Venue: Hybrid: C1-060 and BBB

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Strategic expert committees and the markets that assess them:
A lab experiment

ABSTRACT
Committees of experts are widely used to make decisions. We experimentally investigate (i) whether markets accurately assess the ability of committee members who benefit from positive assessments and (ii) how such committee members combine costly decisions and cheap-talk statements to impress markets. The focus on committees allows us to use conversations among their members as a source of information about the beliefs on the relationship between their actions and assessments received. We find that reputation concerns reduce the amount of useful information markets can rely on by a factor 2, while removing the cheap talk statements reduces the available info by a factor 10. In particular, reputation concerns make the modal cheap-talk strategy of committee members uninformative about their ability. In a treatment without statements, committees use the costly decision to impress. Thus, distorted decisions are more frequent in the absence of the cheap-talk channel. Consistent with this behavior, markets make assessments less dependent on actual decisions and statements when assessments matter to decision makers. Within treatments, markets use the available information about ability quite efficiently.

Venue: TPM Boardroom A1.370

A methods seminar series. How to do things with research.

The Intersectional Philosophy of Technology Speaker Series (vol 2) presents:

"Automating Autism," Os Keyes, Doctoral student, Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington


ironholds.org/research/

Venue: Hybrid: C1-060 and BBB

AbstractThis paper contributes to the burgeoning discussion on pathways to Africa’s industrialization by examining the role of spatial dynamics and the interdependence of technological capability and industrial development in region. First, we propose a unified analytical framework to study technological capability in Africa. The unified analytical framework measures technological capability along four dimensions: technology precondition, technology infrastructure, technology import, and technology effort. We characterize these four dimensions as well as operationalize them using hard data. Contrary to the conventional view, we document strong heterogeneities in the levels of technological capabilities among countries in Africa. Second, we employ a spatial econometric model to examine how industrial development in an African country depends on the country's technological capability and the technological capability and industrial development of other African countries. Although we do not find significant evidence of industrial development interdependence, our results show strong evidence of technological interdependence among countries in Africa. Importantly, we find that the channel through which this interdependence is propagated is intra-regional trade. Our result holds important implications on the need to promote regional value chains in Africa and the active role AfCFTA must play in this regard.

Venue: TPM-Hall B, 31.A0.020