Till von Wachter on Working Conditions in the U.S.

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The RAND Corporation published a study on working conditions in the U.S. that is coauthored by UCLA Professor, Till von Wachter. The study examines data from the American Working Conditions Survey and contains a number of interesting findings. For example, more than 25% of Americans surveyed say they don’t have enough time to do their jobs, while 20% report abuse or harassment over the past year.

The study has been reported by NPR and the LA Times.

The RAND press release can be accessed here.

Ariel Burstein and Jonathan Vogel awarded Russell Sage Foundation grant

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Ariel Burstein and Jonathan Vogel, together with Gordon Hanson of UCSD, received a two-year grant from “Russell Sage Foundation” (RSF) to support the project “Tradability and the Labor Market Impact of Immigration.” The total award is $127,000. They study how differences in the tradability of goods and services determine how U.S. local labor markets adjust to the inflow of foreign-born labor. By combining theoretical models from international trade with empirical approaches from labor economics, they provide new insights into which types of workers gain from immigration and which types lose.

Julie Lee

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Julie Lee

You may have not heard of Julie Lee, but you have definitely heard music on Vevo. A founding member of Vevo, Julie helped revolutionize the music video industry. Immigrating to the United States as a child, Julie embarked on a journey that has since taken her across the world. Today, Julie is a business executive, entrepreneur, leader and mother.

In fact, she is just as energetic and driven today as she was when she first arrived at UCLA. A natural leader, Julie served as President for a business club on campus. She remarks that the greatest thing about UCLA was the network and mentors she had. In particular, one of her most influential mentors was Dr. McGarry, the former chair of the UCLA Econ Department. A confluence of great beginnings happened as one of Julie’s first Economics classes was also one of the first classes taught by Dr. McGarry at UCLA. Julie remarks that Dr. McGarry mentored her outside the classroom even though she had no obligation to do so. These interactions taught her the importance of learning through experiences, and understanding how the knowledge you learn in the classroom translates into the real world. Perhaps the most crucial impact in Julie’s life was when Dr. McGarry encouraged her to apply to the Departmental Scholar Program (DSP). Julie was initially hesitant about the program, since it required her to add another year to her education which was beyond her financial means. However, Dr. McGarry told her to apply for the Regent Scholarship which would fully fund her education. Heeding her advice, Julie applied to both the programs. Given the high bar of being accepted into into the DSP, Julie thought she had no shot. However, Julie was wrong: she got accepted as a Department Scholar and a Regent Scholar.

The Departmental Scholar Program proved to be the highlight of her life at UCLA. She got the opportunity to interact with graduate students who had a lot more experience than she did. She considered this to be an extremely humbling experience as she realized she was not the smartest person in the room. In addition, the graduate students came from a multitude of countries and walks of life. This was an enriching experience and prepared her for life outside UCLA. Furthermore, graduate classes were much more intimate. She believes the camaraderie that came from suffering together allowed all of the students to become extremely close. The is exemplified by the fact that she met Dr. Nahm, her best friend of twenty years on the first day of classes. Dr. Nahm, who is currently the Chair of the Economics Department at Kookmin University, and Julie are still as close as they were during their time at UCLA.

After graduating with a master’s and a bachelor’s degree in 4 years, Julie entered the professional world by working at Ernst & Young. She describes moving into the professional world as being dropped into the ocean. However, due to mentors like Dr. McGarry, she was able to wade in the water through her numerous internships while still at school. Furthermore, by studying Business Economics at a large school, her transition into professional life was made much easier. She decided to work at EY because she wanted to understand the service industry and learn how to professionally manage money. She believes that these skills are important whether you are a CEO, CIO, or President, all of which are positions she has held in the past 20 years.

After working at EY for a few years, Julie worked for Universal Music Group and then decided to move onto a project where she would have a larger impact. Beginning in the early 2000s, there was a substantive surge in music video demands; however, revenues for music companies like Sony and Universal were stagnant. To fill this void, Julie incubated a joint venture by Sony, Universal and Abu Dhabi Media which ended up as Vevo. While working at Vevo, Julie worked with companies like Google to redesign how music videos were distributed to consumers in the age of the internet. She played a key role in devising the hyper distribution model where consumers can access content whenever and wherever they want. Using then unheard-of media channels like YouTube and AOL, Vevo helped revolutionize how music is heard today. Vevo’s relationship was a landmark one in that it set the stage for a publisher ecosystem that ultimately paved the way for multi-channel networks.

However, revolutionizing the world’s music doesn’t come without hard work and long hours. Working at Vevo eventually began to take a toll on her work-life balance. “While incubating Vevo, I incubated a little boy” wryly comments Julie. In the years after her son’s birth, she spent a lot of time at work and not enough with her son. One day, when she was working on the Asia strategy for Vevo in Singapore, her 4-year-old son asked her why she was working. Julie had no answer. On the flight back to LA, she contemplated the simple question her son had asked, and the very next day, she decided to start a ten-month transition process onto her next adventure.

After departing from Vevo, she traveled the world with her son for 9 months which allowed her to spend quality time with him. It was her son’s curiosity that drove her to start EdTwist, a curated search engine for children. The project partnered with entities like UNESCO and JPL to foster curiosity among children. However, EdTwist eventually began to move in a direction which was beyond Julie’s realm of expertise. This subsequently spurred Julie’s recent move to Hong Kong to serve as the Chief Innovation Officer at Edipresse Media Asia, a premium media company inspiring, enabling and connecting communities of discerning consumers across Asia with brands including Asia Tatler. As an Asian mother, she wanted her son to live in Asia and become a true global citizen. She believes that although LA is described as a melting pot, it is really a salad bowl and the best way to learn about a culture is to live amongst its people. With a desire to work in a dynamic growing economy, she looks forward to the adventures which Asia has to offer.

Julie attributes her success to her affinity to take calculated risks. She argues that as economists, we should never take decisions without considering the short and long-term return of our decisions. She often agreed to work for less money if the opportunity was a new adventure that promised good returns. Furthermore, her decisions are made based on four major factors: money, people, legacy and location, emphasizing that you need to understand your expectations and priorities.  When she was fresh out of college, money was a very important factor. However, as her career progressed, her focus shifted away from earning money and towards other people and her own legacy. Her advice for students would be to embrace risks. An easy life is not an interesting life. Risks are intimidating at first. However, climbing over one mountain will give you the confidence and the motivation to climb over the next mountain. As you continue to take risks, you will become more and more comfortable with overcoming hurdles. She contends the importance of finding a network of people that support you when you fail. Her success would not have been possible without the support of Dr. Lee, her husband, and Dr. Nahm, her best friend (both extremely successful fellow Bruins). Going to UCLA has enabled her to acquire both a close network of supporters and a handle for calculated risk taking which has brought her success in her professional and personal life.

By Harsh Gupta.

Marek Pycia wins Scoville Teaching Award

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The department would like to congratulate Marek Pycia for winning the Warren C. Scoville Distinguished Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Professor Pycia’s Econ 106D course discusses the design and use of markets and other institutions to solve problems of matching markets and resource allocation.  The course uses both theory and case studies to help students understand how the design of markets can have substantial effects on the efficiency and fairness of outcomes. Congratulations Marek on winning the award!

 

 

The Asymmetric Impact of Taxes on Prices

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Youssef Benzarti

Value Added Taxes (VAT) don’t exist in the US but they are actually one of the most important and powerful forms of taxation. They are in fact so powerful that they have been labeled the “money making machine”. In European countries, they raise 30% of total tax revenue, which amounts to 12% of GDP. VATs exist in every single developed country and were introduced in 160 countries over the past 50 years. In spite of the importance of VATs, there is very little research investigating them

In “What Goes Up May Not Come Down: the Asymmetric Incidence of Value Added Taxes”, Professor Youssef Benzarti explores the effect of changes in VAT rates on prices. He finds something surprising: when VAT rates increases, prices inclusive of the VAT rate tend to increase to compensate for higher VAT rates; however when VAT rates decreases prices inclusive of VAT remain constant. This implies that firms tend to benefit from VAT cuts, but it is consumers who pay for VAT increases.

Some Governments use temporary VAT cuts to stimulate demand. This research implies that because prices tend not adjust downwards, temporary VAT cuts are not a good measure to stimulate demand. They are desirable if Governments want to stimulate supply by providing them with a transfer of money. However, ultimately Governments cannot control what firms will do with the windfall of money they receive as they can distribute it to their shareholders with no direct benefits to the economy.

Second, if VAT cuts are temporary and are supposed to be repealed once the economy recovers, the asymmetric pass-through suggests that this might result in a higher equilibrium price and will end up being paid for by consumers. As an illustrative example, assume a VAT cut of 10 percent that lasts three years. If firms pass through 50 percent of the VAT decrease but 100 percent of the VAT increase, then firms will receive a permanent windfall of 50 percent of the VAT decrease, consumers a three year long windfall of 50% which will be paid for by the Government through lower taxes. But once the VAT rate is increased, will stop receiving the 50 percent windfall and instead will start paying for the 50 percent windfall that firms are receiving through higher equilibrium prices. For this reason, a temporary VAT cut can hinder the demand side and is only desirable if the Government wants to permanently transfer money from consumers to firms.

Simon Board and Andres Santos announced as Editors

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This summer, Professor Simon Board became Coeditor of Theoretical Economics and Professor Andres Santos became Coeditor of Quantitative Economics. These are leading journals in theoretical and empirical economics, and operate under the umbrella of the Econometric Society. They are also open access.

Professor Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn has also become the Associate Editor at the Journal of Economic Theory, a leading journal in economic theory.

Michela Giorcelli awarded Grant in Innovation Policy

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Professor Michela Giorcelli was awarded the NBER Small Grant in Innovation Policy with Professor Nicola Lacetera for their project on “Public Disclosure and the Evolution of Science and Technology: A text Analysis Approach”. This project seeks to understand the relationship between the quality and success of scientific discoveries, and the public perception, understanding and ultimate acceptance. To evaluate the public’s view of innovations, Professor Giorcelli uses text analysis to study a large amount of historic data over the past century.

If you would like to assist Professor Giorcelli in her work, you can donate here.

LA Times article on the stock market features interview with Lee Ohanian

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In a recent article in the business section of the Los Angeles Times titled “The Fed took bold steps to books the economy.  Will undoing one of them rattle markets?”, UCLA’s Lee Ohanian was asked what he thought about the moved the Fed had made.

The article discusses how the Federal Reserve bought up trillions of dollars in bonds following the 2007-08 financial collapse, but is now preparing to scale back its massive investment of about $4.5 trillion in assets.  When Lee Ohanian was asked what he thinks of the Fed’s initial bailout, he points out that most studies have indicated that the Fed’s bond purchases lowered long-term rates between 0.25 and 0.75 percentage points, and that the effect was modest.

 

 

Kidney Vouchers

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Marek Pycia

Until recently, if someone wanted to donate a kidney to a family member or a friend, the recipient would receive the kidney at the time of the donation, or very close to this time. This timing restriction created a problem for Howard Broadman, a retired California judge. Judge Broadman wanted to donate a kidney to his grandson, who, however, did not need the kidney yet, but was likely to need one in 10 to 15 years, at a time when Broadman might be too old to donate. Judge Broadman approached UCLA and proposed to donate the kidney for a promise (a voucher) that his grandson will have priority to receive a kidney when he needs one.

A system of kidney vouchers that builds on Judge Broadman’s case was subsequently developed by Professor Marek Pycia and other members of an interdisciplinary team including Jeffrey Veal from UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, other UCLA, USC, and Cornell medical practitioners, and Alexander Capron from USC Law. This system— described in their recent paper “Vouchers for Future Kidney Transplants to Overcome ‘Chronological Incompatibility’ Between Living Donors and Recipients”—is already being used to organize promises of priority for future kidney transplants.

Kidney vouchers need to be legal: for instance, in the US it is illegal to trade a kidney for money or other valuable consideration, and for this reason each kidney voucher is issued in the name of a particular recipient and cannot be used by anyone else. The system also needs to be sustainable: it needs to ensure that the hospitals in the system are able to offer kidneys to voucher holders, when they need transplants and come to redeem their vouchers.

Sustainability is where economics enters the picture. The voucher system resembles a retirement system such as US Social Security. Each time a kidney voucher is issued, one more kidney can be transplanted to someone waiting for it. Later, however, when the voucher is redeemed, a kidney is needed for the voucher holder. The system is sustainable provided the number of donations into the voucher system stays constant or is growing.

Each new voucher allows the participating hospitals to initiate a chain of transplantations, in which a first patient receives the kidney donated for a voucher, a second patient receives the first patient’s donor’s kidney, etc. This chain provides an opportunity to honor a previously issued voucher by transplanting the last kidney in the chain to a patient redeeming the voucher. At the same time, the chain enables several patients with incompatible donors to receive a kidney, and thus not only patients with vouchers benefit but also an average patient without a voucher faces a shorter wait time.

The system, started recently at UCLA, is quickly gaining popularity. By now, over twenty leading US transplant centers joined it, and, in addition to Judge Broadman, over ten donors donated kidneys to give vouchers to their close ones and protect them against the consequences of anticipated kidney failure.

The paper, ahead of print at Transplantation, is available electronically, and kidney vouchers were featured in the Boston Globe, CBS, Fox News, Reuters, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and many other outlets.