09:30 to 10:45 |
Rajiv Sethi |
Rationality and Complexity in Games - II A short abstract of the talk:
These talks will cover standard and non-standard solution concepts in the theory of games, including models of procedural rationality, with applications to public goods and common pool resources.
A short academic/professional biography:
Rajiv Sethi is a Professor of Economics at Barnard College, Columbia University and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review and Economics and Philosophy. His current research deals with information and beliefs. In collaboration with Brendan O’Flaherty, he has examined the manner in which stereotypes affect interactions among strangers, especially in relation to crime and the criminal justice system. Their book, Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and the Pursuit of Justice was published by Harvard University Press in 2019. With Muhamet Yildiz, he has explored communication among individuals who consider each other to have valuable information, but also believe that others are biased to different degrees in the manner in which they process information. In previous work they have examined public disagreement and private information flows, and in current work are exploring the implications of correlated biases within social groups. He is also part of an interdisciplinary team working on the forecasting of geopolitical events using methods that combine machine models with human judgment.
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10:45 to 11:15 |
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Coffee break |
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11:15 to 12:30 |
Eleanor Power |
The Complexity of Cooperation on Networks A short abstract of the talk:
In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the potential of network structure to facilitate cooperation. "Network reciprocity," for example, has been put forth as a mechanism that can favour cooperation. However, the full implications of network dynamics for cooperation are as yet not fully explored. In this talk, I will outline some of the ways in which the nature of interpersonal interactions may add important complexity to our models and understanding of cooperation. Social relationships often entail repeated interactions of various behavioural types between individuals who are themselves indirectly connected. All of these features (repeated interactions, multiplex relationships, clustering) have the potential to impact the efficacy of the various mechanisms for the evolution cooperation. The consequences of network structure are particularly profound for humans, given our reliance on communication and the dynamics of information spread through networks. I will illustrate these dynamics with some ethnographic case studies from my fieldwork in rural South India, and I will discuss potential theoretical and empirical ways forward.
A short academic/professional biography:
Eleanor Power is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Methodology at the LSE. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at Stanford University in 2015. Prior to joining LSE in 2017, she was an Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Eleanor's research explores questions regarding: the role of religion in society, the interaction between costly signaling and cooperation, gender differences in prominence and social capital, and the dynamics of gossip and social censure. She studies these topics primarily through fieldwork conducted in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where she has been working since 2009,using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, primary among which is social network analysis.
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12:30 to 12:45 |
Swaprava Nath |
Research at the Interface of Computer Science and Economics A short abstract of the talk:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is prospering at a rapid rate in all aspects of technology. While a majority of these applications are purely data driven, making machines smarter through `learning' from examples, there are a ton of everyday decision problems where there is no good examples to learn from. For example, how to make a voting rule that satisfy several desirable properties of a democracy, or to have an efficient social decision without any monetary inflow or outflow -- known as budget balance -- or to design a grading scheme of large classes that is as accurate as that of the instructors. In this talk, we pick some of these applications and show how research at the interface of computation and economics is making an impact through the use of tools like game theory, mechanism design, approximation algorithms, nonlinear optimization to assist humans take more `efficient' decisions. This domain marks an alternative interpretation of artificial intelligence for the social decision making. I'll discuss briefly a few results and the analytical tools involved in deriving them.
A short academic/professional biography:
Swaprava is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur. After finishing his PhD from the Dept. of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, he has held postdoctoral positions in Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi and Carnegie Mellon University. His research interest lies in the intersection of/economics and computation/, which has several applications in social, industrial and computational paradigms. Apart from academic positions, Swaprava also has experience in the industry. He has worked at Xerox Research Centre Europe and Cisco Systems India. He has been recipients of Fulbright-Nehru post doctoral grant, Tata Consultancy Services PhD Fellowship, and the Honorable Mention Award of Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Program.
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12:45 to 13:00 |
V. Sasidevan |
Committing heresy by co-action: A critique of Nash optimization A short abstract of the talk:
The idea of optimizing individual good via a Nash optimization protocol is everpresent in analyzing strategic interactions. Though experimental evidence for real-life agents implementing such optimization is scarce, the protocol is often projected as a benchmark for what is considered as rational behavior. In this talk, I take a critical look at the assumptions behind the Nash optimization and discuss alternate possibilities for modeling benchmark rational behavior, which perhaps also make more sense in analyzing real-life game situations.
A short academic/professional biography:
Dr. V. Sasidevan received Ph.D. from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai in 2014. Thereafter, he held post-doctoral positions at Institute of Mathematical Physics, Chennai and Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. He joined Dept. of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kerala in 2017. His research interests are Statistical physics of complex systems, Interdisciplinary applications of statistical physics in socio-economic systems, Complex networks, Systemic risk and Game theory.
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13:00 to 14:30 |
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Lunch |
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14:30 to 14:55 |
Tushar Nandi |
Taxation and Supplier Networks: Evidence from India A short abstract of the talk:
Do tax systems distort firm-to-firm trade? This paper considers the effect of tax policy on supplier networks in a large developing economy, the state of West Bengal in India. Using administrative panel data on firms, including transaction data for 4.8 million supplier-client pairs, we first document substantial segmentation of supply chains between firms paying Value-Added Taxes (VAT) and non-VAT-paying firms. We then develop a model of firms’ sourcing and tax decisions within supply chains to understand the mechanisms through which tax policy interacts with supply networks. The model predicts partial segmentation in equilibrium because of both supply-chain distortions (taxes affect how much firms trade with each other) and strategic complementarities in firms’ tax choices. Finally, we test the model’s predictions using variations over time within-firm and within supplier-client pairs. We find that the tax system distorts firms’ sourcing decisions, and suggestive evidence of strategic complementarities in firms’ tax choices within supplier networks.
A short academic/professional biography:
Tushar K. Nandi is an Assistant Professor of Economics at CTRPFP, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. He did his Ph. D. in Economics from University of Siena, Italy. He was Visiting Scholar at University of Oxford and Post-Doc Fellow at Universite Paris Sud. He is an Applied Econometrician and works on issues of Education, Labour Market and Taxation in developing country context. He has a number of publications in reputed journals including Journal of Development Economics. He teaches courses on Microeconometrics at graduate level. Currently, he is involved in two research projects. One looks at labour market inequality from an intergenerational perspective. Other project is on indirect taxation in India – how tax policy affects firms’ trading behavior.
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14:55 to 15:20 |
Anirban Chakraborti |
Study of financial and macroeconomic dynamics using multi-layered networks A short abstract of the talk:
We will present the existence of the empirical linkage between the dynamics the financial network constructed from the market indices and the macroeconomic networks constructed from macroeconomic variables such as trade, foreign direct investments, etc., for several countries across the globe. The temporal scales of the dynamics of the financial variables and the macroeconomic fundamentals are very different, which makes the multi-layered network structure and the empirical linkage even more interesting and significant. Also, we show that there exist in the respective networks, core-periphery structures (determined through centrality measures) that are composed of similar set of countries. The data science methodology using network theory, coupled with standard econometric techniques constitute a new approach to studying multi-level economic phenomena in a comprehensive manner.
A short academic/professional biography:
Anirban Chakraborti is a Professor at the School of Computational and Integrative Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, since March, 2014. He had worked as an Associate Professor at the Chair of Quantitative Finance, École Centrale Paris, France, during 2009-14. He had obtained a Ph.D. in Physics from the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, India and then the Habilitation in Physics from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI), France. He has the experience of working as a scientist in many reputed universities and educational institutions in India, USA, Europe and Japan. He was awarded the prestigious Young Scientist medal of the Indian National Science Academy in 2009. He has published several books and research articles from internationally renowned publishers. His main research interests lie in the areas of Econophysics, Sociophysics, Data Science, Statistical Physics, Quantum Physics and Nanomaterial Science.
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15:20 to 15:45 |
Sunetra Ghatak |
Facets of Internal Migration in India A short abstract of the talk:
In India migration of labour force was low for almost four decades after independence. But as reforms changed the role of the government from manufacturer to service provider, rapid urbanization attracted people from rural to urban areas. As a result while the number of migrants in the country has increased over time, they remain limited mostly within shorter distances.
In order to understand the dynamics of internal migration in India, I will discuss different dimensions of labour migration - trends and patterns of internal migration, the characteristics of the migrants, the factors that influence internal migration etc. and its dynamics over time. I will focus on how overall dynamics of migrant-sending and migrant-receiving states are changing after reforms with respect to per capita income differences. In recent years, there is an emergence of “Southern Pull” which faded the role of bilateral barriers to migration like physical distance, physical contiguity between states, linguistic divide etc. and highlights the importance of ‘social networks’ in migration decision. I will highlight different forms of ‘social networks’, such as contacts or presence of friends, relatives etc., which act as the channel of information and help migrants to get information about job prospects, access to basic services (like education, health, and housing), information on procedures (technical and legal), financial help, administrative assistance — and also emotional solidarity.
A short academic/professional biography:
Sunetra Ghatak is a Research Fellow at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), New Delhi. She did her Ph.D. in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and specialized in the area of labour, gender, trade and health-related issues. She has worked with donor agencies, development consultancies and national level think tanks. She has ten years of experience in the field of socio-economic and development research. Her strength lies in quantitative and qualitative research, systematic review, policy analysis, and field survey (tool preparation, sampling, training, survey). She has contributed several research papers on development economics in various prominent national and international journals.
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15:45 to 16:15 |
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Coffee break |
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16:15 to 17:30 |
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Poster and Discussion |
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