北大经院工作坊第801场
Not So Toothless: How Chinese Criminal Defense Lawyers Encourage Judge-Prosecutor Disagreement
发展与公共财政工作坊
主讲人：侯越（香港科技大学副教授）
主持老师：
（北大经院）刘冲、吴群锋、曹光宇
（北大国发院）李力行、席天扬、徐化愚、于航、王轩、易君健、黄清扬
时间：2023年12月20日（周三）10：30-12：00
地点：北京大学国家发展研究院承泽园246教室
主讲人简介：
Yue Hou is an Associate Professor in the Division of Social Science. Her research interests include political economy, authoritarian politics, and identity politics with a regional focus on China. Her first book, the Private Sector in Public Office: Selective Property Rights in China (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics), addresses the long-standing puzzle of how China’s private sector manages to grow without secure property rights. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, the China Quarterly, among other peer-reviewed journals.
摘要：
In authoritarian regimes, courts are often seen as tools of the autocrats, while lawyers are perceived as powerless. We challenge these assumptions by examining the role of criminal defense lawyers in China. Analyzing an original database of drug cases in Chinese criminal courts from 2014 to 2018, we find that the presence of criminal defense lawyers significantly increases the likelihood of judge-prosecutor disagreement: Judges are 3.6 times more likely to reject prosecutors' arguments and two times more likely to deviate from prosecutors' recommended sentences when a case is presented by a lawyer. Using original interviews, detailed readings of lawyers' effective arguments, and structural topic modeling, we demonstrate that the quality of legal representation is crucial in understanding lawyers' effectiveness in influencing court decisions. These results contribute to our understanding of authoritarian politics, showcasing how non-state agents such as lawyers can exert influence within state institutions.
北大经院工作坊第802场
Optimal Certification Design
微观理论经济学工作坊
主讲人：陈斌（华中科技大学教授）
主持老师：
（北大经院）吴泽南、石凡奇
（北大国发院）胡岠
参与老师：
（北大经院）胡涛、吴泽南、石凡奇
（北大国发院）汪浩、胡岠、邢亦青
（北大光华）翁翕、刘烁
时间：2023年12月21日（周四）10：30-12：00
地点：北京大学经济学院302会议室
主讲人简介：
陈斌, 现任华中科技大学教授、博士生导师，经济学院院长助理。2010年在香港大学经济与金融学院取得博士学位，2015年在中山大学取得长聘教职，2021年调入华中科技大学。长期从事信息经济学、产业经济学等研究，十余篇英文论文发表在Economic Journal、Journal of Economic Theory、Management Science、Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization、International Journal of Industrial Organization等国际期刊，以及2篇发表在《经济研究》，主持国家自然科学基金课题3项，教育部人文社科规划课题1项等。
摘要：
We study the optimal certification design in an environment in which the certification institute charges a uniform price to certify firms with heterogeneous types and outside options. We find that the optimal certification depends not only on the surplus/deficit between firm's true and outside payoff associated with the price but also on the true value a firm stands. For a subset of firms, the Top Cover Condition (TCC), i.e., the surplus covers the deficit for any top percentile firms, is necessary to certify the firms with some incentive compatible policy. When the outside options are non-decreasing, we show the sufficiency of TCC and the number of certificates required in the certification. We further provide an algorithm to find the optimal set of firms to certify with a given price. We find that the institute will exclude firms with high deficit. Moreover, with same deficit, those firms with both high true value and outside options will be excluded prior to ones with low true value.
北大经院工作坊第803场
Optimal Mix among PAYGO, EET and Individual Savings
风险、保险与不确定性经济学工作坊
主讲人：何林（中国人民大学财政金融学院教授）
主持人：
（北大经院）贾若
（人大财金）陈泽
（清华经管）刁莉
参与老师：
（北大经院）郑伟
（人大财金）魏丽
（清华经管）冯润桓
时间：2023年12月21日（周四）13：30-15：00
线上形式：腾讯会议
会议号：550 619 902
会议密码：1221
线下地点：北京大学经济学院302会议室
主讲人简介：
何林，中国人民大学财政金融学院教授。她的研究方向为随机优化方法在金融和保险中的应用，以及养老金管理。曾在Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Scandinavian Actuarial Journal and North American Actuarial Journal等一流精算学期刊发表多篇研究论文。
摘要：
In order to deal with the aging problem, pension system is actively transformed into the funded scheme. However, the funded scheme does not completely replace PAYGO (Pay as You Go) scheme and there exist heterogeneous mixes among PAYGO, EET (Exempt, Exempt, Taxed) and individual savings in different countries. We establish the optimal mix by solving a Nash equilibrium between the pension participants and the government. Given the obligatory PAYGO and EET contribution rates, the participants choose the optimal asset allocation of the individual savings and the consumption policies to achieve the objective. The results extend the “Samuelson-Aaron” criterion to age-dependent preference orderings. The government is fully aware of the optimal feedback of the participants. It chooses the optimal PAYGO and EET contribution rates to maximize the overall utility of the participants weighted by each cohort’s population. As such, the negative population growth rate leads to the decline of the PAYGO attractiveness as well as the increase of the older cohorts’ weight in the government decision-making. The optimal mix is the comprehensive result of the two effects.
北大经院工作坊第804场
Lumpy R&D and the Great Twins: The Great Moderation and Great Recession
（调整缓慢的研发与伟大的双胞胎：大温和与大衰退）
宏观经济学工作坊
主讲人：Donghai Zhang (National University of Singapore)
主持老师：（北大经院）李博
参与老师：
（北大国发院）赵波、余昌华、李明浩
（北大经院）陈仪、韩晗、李伦
时间：2023年12月22日（周五）10：00-11：30
地点：北京大学国家发展研究院承泽园131教室
主讲人简介：
Donghai Zhang is Assistant Professor of Economics at the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on macroeconomics and monetary economics, especially on heterogeneity and information frictions. He has been published in top journals such as Journal of Monetary Economics and Journal of European Economic Association. Prior joining National University of Singapore, he is assistant professor of economics at University of Bonn.
摘要：
We document that R&D investments are lumpy, with a heavy representation of innovative firms that either do not adjust or make a spike adjustment in R&D expenses. Moreover, the fraction of firms making significant adjustments to R&D spending is pro-cyclical. We then develop a medium-run business cycle model with heterogeneous innovative firms and fixed adjustment costs, featuring lumpy R&D. By fitting the model to the data, we uncover the 'Great Twins': the Great Recession is partly caused by the preceding Great Moderation. We present micro- and macro-level evidence that supports the Great Twins hypothesis. Finally, we discuss the policy implications.
供稿：科研与博士后办公室
美编：兮哲
责编：度量、雨禾、雨田
