Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series at the Graduate Center: Aboozar Hadavand

Join us in the upcoming Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series at the Graduate Center.

This session consists on a seminar and discussion with Aboozar Hadavand on Wednesday, November 30 at 2:30PM-4:00PM. The seminar will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center, Room 5414. The event will consist of a 30-minute seminar followed by 30-45 minutes for Q&A.

 

Aboozar Hadavand is a PhD candidate in Economics here at the Graduate Center. His research focuses on economic inequality, labor economics, and economics of education. His presentation will lay out the intersection of age, race, sex, and income inequality in the United States. His findings demonstrate the important differences in trends in inequality within various socio-demographic groups. His research sheds light on the effect of demographic changes on the observed rise in the Gini coefficient.

 

The abstract of the paper:

This paper questions how much of the existing inequality, and subsequently the increase in inequality in recent decades, is due to life-cycle differences in income. Using microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study, I calculated the respective shares of inequality that result from differences in income within and between different age groups. I find that compared to other countries, the within-cohort proportion of inequality in the U.S. is relatively high and stable. Furthermore, I analyze the evolution of inequality in various other subgroups defined by gender, educational attainment, race, and occupation. By deconstructing basic inequality statistics and figures into within and between measurements for smaller cohorts, I conduct a more granular analysis of inequality. Some of the stylized facts in this paper are: 1) between 1979-2013 there has been a greater rise in inequality within the very young and the very old age-cohorts, 2) over the same period, there has been a rise in inequality among men but a decrease in inequality among women, 3) there has been a larger rise in inequality among the highly educated as opposed to those with lower levels of education, and 4) there are significant differences in the trends of inequality within various occupational groups. I further analyze these findings and provide hypotheses that may explain them.

RSVP to njohnson@gradcenter.cuny.edu or ian.haberman@gmail.com.

This event is part of the Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series.

Learn more about the Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series at:

Inequality-Lecture-Series

Two Timely Post-Election Discussions at the Graduate Center this week

Gain an informed perspective on the post-election landscape from leading thinkers on politics, economics, and international affairs.

What Now? The Roots of the Present Economic Crisis and the Way Forward

FEATURING:

Robert Brenner (visiting professor of economics, New School University) has written widely on the early development of capitalism and the current economic crisis. His many books include The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy.

David Harvey (distinguished professor, the Graduate Center) is one of the world’s most cited social scientists. He is the author of many books, including the recent The Ways of the World and Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism.

FREE; NO RESERVATIONS REQUIRED

Presented with the Advanced Research Collaborative; the Center for Place, Culture and Politics; and the Center for the Humanities.

When/Where: Thursday, December 1 / 7:00 pm / Elebash Recital Hall

The End of the World as We Know It?
The Global Rise of National Populisms

FEATURING:

Branko Milanovic, a GC professor and senior scholar at the Stone Center, studies income inequality in individual countries, globally, and among pre-industrial societies. His most recent book is Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization.

Marla Stone, a professor of history at Occidental College, focuses on 20th-century Europe with a specialization in modern Italy and genocide studies. Her most recent book is The Fascist Revolution in Italy.

Richard Wolin is distinguished professor of history, political science, and comparative literature at the GC. His many books include The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism.

Moderated by John Torpey, director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.

FREE; RSVP TO: eusc@gc.cuny.edu

Presented by the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and the European Union Studies Center. Co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies and the Dankwart Rustow Fund.

When/Where: Thursday, December 8 / 6:00 pm / Skylight Room

Applied Economics Seminar at the Graduate Center: Raul Segura

Join us in our upcoming Applied Economics Seminar at the Graduate Center organized by Professor David A. Jaeger.

A lecture by: Raul Segura, CUNY Graduate Center
“The Impact of Terrorism on Mental Health and Substance Use: Evidence from the Boston Marathon Bombings”

Date: Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Time: 12:00pm-1:45pm

Location: 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Room: 5382

Travel Directions to The Graduate Center:
By Subway: B, D, F, N, R, or Q to 34th Street-Herald Square; walk east to 5th Avenue 6 to 33rd Street.
By Bus: M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M7, M16, M34, Q32.

Applied Economics Seminar at the Graduate Center: Tim Roeper

Join us in our upcoming Applied Economics Seminar at the Graduate Center organized by Professor David A. Jaeger.

A lecture by: Tim Roeper, CUNY Graduate Center
“Measuring Access to Affordable Higher Education and its Effect on Economic Opportunity”

Author’s website: http://timothy-roeper.squarespace.com/

Date: Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Time: 12:00pm-1:45pm

Location: 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Room: 5382

Travel Directions to The Graduate Center:
By Subway: B, D, F, N, R, or Q to 34th Street-Herald Square; walk east to 5th Avenue 6 to 33rd Street.
By Bus: M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M7, M16, M34, Q32.

Applied Economics Seminar at the Graduate Center: Chinhui Juhn

Join us in our upcoming Applied Economics Seminar at the Graduate Center organized by Professor David A. Jaeger.

A lecture by: Chinhui Juhn, University of Houston and NBER
“The Quantity-Quality Trade-off and the Formation of Cognitive and Non-cognitive Skills”

Abstract:
We estimate the impact of increases in family size on childhood and adult outcomes using matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. We find that families face a substantial quantity-quality trade-off: increases in family size decrease parental investment, decrease childhood cognitive abilities, and increase behavioral problems. The negative effects on cognitive abilities are much larger for girls while the detrimental effects on behavior are larger for boys. We also find evidence of heterogeneous effects by mother’s AFQT score, with the negative effects on cognitive scores being much larger for children of mothers with low AFQT scores.

Author’s website: http://www.uh.edu/~cjuhn/

Paper available here

Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Time: 12:00pm-1:45pm

Location: 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Room: 5382

Travel Directions to The Graduate Center:
By Subway: B, D, F, N, R, or Q to 34th Street-Herald Square; walk east to 5th Avenue 6 to 33rd Street.
By Bus: M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M7, M16, M34, Q32.

Applied Economics Seminar at The Graduate Center: Hilary Hoynes

Join us in our upcoming Applied Economics Seminar at the Graduate Center organized by Professor David A. Jaeger.

A Lecture by:
Hilary Hoynes, University of California Berkeley and NBER

“Effective Policy for Reducing Inequality? The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Distribution of Income”

Abstract:
In this paper, we examine the effect of the EITC on the employment and income of single mothers with children. We provide the first comprehensive estimates of this central safety net policy on the full distribution of after-tax and transfer income. We use a quasi-experiment approach, using variation in generosity due to policy expansions across tax years and family sizes. Our results show that a policy-induced $1000 increase in the EITC leads to a 7.3 percentage point increase in employment and a 9.4 percentage point reduction in the share of families with after-tax and transfer income below 100% poverty. These results are robust to a rich set of controls and whether we compare single women with and without children or compare women with one child versus women with two or more children. They are also robust to whether we limit our analysis to the sharp increase in the 1993 expansion or use the full period of policy expansion, back to the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Importantly, event study estimates show no evidence of differential pre-trends, providing strong evidence in support of our research design. We find that the income increasing effects of the EITC are concentrated between 75% and 150% of income-to-poverty with little effect at the lowest income levels (50% poverty and below) and at levels of 250% of poverty and higher. By capturing the indirect effects of the credit on earnings, our results show that static calculations of the anti-poverty effects of the EITC (such as those released based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure, Short 2014) may be underestimated by as much as 50 percent.

Author’s website: https://gspp.berkeley.edu/directories/faculty/hilary-hoynes

Date: Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Time: 12:00pm-1:45pm

Location: 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Room: 5382

Travel Directions to The Graduate Center:
By Subway: B, D, F, N, R, or Q to 34th Street-Herald Square; walk east to 5th Avenue 6 to 33rd Street.
By Bus: M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M7, M16, M34, Q32.

Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series at the Graduate Center: Rishabh Kumar

Join us in the upcoming Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series at the Graduate Center.

This session consists on a seminar and discussion with Rishabh Kumar on Thursday, November 3 at 3:30PM-5:00PM. The seminar will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center, Room 9204. The event will consist of a 30-minute seminar followed by 30-45 minutes for Q&A.

Rishabh Kumar is a PhD candidate in economics at the New School for Social Research. His research focuses on wealth, capital theory, and taxation from historical and international perspectives. His working paper, “Capital and the Hindu rate of growth: Top Indian wealth holders 1961-1986”, explores the evolution of wealth held by the wealthiest Indian households. The paper examines the share of national wealth held by the top 0.1% and 0.01%, as well as the composition of wealth.

The abstract of the paper:

Did India’s stagnant growth performance until the 1980s increase or decrease the wealth of the elite? Using estate tax data I compute a series which highlights the relative importance of top wealth holders in India between 1961-1986. I find that a combination of policies and shocks were able to significantly depress the personal wealth of the Top 0.1% over this period. A portfolio decomposition by asset categories for the rich reveals that there was a U shaped trend in the average value of movable assets while wealth invested in land significantly declined. Disparity within top wealth groups also follows a shrinking and swelling, consistent with the intervention of the state in private capital. These results have implications for the equalizing forces inherent in tax policy vis-a-vis the rich and the role of the state in regulating capital in poor nations.

RSVP to njohnson@gradcenter.cuny.edu or ian.haberman@gmail.com.

This event is part of the Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series.

Learn more about the Stone Center Inequality Lecture Series at:

Inequality-Lecture-Series