by sfab358 | Jul 27, 2023
A link to the recording of the lecture on YouTube can be found here
For photos taken on the day, follow this link
Speaker: Massimo Morelli (Bocconi University)
Title of the talk: “The Shift to Commitment Politics and Populism” [working paper version – slides & recording of the public lecture]
Date, Time and Venue: Thursday, 17 August 2023, 5.15pm – 6pm, Registration, drinks & canapés, Level 1 Foyer, Sir OGGB, 6pm – 7.30pm, Lecture and Audience Q&A, Sir OGGB, Room OGGB 5, Level 0
Abstract: The decline in voters’ trust in government and the rise of populism are two concerning features of contemporary politics in Europe and United States. In the lecture I plan to introduce a model of commitment politics that elucidates the interplay between distrust and populism. Candidates supply policy commitments to mitigate voters’ distrust in government, shrinking politicians’ levels of discretion typical of representative democracies. Alongside commitments, candidates rationally choose the main strategies associated with populism, namely anti-elite and pro-people rhetoric. With novel data on voters’ distrust towards the U.S. federal government, which we match with the Twitter activity of more than 2,000 candidates over five congressional elections, we show that distrust is strongly associated with candidates’ supply of commitments and populist rhetoric, which are also effective strategies at mobilizing distrustful voters. I also plan to show that the shift to commitment politics determines greater aversion to checks and balances, and hence even illiberal populism can emerge. Free media, judiciary independence, and professional bureaucrats, are all “agencies of restraint’’ of an executive, and hence the voters who prefer the policy commitments of their chosen candidate to executive power prefer the reduction of strength of all such agencies.
Bio: Massimo Morelli has been elected Fellow of the Econometric Society – and Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory – mostly for his contributions to bargaining, political economy and economics of conflict, while his current work also deals with causes and consequences of populism and law and economics in general. He obtained a PhD in economics from Harvard in 1996 and went back to Italy (Bocconi) in 2014, after having taught at multiple universities in the US, including Columbia University. He has been an active member of the Council of the European Economic Association and is now chairing the Minorities in Economics (MinE) committee, with a growing passion for all diversity and inclusion concerns.
To register, sign up on Eventbrite
by sfab358 | Jul 27, 2023
Speaker: Moon Duchin (Tufts University)
Title of the talk: “Computing and Democracy” [slides]
Date, Time and Venue: Thursday, 9 March 2023, 18:00-20:00,OGGB4 (Room 260-073) Sir Owen G Glenn Building, 12 Grafton Road
Abstract: How do groups make collective decisions? And how should they best do so? This ancient topic has been intertwined with mathematical tools in several ways throughout the ages: with the new art of probability in the 18th century, isolating axioms of fairness in the mid-20th century, and again today with computation on centre stage. Professor Duchin will discuss ways that mathematics and data science are illuminating the dynamics of voting and creating powerful tools for democracy reform.
Link to photo album
Link to radio interview by Moon Duchin while visiting UoA
by sfab358 | Aug 1, 2022
We are pleased to announce a new in person research seminar series hosted by the Centre for Mathematical Social Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, which we called “There will be donuts.” The series will run periodically from August 2022 (frequency of meetings to be confirmed and meetings posted and announced as they get confirmed), accompanied by donuts to share. If you want to talk about theory (your own, or an interesting paper from the literature) or even give a mini-course on some area of theory you want to tell us about, then please sign up! We encourage informality, brainstorming of potential research ideas, and general enthusiasm for all things theoretical. Book your slot by emailing one of the organisers. If you want to learn some theory, then please come along. Students are particularly welcome (in the audience and on stage). And of course, donuts will be provided! Hope to see you at the seminars!
To learn more about it, visit its dedicated website at https://sites.google.com/view/cmss-there-will-be-donuts/home
Best,
The Organisers
Matthew Ryan (mryan@aut.ac.nz)
Simona Fabrizi (s.fabrizi@auckland.ac.nz)
Steffen Lippert (s.lippert@auckland.ac.nz)
by sfab358 | Jan 7, 2021
We continue to host online seminars on social choice and welfare. Here is where you can find all about them, over time, including how to sign up to receive any notification as seminars get confirmed.
by sfab358 | Oct 21, 2020
Speaker: Valery Pavlov (University of Auckland)
Paper presented: “Sharing the first (year of) experience of getting started with online experiments: why, what it takes, what’s easy, and what’s not.”
Date/Time/Venue: Wednesday, 21 October 2020, 12:30-13:30 (NZST), via Zoom
Recording and slides
Abstract: By now, online experiments appear to be at least as popular as labs experiments, and there are several very good reasons for that. One that has become particularly salient at the time of Covid-19 is the possibility to collect the data and thus continue doing research regardless of the availability of students on campus. This presentation is meant to primarily help researchers whose research critically depends on the possibility of running experiments and who experience difficulties getting them done in a computer lab on campus. The presenter shares his experiences with the learning curve of using oTree and MTurk, with and without coding. While collecting the data in a single decision-maker experiment with 1,000 participants requires about the same amount of work as running a single 30-people session in a computer lab, collecting the data in a four-player game proves much harder online than in the lab.
Bio: Dr Valery Pavlov is a Senior Lecturer at the ISOM Department of the UOA Business School. He obtained his PhD at the Penn State University investigating the impact of other regarding preferences on the performance of supply chain contracts under the supervisor of Professor Elena Katok. His research interests belong to the areas of behavioural, and healthcare operations management. In his research he uses primarily experiments and analytical modelling. Among his contributions to the literature are two theoretical results on the contracting problem when preferences for fairness are private information: the “no-rejection” property of the wholesale pricing, and the equivalence of the optimal mechanism and the Ultimatum Game. Papers he co-authored have been accepted for publication in Management Science, Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management.
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