Tag Archives: guest lecture

general, Interviews, Visiting Lecturers

Going Once, Going Twice, and Gone! Auction Theory with Professor Paul Milgrom

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 httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bErO0-ujMQg

Fall semester in CERGE –EI was full of interesting events for researchers and students. One of the most memorable is surely the Market Design Conference in October, and in particular the visit of Professor Paul Milgrom from Stanford University.

While serving as a professor in Yale and Northwestern Universities, Paul Milgrom received wide recognition for his revolutionary innovations in practical market design. Currently Dr. Milgrom holds a position as the Shirley and Leonard Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics at Stanford University.

Professor MIlgrom is widely recognized by economists to be the father of the celebrated “linkage principle,” which is extensively used as a valuable strategic tool in market design, particularly multi-unit auctions and procurement. One of Milgrom’s stellar academic contributions was in designing and conducting the first spectrum auctions for US Federal Communication Commission (FCC), which allowed the government to raise enormous amounts of money for spectrum licenses. Modifications of Milgroms’ auction rules for spectrums have been employed all over the world, and now most spectrum licenses are sold through these types of auctions.

At the conference at CERGE-EI, Professor Milgrom gave a public lecture about his recent work for the FCC on the ‘Incentive Auction in the US’. In particular, these types of auctions serve to redistribute efficiently existing 3G licenses. The main challenge in this type of market situation is to achieve satisfaction from both sides: consumers and suppliers (license holders) of 3G services.

During his lecture, Professor Milgrom discussed all possible drawbacks of the ongoing redistribution of the licenses, and showed that one can overcome existing problems by applying “incentive auction” rules. The main intuition is that smaller licenses will be redistributed to bigger providers and hence bigger providers will receive more market power and they will be willing to pay for these licenses. Incentive auction rules develop a unique efficient matching mechanism where first the FCC buys broadcast licenses from providers, and then it repackages them in an efficient way and sells them through the auction again.

The most fascinating thing for CERGE-EI students was to see an immediate application of the economic theory into practice.  Professor Milgrom’s presentation motivated a great deal of discussion on further improvements and modifications on the incentive auction rules. After the lecture, Milgrom kindly agreed to a brief interview, which you can see on our Youtube page. From our side, we want to sincerely thank professor Milgrom for his participation in the conference and his openness to discussing new ideas from CERGE-EI students!

Author: Oksana Oryshchyn

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general, Interviews

CERGE-EI Interviews Professor Philippe Aghion

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Let’s start from the beginning. Who influenced your decision to become an economist?

I wanted to go into economics because I was politically engaged; I was a left wing militant in my youth. And I realized then that understanding the economy was important because I could see that it plays a big role in political events. I thought it was good to be able to go into academics to understand these things better. I knew there are ways to transform the world and to make it a better place, so that’s what motivated me.

So tell us, where did you get your education?

In France I started mathematics first. I went to do my PhD in Harvard, and then I spent two years at MIT. Eventually I was a bit homesick, so I went back to Europe, and spent ten years here.

In Europe I spent most of my time in London because the EBRD was being created and I was part of the team that started it. Then in 2000 I went back to Harvard and I’ve been a professor there since then.

As for your current state research, what is your interest? And as a professor who has published many books and articles, where do you see the research gap?

My area of research is growth economics. What differentiates my approach from other approaches to growth is that firms play a big role. It’s an ‘industrial organization’ approach to growth. Particularly I examine competition and growth, industrial policy and growth, and how monetary and fiscal policy influence growth by affecting firms’ investment decisions, like R&D and other types of investment. So it’s very much firm level growth analysis, and that’s really what I’ve been pushing.

My training is in theoretical industrial organization and contract theory. I try to understand how market structures and the organization of firms and government matters for growth. Recently I’ve also been working on climate and growth.

I’m very interested in how to rethink growth policy in Europe. Everyone talks about growth policy. So how should it be designed? I think the research I do has something to say about how to design a growth policy package for Europe.

It always leads to using a Schumpetrian approach to get into new reconsiderations of growth policy; this could be competition, it could be more general structural reforms, it could be industrial policy, investment policy, or microeconomic policy of growth. It’s on those grounds that things can be done to spur growth in the Eurozone.

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general, Interviews, Visiting Lecturers

What’s Really Hidden in the Hidden Economy? CERGE-EI Interviews Professor Dilip Bhattacharyya

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Could we have predicted the crisis? Were there hidden clues and we just didn’t know where to look? Professor Bhattacharyya (University of Essex) is on a mission to measure the hidden economy and understand what it can tell us about macroeconomic instability.

Dr. Bhattacharyya’s guest lecture at CERGE-EI, titled “Predicting the 2008 Financial Crises from the Hidden Economy Estimates,” outlined how hidden economy estimates and the methodology used in the estimation procedure allow us to produce an indirect measure of ‘excessive money.’ Previous scholars, notably Raghuram Rajan, have noted that ‘excessive money’ in the economy was a primary cause of the 2008 financial crisis. Dr. Bhattacharyya paper notes that even as early as 1995 there were hidden signals suggesting a possible impending crisis for the UK economy.

Could we have predicted the 2008 financial crisis13 years earlier if the authorities had cared to consider this research?

 

Check out CERGE-EI’s brief interview with Dr. Bhattacharyya:

What is the most important insight from your research?

The most important insight, which is often missed, is that there are signals in this world which are mostly ignored by mainstream economists, and which can predict a lot of things which mainstream economics cannot. More importantly, it highlights the changing economic structure—the informal economy is taking a more important role, so learning about it and how it is interrelated with the normal ‘recorded’ economy is an important part for the future of the world. We hear now that there is 10% unemployment. But how these people can be absorbed into the system is not always necessarily through the process of formal employment—there might be informal employment structures growing. These are very fundamental questions in economic analysis. I don’t know when and how long it will take for this type of research to be taken up in a very deep way—but I won’t be surprised if one day someone working in this area becomes a Noble Prize winner Continue reading What’s Really Hidden in the Hidden Economy? CERGE-EI Interviews Professor Dilip Bhattacharyya →

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