-1- Joshua Abel https://scholar.harvard.edu/jabel [email protected] HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: John Campbell [email protected] 617-496-6448 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information 1805 Cambridge Street, Room 200 Cambridge, MA 02138 Phone: (610) 937-3164 Undergraduate Studies: Swarthmore College, 2007-2011 B.A. in Economics with High Honors Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2013 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Economics Thesis Title: “Essays on Homeowner Behavior During the Recent Housing Cycle” Expected Completion Date: May 2019 References: Professor Edward L. Glaeser Professor Gabriel Chodorow-Reich Department of Economics Department of Economics Harvard University Harvard University (617) 495-0575 (617) 416-3226 [email protected] [email protected] Dr. Paul S. Willen Research Department Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (617) 973-3149 [email protected] Fields: Real estate, consumer finance, macroeconomics Teaching Experience: Spring 2016-8 Intermediate Macroeconomics, Harvard, TA for Profs Paul Willen, Gabriel Chodorow-Reich, and Karen Dynan Fall 2015-7 Intermediate Microeconomics, Harvard, TA for Professor Maxim Boycko Fall 2015 Public Economics (Ph D), Harvard, TA for Profs Jeffrey Liebman and Miles Corak Research Experience and Other Employment: 2014-present Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Graduate Fellow, Research Department 2014 Harvard University, Research Assistant for John Y. Campbell -2- 2011-13 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Research Assistant, Research and Statistics Department Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2015, 2017-18 Harvard Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (awarded 3 times) 2017 Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies Meyer Dissertation Fellowship 2011 Swarthmore College Adams Prize in Economics 2011 The Phi Beta Kappa Society Publications: “The Measurement and Behavior of Uncertainty: Evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters,” with Robert Rich and Joseph Song and Joseph Tracy. 2016. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 31. We examine matched point and density forecasts of output growth, inflation and unemployment from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters. We construct measures of uncertainty from individual histograms, and find that the measures display countercyclical behavior and have increased across all forecast horizons since 2007. We also derive measures of forecast dispersion and forecast accuracy, and find that they are not reliable proxies for uncertainty. There is, however, evidence of a meaningful co-movement between uncertainty and aggregate point predictions for output growth and unemployment. These results are robust to changes in the composition of the survey respondents over time. Research Papers: “How Do Mortgage Refinances Affect Debt, Default, and Spending? Evidence from HARP” (Job Market Paper; joint with Andreas Fuster; revise and resubmit at American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics) We use quasi-random access to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) to identify the causal effect of refinancing a mortgage on borrower balance sheet outcomes. We find that on average, refinancing into a lower-rate mortgage enabled borrowers to cut their default rates on mortgages by around 40% and their rates of serious delinquency on non-mortgage debts by about 25%. Refinancing also causes borrowers to expand their use of debt instruments, such as auto loans, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), and other consumer debts that are proxies for spending. All told, refinancing led to a net increase in debt equal to about 20% of the savings on mortgage payments. This number combines increases (new debts) of about 60% of the mortgage savings and decreases (pay-downs) of about 40% of those savings. Borrowers with low FICO scores or low levels of unused revolving credit grow their auto and HELOC debt more strongly after a refinance, but also reduce their bank card balances by more. Finally, we show that take-up of the refinancing opportunity was strongest among borrowers that were in a relatively better financial position to begin with. “The Home Sale Volatility Puzzle: Equity Constraints, Loss Aversion, and Irreversible Construction” The recent housing cycle in the United States saw large swings not only in home prices but in home sales as well. This paper begins by using a comprehensive dataset on US home sales to investigate two popular explanations for the cyclicality of selling activity: “house lock," which conjectures that falling prices cause down-payment constraints to bind and prevent current homeowners from selling their homes; and nominal loss aversion, which proposes that cognitive frictions prevent homeowners from selling when doing so would not garner a price as high as the one they originally paid for the house. I find that while there is evidence that both of these mechanisms are active at the household level, they explain a fairly small portion of the decline in sales from boom to bust: likely no more than 10%. I then propose a novel mechanism, which is that construction of New homes, which tend to be of higher quality, unlocks sales of Existing homes during booms, as there is aggregate movement up the housing ladder. In the bust, this movement freezes, and it does not reverse, as the irreversibility of construction prevents the market from tearing down nice homes and facilitating an aggregate down-size. As a result, sales are high in the boom and low in the bust. I show that the model's predictions are consistent with recent dynamics of aggregate prices and volume, as well as cross-MSA variation in sales. Overall, without any amplification, the model is able to explain up to 30% of the aggregate movements in sales over the previous cycle. I conclude by discussing factors that could increase or decrease this magnitude. -1- CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON scholar.harvard.edu/chrisanderson [email protected] HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: John Campbell [email protected] 617-496-6448 Placement Director: Nathan Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information Home Contact Information Baker Library 244B 5 Cowperthwaite St #425 Harvard Business School Cambridge, MA 02138 Boston, MA 02163 Phone: (415) 300-6085 Personal Information: Citizenship: United States Date of birth: September 27, 1990 Undergraduate Studies: B.A. Mathematics and Economics, University of California at Berkeley, 2012 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2014 to Present Ph.D. Candidate in Business Economics Thesis Title: “Essays in Financial Economics” Expected Completion Date: May 2019 References: Professor John Campbell Professor Matteo Maggiori Littauer Center 213 Littauer Center 212 [email protected] [email protected] Professor Malcolm Baker Baker Library 261 [email protected] Research Fields: Primary field: Asset pricing Secondary fields: Corporate finance, behavioral finance, macroeconomics Teaching Experience: Spring, 2017 Investment Strategies, Harvard Business School, teaching fellow for Professors Malcolm Baker and Samuel Hanson Research Experience and Other Employment: 2012-2014 Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Research Assistant Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation 2010-2011 Ulrike Malmendier, Research Assistant -2- Professional Activities Service Organizer of Harvard PhD finance lunch from 2016-2018 Conferences Yale Doctoral Fall Finance Conference 2018, Trans-Atlantic Doctoral Conference 2018 Workshops Macro Financial Modeling Summer Session for Young Scholars 2018 and 2016, MIT Capital Markets Workshop 2017, Yale Summer School in Behavioral Finance 2017, Princeton Initiative in Macro, Money, and Finance 2016 Research Papers: “Consumption-Based Asset Pricing Without Optimal Consumption Choice” [Job Market Paper] The predictions of consumption-based asset pricing models rely heavily on the assumption that consumers optimize perfectly. Slight deviations from optimal consumption, such as consumers who react to news with a delay, can completely break these models' predictions. To address this problem, I separate consumption and portfolio choice in order to identify which predictions hold when consumption is non-optimal. I build a model in which a portfolio manager selects portfolio weights on behalf of a consumer. The consumer has a potentially non-optimal consumption policy which could reflect a range of realistic consumption frictions. In the case of power utility, risk premia depend on exposure to long-horizon consumption and expected return shocks, not single- period consumption as in the standard model. My results apply to a wide range of environments and generalize beyond power utility. In the general case, long-horizon risks matter when consumers do not react to shocks optimally. I provide empirical evidence that expected return shocks are negatively priced in the cross section of stock returns, as the model predicts, and can account for 1.3 percentage points of the equity premium. “The Shadow Price of Intermediary Constraints” (with Weiling Liu) Limits to the risk-taking activities of financial intermediaries are important for understanding market stability as well as asset prices, yet they remain difficult to pin down. We propose a novel measure of intermediary risk constraints called the interdealer broker (IDB) ratio, which is the percent of total trade volume conducted between dealers using an IDB. Theoretically, when aggregate risk constraints tighten, dealers will use IDBs more in order to redistribute idiosyncratic risk. Empirically, we test our measure in the U.S. Treasury market, where we find that the IDB ratio has a 0.72 correlation with interest rate risk, as proxied by Value-at-Risk. Consistent with a story of risk premia, a one standard deviation increase in the IDB ratio forecasts a 1.8 percentage point higher annual excess return on a five-year bond. This return predictability holds across different fixed income classes, over varying maturities, as well as out-of-sample. JONATHAN P. BEAUCHAMP • OCTOBER 2018 JONATHAN P. BEAUCHAMP http://scholar.harvard.edu/jonathanpbeauchamp/home [email protected] Contact Information: Department of Economics University of Toronto Max Gluskin House, 150 St. George Street, 306 Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G7, Canada +1 (416) 978-4978 Citizenship: Canadian Professional Experience: Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, U. of Toronto (Jul. 2016-now) Assistant Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, U. of Toronto (Cross- Appointed Affiliated Faculty; Jul. 2018-now) Associate Investigator, The Centre for Applied Genomics (Oct. 2018-now) Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Economics, Harvard University (Jan. 2015-Jul. 2016) Economist, Monetary & Capital Markets Dept., International Monetary Fund (Dec. 2013-Dec. 2014) Associate, specialization in the Risk Practice, McKinsey & Company (Sept. 2011-Dec. 2013) Education: Harvard University, Ph.D., Economics, May 2011 Queen’s University, M.A., Economics, Aug. 2006 Queen’s University, B.Sc. (Honours), Mathematics, Minor in Economics, with Distinction, May 2005 References: References: Professor Daniel Benjamin Professor David Laibson Center for Economics and Social Research Department of Economics University of Southern California Harvard University [email protected] [email protected] +1 (213) 821-2769 +1 (617) 496-3402 Professor David Cesarini Department of Economics New York University [email protected] +1 (212) 998-3773 Teaching and Research Fields: Primary fields: Applied Microeconomics Secondary fields: Genoeconomics Additional teaching fields: Econometrics, Behavioral Economics, Cultural Economics 1 JONATHAN P. BEAUCHAMP • OCTOBER 2018 Journal Referee: The Quarterly Journal of Economics; The Journal of Political Economy; Journal of the European Economic Association; American Economic Journal: Applied Economics; Review of Economics and Statistics; Experimental Economics; European Economic Review; Journal of Development Economics; American Journal of Health Economics; Economics and Human Biology; Journal of Economic Psychology; Science; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Nature Neuroscience; Nature Communications; Economics and Human Biology; Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics; Hereditas. Selected Presentations and Invited Talks (Including Upcoming Events): 2019 Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) Annual Meeting, Atlanta 2018 Symposium at the Allen Institute on What Makes us Human and the Genetics of Complex Traits, Seattle, Washington Seminar at George Mason University Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences Conference, Boulder Conference on Evolution and Financial Markets, Cambridge 2017 American Society of Human Genetics 2017 Annual Meeting, Orlando Conference on Polygenic Prediction and its Application in the Social Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Seminar at the University of British Columbia Seminar at Simon Fraser University CIFAR-SIIWB Meeting, Toronto 2016 Seminar at the Center for Economic and Social Research, University of Southern California HCEO’s Conference on Genetics and Social Science, Los Angeles Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences Conference, Boulder Seminar at Binghampton University Seminar at the University of Toronto 2015 Invited talk at the McLaughlin Centre, University of Toronto Seminar at the University of Chicago Dept. of Economics, Lifecycle Working Group Behavior Genetics Association Annual Meeting, San Diego Invited talk at Midi Conférence de l’IGF, Montreal 2010 Seminar at Erasmus School of Economics, Rotterdam Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences Conference, Boulder 2009 IZA/Volkswagen Foundation Workshop: Genes, Brains, and the Labor Market, Bonn Selected Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2008-11 Trudeau Scholarship 2006-10 SSHRC Canada Doctoral Fellowship 2006-08 Harvard Douglas Dillon Fellowship Fund 2005-06 SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship 2001-05 Canada Millennium National Excellence Scholarship 2001-05 Queen’s Chancellor’s (Senator Frank Carrel Honour) Scholarship Languages: English, French (native fluency); German (advanced); Spanish (beginner) 2 JONATHAN P. BEAUCHAMP • OCTOBER 2018 Research Papers: Job Market Paper: With the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (co-starred senior author). “Genome-wide association analyses of risk tolerance and risky behaviors in over one million individuals identify hundreds of loci and shared genetic influences.” (Accepted by Nature Genetics.) Humans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over one million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. Across all GWAS we identified hundreds of associated loci, including 99 loci associated with general risk tolerance. We report evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across risk tolerance and the risky behaviors: 46 of the 99 general risk tolerance loci contain a lead SNP for at least one of our other GWAS, and general risk tolerance is genetically correlated (!𝑟̂ ! ~ 0.25 to $ 0.50) with a range of risky behaviors. Bioinformatics analyses imply that genes near general-risk-tolerance- associated SNPs are highly expressed in brain tissues and point to a role for glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission. We found no evidence of enrichment for genes previously hypothesized to relate to risk tolerance. Jonathan Beauchamp, Christopher F. Chabris, Daniel J. Benjamin, and David I. Laibson. “Controlling for the Compromise Effect Debiases Estimates of Risk Preference Parameters.” NBER Working Paper No. 21792. DOI: 10.3386/w21792. (Revise & Resubmit at Experimental Economics.) Jonathan Schulz, Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Joseph Henrich. “The Origins of WEIRD Psychology.” PsyArXiv. DOI: https://psyarxiv.com/d6qhu/. (Submitted and under review.) Jonathan Beauchamp, Aysu Okbay, Sven Oskarsson, and Kevin Thom. “Of Genes and Screens: Educational Reform, Ability, and Labor Market Screening.” Working Paper. Research in Progress: “Nature via Nurture: Evidence from Adoptees and Implications for Intergenerational Mobility” (with James Lee and Matt McGue). “Kinship Systems and Economic Outcomes” (with Duman Bahrami-Rad, Joe Henrich, and Jonahan Schulz). Publications: With the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium. 2018. “Gene Discovery and Polygenic Prediction from a 1.1-Million-Person GWAS of Educational Attainment.” Nature Genetics, 50: 1112–1121. Jonathan Beauchamp, David Cesarini, and Magnus Johannesson. 2017. “The Psychometric and Empirical Properties of Measures of Risk Preferences.” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 54: 203-237. Jonathan Beauchamp. 2016. “Genetic Evidence for Natural Selection in Humans in the Contemporary United States.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113: 7774-7779. With the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (co-starred senior author). 2016. “Genetic Variants Associated with Subjective Well-Being, Depressive Symptoms, and Neuroticism Identified through Genome-Wide Analyses.” Nature genetics, 48: 624-633. With the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (co-starred leading author). 2016. “Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies 74 Loci Associated with Educational Attainment.” Nature, 533: 539-542. With the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium. 2013. “GWAS of 126,559 Individuals Identifies Genetic Variants Associated with Educational Attainment.” Science, 340: 1467-71. Christopher F. Chabris, James J. Lee, Daniel J. Benjamin, Jonathan Beauchamp, et al. 2013. “Why Is It Hard to Find Genes that are Associated with Social Science Traits? Theoretical and Empirical Considerations.” American Journal of Public Health, 103: S152–S166. 3 JONATHAN P. BEAUCHAMP • OCTOBER 2018 Christopher F. Chabris, Benjamin M. Hebert, Daniel Benjamin, Jonathan Beauchamp, et al. 2012. “Most Reported Genetic Associations With General Intelligence Are Probably False Positives.” Psychological Science, 23: 1314–23. With Daniel J. Benjamin, David Cesarini, Christopher F. Chabris, Edward L. Glaeser, et al. 2012. “The Promises and Pitfalls of Genoeconomics.” Annual Review of Economics, 4: 627-662. Jonathan Beauchamp, David Cesarini, Magnus Johannesson, Matthijs van der Loos, et al. 2011. “Molecular Genetics and Economics.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25: 57–82. Jonathan Beauchamp, David Cesarini, Magnus Johannesson, Erik Lindqvist, and Coren Apicella. 2010. “On the Sources of the Height-Intelligence Correlation: New Insights from a Bivariate ACE Model with Assortative Mating.” Behavior Genetics, 41: 242–252. Coren Apicella, David Cesarini, Magnus Johannesson, Christopher T. Dawes, Paul Lichtenstein, Björn Wallace, Jonathan Beauchamp, and Lars Westberg. 2010. “No Association between Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) Gene Polymorphisms and Experimentally Elicited Social Preferences.” PLoS ONE, 5: e11153. Major Grants ($10,000 or more): 2018-2021 Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Genome Canada: Insight Grant. “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Economic Preferences and Outcomes.” PI. (CDN$ 90,147.) 2018-2020 Connaught (University of Toronto): New Researcher Award. “Nature via Nurture: Gene- Environment Interactions and Economic Outcomes.” PI. (CDN$ 10,000.) 4 -1- VALENTIN BOLOTNYY https://scholar.harvard.edu/bolotnyy [email protected] HARVARD UNIVERSITY Placement Director: John Campbell [email protected] 617-496-6448 Placement Director: Nathaniel Hendren [email protected] 617-496-3588 Assistant Director: Brenda Piquet [email protected] 617-495-8927 Office Contact Information: Littauer Center 1805 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Personal Information: Born in Ukraine. U.S. Citizen. Undergraduate Studies: B.A. Economics, International Relations, Stanford University, with Honors and Distinction, 2011 Graduate Studies: Harvard University, 2013 to present Ph.D. Candidate in Economics Thesis Title: Essays in Public and Labor Economics Expected Completion Date: May 2019 References: Professor Andrei Shleifer Professor Edward Glaeser Harvard University Harvard University Littauer Center Littauer Center 617-495-5046 617-495-0575 [email protected] [email protected] Professor Nathaniel Hendren Professor Claudia Goldin Harvard University Harvard University Littauer Center Littauer Center 617-496-5079 617-613-1200 [email protected] [email protected] Professor Lawrence Katz Harvard University Littauer Center 617- 495-5148 [email protected] Research Fields: Primary fields: Public Economics, Labor Economics Secondary field: Political Economy Teaching Experience: Spring 2016 Economics 1745: Corporate Finance, Teaching Fellow for Prof. Matteo Maggiori -2- Research Experience and Other Employment: 2014-2016 Harvard University, Resident Tutor in Economics and Fellowships for Eliot House 2011-2013 Federal Reserve Board, Sr. Research Assistant for Division of Financial Stability Professional Activities: Refereeing: Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Finance Consulting: World Bank, Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships: 2017 Foundations of Human Behavior Initiative, Pershing Square Research Grant 2016 US Department of Transportation University Transportation Centers (UTC) Grant; Warburg Prize; Bradley Foundation Grant; Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston Research Fellowship 2014 5th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on Economic Sciences, Attendance Scholarship 2013 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship; Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellowship 2011 Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research Leadership: Co-Creator: Harvard Graduate Economics Association; Graduate Student Mental Health Study; The Immigrant Doctors Project Select Presentations: “The Immigrant Doctors Project: Research Activism in Practice,” Carleton College, April 18th, 2018. “Budget Constraints and Rent Extraction in Public Infrastructure Procurement,” Western Economic Association International (WEAI) Conference, Universidad Catolica de Chile, January 3rd, 2017. “Cost Estimates, Winning Bids, and Final Project Costs: Why Do They Differ?” Review, Evaluate, Accelerate, and Deploy Innovation (READi) Committee Meeting, Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT), January 7th, 2016. Working Papers: Bolotnyy, Valentin and Emanuel, Natalia. 2018. “Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men? Evidence from Bus and Train Operators” (Job Market Paper) Even in a unionized environment, where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings). We use confidential administrative data on bus and train operators from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to show that the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by the workplace choices that women and men make. Women value time and flexibility more than men. Women take more unpaid time off using the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and work fewer overtime hours than men. Men and women plan to work similar overtime hours when they are scheduled three months in advance, but men actually work nearly 50% more overtime hours than women. Women with dependents value time away from work more than do men with dependents. When selecting work schedules, women try to avoid weekends and split-shifts more than men. To avoid unfavorable work times, women prioritize their schedules over route safety and select routes with a higher probability of accidents. Women are less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages. Conditional on seniority, which dictates choice sets, the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by differences in operator choices of hours, schedules, and routes.