Mohammad H. Rahmati

Transcription

1 Mohammad H. Rahmati The Cell: (512) Office: (512) University Station C3100 Fax: (512) Austin, Texas rahmati@utexas.edu EDUCATION Ph.D. Economics, Dec 2012 (expected) Dissertation: Essays on Industrial Organization and International Finance Committee Co-Chairs: Dean Corbae, David Sibley M.S. Economics, May 2009 M.A. Economics, Sharif University of Technology May 2007 B.A. Mechanics, Sharif University of Technology May 2005 FIELDS OF SPECIALIZATION Primary: Industrial Organization, International Finance, Money and Banking Secondary: Law and Economics, Development, Information System FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS, AND AWARDS Bruton Fellowship, PhD Scholarship, PUBLICATIONS Demand Estimation in Iranian Automobile Industry With Reza Yousefi, forthcoming Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance WORKING PAPERS Productivity, Scale Economies, Mergers: Estimating a Quantile Banking Production Function (Job Market Paper) Breaking the Curse of Sisyphus; An Empirical Analysis of Post-Conflict Economic Transition with Serhan Cevik (IMF Working Paper) Business Cycle Accounting in a Small Open Economy with Jacek Rothert Platform Investment and Competition of Online Offline Markets with Andrew Whinston, Mei Lin The Driving Force of Iran s Baby Boom with Farid Farrokhi CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS Business Cycle Accounting in a Small Open Economy, Midwest Macroeconomics Conference at Vanderbilt University, Spring Demand Estimation in Iranian Automobile Industry, Conference on Iran s Economy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Spring 2008.

2 The Driving Force of Iran s Baby Boom, Conference on Iran s Economy, The Harris School, University of Chicago, Spring RESEARCH AND TEACHING EXPERIENCE Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Fall 2012 Research Assistant for Prof. Corbae, Summer 2009 Assistant Instructor, Undergraduate, Honors Macroeconomics Spring 2012 Teaching Assistant, Graduate Macroeconomic Theory I, II Graduate Industrial Organization Spring 2011 Undergraduate Industrial Organization Fall 2011 Undergraduate Microeconomic Theory PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT International Monetary Fund, Summer Internship Summer 2012 PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND ACTIVITIES Referee for: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Decision Support System Member, American Economic Association PERSONAL INFORMATION Citizenship: Iran, F1 Visa Languages: Farsi (fluent), English (fluent), Arabic (elementary) Computer Skill: MATLAB, Fortran, Stata

3 REFERENCES Professor Dean Corbae Professor David Sibley University of Wisconsin - Madison Madison, WI University Station C3100 (608) Austin, Texas (608) (fax) (512) corbae@ssc.wisc.edu sibley@eco.utexas.edu Professor David Hyman Professor Eugenio Miravete University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Law 504 East Pennsylvania Avenue 1 University Station C3100 Champaign, Illinois Austin, Texas (271) (512) dhyman@illinois.edu eugenio@eugeniomiravete.com Dr. Jacek Rothert Dr. Serhan Cevik International Monetary Fund MCD Department 1 University Station C Pennsylvania Avenue Austin, Texas Washington, DC (512) (202) dhyman@illinois.edu scevik@imf.org

4 ABSTRACT Productivity, Scale Economies, Mergers: Estimating a Quantile Banking Production Function, (Job Market Paper) What motivates mergers in banking? The data show that merger activity is concentrated among very large banks. A large literature on the banking structure has studied this question by estimating cost functions and has provided mixed evidence. A crucial assumption is the exogeneity of input prices. If this assumption fails, result may be biased. This paper adopts the production function method proposed by Levinsohn and Petrin 2003 to separate the impact of productivity from scale economies in banking. To avoid this bias, I use recovery rates of non-performing loans, charge off rates, and cash holdings as proxies for productivity. The proxy method illustrates that the industry operates with significant diseconomies of scale, while the OLS method generates opposite results. Therefore, this finding supports the view that improvements in productivity cause mergers, which is also consistent with data. Finally, I introduce the Quantile Proxy Method to capture the impacts of both input endogeneity and size heterogeneity. This method reveals that medium size banks have largest diseconomies of scale, while top 5% experience somewhat extensive economies of scale. This result sheds light on the fact why many mergers occur among large banks: large parties involved in a consolidation benefit from both productivity improvements and scale economies. Breaking the Curse of Sisyphus: An Empirical Analysis of Post-Conflict Economic Transitions (IMF Working Paper) This paper provides a broad empirical analysis of the determinants of post-conflict economic transitions during the period , using a dynamic panel estimation approach based on the generalized method of moments. In addition to an array of demographic, economic, geographic, and institutional variables, we introduce an estimated forward-looking risk of conflict recurrence as an explanatory variable in the growth regression. The empirical results show that domestic factors, including an estimated forward-looking risk of conflict recurrence, as well as a range of external variables contribute to post-conflict economic performance. Business Cycle Accounting in a Small Open Economy We extend the work of Chari et al. (2007) to a Small Open Economy. We introduce two additional wedges - a trend shock wedge and a debt price (country risk) wedge. We then evaluate the contribution of these wedges to the fluctuations in Mexico during the Tequila Crisis. Our results suggest that trend shock wedge is crucial to account for the behavior of the net exports and the current account during that time. Output movements are driven primarily by the traditional, stationary efficiency wedge. The role of debt price wedge appears to be minimal. On the theoretical side, we show that allocations in the prototype economy with a trend shock wedge are, up to a first-order approximation, identical to the allocations in a detailed economy with exogenous terms of trade shocks, when the latter are random walks. We provide evidence that in a few emerging economies terms of trade are well approximated by a random walk process. We also show that allocations in an economy with shocks to the world interest rate and to country spreads, coupled with a working capital friction, are identical to allocations in a prototype economy with debt price and labor wedge.

5 Demand Estimation in Iranian Automobile Industry This paper focuses on the frequently-used methods of demand estimation for discrete choice models to analyze the Iranian automobile market. The main contribution of the paper is a simple theoretical framework and empirical estimations explaining the behavior of the manufacturers. It shows how both major companies in Iran choose to produce lower quality products and why they still collusively charge high markups. Empirical estimations are based on BLP (Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes 1995) and Nevo (2000) methods to predict marginal costs in order to estimate markups. Estimation results also support the hypothesis that manufacturers are charging high markups. Another counterfactual analysis confirms that both duopolist firms prefer to operate at lower quality rather than at higher quality production levels. They also collusively price their products. Furthermore, analyses are performed using the Multinomial Logit methodology to better understand the Iranian automobile market. Tastes of people with different genders and ages for some specific cars are explained, and the effects of population changes on auto demand are predicted. The Driving Forces of Iran's Baby Boom Using the Census data besides HIES in 1984, this paper establishes that the Iran's Baby Boom in the late 1970's and the early 1980's coincided with an increase in the number of marriages. In addition, the paper shows that different generations peaked their life cycle number of children over the same period, which increased their age specific fertilities and consequently TFR during the baby boom. Moreover, the paper documents that the female labor participation declined about 33% after the revolution. All these facts are consistent with our observation that in contrast to the US baby boom, the CEB has been decreasing throughout the baby boom. To assess, quantitatively, which fundamental factors derived these stylized facts, we develop a dynamic model that individuals decide endogenously about marriage, giving birth, asset holdings, and labor force. Then we use the Simulated Method of Moment (SMM) to estimate the structural model. Our preliminary estimations show that the baby boom after the revolution is mostly driven by getting more utility from children and marriage rather than a fall in child costs. We conduct two counterfactual experiments and conclude that the legal marriage amendment shows significant effects on the marriage rate.