Category: Recent Seminars

Date: 18 November 2026, Wednesday Online "Misentangled Choices: Which Species Should We Consume?” by Jack Waverley University of Manchester Abstract  Which species should we consume? How many? Why? Global consumption is trending toward a small set of animals, with ecological, epidemiological, economic, and ethical consequences. More-than-human studies show interspecies encounters help humans come to know their lives as multispecies entanglements, and choose accordingly. However, less is shown or known about what happens next. So I ask: how do consumers and market professionals choose which species to consume instead? Bio Dr Jack Waverley is a senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, specialising in more-than-human market morality. This means he studies how markets shape what is good and bad or right and wrong, but with human and nonhuman perspectives in mind.…

Date: 11 November 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Counterfactual Consumer Identity – Market Reorientations in Male Midlife Crisis” by Thomas Robinson City St George's, University of London Abstract  Consumer research commonly assumes that identity is maintained through narrative processes that establish coherence and continuity across time. Drawing on an interpretive study (n=38) of men experiencing midlife crisis, we identify a process of counterfactual consumer identity construction. Rather than repairing identity through narrative linkage between past, present, and future selves, consumers actively imagine alternative timelines rooted in past critical life junctures and unrealised possibilities to reassess new futures. Consumers subsequently import other selves from alternate timelines, which selectively incorporate new dispositions, practices, skills, and consumption activities into their present lives appearing as sudden and dramatic life changes. We…

Date: 9 November 2026, Monday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Coordinating Markets via Perturbed Prices” by Süleyman Kerimov Rice University Abstract  We study the online allocation of finite, non-replenishable resources to self-interested buyers with private types who demand bundles of goods. The planner knows the type distribution and associated valuations but does not observe each arriving buyer’s type. This informational constraint creates an implementability gap: type-observing allocation policies achieve constant regret, whereas conventional bid-price mechanisms, though implementable under private type information, can incur regret on the order of √T, where T is the number of buyers. The gap arises because posted prices can induce indifference, leaving the buyer’s action not uniquely determined. We close this gap with Perturbed Posted Price (PPP), an online and anonymous mechanism that posts a…

Date: 06 November 2026, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA 330 “Intermediary Ownership and the Transmission of Collateral Shocks” by Mehmet Fatih Ulu Koç University Abstract  Does the transmission of a shock to pledgeable assets depend on who intermediates it? We study the February 2023 Türkiye earthquakes, which destroyed real estate and other productive assets with sharp variation across districts. Comparing lenders serving the same firm, we find that state-owned banks extend larger loans at lower rates than private banks as local damage rises, with a sharp break at the earthquake. Loan-level collateral records show that state banks substitute toward non-real-estate collateral rather than lending against impaired real estate. The response is concentrated among SMEs and low-net-worth firms. Firms more reliant on state banks before the disaster receive more credit…

Date: 14 October 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30-11.30 Place: MA 330 “How Political Ideology Shapes Prosocial Consumer Behavior Research” by Kate White University of British Columbia Abstract  This research suggests that there is a lack of political diversity in the stimuli used in prosocial consumer behavior research, which may pose challenges for the reliability and generalizability of such work. We review prosocial consumer behavior research from leading marketing journals over a twenty-year time period and show that the stimuli used exhibit a concentration of causes more commonly associated with liberal values, potentially leading to an imbalance in the ideological diversity of stimuli used in the literature. In a survey of contemporary prosocial consumer behavior researchers, we provide evidence consistent with the possibility that researchers’ political beliefs, disciplinary norms, and comfort with…

Date: 16 October 2026, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Online https://zoom.us/j/3370698252?pwd=OWRmQ1hNNWhRWng2QnhsTENzK1hGUT09&omn=93334435355&mynotes=on Meeting ID: 337 069 8252 “Are New Technologies Replacing the Information Produced by Financial Markets?” by Laurent Fresard University of Lugano Abstract  Firms are increasingly collecting and analyzing data. After adopting technologies to exploit customer data collected from their website, firms’ investment becomes less sensitive to their stock price. This effect is consistent with a model in which data technologies improves managers’ internal information about future demand, and reduces their reliance on stock prices for that information. This “replacement effect” is robust to alternative explanations and reverses when data usage is limited by privacy restrictions. Our findings suggest that the diffusion of data technologies reduces the informational role of financial markets in guiding firms’ investment decisions. Bio Laurent Frésard…

Date: 9 October 2026, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Online https://zoom.us/j/3370698252?pwd=OWRmQ1hNNWhRWng2QnhsTENzK1hGUT09&omn=93334435355&mynotes=on Meeting ID: 337 069 8252 “Government Arrears and Corporate Policies: Lessons from a Natural Experiment” by Vicente Cuñat London School of Economics Abstract  We study how late payment in public procurement affects corporate policies by analyzing a public program that unexpectedly repaid local government arrears. Our identification strategy compares firms includedin the program with similar firms that were accidentally excluded. Early repayment of arrears leads to real effects and heterogeneous corporate responses. Financially unconstrained firms repay financial debt and accumulate cash, while constrained firms repay suppliers, build cash, and increase investment. This suggests that financially constrained firms can only partially offset the liquidity cost of arrears, while unconstrained firms, with better access to bank credit, fully accommodate them. The accumulation of arrears also deteriorates procurement relationships, which do not recover…

Date: 01 June 2026, Monday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Contract Design for Coffee Supply Chain Coordination under Uncertainty and Strategic Default" by Mert Hakan Hekimoğlu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Abstract  In many agricultural supply chains, particularly in emerging economies, trade occurs under significant price and yield uncertainty. Farmers must commit resources at the beginning of the crop season, while wholesale prices at harvest remain uncertain. Forward contracts are commonly used to secure supply and manage risk, but when market prices rise sharply, farmers may strategically default and sell on the spot market instead. The international coffee market provides a salient example, where recent high-price episodes in Colombia have triggered delivery shortfalls and breaches of forward contracts. Motivated by these disruptions, we study contract design when farmers can strategically default…