Adansonia Conference
This conference represents the closing event of the Adansonia Project, a large Pan-African RCT involving 5000 entrepreneurs of 45 different African countries. This project has been financed by the PEDL Major Grant Program. Its objective has been to shed light on how peer interaction affects -- and can be used to promote -- entrepreneurship in the context of developing economies. The conference revolves around the three research fields that are combined in our project: development, networks, and semantic analysis. Top researchers from each of these three fields (in some cases working across their boundaries) will present their work and have the opportunity to interact and profit from their diverse but complementary research perspectives.
>>> TO ATTEND PLEASE REGISTER HERE<<<
THURSDAY, MAY 30
Chair: Fernando Vega Redondo
09:00-09:30 Orazio Attanasio – University College London
"Consumption Insurance in Networks with Asymmetric Information: Evidence from Tanzania" (joint with Sonya Krutikova)
09:30-10:00 Pau Milan – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
"Informal Risk Sharing with Local Information" (joint with Attila Ambrus and Wayne Gao)
10:00-10:30 Pamela Giustinelli – IGIER-Università Bocconi
"Ex Ante Risks & Returns and Occupation Sector Choice in Low-Income Countries: Evidence from Subjective Expectations in Mozambique" (joint with Mariapia Mendola and Luigi Minale)
10:30-11:00: COFFEE BREAK
Chair: Cristiana Benedetti Fasil
11:00-11:30 Ben Golub – Harvard University
"Targeting Interventions in Networks" (joint with Andrea Galeotti and Sanjeev Goyal)
11:30-12:00 Kenan Huremovic – IMT Lucca
"Financial Shocks Propagating in a Large Prouction Economy: Theory and an Application" (joint with Gabriel Jiménez, Enrique Moral-Benito, Jose Peydró, and Fernando Vega-Redondo)
12:00-12:30 Alexander Teytelboym – Oxford University
"Targeted Carbon Price Reforms"
12:30-14:00 LUNCH
Chiar: Diego Ubfal
14:00-14:30 Marcel Fafchamps – Stanford University
"Keep It Simple: A Field Experiment on Information Sharing in Social Networks" (joint with Cátia Batista and Pedro C. Vicente)
14:30-15:00 Eliana La Ferrara – IGIER-Università Bocconi
"The Impact of Land Title Registration in Rwanda: Evidence from a National Program" (joint with D. Ali, K. Deininger and M. Goldstein)
15:00-15:30 COFFEE BREAK
Chair: Gaia Rubera
15:30-16:00 Paolo Pin – IGIER-Università Bocconi
"Polarization When People Choose their Peers" (joint with Ugo Bolletta)
16:00-16:30 Quocanh Do – Sciencespo
“Friendship Networks and Political Opinions: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians” (joint with Yann Algan, Nicolò Dalvit, and Yves Zenou)
20:00 Dinner @ Il chiostro di Andrea, via San Barnaba, 48, 20122 Milano - (only for Conference Speakers)
FRIDAY, MAY 31
Chair: Eliana La Ferrara
09:00-09:30 Attila Ambrus – Duke University
"Investments in Social Ties, Risk Sharing and Inequality" (joint with Matt Elliott)
09:30-10:00 Fernando Vega Redondo – IGIER-Università Bocconi
“Peer networks and entrepreneurship: a Pan-African RCT” (joint with P. Pin, D. Ubfal, C. Benedetti, C. Brummitt, G. Rubera, D. Hovy, and T, Fornaciari)
10:00-10:30 David McKenzie – World Bank
“Man vs Machine in Predicting Successful Entrepreneurs: Evidence from a Business Plan Competition in Nigeria” (joint with Dario Sansone)
10:30-11:00 COFFEE BREAK
Chair: Paolo Pin
11:00-11:30 Barbara Plank - IT University of Copenhagen
“Inferring author attributes from text and beyond”
11:30-12:00 David Jurgens – Michigan University
“Large-scale population measurements from social media”
12:00-12:30 Dirk Hovy – Università Bocconi
“Learning semantic and network representations of users for improved geolocation”
12:30-14:00 LUNCH
Chair: Dirk Hovy
14:00-14:30 Chris Woodruff – Oxford University
“Agency and Lawyer Quality: Experimental Evidence from Mexico’s Labor Courts”
14:30-15:00 Diego Ubfal – IGIER-Università Bocconi
“Working while Studying" (joint with Thomas Le Barbanchon and Federico Araya)
15:00-15:30 COFFEE BREAK
Chair: Pamela Giustinelli
15:30-16:00 Simon Quinn – Oxford University
"Learning management through matching: A field experiment using mechanism design"
16:00-16:30 Arun Advani – Warwick University
“Insurance Networks and Poverty Traps”
20:00 Dinner @ Terrazza Triennale, Viale Emilio Alemagna, 6, 20121 Milano (for conference Speakers only)
SATURDAY, JUNE 1
Chair: Fernando Vega Redondo
09:00-09:30 Matt Elliott – Cambridge University
“Capability Accumulation and Conglomeratization in the Information Age” (joint with Jun Chen)
09:30-10:00 Francis Bloch – Paris School of Economics
“Friend-based ranking" (joint with Matthew Olckers)
10:00-10:30 COFFEE BREAK
Chair: Fernando Vega Redondo
10:30-11:00 Sanjeev Goyal – Cambridge University
“Network Formation in Large Groups “
11:00-11:30 Francesco Feri – Royal Holloway, University of London
“Social networks and social pressure”
12:00-14:00 LUNCH