EKIM CEM MUYAN
https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/graduate-program/candidates/ekim-cem-muyan
muyan@sas.upenn.edu
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Placement Director: Iourii Manovskii
Placement Director: Andrew Postlewaite
Graduate Student Coordinator: Kelly Quinn
MANOVSKI@ ECON.UPENN.EDU
APOSTLEW@ECON.UPENN.EDU
KQUINN @ ECON.UPENN.EDU
215-898-6880
215-898-7350
215-898-5691
Office Contact Information
Department of Economics
3718 Locust Walk Rm 160
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: +1 (267) 994-6081
Citizenship: Turkish
Undergraduate Studies: BA, Economics with a minor in Mathematics, Sabanci University,
Dean’s Highest Honors, Istanbul, Turkey, 2008
Masters Level Work:
Laurea Magistralis, Economics, Università di Bologna, Summa Cum Laude,
Bologna, Italy, 2010
Graduate Studies:
University of Pennsylvania, 2010 to present
Thesis Title: “Essays in Political Economics”
Expected Completion Date: June 2016
Thesis Committee and References:
Professor Antonio Merlo
Rice University
Department of Economics
6100 Main Street
Houston, TX 77005
+1 (713) 348-3699
amerlo@rice.edu
Professor Kenneth I. Wolpin
Rice University
Department of Economics
6100 Main Street
Houston, TX 77005
+1 (713) 348-2522
kenneth.i.wolpin@rice.edu
Professor Camilo Garcia-Jimeno
University of Pennsylvania
Department of Economics
3718 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104
+1 (215) 898-8206
gcamilo@sas.upenn.edu
Research Fields:
Political Economics, Development Economics, Public Economics
Teaching Experience:
Fall 14
Mathematics for Economist (Graduate), Rice University, Instructor
Spring 12/14
Political Economics, University of Pennsylvania, T.A.
for Professor Antonio Merlo
Fall 12/13
Honors Game Theory, University of Pennsylvania, T.A.
for Professor Andrew Postlewaite
Summer 13
Statistics for Economists, University of Pennsylvania, Instructor
Fall 13
Public Economics (Graduate), University of Pennsylvania, T.A.
for Professor Andrew Postlewaite
Fall 11/12
Game Theory, University of Pennsylvania, T.A.
for Professor Steve Matthews
Fall 09
Econometrics (Masters), University of Bologna, T.A.
for Andrea Ichino
Research Experience and Other Employment:
2009
University of Bologna, Research Assistant for Professor Andrea Ichino
Other Professional Activities:
2014
Teaching Mentor, Economics Department, University of Pennsylvania
Honors, Scholarships, and Fellowships:
2010-2015
University Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania
2009-2010
Fellow of Collegio Superiore, University of Bologna
2005-2008
Sakip Sabanci Full Scholarship, Sabanci University
Research Papers:
“Public Investment and Preference Aggregation under Alternative Decentralization Institutions”
(Job Market Paper)
Decentralization institutions differ from each other in terms of the degree of power they grant to local authorities in
decision-making. Successfully designing decentralization institutions depends on understanding the local and
central authorities' preferences over the types of public investments and how alternative decentralization
institutions aggregate them. Focusing on these key components, I build and estimate a dynamic committee
decision-making model to study how public investment choices vary with the degree of power granted to local
governments. I characterize alternative decentralization institutions as voting mechanisms the committee can
employ. I implement my model using a novel dataset from a unique institution in Colombia. I find that the local
governments are more likely to invest on targeted transfers than is the central government. Counterfactual
exercises show that a complete decentralized system would significantly increase the number and size of the
targeted transfer spending.
“How many votes does a dollar buy: Campaign Spending and Strategy in the U.S. Congressional
Elections” (with Devin J. Reilly)
A central yet unresolved question in political economy is the degree to which money affects election outcomes. We
argue that answering this question requires one to take the productivity of different campaign strategies into
account. To this end, we construct a model of political campaigns in which candidates allocate their budgets
between positive and negative campaigning. This allows us to estimate the marginal productivities of such
spending through the equilibrium of a political campaign game. Elections vary according to politician and districtspecific characteristics, as well as the unobservable (to the econometrician) measure of voter types. We structurally
estimate our model using a wide array of data, including the Wisconsin Political Advertisement project, FEC
campaign finance records, election results, and politician characteristics. Our estimates show that campaign
spending overall is not particularly effective at increasing votes -- a 10% increase in the average Democratic
candidate's budget, corresponding to about a $230,000 increase, would raise his or her expected vote share by 0.4
percentage points. This finding is consistent with the previous literature.
Research Papers in Progress:
“The Network Economics of Foreign Aid” (with Camilo Garcia-Jimeno)
In this paper we study a novel aspect of the strategic nature of foreign aid. Although it has been suggested that aid
is used as a tool to influence policy, we argue that the underlying ties between recipient countries lead to influence
spillovers. We argue that these spillovers are of first order importance from the point of view of donor countries,
which implies that bilateral aid flows cannot be treated in isolation. Thus, we develop and estimate a network
model of foreign aid where donor countries provide aid to recipient countries to influence their polices. Recipient
countries are linked to each other in a way that a unit of influence over a recipient also indirectly influences its
neighbors. Both direct and indirect influence considerations shape donor’s aid incentives. Because donors compete
for policy influence with each other, our model predicts that the strategic nature (strategic complementarity versus
substitutability) of the competition game between donors is endogenous and depends on the relative policy
positions of donors and recipients. We implement our model with data we construct from UN votes and
international aid flows. We estimate the best response dynamics of the model and analyze the entrance of China to
the foreign aid market.
“Why do PACs donate: Ideology or Favors” (with Devin J. Reilly)
Political Action Committees (PACs) donate large sums of money to political campaigns. In 2000, around 25% of
the candidate expenditures was financed by around 3,000 active PACs. We investigate the motivations behind
these donations. A PAC has two potential motivations to donate to a campaign. The first is that, by contributing,
the PAC may increase its probability to receive favors or have candidate access ("favor benefit"). The second is, if
the PAC is ideologically similar to a candidate, it may contribute simply to help the candidate win ("inherent
benefit"), independent of any specific "favors" the candidate may provide conditional on contributing. We build a
model of campaign contributions where these donations affect the probability a candidate wins and the "favors" the
PAC may receive, but not the ideological similarity between a single PAC and candidate. Thus, this model
captures both potential motivations for political contributions. We use estimates from Muyan and Reilly (2015) to
approximate the marginal impact of a PAC contribution to the probability of winning. We argue that the
identification of the model parameters is possible due to the variations in donations a candidate receives from all
PACs and variations in donations of a single PAC to candidates. With data from the 2000, 2004 and 2008
Congressional elections, as well as detailed PAC and candidate characteristics, we implement our model using
energy PACs grouped into various ideological camps.