Pamplona. January 14th, 2013.
Lorenzo Rotunno is a PhD candidate from The Graduate Institute of Geneva. During his visit, he discussed the idea that Free Trade Agreements (FTA) are more likely to be signed by governments that have a high probability of losing their power for the next term. By estimating how the change in the probability of an FTA is linked to the likelihood of government turnover, Rottuno concluded that countries are more likely to sign FTAs after the unexpected exit of their leaders; that is when the probability of political turnover is high. Rotunno furthe...
Pamplona. Janurary 14th, 2013
JoaquÃn Naval is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Naval delivered a seminar about the effects of the informal economy and long-term growth in developing countries. By creating a two-period overlapping generations model with children and working-age adults, he established a theoretical relationship between education, child labor, and the informal sector. Naval further highlighted the importance of using means-tested education subsidies as a way to end the poverty trap. He concluded that the long term benefit of inf...
Pamplona. December 10th, 2012.
Ignacio Más (Ph.D. at Harvard University) is a Senior Associate at Bankable Frontier and a collaborator at the World Bank. Mas provided an in-depth analysis about M-PESA and the mobile-phone based money transfer for Safaricom, which is playing an important role in transforming part of the Kenyan economy. By connecting groups of individuals and slowly progressing towards business organizations, M-PESA has helped to improve the quality of life for the Kenyan population. Today, Kenyans have found an efficient way to make basic payments a...