Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS) runs a number of seminar series, including those organised by the individual subject groups and research centres. Seminars are posted here as and when they are arranged, and tend to only take place in term-time. Sign up to our seminars mailing list to receive invitations.
Nickolay Gantchev, Professor of Finance, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
We explore how mutual fund managers and investors react when the tradeoff between sustainability and performance becomes salient. Following the introduction of Morningstar’s sustainability ratings (the “globe” ratings), mutual funds increased their holdings of sustainable stocks to attract flows. Such sustainability-driven trades, however, underperformed, impairing the funds’ overall performance. Consequently, a tradeoff between sustainability and performance emerged. In the new equilibrium, the globe ratings do not affect investor flows and funds no longer trade to improve their globe ratings.
Biliana Yontcheva, Assistant Professor, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics
We study entry restrictions in a private monopoly: the Latin notary system. Under this widespread system, the state appoints notaries and grants them exclusive rights to certify various important economic transactions, including real estate, business registrations, and marriage and inheritance contracts. We develop an empirical entry model to uncover the current policy goals behind the geographic entry restrictions. The entry model incorporates a spatial demand model to infer the extent of market expansion versus business stealing from entry, and a multi-output production model to determine the markups for real estate and other transactions. We find that the entry restrictions primarily serve producer interests, and give only a small weight to consumer surplus, even conditional on the current high markups. We subsequently perform policy counterfactuals with welfare-maximising and free entry. We show how reform would generate considerable welfare improvements, and imply a substantial redistribution towards consumers without threatening geographic coverage. (more…)
Professor John Liechty, Smeal College of Business, USA
Much of current sociology and public health research focuses on understanding and mitigating the disease of despair—a precursor and companion to poverty. One clearly identified, yet understudied, contributor is increased loneliness and isolation driven by social media and other online dynamics. Measuring both despair as well as capturing behavioural data of online activity offers an opportunity to better understand how platforms’ marketing activities, as well as user’s interaction with platforms and other users can impact users’ emotional wellbeing (including despair and poverty). In this talk I discuss nascent efforts to establish a research program to gather and analyse a unique set of data and then publish insights about social media’s impact. (more…)
Professor Cass R Sunstein, Harvard Law School, introduced by Professor Lucia A Reisch, Director of the El-Erian Institute
Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients – or that two judges in the same courthouse give markedly different sentences to people who have committed the same crime. Suppose that different interviewers at the same firm make different decisions about indistinguishable job applicants – or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to answer the phone. Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same interviewer, or the same customer service agent makes different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical. (more…)
Maria L. Goranova, Professor in Organizations & Strategic Management, Ronald E. Pawasarat Faculty Scholar, Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
More information on this seminar, including how to join online, will be available nearer the time.
