Simon Galle

2229 McGee Ave, Apt N

sgalle@econ.berkeley.edu

Berkeley, CA 94703

Nationality: Belgian

USA
Education
2016: PhD in Economics, UC Berkeley (Expected)
2013: PhD Candidate in Economics, UC Berkeley
Primary Research Fields: Macro Development, International Trade
Dissertation Chairs: Andrs Rodriguez-Clare & Edward Miguel
2010: Master in Economics, Universit Libre de Bruxelles (summa cum laude)
2008: Bachelor in Economics, KULeuven (magna cum laude)
2006: Master in Philosophy, KULeuven (magna cum laude)
Professional Experience
Research Assistant for Edward Miguel: Summers of 2011 (Berkeley) & 2012
(Kenya)
Teaching Assistant at UC Berkeley:

- International Trade (Fall 2011 & Fall

2013)
- Macroeconomics (Spring 2013)
Lecturer at Universit du Burundi:
Seminar Coordinator:

Development Economics (June 2012)

Spring 2015

(Development

Seminar,

Macro

&

International Seminar, Department Seminar )

Grants, Awards & Fellowships
International Growth Center Research Award (2015)
Institute for Humane Studies Fellowship (2014)
UC Berkeley Graduate Division Summer Grant (2012, 2014)
PEDL-CEPR Exploratory Research Grant (2013)
IBER Dissertation Research Award (2013)
Berkeley Economic History Lab: Second-Year-Student Mentored Fellowship
(2012)
Belgian American Educational Foundation Fellowship (2010-2011)

Refereeing Service
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Work in Progress
Competition and Capital Accumulation: a Trade-off. Evidence from the Indian
Manufacturing Sector.
Slicing the Pie: Quantifying the Aggregate and Distributional Effects of
Trade.
(joint with Andrs Rodriguez-Clare and Moises Yi)
This project develops and applies a framework to quantify the aggregate gains from
trade and their distribution across different groups of workers. The analysis rests on
a tractable quantitative framework combining a multi-sector gravity model of trade
with a Roy-type model of the allocation of workers across sectors. Workers belong to
groups that are differentiated by characteristics such as education, age, gender, or
region of employment, and by assumption groups differ in their relative abilities
across sectors. By opening to trade, a country gains in the aggregate by specializing
according to its comparative advantage, but the distribution of these gains is
unequal as labor demand increases (decreases) for groups that are specialized in
export-oriented (import-oriented) sectors. The baseline analysis, where each group
corresponds to a region, uses trade and labor allocation data from the US and
Germany to compute the aggregate gains from trade and their distribution across
regions. For an intermediate value of the parameter that determines the (Roy)
dispersion of worker productivity across sectors, the standard deviation of the gains
across groups is between 1/3 and 1/2 of the mean gains. In fact, some groups
experience large net losses as trade leads to a fall in income that is larger than the
decline in goods prices. Still, under commonly used measures of risk aversion, an
agent behind the veil of ignorance for the US or Germany (not knowing to which
group she would belong), would experience risk-adjusted gains from trade that are
larger than the aggregate gains, as income risk coming from income inequality
among groups actually falls with trade relative to autarky.

"Understanding Ethnic Cooperation. Evidence from experiments in Kenya and

Tanzania." (joint with Lars Ivar Berge, Kjetil Bjorvatn, Edward Miguel, Dan
Posner, Bertil Tungodden and Kelly Zhang.)
Elections in Africa have often led to tensions between ethnic groups, which
sometimes escalate into violence. Yet, it is unclear if ethnic tensions reflect the
everyday sentiments of ordinary people. To address this question, we carried out
three rounds of lab experiments to investigate cooperative behavior, drawing an
ethnically diverse sample of individuals from working-class neighborhoods in Nairobi,
Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The first Kenya-round took place in the year
preceding the 2013 Kenyan presidential election, while the second round took place
in the month just prior to the election. The Tanzania-round took place in 2012, in the
middle of the presidential term. We exploit this variation in timing and location and
utilize ethnically identified games, experimental priming and implicit association
tests (IATs) to analyze how preferences and behavior are affected by coethnicity,
political competition, and national identity. The results are based on a pre-analysis

plan. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find no evidence of meaningful coethnic

bias in any of the lab rounds, no significant drop in interethnic cooperation closer to
the election, no differential effects by ethnic group, and no difference between the
two countries. However, we do find a large decrease in the general level of
cooperation in proximity to the election. Taken together, the findings suggest a
reassessment of the widespread view that there is pervasive ethnic bias in Kenya at
the individual level.