PLAS Graduate Works-in-Progress with Federico Huneeus & Jessica Mack
"The Effects of Firms' Lobbying on Resource Misallocation" ---- Presented by: Federico Huneeus --Economics, Princeton University --------- We study the causal effect of firms' lobbying activities on the misallocation of resources through the distortion of firm size. To address the endogeneity between firms' lobbying expenditure and their size, we propose a new instrument. Specifically, we measure firms' political connections based on the geographic proximity between their headquarter locations and politicians' districts in the U.S., and trace the value of these networks over time by exploiting politicians' assignment to congressional committees. We find that a 10 percent increase in lobbying expenditure leads to a 3 percent gain in revenue. To investigate the macroeconomic consequences of these effects, we develop a heterogeneous firm-level model with endogenous lobbying. Using a novel dataset that we construct, we document new stylized facts about lobbying behavior and use them, including the one from the instrument, to estimate the model. Our counterfactual analysis shows that the return to firms' lobbying activities amounts to a 22 percent decrease in aggregate productivity in the U.S. ---------------- Federico Huneeus is a sixth year Economics Ph.D. student from Santiago de Chile. Before coming to Princeton I did my undergraduate studies and masters in Economics in the University of Chile. In Princeton I did my fields in Macroeconomics, International Trade and Industrial Organization. I'm broadly interested in the behavior of firms and its macroeconomic consequences. In particular, I've worked on the effects that firms' lobbying activities has over the misallocation of resources, generating inefficiencies between firms, using US micro data. My dissertation is about how shocks propagate in the economy through production networks, i.e., the network created by the fact that firms buy and sell products to other firms. In particular, I study how international trade micro shocks are propagated when production networks are costly to adjust. To answer this question, I use a rich and novel administrative dataset from Chile that has transaction level information between firms. I use this data to estimate a structural model of production network dynamics and evaluate how the trade shocks around the Great Recession propagated domestically, taking into account that the formation of links that underlie these production networks are costly to adjust. Besides doing research, I play soccer and squash. I love music and spend time with friends and family. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The Rising City: Building Ciudad Universitaria, 1950-1954" ---- Presented by: Jessica Mack -- History, Princeton University ---------- In June of 1950, the first stone was ceremoniously placed on a construction site several kilometers south of Mexico City's center. Building had officially begun on a long-imagined campus for the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM): the utopian Ciudad Universitaria, or University City. This paper chronicles the rapid construction of CU's central campus between 1950 and 1954. It explores the project's leadership and the architectural trends, spatial theories, and fascination with planning that shaped its construction. What administrative, political, economic and intellectual realities did this building project testify to? Both the architecture and the murals that distinguished Ciudad Universitaria reflected revolutionary forms that, by 1950, had become official styles. By mapping the campus construction process alongside archival materials from planners known as hombres plan, this paper shows the ways in which this monumental state project spatially manifested a new vision for Mexico's future, a vision closely tied to the priorities of urbanization, industrialization and developmentalism. --------Jessica Mack is a Postgraduate Research Associate in the History Department where she recently defended her dissertation, "A Campus for Mexico: Knowledge and Power in UNAM's University City." Her research traces the midcentury spatial reconfiguration of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) at Ciudad Universitaria in Mexico City. Centered around this monumental building project, her research explains the university's shifting relationship to power, its role in Mexico's developing revolutionary state and the ways in which national projects were inscribed upon its intellectual and cultural life. At Princeton, she is a contributor to the Princeton & Slavery project and is currently affiliated with the Center for Digital Humanities, where she is carrying out a textual analysis project using UNAM thesis data. Her research interests include public history, urban studies and archival quandaries. ---------- Location: 216 Burr Hall ----- Speaker(s): -- Federico Huneeus -- Economics, Princeton University ---------- Jessica Mack -- History, Princeton University
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