Month: March 2026

Myrto Kasioumi (QSMS) will present “The Influence of Social Practices on the Environment” on March 16th, 2026, at 10:30 AM, in room QA323.

Abstract:

This paper examines how changes in everyday social practices relate to air quality in the United States, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a large, unplanned behavioral shock during which human mobility was substantially reduced. Focusing on three major air pollutants—NO2, PM10, and PM2.5—and employing a set of panel econometric models, the study estimates both the short-run and long-term environmental consequences of reduced traffic activity. Two complementary forecasting exercises, including a counterfactual no-COVID-19 scenario and a hypothetical case in which COVID-like mobility patterns persisted beyond the pandemic, are used to explore how air pollution would have evolved under alternative behavioral regimes.

By explicitly examining the persistence of air quality improvements, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions on the environmental relevance of temporary behavioral change, an underexplored dimension in the existing literature. The results indicate that mobility reductions are associated with short-run improvements in air quality, particularly for NO2, but that these improvements dissipate as behavior returns to normal, highlighting the limits of short-term behavioral change in achieving lasting environmental gains without accompanying structural transformations.

Héctor Hermida Rivera (QSMS) will present “Self-Equivalent Voting Rules” on March 2nd, 2026, at 10:30 AM, in room QA323.

Abstract:

In this paper, I introduce a novel stability axiom for stochastic voting rules, called self-equivalence, by which a society considering whether to replace its voting rule using itself will choose not to do so. I then show that under the unrestricted strict preference domain, the unique voting rule satisfying the democratic principles of anonymity, optimality, monotonicity, and neutrality as well as the stability principle of self-equivalence must assign to every voter equal probability of being a dictator (i.e., uniform random dictatorship). Thus, any society that desires stability and adheres to the aforementioned democratic principles is bound to either employ the uniform random dictatorship or decide whether to change its voting rule using a voting rule other than itself.