limit judgment biases such as the prevalence of negative stereotypes about socially distant others or the resistance to institutional change. It will also carry prescriptions to limit the emergence of collective illusions, and contain the polarization of opinions across social groups.

1 158 625 €

Start date: 2018-05-01, End date: 2023-04-30

"While polemics and dialogue between Judaism and Christianity are as old as the Christian religion itself, one can clearly distinguish different periods, trends and intensities in the relations between the faiths. A significant landmark in this long and complex history is the Latin translation of large sections of the Talmud, the most important Jewish post-biblical text and the basis for the development of Rabbinic Judaism. When during the 13th century Christian theologians started to examine and translate the Talmud from Hebrew and Aramaic into Latin, they were faced with a huge body of texts which represented centuries of legalistic and homiletic materials. The discovery of this immense post-biblical Jewish literature became a source of fascination for Christians who believed that this text, which encompasses every aspect of Jewish life, was fundamental both for refuting the Jewish faith and for substantiating the truth of Christianity. This realization heralded a rethinking of the place of Jews in Christian society and redefined Christian-Jewish dialogue and polemic. The purpose of our project is to edit and publish the largest extant collection of Talmudic passages translated from Hebrew into Latin, that is, the ""Extractiones de Talmud"", while studying this ground-breaking document in the context of the trial and burning of the Talmud in 1240-42 and its aftermath. This project addresses vital questions of Jewish and Christian identity, still relevant to the 21st century, and can only be carried out by a transdisciplinary research team including specialists from Latin Philology, Hebrew Studies and History."

1 292 700 €

Start date: 2014-10-01, End date: 2018-09-30

Financial markets constitute the backbone of modern economies, intermediating resources from those who have them (i.e., lenders) to those who can put them to productive use (i.e., borrowers). The defining feature of these markets is that they entail the exchange of goods today for a borrower’s promise to deliver goods in the future. These promises are sustained by guarantees, which are akin to the amount of future income that borrowers can credibly pledge to lenders. I refer to this pledgeable income as an economy’s stock of collateral. This stock determines the amount and type of promises that can be traded in an economy and, in turn, this set of promises determines the transactions that can be carried out. Intuitively, when this set of promises is large, resources find their most productive uses and efficiency is high. This raises a general question: what are the key determinants of the set of promises that an economy is able to sustain, and why does it vary? In macroeconomic models, it is commonly assumed that all promises are backed by only one kind of collateral, i.e. usually that of private borrowers, and that this collateral is ‘fundamental’, i.e. it consists of output. Real-world financial markets, however, rely on many types of collateral to guarantee promises. In this proposal, I focus on three such types. First, collateral may be ‘bubbly’, i.e. promises can be backed by nothing else but the income that the sale of new promises is expected to bring in the future. Second, collateral need not be private, as government promises are sustained by pledging public income. Third, collateral need not be homogenous, as it may differ in quality or type across entrepreneurs, and this quality may not be perfectly observed by all. I address the following broad questions. How do economies produce these different types of collateral? How do they interact with one another? Is there a role for policy in maintaining the efficient level and composition of collateral?

979 800 €

Start date: 2014-09-01, End date: 2019-08-31

The objective of this project is to unravel the impact of migration on democratic participation and processes in countries of origin. Both international migration and democratic development are important contemporary public and policy concerns. Recent studies of transnational migrant practices have uncovered how migrants influence democratic participation in their homelands through the remittance of money and newfound ideas about democracy from afar or through return. Yet, there is still little comparative knowledge of how these processes intersect with broader economic, social and political transformations in countries of origin. Moreover, complex migration experiences and nonlinear processes of democratization in countries of origin point to the need for a more nuanced conceptualization of what kind of political ideas circulate and are negotiated among migrants, return migrants and non-migrants in countries of origin. The proposed project outlines an ambitious long-term comparative research strategy to analyse and theorize the scope and dynamics of processes of democratic diffusion through migration. The research strategy of the project is innovative in combining analysis of democratic diffusion across three countries of origin and at three levels of democratic participation and processes: individual citizens, civil society and among political leaders and representatives. To that end the project draws on both statistical and qualitative research methods and analysis. The project will analyse already existing aggregate data on remittances and political behaviour and, importantly, generate new comprehensive datasets based on surveys and in-depth qualitative research among non-migrants and returnees in countries of origin. Consequently, the project will contribute to our theoretical understanding of the conditions under which migration can influence democratic processes as well as the broader research fields of democracy studies, migration and citizenship.

1 451 264 €

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

A recent literature in economics on the “fetal origins hypothesis” has documented that a range of early (prenatal and postnatal) shocks and interventions can have substantial effects on long-term human capital formation (e.g. adult health, wages). However, we still know little about the years in between early infancy and adulthood, referred to as the “missing middle”. How do early shocks affect health and human capital formation during childhood? How do the effects of different types of interventions, or shocks at different ages, compare? What are the most cost-effective ways of improving young children’s future outcomes? I aim to fill this gap in the literature by taking advantage of a range of natural experiments in a country, Spain, for which high quality administrative data are available for the past 35 years. State of the art econometric techniques, combined with large sample sizes, will allow me to evaluate credibly and precisely the causal effects of a number of different public policies and shocks on child development. I will consider five different “shocks” in early childhood (at different ages), affecting: i) Household material resources (an unconditional mother’s allowance); ii) Parental time (subsidized paternity leave); iii) Medical treatments around birth (elective delivery); iv) The availability of family planning services (access to abortion); and v) Aggregate demand shocks to different sectors of the economy. I will evaluate their impact on health and cognitive development at ages 0-15, as measured in hospital and primary health care records, school grades, and standardized test scores, among other data sources. I will also study the potential channels linking treatments to child outcomes, including family size (fertility), parental time use and labor market outcomes, expenditure patterns, etc. My results will help us understand how shocks in early life can have long-term effects on human capital, with direct policy implications.

1 048 750 €

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

The aim of this project is to investigate patterns of population history and cultural transmission from the Late Magdalenian to the Late Mesolithic (c.15,000-8,000 cal BP) in South-western Europe. This period witnessed major environmental changes and cultural transformations on settlement distribution, technology and social organisation. Our project specifically addresses two major inter-related research topics: Firstly, to what extent demographic behaviour was driven by environmental factors; and secondly, how did regional population patterns influence cultural transmission processes. This project develops a new, multi-scale, methodological approach to study population patterns and cultural change between the Late Magdalenian and the Late Mesolithic in the Iberian Peninsula. First, at a local scale, our project will combine new empirical data obtained at open-air residential sites with well dated multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental reconstructions to understand the impact of climate change and hydrological stress on human settlement areas. Then, we will reconstruct population patterns at 4 different Iberian regional units analysing summed probabilities of radiocarbon date distributions from a new audited radiocarbon database. Finally, we will conduct computational network analysis at a macro-regional scale to identify how diachronic variations on hunter-gatherer settlement networks affected the transmission of cultural traits and the spread of technological innovations. With this multi-step interdisciplinary approach, we aim to provide a chronological-secure framework and spatially explicit context for the interpretation of population history, cultural change, and resilience to environmental changes through from the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition to the Middle Holocene in Iberia.

1 460 385 €

Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30

In 2007 the US and Europe were overwhelmed by a banking crisis, which was followed by a severe economic recession. Historical studies show that financial crises are followed by periods of substantially stronger contraction of aggregate output and employment than non-financial recessions. Those studies also point out that the best predictor of financial crises is an ex-ante strong credit boom which, after the beginning of the crisis, followed by negative overall credit growth. Lastly, financial crises take a long time until recovering the pre-crisis levels. Why are the effects of credit shocks so strong and persistent over time? Is this effect explained by costly household deleveraging? What is the effect of household debt on consumption, savings and employment? Are there any benefits of debt in crises? Do some effects of the financial crisis work through a reduction in credit supply to firms and projects with high innovative content and productivity (high overall return, but with high credit and liquidity risk for the lenders)? Or are the cleansing effects in financial crises concentrated on the less productive firms? Can macroprudential policies based on strict control of loan-to-value ratios stop the building up of excessive household debt? We plan to construct several new datasets to study these issues by merging information from different sources. For some issues, like the analysis of the effect of household debt on consumption and employment, we can take advantage of a natural experiment of randomized allocation of debt among individuals derived from the use of lotteries to allocate the rights to buy housing in Spain. In comparison to the existing literature, we can exploit the exogenous variation generated by these lotteries and some other combination of data (including exhaustive credit data) to obtain causal evidence and quantification on the interaction between debt, systemic risk, crises, and the new macroprudential policy.

1 308 676 €

Start date: 2015-07-01, End date: 2020-06-30