ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

From pension reforms to UI extensions, the optimal tax and program design literature is often ill-equipped to provide clear guidance in policy debates on the reform of social insurance and tax-and-benefit systems. The reason is that this literature is mostly focused on static settings, while these programs are inherently dynamic: they specify a schedule of tax and benefits that is time or state dependent and they affect individuals’ decisions throughout their lifetime. DYNAMICSS will offer a simple and general approach to the analysis of optimal dynamic policies that connects to the data. The key idea of DYNAMICSS is to extend the sufficient statistics (SS) approach to dynamic settings and characterize the full time profile, rather than the average generosity, of social insurance and transfer policies. By expressing optimal policy as a function of a limited set of statistics, the SS approach has the advantage of making clear the trade-offs implied in optimal tax or benefit formulae and of tightly integrating the theory and the empirics of optimal policy analysis, to offer robust policy guidance. DYNAMICSS will use unique administrative data and cutting-edge econometric techniques to exploit compelling variations in policy profiles and offer significant contributions to the empirical analysis of dynamic behavioural responses to policies. A central contribution will be to create a unique measure of consumption expenditures based on leveraging complete administrative information on income, transfers and wealth to offer ground-breaking evidence of the effect of social insurance on consumption dynamics. Part I will use and extend the SS framework to analyse the optimal time profile of UI benefits. Part II will develop this approach for analysing the optimal design of retirement pension systems. Part III will address optimal family policies with a focus on understanding the different dynamics of men and women in the labour market, and exploring the role of cultural norm

1 049 855 €

Start date: 2016-03-01, End date: 2021-02-28

"The financial crisis, since its start in 2008 has exposed enormous fractures both in the financial architecture and in the structure of the global economy. Although with some notable exceptions, the magnitude of the events caught the finance profession largely by surprise. Clearly, we have to understand better the institutional mechanism channeling savings towards the best uses of capital, and to what extent this mechanism can sometimes fail. The projects in this proposal will push the boundaries of our knowledge in this direction. I suggest a dual approach to achieve this goal. First, we have to improve our understanding of which frictions are the crucial impediments of the efficient functioning of markets. As this approach focuses on particular markets in isolation, I call this the micro approach. I propose three projects within this approach: trading and information diffusion in OTC markets, the crowdedness in limits-to-arbitrage, and the interaction of political uncertainty and sovereign bond prices. Second, from the frictions emerging from the micro approach, we have to select the ones which determine the aggregate liquidity fluctuations in the economy. I use this concept in a broad sense; referring to the changing efficiency with which the financial system allocates resources across investment opportunities. As this approach focuses on the functionality of the financial system as a whole, I call this the macro approach. I propose two projects within this approach. The first project focuses on the determinants of the differences in the financial architecture of different economies. It builds a novel framework to study the dynamics of the financial sector of an economy. The second project studies the role of shadow banking in the fluctuation of aggregate liquidity. In particular, this project concentrates on the fluctuation of the efficiency of private liquidity creation as the state of the economy changes."

1 122 883 €

Start date: 2013-12-01, End date: 2018-11-30

Equilibrium models are one of the pillars of Economics. This proposal focuses on methodological and empirical studies of estimable game theoretic and social interactions models where observed outcomes are assumed to be determined in equilibrium. Ignoring this simultaneity in estimation and inference is likely to mislead conclusions and produce flawed counterfactual analyses. One pervasive feature in many interaction models is the existence of multiple solutions for various payoff configurations, and this is an aspect that carries over to estimable versions of such systems. Overlooking this possibility or assuming an uninformed equilibrium selection process potentially opens the door to severe misspecifications and erroneous conclusions. Another notable complication in the analysis of interaction models is computability: with a large number of players and sizeable set of outcomes and/or states, the search for an equilibrium solution can be daunting. The research projects contemplated in this proposal address one or both of these aspects in various different settings. Those projects contain methodological and substantive contributions. The work involves advances in the econometric analysis (identification and estimation) of interaction models and empirical implementation of the devised methodologies to questions of interest. Given the widespread and increasing use of such econometric models, the projects contemplated here will have a fundamental impact. I divide the projects into three main subtopics: 1) Identification and inference in games with multiple equilibria, 2) Social interactions and network models, 3) Dynamic interaction models.

1 028 780 €

Start date: 2013-10-01, End date: 2018-09-30

I propose to develop and apply a novel approach to optical microscopy to enable the direct visualization and study of dynamics on the nanoscale in biological and condensed matter physics. Given the speed with which nanoscopic objects move at ambient condition, this requires simultaneously very fast (ms) and precise (nm) imaging. The challenge is to avoid excessive perturbation of the system and enable imaging in biologically compatible environments without compromising imaging performance by pushing interferometric scattering to its theoretical limits. Using these advanced capabilities, I will study the dynamics and thereby the structure-function relationships in three fundamental systems that are currently not captured by even the most advanced biophysical approaches. These include: (1) the flexibility of DNA on short length scales, (2) diffusion in artificial and cellular membranes and (3) the three-dimensional power stroke of molecular motors such as myosin and kinesin. Fundamentally, this work aims to develop and establish a high-speed, non-invasive camera on the nanoscale that will enable us to study and eventually understand nanoscopic motion, dynamics and potentials on the relevant, rather than currently achievable, size and time scales.

1 498 352 €

Start date: 2014-01-01, End date: 2018-12-31