Candidate Spotlight is a showcase of research by PhD students coming onto the job market from the Department of Economics, University of Toronto. Today’s post introduces Jie Fang whose job market paper entitled When are Patents Traded and Why: A Dynamic Structural Model of Drug Development and Patent Trading examines the role of patent trade and its impact on innovation outcomes and incentives in the pharmaceutical industry. Assistant Professor Murat Çelik, a member of Fang’s supervision committee, describes the paper and its contribution to the discipline.
Candidate Spotlight: Use of Diverse Data Demonstrates Strong Technical Skills
Candidate Spotlight is a showcase of research by PhD students coming onto the job market from the Department of Economics, University of Toronto. Today’s post introduces Paul Z. Han whose job market paper entitled Biased Learning, Dynamic Effort and Course Design, utilizes a behavioural model in the study of the economics of education. Professor Victor Aguirregabiria, a member of Han’s supervision committee describes the paper and its contribution to the discipline.
Paul Han specializes in structural econometrics, with a specific focus on dynamic structural models. His job market paper is in education economics where he investigates how certain aspects of student assessment in a university course influence students’ hours of study and their acquisition of knowledge.
His model assumes that students make decisions based on their expected utility, which considers the grades they aim to achieve, and the associated effort required. What sets Paul’s model apart is its recognition that, at the outset of the course, students may hold biased beliefs regarding the connection between study hours and grades, as well as their skills related to the course material. As the course unfolds, students update these beliefs in response to their test grades. Paul employs data from an undergraduate course at the University of Toronto to estimate his model. His dataset encompasses both objective data, including student attendance records and test results, and survey-generated information on students’ hours of study, as well as their elicited preferences and beliefs.
He ingeniously combines these diverse data sources to develop an identification approach that integrates revealed and elicited preferences and beliefs. Through his counterfactual analysis, he uncovers a significant positive influence of students’ biased perceptions about the benefits of studying hours on their effort and knowledge acquisition.
Conversely, on average, their skewed beliefs about their course-specific skills have a negative impact on their study hours. Furthermore, Paul’s findings indicate that the sign and magnitude of the effect on study hours of incorporating more frequent tests hinges on the relative speed at which students adjust their misconceptions about their skills compared to their misperceptions about the returns of hours of study. This paper demonstrates Paul’s strong technical skills.
Author: Victor Aguirregabiria is Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto. His most recent paper with Alessandro Iaria, and Senay Sokullu is Identification and Estimation of Demand Models with Endogenous Product Entry and Exit (August 28, 2023). Is is available at SSRN.
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Guangbin Jeremy Hong Wins Bank of Canada Award
PhD Candidate Guangbin Jeremy Hong wrote the best Economics graduate student paper in Canada for 2023. That’s according to the Bank of Canada who gives the Graduate Student Research Paper Award to recognize promising graduate students in Economics or Finance.
“The Graduate Student Paper Award celebrates excellent research by students at universities in Canada, and Canadian students around the world. It recognizes research in areas that are of interest to the Bank and support its policy goals,” said BoC Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle. “And this year, we explored some fascinating ideas. The submissions covered a wide range of research areas, from spatial inequality to the clean energy transition to the at-times enigmatic behaviour of financial markets.”
The title of Hong’s award-winning paper is The Two-Sided Sorting of Workers and Firms: Implications for Spatial Inequality and Welfare.
“Jeremy’s job market paper studies how firms and workers co-locate across cities, and why it matters in terms of earnings inequality and location-based policies,” said Professor Kevin Lim, a member of Hong’s supervision committee. “The Bank of Canada has recognized that Guangbin Jeremy Hong’s scholarship is relevant and important to understanding economic conditions in Canada and around the world.”
Hong is in the final year of his PhD at the Department of Economics. The job market papers each doctoral candidate in the field produces is a chapter taken from their dissertations that highlights their original research, aptitudes, skills, and contributions to the literature.
“It’s so humbling to be recognized by the Bank of Canada for my job market paper,” said Hong. “My academic community here at the University of Toronto has helped me to grow as an economist and as a researcher and I would like to thank my supervision committee and my cohort of colleagues for their support.”
Award finalists are invited to a workshop at the Bank of Canada Annual Conference to engage with and receive feedback from a diverse group of researchers and policymakers.
“Members of the Department of Economics are thrilled that the Bank of Canada has recognized Guangbin Jeremy Hong’s paper. Discussion about where and why firms locate their operations, and where and why skilled workers live and work where they do, and its impact on everyone’s well-being, is central to understanding how the global economy now works, or should work,” said Professor Ettore Damiano, Department Chair. “Jeremy Hong’s research presents theory and empirical evidence which move this discussion forward.”
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