PERC Staff Take Part in Southern Economic Association Conference

Summary: This past week, several members of the PERC staff and students took part in multiple sessions at the annual Southern Economic Association conference, held November 18-20, 2018.

Members served as a session organizer, chair, or presenter in the sessions dedicated to Inequality and Policy Implications, Macroeconomics, and Labor Supply, among others. Drs. Jansen and Rettenmaier organized and chaired several sessions.  Dr. Jansen presented “The Business Cycle and the Labor Market” with coauthor Michael D. Bradley.  Dr. Rettenmaier presented “The Distribution of Earnings over Time and Across Birth Years.”  Dr. Liu presented “Discounting Environmental Benefits to Future Generations: Generational Equity or Intertemporal Efficiency?”  PERC postdoc fellow Dr. Aslim presented his paper “Does Maternity Leave Affect Labor Force Participation and Productivity?” with coauthors Irina Panovska and M. Anil Tas, and also “Fiscal Decentralization, Political Polarization and Welfare” with coauthor Bilin Neyapti.
 
Current PERC faculty affiliates participated as well.  Dr. Mark Hoekstra, holder of PERC’s Rex Grey Professorship, presented “The Electoral Impact of Voter Identification Laws,” a paper coauthored with former TAMU student Dr. Vijetha Koppa.  Dr. Sarah Zubairy, PERC faculty fellow, presented “Debt Overhand and Monetary Transmission: An International Perspective,” a paper coauthored with Sami Alpanda and Eleonora Granziera.
 
Current PERC student affiliates Brittany Street and Carlywill Sloan presented as well.  Ms. Street presented two papers, “The Vicious Circle of Power Outages and Bill Payment: Evidence from Ghana” and also “The Effect of Income Shocks on Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Fracking Boom.”  Ms. Sloan presented “Racial Discrimination by Prosecutors: Evidence from Random Assignment.”  Former PERC student affiliate Mr. Eunseong Ma presented “Homeownership and Housing Transitions: Explaining the Demographic Composition,” a paper coauthored with PERC Professor Dr. Sarah Zubairy.
 
Finally, at least two former PERC student affiliates participated. Dr. Abigail Peralta, assistant professor at LSU,  presented ”Moving to floodplains: How perverse incentives from the National Flood Insurance Program affect population flows,” a paper coauthored with current TAMU student Mr. Jonathan Scott.  Dr. Jillian Carr, assistant professor at Purdue, presented “Evidence on Court System Bias from Strategic Judge Assignment,” work coauthored with William Mcclain.