Home > Research > Seminars > Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
The Applied economics lunch seminar takes place every Tuesday from 12:30 to 13:30.
Its objective is to provide a friendly and informal atmosphere in which ongoing research in applied economics carried out at the Paris School of Economics can be presented and discussed. It is open to all students and faculty members of the Jourdan campus. The seminar is primarily devoted to presentations by PhD students, but it can also accommodate occasional presentations of ongoing work by young and less young researchers.
If you want to make a presentation and book a date, you can contact Thomas Piketty (thomas.piketty psemail.eu) and Cyprien Batut (cyprien.batut gmail.com).
This seminar is organized by Thomas Piketty
Administrative contact: Monique-Alice Tixeront
This seminar is co-funded by a French government subsidy managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the framework of the Investissements d'avenir programme reference ANR-17-EURE-0001.
Tuesday 28 January 2020 12:30-13:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
Tuesday 4 February 2020 12:30-13:30
The role of women in the economies of industrialized countries and, thus, their societal status and opportunities have changed radically in the last 150 years. While scholars estimated the long-run development of gender pay differences for the USA, Sweden and the United Kingdom, long-run trends for Germany are scarce. This paper examines the long-run development of the gender pay ratio in Germany from the 1870s until the present day. Using official inquiry reports, contemporary academic works, and publications of the Statistical Offices, it shows that the German path towards gender equality in pay has parallel dynamics to the Swedish case and very different patterns compared to the US-American experience. While the gender pay ratio made a great leap forward during the interwar period, slower growth characterizes the post-war period. Migration of women into white-collar work combined with the progressive institutional framework of the Weimar Republic might be one essential lever for the observed increase in the interwar period.
Tuesday 11 February 2020 12:30-13:30
COLY Caroline : Reducing the gender pay gap: can we trust firms to take action?
This paper analyzes the effect of the 09th of November 2010 law in France that implemented financial sanctions for firms of 50+ employees who will not have implemented an agreement or an action plan in favor of professional equality between men and women by January 1st, 2012. An important difference between this law and the ones studied previously in the literature is that it does not just state the interdiction of gender discrimination but it obliges firms to take action by decentralizing the negotiation on gender inequalities in the workplace at the firm level. To develop our analysis, I build on a unique administrative dataset, a combination of the ADEP database, registering firms that signed this type of agreement, matched with the DADS database that contains detailed information on workers and firms characteristics. To identify the effects of the signature of an agreement on the wage gap, we exploit information on the timing of signature that differs between firms. Results suggest that the agreements had an effect on large firms (500+ employees) that had both human and financial resources to implement and monitor the policies elaborated but not on medium-sized firms, which lacked those resources.
CASANUEVA ARTIS Annalí : Can chant on the street change Parliament's tune ?. The effects of the 15M social movement on electoral results
Tuesday 3 March 2020 12:30-13:30
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : TBA
Tuesday 10 March 2020 12:30-13:30
NEEF Theresa (Freie Universität Berlin) : Distributional National Accounts: A Macro-Micro Approach to Inequality in Germany
30 years after the German reunification, substantial income and wealth differences persist between those living in the Eastern and Western part of the country. In this study we want to venture an in-depth analysis of the persisting inequalities between East and West Germany. In the 1990s, special tax incentives fostered massive investment flows going from West Germany to East Germany. Using the Distributional National Accounts (DINA) method, we bring together macroeconomic information from National Accounts and tax and survey data at the micro level to answer the following questions: Who has benefited more from economic growth over time: employees or capital owners? Who receives the surplus generated from the investments in the East German federal states – East or West German capital-owners?
GALBIATI Roberto : TBA
MICHEL Bastien (PSE) : Custodial vs. Non-Custodial Punishments: Measuring the Impact of an Anticipated Reform
Camille Hemet (ENS, PSE)
We study a reform of the Danish legislation after which most offenders tried for drunk-driving received a non-custodial sanction instead of a custodial one. We show that stakeholders anticipated the consequences of the reform as selection is observed in the nature of the cases tried before and after the reform. To measure its impact, we use an instrumental variable approach exploiting the fact that the closer to the reform a crime was committed, the more likely the defendant was to be tried after. Offenders who received a non-custodial sentence commit fewer crimes and have stronger ties to the labor market.
STERN Lennart (PSE) : Funding Global Public Good Institutions via taxes on aviation emissions- a comparison of three proposed mechanisms
The EU is considering taking unilateral action to achieve higher carbon pricing for international aviation. It has been proposed that the EU could start a club mechanism whereby participating countries would have to tax at a fixed rate the emissions of all outgoing flights as well as all flights coming in from non-participants. They would then have to allocate a certain proportion of the tax revenue to some agreed-upon global institution for climate change mitigation. I propose an alternative club mechanism in which participating countries could allocate their tax revenue to Global Public Good Institutions (GPGIs) of their choice from a set GPGIs recognised as eligible in the treaty establishing the mechanism. Of the tax revenue that participants decide to not allocate, they could retain a fixed proportion. The remaining revenue would be added to the GPGIs in proportion to the aggregate allocations made to them. I consider an example where the set of eligible GPGIs consists of 2 GPGIs for global health and 4 for climate change mitigation. I estimate the payoffs that countries would derive from money being added to the different GPGIs,taking into account the heteogrenous benefits generated by each GPGI, the rents that some GPGIs create and the redistributional effects that some GPGIs induce by changing e.g. the oil price. Using an iterated best response algorithm and assuming that initially only the EU and China participate, I predict that this new mechanism can achieve 22% more welfare gains than the previously proposed one, raising 50% more revenue for GPGIs. I then enrich the mechanism by allowing countries to also give to so called "proportional matching funds", which distribute their budget to subsets of GPGIs, in proportion to the direct allocations made to these GPGIs. This enriched mechanism can achieve 67% more welfare gains than the previously proposed one, raising 100% more revenue for GPGIs.
Tuesday 7 April 2020 12:30-13:30
SACHS Dominik (University of Munich (LMU)) : TBA
Tuesday 14 April 2020 12:30-13:30
LEROUTIER Marion : TBA
ZABROCKI Leo
SIGNORELLI Sara (PSE) : TBA
GUYON Nina (National University of Singapore) : TBA
Tuesday 5 May 2020 12:30-13:30
MARTÍNEZ-TOLEDANO Clara : Paraísos Fiscales, Wealth and Mobility
David Agrawal and Dirk Foremny
Tuesday 12 May 2020 12:30-13:30
BLANC Guillaume (Brown University) : Modernization Before Industrialization: Cultural Roots of the Demographic Transition in France
LACROIX Jean : TBA
ECKERT Fabian (Princeton) : Skilled Tradable Services: The Transformation of U.S. High-Skill Labor Markets
Sharat Ganapati (Georgetown), Conor Walsh (Yale)
We study a group of service industries that are skill-intensive, widely traded, and have recently seen explosive wage growth. Between 1980 and 2015, these "Skilled Tradable Services" accounted for a sharply increasing share of employment among the highest earning Americans. Unlike any other sector, their wage growth was strongly biased toward the densest local labor markets and the highest paying firms. These services alone explain 30% of the increase in inequality between the 50th and 90th percentiles of the wage distribution. We offer an explanation for these patterns that highlights the complementarity between the non-rivalry of knowledge and changes in communication costs.
Tuesday 2 June 2020 12:30-13:30
DAGEFÖRDE Mirjam (Sciences-Po, Humboldt University) : Against the 'common wisdom'? How voters evaluate representation in diverging electoral contexts
This article argues that the debate on representation and the electoral context lacks both (1) a notion of citizens' individual representational judgments and (2) a focus on the representational link between citizens and parliamentary parties. Hence, it develops a typology of congruence between citizens and parliamentary parties by presenting micro concepts of congruence. (3) The article refers to recent contradictory findings with regard to the relation of electoral systems and congruence, revisiting the debate on context and congruence when putting citizens center stage. The article proceeds as follows: first, it theorizes how a citizen evaluates representation; second, it formulates normative criteria for judging representation, developing empirical indicators for measuring congruence at the micro level by presenting a typology; third, it shows how the micro perspective refutes the 'common wisdom' of comparative politics by pointing out that under some conditions, proportional systems lead to lower degrees of congruence than majoritarian systems.
ALMEIDA Vanda : Accounting for the distributional effects of the 2007-2008 crisis and the Economic Adjustment Program in Portugal
This paper develops a new method to model the household disposable income distribution and decompose changes in this distribution (or functionals such as inequality measures) over time. It integrates both a micro-econometric and microsimulation approaches, combining a flexible parametric modelling of the distribution of market income with the EUROMOD microsimulation model to simulate the value of taxes and benefits. The method allows for the quantification of the contributions of four main factors to changes in the disposable income distribution between any two years: (i) labour market structure; (ii) returns; (iii) demographic composition; and (iv) tax-benefit system. We apply this new framework to the study of changes in the income distribution in Portugal between 2007 and 2013, accounting for the distributional effects of the 2007-2008 crisis and aftermath policies, in particular the Economic Adjustment Program (EAP). Results show that these effects were substantial and reflected markedly different developments over two periods: 2007-2009, when stimulus packages determined important income gains for the bottom of the distribution and a decrease in income inequality; 2010-2013, when the crisis and austerity measures took a toll on the incomes of Portuguese households, particularly those at the bottom and top of the distribution, leading to an increase in income inequality.
Tuesday 16 June 2020 12:30-13:30
DERENONCOURT Ellora (Harvard) : TBA
ANDRÉ Mathias (INSEE) : Housing Wealth and Redistributive Effects of Property Tax : a Microsimulation Approach on French Data
MESLIN Olivier (INSEE)
RASTER Tom (PSE) : TBA
GOVIND Yajna (PSE, WID) : Naturalisation: Passport to better labour market performances? Evidence from mixed marriages in France
Better integration is beneficial for migrants and the host country. In this respect, granting citizenship is deemed to be an important policy to boost migrants' integration. In this paper, I estimate the causal impact of obtaining citizenship on migrants' labor market integration. I exploit a change in the law of naturalization through marriage in France in 2006. This reform amended the eligibility criteria of applicants by increasing the required number of years of marital life from 2 to 4, providing a quasi-experimental setting. Using administrative panel data, I first show evidence of the impact of the reform on the naturalization rates. I then use a dynamic triple-differences model to estimate the labor market returns to naturalization. I find that citizenship leads to increased labor market participation. Among those working, it leads to higher overall earnings associated with both an increased number of hours worked and higher hourly wages. A gender decomposition shows that the effect on the increased probability of working is more relevant for men. On the other hand, among those working, women tend to be the ones benefiting from higher overall earnings as a result of an increased number of hours and hourly wages.
Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
NAVARRETE H. Nicolas : Behind the Veil: the Effect of Banning the Islamic Veil in School
Immigration from Muslim countries is a source of tensions in many Western countries. Several countries have adopted regulations restricting religious expression and emphasizing the neutrality of the public sphere. We explore the effect of the most emblematic of these regulations: the prohibition of Islamic veils in French schools. In September 1994, a circular from the French Ministry of Education asked teachers and principals to ban Islamic veils in public schools. In March 2004, the parliament took one-step further and enshrined prohibition in law. This paper provides evidence that the 1994 circular contributed to improving the educational outcomes of female students with a Muslim background and to reducing educational inequalities between Muslim and non-Muslim students. We also provide evidence suggesting that the 2004 law has not generated any further improvements.
Tuesday 7 January 2020 12:30-13:30
BERGERON Augustin (Harvard University) : Local Elites as Tax Collectors: Experimental Evidence from the DRC
Historical states with low capacity often empowered local elites to collect taxes, despite the risk of mismanagement. Could local tax collection raise revenues without undermining government legitimacy in fragile states today? We provide evidence from a field experiment in which the Provincial Government of Kasai Central, in the DR Congo, randomly assigned city neighborhoods to centralized property tax collection, conducted by agents of the tax ministry, or local tax collection, conducted by neighborhood chiefs. Local collection generated 30% higher revenues and 24% lower transaction costs compared to central collection. Although there is evidence of a small increase in bribes, local collection did not undermine citizens' views of the government; in fact, it increased reported confidence in the formal state. Hybrid treatment arms and survey evidence suggest that local chiefs achieved higher citizen tax compliance because of their informational advantages rather than a differential ability to threaten sanctions, to make salient the public-goods-tax link, or to motivate tax morale.
Tuesday 17 December 2019 12:30-13:30
GLEYZE Simon (PSE) : Segregation and Expectation Formation on the Returns to Schooling
Philippe Jehiel (PSE/UCL)
We show that low credit constraints together with high returns to schooling are consistent with low investment in human capital if students form their expectation on the returns to schooling by word-of-mouth learning. Under rational expectations, computing these expected returns requires to know the joint distribution of schooling, ability and wages. Instead, in our model students estimate this joint distribution by sampling their social network with a selection bias toward students with similar ability. The perceived returns to schooling exhibit regression to the mean compared to the opportunity cost, leading to self-selection and equilibrium mismatch. We discuss policy implications and show that quotas might be ineffective. We then derive a new form of bias in the estimated returns to schooling from Mincer equations. It is caused by the equilibrium misallocation of students to schools leading to a downward "mismatch bias" on the estimated returns. Finally, we discuss econometric issues in demand estimation from matching data and show that most identifying assumptions (Nash equilibrium, stability, undominated strategies, etc.) induce biased estimates of structural parameters.
ASSOUAD Lydia : Charismatic Leaders and Nation building: Ataturk's visits in Turkey
Can leaders successfully shape beliefs and social norms? I address this question by studying the role of Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey, in spreading a new national identity. Using a generalized difference-in-differences design, that exploits time and geographic variation in Kemal's visits to cities, I test whether direct exposure to a charismatic leader affects citizens' take-up of the new national identity. I show that cities visited are more likely to embrace the common identity, as proxied by the adoption of first names in "Pure Turkish", the new language introduced by the state. I investigate the mechanisms and find that Kemal was more efficient in spreading a new identity compared to Ismet Inonu his "second man", suggesting that he did not only have a pure informational effect. This is consistent with the Weberian view that "charismatic authority" can play a role in legitimizing new social orders.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 12:30-13:30
GUILLAUD Elvire (U Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, CES & Sciences Po, LIEPP) : The Law of Rank
Michaël Zemmour (U Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, CES & Sciences Po, LIEPP)
In comparing tax systems across developed countries, scholars generally stress differences. However, we point to a relationship common to all countries when we consider the link between tax rates and income percentile rather than the link between tax rates and income level. Across all countries, this relationship is (1) remarkably linear, (2) with a uniform slope of 3%. The additional tax that one has to pay when climbing in the income ladder is therefore the same everywhere. We call this common shape of taxation the 'Law of rank'. We establish this stylized fact for 22 OECD countries over 17 years, using LIS dataset supplemented with OECD tax data. Combined with the different pretax income distributions and the various average tax rates across developed economies, this 'Law of rank' has important theoretical implications, as it allows us to predict the well-known properties of existing tax schedules: (i) Local progressivity in taxation is higher when income inequality is low (i.e. when the gap in income from one fractile to the next is small); (ii) Marginal tax rates are increasing in income, before to decrease for top incomes in every country – yet at different paces; (iii) Global pro- gressivity in taxation (Kakwani disproportionality measure) decreases with the country average tax rate.
Tuesday 26 November 2019 12:30-13:30
BAU Natalie (UCLA) : Misallocation and Capital Market Integration: Evidence from India
Adrien Matray (Princeton)
Using the staggered liberalization of access to foreign capital across highly disaggregated Indian industries, we show that capital misallocation is an important contributor to low aggregate productivity. The natural policy experiment allows us to credibly identify changes in firms' input wedges, addressing major challenges in the measurement of misallocation. For domestic firms with initially high marginal revenue products of capital (MRPK), liberalization increased revenues by 18%, physical capital by 60%, wage bills by 26%, and reduced the marginal revenue product of capital by 43%. There were no effects on firms with low MRPK. The effects of liberalization are largest in areas with less developed local banking sectors, indicating that foreign investors may substitute for an efficient banking sector. Finally, we develop a new method to use natural experiments to estimate the lower bound effect of changes in misallocation on manufacturing productivity and conclude that the liberalization increased the aggregate productivity of the Indian manufacturing sector by at least 7.6%.
BAUMARD Nicolas : The Origins of Romantic Love and Asceticism : How Economic Prosperity Changed Human Psychology in Medieval Europe
Elise Huilerie, Léo Zabrocki
In this paper, we study the effect of economic development on human psychology during the Middle Ages (600-1600) in a panel of European countries. We show that the increasing prosperity enjoyed by Europeans during this period transformed their psychology and shifted their preferences away from purely materialistic motivations toward higher motivations which include strong emotional attachment, commitment, self-discipline, renunciation of material possessions for spiritual goals, and intrinsic motivation. To test this idea, we construct a unique database on two behaviors that express these motivations romantic love and asceticism from relatively homogenous sources over the long-term: the biographies of the saints for asceticism, and the topics of narrative fictions for romantic love. We use the introduction of the heavy plow as an instrument for economic prosperity (in the form of population density) to identify the causal impact of economic prosperity on these behaviors. Our results show that higher population density caused a rise in love and asceticism, which provides first macro-economic and historical evidence that economic development had a causal effect on human psychology in medieval Europe.
LI Yang : From workers to capitalists in less than two generations: A study of Chinese urban elite transformation between 1988 and 2013
Filip Novokmet, Branko Milanovic
Economic and social transformation of China during the past 40 years is without precedent in human history. While the economic transformation was extensively studied, social transformation was not. In this paper, we use for the first time harmonized household surveys covering the period 1988-2013 to study the changes in the characteristics the richest 5 percent of China's urban population. We find that the elite changed from being composed of high government officials, clerical staff, and workers in 1988 to professionals and small and large business owners in 2013. The educational level of the elite increased substantially. Membership in CCP has a positive (albeit small) effect on one's income but is particularly valuable to large business owners.
Tuesday 5 November 2019 12:30-13:30
JOHNSEN Gudrun : The Fall of the Icelandic Banking System and the Wages of Failure
Iceland's banking collapse has been the largest, relative to the size of the economy, suffered by any country in modern economic history. In this seminar, Guðrún Johnsen provides an overview of the methodology and conclusions of the Icelandic Parliament's Special Investigation Commission on the causes and events leading up to the fall of the Icelandic banking system. She will also describe the executive compensation arrangements in the failed banks and how incentive schemes led to misreporting of profits and equity levels, embezzlement of the funds of publicly owned companies and massive market manipulation, keeping the promises of the incentives schemes alive for the bankers, whilst the investing public was defrauded and financial supervisors derailed by false market signals.
Tuesday 29 October 2019 12:30-13:30
BLANCHET Thomas : Modelling the Dynamics of Wealth Inequality in the United States: 1962–2100
I decompose the dynamics of the wealth distribution using a simple dynamic stochastic model that separates the effects of consumption, labor income, rates of return, growth, demographics and inheritance. Based on two results of stochastic calculus, I show that this model is nonparametrically identified and can be estimated using only repeated cross-sections of the data. I estimate it using distributional national accounts for the United States since 1962. I find that, out of the 15 pp. increase in the top 1% wealth share observed since 1980, about 7 pp. can be attributed to rising labor income inequality, 6 pp. to rising returns on wealth (mostly in the form of capital gains), and 2 pp. to lower growth. Under current parameters, the top 1% wealth share would reach its steady-state value of roughly 45% by the 2040s, a level similar to that of the beginning of the 20th century. These conclusions apply to a wide class of models of the wealth distribution, regardless of the specific ways in which they model, say, consumption or the labor market.
MEHMOOD Sultan : Judicial Independence and Development: Evidence from Pakistan
To what extent does the Presidential appointment of judges impact judicial decision making? This paper provides causal evidence that the institution of Presidential appointment exerts considerable influence on judicial decision making in Pakistan. We find that a change in selection procedure of judges from Presidential appointment to appointment by a judicial commission (consisting of peer judges) significantly reduces rulings in favor of the government and that this reduction reflects an improvement in the quality of judicial decisions. Using mandatory retirement age as an instrument for new appointments allows us to estimate the causal effect of the reform. We test for, and provide evidence against, potential threats to identification and alternative explanations to our findings. The analysis of case content reveals that the results are explained by rulings in politically salient cases. We find evidence of selection effects mechanism: judges appointed by the President are more likely to have been politically active prior to their appointment. We also find a positive welfare effect of the reform, with lower expropriation risk leading to increased investment in the construction industry and higher house prices.
CARPETTINI Bruno (University of Zurich ) : The electoral impact of wealth redistribution: Evidence from the Italian land reform
Lorenzo Casaburi
Governments often implement large-scale redistribution policies to gain political support. However, little is known on whether such policies generate sizable gains, whether these gains are persistent, and why. We study the political consequences of a major land redistribution program in Italy. Using a panel spatial regression discontinuity design, we show that the reform generated large electoral gains for the incumbent Christian Democratic party, and similarly large losses for the Communist party. The electoral effects persist over four decades, during a period in which the agricultural sector shrank dramatically. We explore several mechanisms for this persistence. Analysis of fiscal transfers, public sector employment, and referendum outcomes suggests that the reform initiated a repeated exchange: the incumbent party continued promoting the interests of treated towns even after the land redistribution ended and the voters continued supporting this party. Additional analysis finds less support for other potential mechanisms, including voters' long-term memory, changes in voters' beliefs, and mechanical correlation in voting over time.
Tuesday 8 October 2019 12:30-13:30
SIDOIS Charles-Louis (Mannheim ) : Silence the Media or the Story? Theory and Evidence of Media capture.
Elisa Mougin (Sciences-Po)
We explore a theory of media capture where a principal can either influence journalistic investigation (internal capture) or let the media investigate and pay to suppress news stories before publication (external capture). We predict that the likelihood of internal capture increases with perceived corruption while competition on the media market favors external capture. Exploiting new individual survey data from Reporters Without Borders, we use the revelation of the Panama Papers in 2016 as a shock to perceived corruption. With a differences-in-differences identification strategy that exploits the cross-country variation in exposure to the shock, we show that internal capture increases with perceived corruption.
ARIELL Reshef : Are Your Labor Shares Set in Beijing? The View through the Lens of Global Value Chains
We study the evolution of labor shares while taking into account international trade based on value added concepts. On average, labor shares decline significantly in 1995-2007 and then recover somewhat in 2007-2014. Skilled labor shares increase strongly and uniformly throughout 1995-2014. Globalization consistently pushes labor shares down due to greater reliance on intermediate input trade, which is relatively capital intensive; complex global value chains are an important dimension of this process. Within-industry changes account for the reversal in the decline in labor shares after 2007, and almost all of the increase in skilled labor shares; we explain this by declines in the price of capital in the presence of capital-skill complementarity, together with within-industry forward GVC integration. Compared to shares in GDP, labor shares in gross national product (GNP) are higher in countries with positive net FDI positions; the uneven spread of multinational activity contributes to greater inequality through this channel.
Tuesday 24 September 2019 12:30-13:30
PROVENZANO Sandro (LSE) : Capital City Isolation in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Paradox of the Isolated Poor
We put forward the geographic positioning of areas relative to the political center within the country, the capital city, as an important determinant of economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. We exploit the fact that African boundaries divide pre-colonial ethnic homelands with similar geographical characteristics to obtain a quasi-random variation in distance to the capital city. Using VIIRS nightlights as a proxy for economic activity, we isolate a negative causal impact of isolation to the capital city on economic performance. In contrast, isolation from other major cities turns out insignificant. This supports the view that distance to the political center is the driving force behind the effects. Regarding the economic link between capital city isolation and economic activity, we document a lower level of public goods provision in isolated areas. However, despite being discriminated against, people in isolated areas, paradoxically, exhibit a higher level of trust in their political leaders.
LOPEZ-FORERO Margarita : Productivity, Labor Shares and Tax Havens: things are not always what they seem
Samuel Delpeuch (Sciences-Po)
Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd jourdan 75014 Paris
SCHMUTZ Benoit (Crest,IPP,Polytechnique) : The political economy of public housing"
In many European and Asian countries, public housing accounts for a large share of housing and its allocation is controlled by municipalities. Using French data, we investigate whether mayors use public housing to change the composition of their municipality and attract more favorable voters. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits close elections to identify a causal effect of electing a left- instead of a right-wing mayor on the population of housing projects. The results indicate that about six years after the initial election, before the next election, municipalities that elected a left-wing mayor have a larger share of immigrants and a lower share of retired natives in public housing. In the medium-run and long-run, the differences in composition are twice as large but also more imprecise. We also find evidence of similar but less intense changes in composition in the population in private housing but only in municipalities with a large public housing supply. In these municipalities, the election of a left-wing mayor is associated with higher incumbency advantage, but also more far-right votes in the first-round and a decline in electoral participation in municipal elections.
Tuesday 3 September 2019 12:30-13:30
TRICAUD Clémence (Ecole Polytechnique) : Better alone? Evidence on the costs of intermunicipal cooperation
While central governments encourage intermunicipal cooperation to achieve economies of scale, municipalities are generally reluctant to integrate. This paper provides new evidence on the costs of integration by assessing the causal impact of integration on municipalities resisting cooperation. Exploiting a 2010 reform in France that forced non-integrated municipalities to enter an intermunicipal community, I show that the loss of autonomy over urban planning plays a key role in explaining their opposition. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that municipalities forced to integrate experienced a 12.2 percent increase in the number of building permits delivered. Additional results suggest that municipalities were resisting further urban development to avoid congestion rather than to exclude minorities or prevent housing prices to fall. Exploring the impact of integration on fiscal revenues and public services, I find that, while congestion costs appear key in understanding urban municipalities' resistance, rural municipalities' opposition seems mainly driven by the loss of access to local public services. Overall, these results shed new light on the tension between the potential aggregate benefits sought by governments and local negative externalities driving municipalities' opposition.
Tuesday 2 July 2019 12:30-13:30
NERI Lorenzo (Queen Mary University) : The Unintended Consequences of Housing Regeneration Projects
The demolition of public housing estates is often seen as a way to deal with the shortage of houses. In London, many public estates have been demolished between 2002 and 2015 to pave the way for new developments with higher housing density, leading to the creation of 30,000 new houses. I have constructed a novel database with all demolitions in the Greater London area using administrative records from the London Development Database. A difference in difference analysis reveals that the demolition of an estate affects the surrounding neighborhood in terms of economic development, house prices and local businesses. I will study how these effects spill over to the preference of parents for local schools, and whether there are broader social costs of demolitions for communities and children in particular.
MARTÍNEZ-TOLEDANO Clara : Housing Bubbles, Wealth Inequality and Capital Income Taxation
This paper combines different sources (tax records, national accounts, wealth surveys) to construct wealth distribution series for Spain since the mid-eighties until the present. The wealth inequality series and a new asset-specific accumulation decomposition are then used to analyze how housing booms and busts shape the wealth distribution. Wealth concentration dropped in Spain since the eighties until the end of the housing boom of the 2000s and it increased afterwards during the years of the housing bust. My findings suggest that differences in rates of return and capital gains drive wealth inequality dynamics during housing booms and busts, but saving rates only play a role during busts. Rich individuals diversify their portfolio during the housing bust substituting housing for financial assets, contributing to revert the decreasing trend in wealth concentration of the housing boom. The importance of saving rates on financial assets was exacerbated during the bust due to a large capital income tax reform that created a wedge between the taxation of financial income (interest and dividends) and housing rents. These results provide the type of evidence needed to discipline macroeconomic theories of wealth inequality, asset price changes and capital income taxes.
SEIBOLD Arthur (Mannheim ) : Reference Points for Retirement Behavior: Evidence from German Pension Discontinuities
This paper documents and analyzes an important and puzzling stylized fact about retirement behavior: the large concentration of job exits at specific ages. In Germany, almost 30% of workers retire precisely in the month when they reach one of three statutory retirement ages, although there is often no incentive or even a disincentive to retire at these thresholds. To study what can explain the concentration of retirements around statutory ages, I use novel administrative data covering the universe of German retirees, and I take advantage of unique variation in financial retirement incentives as well as statutory ages across individuals in the German pension system. Measuring retirement bunching responses to 644 different discontinuities in pension benefit profiles, I first document that financial incentives alone fail to explain retirement patterns in the data. Second, I show that there is a direct effect of "presenting" a threshold as a statutory retirement age, which is substantially larger than that of financial incentives. Further evidence on mechanisms suggests the framing of statutory ages as reference points for retirement as a potential explanation. A number of alternative channels including firm responses are also discussed but they do not seem to drive the results. Finally, a model of retirement with reference points is employed to interpret the observed patterns. Counterfactual simulations highlight that shifting statutory ages via pension reforms can be an effective policy to increase actual retirement ages with a positive fiscal impact.
BATUT Cyprien (Paris School of Economics) : Local economic impact of refugee arrival: evidence from France
GEEROLF François (UCLA) : Reassessing Dynamic Efficiency
Since Abel et al. (1989), it is generally assumed that the net marginal product of capital is higher than the growth rate, a situation called "dynamic efficiency", where increasing aggregate saving is beneficial in the long run. In this paper, I revisit this question methodologically and empirically, leveraging the availability of new and better data. I contrast marginal and average returns, accumulation and valuation effects, finite and infinitely-lived assets, realized and expected returns, the returns to produced assets and other components of capital income (land and monopoly rents). My preferred estimate is that the net marginal product of capital is everywhere lower than the growth rate. Under neoclassical assumptions, the capital stock and investment are too high, and lower aggregate saving crowds out excess capital accumulation. If aggregate investment is not interest elastic as in early Keynesian growth models, consistently with most microeconomic evidence, then excess saving leads to persistently low output ("secular stagnation") instead of excess capital accumulation; and lower aggregate saving boosts output permanently.
PASINI Elisabetta (Queen Mary University) : Migration and competition for schools: evidence from primary education in England
This is the most updated abstract: The paper investigates the impact of immigration on the school system in England. I exploit the post-2004 inflow of migrants from A8 countries to investigate the impact on natives' allocation in primary schools. In particular, because of their faith, the rapid increase in Polish-born residents has increased competition for Catholic schools, which are on average better performing and oversubscribed. This quasi-experimental setting enables me to estimate the impact of a school demand shock on natives' allocation. I deal with the endogenous sorting of Polish migrants by adopting a novel version of the shift-share instrument. The results suggest that the presence of non-natives lowers the probability of natives attending Catholic schools. I observe that natives resident in areas characterized by larger inflows of Polish migrants, if displaced, substitute Catholic with equally good performing non-faith schools. Moreover, a further investigation on natives' allocation reveals that parents are more willing to sacrifice peer composition of the school rather than distance. Finally, I look at natives' performance three years after the enrollment date and find no evidence of negative impact on test scores, thus suggesting that changes in allocation do not have detrimental effects on natives.
CAGE Julia (Sciences Po) : It Takes Money to Make MPs: New Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending
Edgard Dewitte (Sciences Po Paris)
What is the price of a vote and how did it evolve over time? In this paper, we study the impact of campaign spending on electoral results in the United Kingdom over the last 150 years, a period that covers the emergence of different campaigning technologies. We build a new exhaustive dataset on campaign spending and votes since 1857, including not only detailed election expenses for 62,248 election-constituency-candidates, but also extensive candidates' characteristics as well as constituency-level controls. Beyond this important data collection effort, our contribution to the literature is threefold. First, we propose two new instruments based on historical events to estimate the causal impact of spending on votes. Second, we investigate whether the introduction of new campaigning technologies has affected the relationship between spending and votes. Finally, we exploit the multiparty nature of the U.K. electoral data and examine whether the efficiency of campaign spending varies depending on the political parties. We show that there is a positive effect of spending on votes, and that this effect is becoming stronger over time, reflecting an higher efficiency of new campaigning technologies. Furthermore, we document that while historically, campaign expenditures were relatively less efficient for the UK Independence Party, there is a convergence over time. This may reflect a decrease in the stigma associated with the UKIP vote, and help to improve our understanding of the determinants of the rise of right-wing populism.
VALSECCHI Michele (New Economic School ) : To Russia with Love? The Impact of Sanctions on Elections
Do economic sanctions weaken the support for incumbent governments? To answer this question, we focus on the sanctions imposed on Russia after 2014 and estimate their effect on voting behavior in both presidential and parliamentary elections. For identification, we use cross-regional variation in (pre-determined) trade exposure to sanctioning and non-sanctioning countries and before-after voting data at both regional and district level. The sanctions caused an increase in support for the incumbent. This result is robust to alternative measures of sanction exposure, including a measure of trade loss, i.e., the difference between observed trade flows and counter-factual trade flows computed via a full-general-equilibrium gravity model. Absence of pre-trends, as well as several placebo estimations, supports the validity of the identification assumption. We then explore several potential mechanisms, including propaganda, electoral fraud as well as standard demand-supply effects. Overall, while it is hard to evaluate all the potential motives that sanctioning countries might have had, our results suggest that economic sanctions are not an effective tool for reaching one of their primary goals and can actually backfire.
MALGOUYRES Clement (IPP) : Incidence and Behavioral Responses to Changes in Local Business Taxation: Lessons from a Large Reform in France
Clément Carbonnier, Antonin Bergeaud, Edouard Jousselin
UNGARO Stefano : The Real Effects of the 1930-1931 Banking Crisis in France
MATRAY Adrien (Princeton University) : Higher Dividend Taxes, No Problem? Evidence From France
Charles Boissel
We exploit one of the largest reform of dividend taxation in France in 2012 to estimate the effect of an increase in dividend tax rate on corporate policies, using administrative data covering the universe of firms and employees. In a difference-in-difference setting, we find that exposed firms swiftly cut dividend payments, both at the extensive and intensive margin, with an implied elasticity of -0.6. We find that treated firms build up considerable amount of cash reserves after reducing their dividend payment but do not change their investment policies. We report a precisely estimated null effect of dividend taxes on investment rate, with an implied elasticity around 0.04.
ROVNY Jan (Sciences Po) : Circumstantial Liberals: Ethnic Minorities and Political Competition
Ethnic minorities make contemporary Europe increasingly diverse. The prevailing wisdom in research on ethnic politics is that ethnicity is a trouble-maker disrupting programmatic universal politics – it tends to prioritize group identity over ideology, polity or policy, principle over compromise. In short, ethnicity is expected to be a source of particularistic tension. This project takes a theoretical step back. Approaching ethnic politics as a component of normal politics, it investigates the ideological potential of ethnicity, and examines the conditions that determine the formation of diverse preferences and behavior among ethnic groups and their representatives. The project seeks to answer central questions: What are the political preferences of ethnic minority groups and their representatives? Under what circumstances do ethnic minority groups and representatives prefer to cooperate with the majority, and under what circumstances is this preference undermined? The project proceeds from the expectation that ethnic minorities seek group preservation. It hypothesizes that the search for group preservation may induce ethnic minorities to champion rights and liberties, translating into broader ideological preferences and political behavior. Simultaneously, conditional factors cross-pressure the search for rights and liberties, potentially leading ethnic groups and members towards exclusionary extremism instead. The identification of these conditions is of central theoretical importance, as well as of practical use. The project combines the study of ethnic politics with research on electoral behavior and party competition, while studying both minorities in eastern Europe comparison with dominant majorities. The project collects novel data sources, which it analyses using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. It is divided into two parts, one focusing on large-N quantitative comparative analyses, and one carrying out three in depth case studies.
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Diffusion of Gender Norms: Evidence from Stalin's Ethnic Deportations
Alain Blum (EHESS), Alexandra Jarotschkin (World Bank)
NOLAN Brian (Oxford) : Inequality and Real Income Growth in Rich Countries
TURATI Riccardo : SKILL OF THE IMMIGRANTS AND VOTE OF THE NATIVES: IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALISM IN EUROPEAN ELECTIONS 2007-2016
Simone Moriconi, Giovanni Peri
In this paper we document the impact of immigration at the regional level on Europeans' political preferences as expressed by voting behavior in parliamentary or presidential elections between 2007 and 2016. We combine individual data on party voting with a classification of each party's political agenda on a scale of their "nationalistic" attitudes over 28 elections across 126 parties in 12 countries. To reduce immigrant selection and omitted variable bias, we use immigrant settlements in 2005 and the skill composition of recent immigrant flows as instruments. OLS and IV estimates show that larger inflows of highly educated immigrants were associated with a change in the vote of citizens away from nationalism. However the inflow of less educated immigrants was positively associated with a vote shift towards nationalist positions. These effects were stronger for non-tertiary educated voters and in response to non-European immigrants. We also show that they are consistent with the impact of immigration on individual political preferences, which we estimate using longitudinal data, and on opinions about immigrants. Conversely, immigration did not affect electoral turnout. Simulations based on the estimated coefficients show that immigration policies balancing the number of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants from outside the EU would be associated with a shift in votes away from nationalist parties in almost all European regions.
MACOURS Karen (PSE) : Education, Income and Mobility: Experimental Impacts of Childhood Exposure to Progresa after 20 Years
Caridad Araujo
In 1997 the Mexican government designed the conditional cash transfer program Progresa, which became the worldwide model of a new approach to social programs, simultaneously targeting human capital accumulation and poverty reduction. Since then, a large literature has documented the short and medium-term impacts of the Mexican program and its successors in other countries. Using Progresa's experimental evaluation design originally rolled out in 1997-2000, and a tracking survey conducted 20 years later, this paper studies the differential long-term impacts of exposure to Progresa at critical moments in childhood. To do so, we focus on two cohorts of children: i) those that during the period of differential exposure were in-utero or in the early years of life, and ii) those who during the period of differential exposure were transitioning from primary to secondary school. Results for the older cohort, in their early 30s at endline, show that the short-term impacts of differential exposure to Progresa on schooling are sustained in the long-run and manifest themselves in larger labor incomes, more international migration, and delayed fertility. The younger cohort, 17-20 shows similar differential impacts to those of the older cohort on schooling and a positive effect of differential exposure to Progresa on labor income expectations, pointing to the importance of exposure in very early childhood.
PITON Sophie (PSE) : Revisiting the Global Decline of the Labor Share
Germán Gutiérrez (NYU Stern)
We study the evolution of labor shares in the United States and Europe since 1950. Contrary to common wisdom, we show that the non-housing gross labor share remained stable in Europe, and declined only in the US. The divergence with prior research is due to the treatment of Residential Real Estate in sector accounts. While US accounts exclude all housing income from the nonfinancial corporate sector, European accounts include some rental activities. In fact, 19% of the capital stock of EU nonfinancial corporations are dwellings. The inclusion of housing income substantially biases the corporate labor share. Controlling for these differences, the labor share has remained stable in Europe and declined only in the US.
MEHMOOD Sultan : The Dictator, the Imam and the Judge: Tracing the impact of religion on the courts
How does religion impact the courts? In this paper, we document a substantial impact of religious leaders on judicial decision making in Pakistan. Utilizing a unique dataset on the holy Muslims shrines across Pakistan, we show that districts where historically the shrine density was high, a military coup in 1999 induced a large decline in judicial independence and quality of judicial decisions. We present evidence consistent with the mechanism that increased political power of religious leaders allowed them to influence the courts. The analysis of the type of cases driving the results show that more favourable rulings for the government in land expropriation and human rights cases explain these results. We also show a judicial selection reform that changed the appointment procedure to select judges from presidential appointment to selection by a judicial commission consisting of peer judges mitigates the effect of historical shrine density on judicial outcomes.
SCHWAB Jakob (German Development Institute ) : Accounting for Intergenerational Social Mobility in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Fabian Könings
KSEBI Ilham : Measuring Unemployment by means of Official Data and Administrative Records: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives
This paper addresses the measurement of unemployment in the Italian regional context. Specifically, retrieving data from Tuscany, we compare the picture of unemployment that emerges by exploring official data and administrative records over the period after the burst of the Great Recession. Consistently with previous findings, we find that registered unemployment is higher, more persistent and more concentrated on women than its official measure. However, despite those heterogeneities, we show that the cyclical behaviour of registered job seekers is similar to the one of official job seekers. Moreover, we provide a way to reconcile the two measures of unemployment. Thereafter, we develop a model that provides a rationale for the coexistence of official and registered job seekers and we explore how it reacts to productivity shocks and its policy implications. Finally, we offer some insights about the desirability of an integrated use of those data.
CASSAN Guilhem : Voting Power and the Supply of News Media: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from India
Julia Cagé (Sciences-Po), Francesca Jensenius (Oslo)
In this paper, we investigate how media owners react to changes in the political importance of vote choices - voting power - in different areas. Whereas "one person, one vote" is often considered the guiding principle of democracies, there is in fact great variation across the democratic world in the extent to which votes matter at all, the extent to which they translate directly into seats or affect elections in a more indirect manner (such as through electoral colleges), and the weight given to one vote compared to another (e.g., votes in densely populated areas counting for less). As the voting power of an area increases, influencing the political behavior of the electorate also becomes increasingly important for actors seeking political influence. As a result, controlling the quantity and bias of the news media that voters are exposed to becomes a serious challenge. One may therefore expect changes in the voting power of an area to be associated with an increase in the supply of news media. To tackle this question, we analyze how the Indian newspaper market reacted to changes in the voting power of diff erent areas, by investigating changes in the number of newspapers, the circulation of these newspapers (both on average and aggregated), as well as the identify and nature of the owners.
PRESIDENTE Giorgio : The Redistributive Role of Automation
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SEROR Marlon (University of Bristol) : Industrial clusters in the long run: Evidence from Million-Rouble plants in China
This paper exploits the short-lived economic and scientific cooperation between the U.S.S.R. and China, which led to the construction of 156 "Million-Rouble plants" between 1953 and 1958. We isolate exogenous variation in location decisions due to the relative position of allied and enemy airbases and study the long-run impact of these factories on the spatial distribution of economic activity. While the "156" program accelerated structural transformation in treated counties until the end of the command-economy era, this significant advantage eroded in the subsequent period. We explore the nature of the local spillovers responsible for this pattern, and provide evidence about the following externalities: over-specialization, human capital accumulation and competition for skills, and changes in the supply of entrepreneurs.
FERNANDEZ-SANCHEZ Martin (PSE) : Mass Migration and Education over a Century: Evidence from the Galician Diaspora
This paper analyzes the impact of mass migration on human capital accumulation at origin over a century. I examine one of the largest migration episodes in the XX century, the Galician diaspora in Latin America. Using data from different historical sources I build a unique database of all Galician villages from 1860 to today with information on migration, literacy rates, migrants' associations and their investments at origin. To infer causality I exploit the fact that the distance to a few ports was a key determinant of migration intensity, especially in times of good economic conditions at destination. The results show that in the short run, migration significantly increased literacy rates due to the selection of illiterate into migration and an increase in the stock of literate. In the long run, migration led to more schools per capita, higher enrolment rates and higher schooling levels. These findings are largely explained by migrants associations financing the construction of schools, by the return of educated migrants, and by a change in perceptions about the value of education.
BARRERA Oscar : Voting for war. The effect of electoral outcomes on conflict, evidence from Colombia
The Colombian conflict experienced a dramatic intensification after 2002 when the national government implemented the Democratic Security policy spearheaded by the Colombian's Conservative leader Alvaro Uribe. This study examines the direct effects of putting into practice the Democratic Security policy on local violence towards civilians. A regression discontinuity approach shows that the number of civilian victims by Guerrilla bands increases substantially after close elections in municipalities where mayors sharing the DS policy won, whereas no effect of the civilian victims by other bands or official forces was observed. Empirical evidence suggests that the violence reflects either an anticipation strategy followed by the Guerrilla or a manipulation of the scores by the local offices.
BLANCHET Thomas : Divided Behind and Beyond Borders? Income inequality in Europe, 1980-2017
Lucas Chancel, Amory Gethin
This paper estimates the evolution of income inequality in 38 European countries from 1980 to 2017 by combining surveys, tax data and national accounts in a systematic manner. We develop a harmonized methodology (based on machine-learning, nonlinear survey calibration and extreme value theory) in order to produce homogeneous pre-tax and post-tax income inequality estimates, comparable across countries and coherent with official national income growth rates. Our findings reveal that income inequalities within European countries increased significantly, while inequalities between countries remained broadly stable over the period. As a result, income disparities in Europe as a whole increased significantly: over the period, bottom 50% earners saw their incomes grow four times slower than the top 0.001%. Income gaps are however substantially wider and have increased much more rapidly in the United States than in the old continent. In 1980, Europe and the US shared similar levels of inequality; in 2017, by contrast, the share of national income accruing to top 1% earners was two times higher in the US. Our findings also stress the need for more transparency on inequality statistics in Europe and continued efforts towards the production, dissemination and analysis of distributional measures of economic growth.
LE PENNEC Caroline (Berkeley) : Electoral competition, campaign messages and commitment: Evidence from French Legislative Elections (1958-1993)
Do politicians strategically adjust their campaign messages under electoral competition and do these messages matter? In this paper we assess the extent to which politicians' discourse responds to natural variation in the set of competitors they face in two-round elections. We exploit a unique dataset of about 30,000 manifestos circulated by candidates to the French legislative elections before each election round between 1958 and 1993. Using computational text analysis methods to scale these manifestos on a left-to-right axis, we show that candidates who make it to the runoff tend to become more neutral and similar to each other in the second round. This is particularly true among candidates who were more extreme in the first round but less so among incumbent and elected candidates. We further explore several dimensions along which the content of manifestos changes between election rounds and find that candidates tend to drop policy platform elements, add mentions of local places in their district and use words related to communal moral values relatively more often than words related to universal ones. We next collect the written questions to the government issued by elected representatives to voice their voters' concerns on specific topics or policies. We use various approaches to compare manifestos to questions' content and find weak to zero correlation between the two, suggesting that neither campaign messages nor their adjustment under electoral competition are binding once politicians are elected.
LI Yang : Robin Hood or Crony Capitalism? Income inequality trend in Malaysia (1984-2014) under long standing affirmative action program
Abdul Khalid Muhammed
By combining national account, fiscal data, surveys, and demographic statistics, in this paper we build the first Distribution National Accounts (DINA) for Malaysia for the period of 2002-2014. Under the DINA framework, we systemically analysis the impact of long-lasting affirmative policies in Malaysia on inequality trend among and within different ethnic groups, e.g. Bumiputera, Chinese, and Indians. Our findings show that while the affirmative policies significant increase the income of the Bumiputera in the bottom (e.g. In the bottom 50%) from 2002 to 2014 , it is the Bumiputera on the top (e.g. In the top 1%) who benefit the most from the policies.
POULHES Mathilde (Sciences Po) : Increasing Housing Transfer Taxes: Buy Now or Foot the Bill Later
This paper estimates the impact of the rise of housing transfer tax in France. It exploits both time and geographical discontinuities in the implementation of the 2014 reform that allowed local authorities to raise housing transfer tax. On the short term, we provide evidence that buyers anticipate the reform to avoid the additional tax burden. We find some evidence of a long-term negative effect of the tax increase on the number of transactions, only in markets where supply is high relative to demand. Finally, we find no effect on pre-tax sales prices, meaning that the burden of the transfer tax rests on the buyer. Our findings highlight the strong inelasticity of the French housing market and suggest the existence of price frictions potentially due to loss aversion.
LEBRIS David (TSE) : Testing the Tax-Loss Selling Explanation of the January Effect: Evidence from a 'Confiscatory' Tax Implemented in France in 1921
For almost a century, we document a significant January effect on the French equity market. We find strong evidences in favor of the tax-loss selling explanation for this phenomenon. Indeed, the January effect was insignificant before the introduction of a "confiscatory tax" on capital gains in 1921, and became strongly significant afterward. Moreover, the rate of taxation is statistically significant to explain the strength of the January effect over time. Studying individual stock returns, a DiffInDiff investigation shows that past losers, outperform past winners at the turn of the year but only after 1921, which reinforces further the tax-loss selling explanation of the January effect.
DELATTE Anne Laure (CEPII, CNRS) : Private Credit Under Political Influence. Evidence from France.
Adrien Matray (Princeton), Noémie Pinardon-Touati (HEC)
R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
POTTIER Antonin (CERNA - PSL) : Integrated assessment of climate and population change: A first evaluation
We develop an integrated assessment model with endogenous population dynamics accounting for the impact of global climate change on mortality. An age-dependent endogenous mortality rate, which depends linearly on global temperature increase, is introduced and calibrated. We consider three scenarios (a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, a 3 ?C scenario and a 2 ?C scenario) and find that climate-induced deaths per annum range from 160,000 (in the near term) to more than 300,000 (at the end of the century). We examine the number of life-years lost because of climate change in a given year and find figures ranging from 5 to 13 millions annually. Interestingly, the number of life-years lost is constant (BAU) or decreasing (3 ?C and 2 ?C scenarios) through time due to changes in the age-composition of future population. Using standard levels of the value of a statistical life, we can estimate that climate change-induced mortality is equivalent to a monetary loss between 0.2% and 0.5% of world GDP each year.
ESTEVEZ BAULUZ Luis : From Manufacturing to Services: The impact of Structural Change on the value of Housing
This paper connects the striking rise of national housing-to-national income ratios experienced by rich countries over the last decades decades with the transformation of the productive system: from manufacturing to services. It explores two factors: the increase in countries' spatial concentration of economic activity and the negative shocks to manufacturing-specialized regions. To explore the first factor, I present new series of housing wealth and of spatial concentration of economic activity in seven developed economies: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK and USA. Results show that rising housing wealth is the consequence of higher urban land values, with this increase being tightly connected with larger concentration of market-oriented services. The second factor is investigated using urban-level data in England and Wales, thus analyzing how macro trends in house-income ratios emerge from the local level. I find that rising national values are largely the result of higher dispersion of local house prices, but not of incomes per capita. The best predictor of how house prices changed is the city-level specialization of the productive system. I estimate that one quarter of the dispersion in local house prices is explained by manufacturing output declining at the national level. A simple theoretical model is used to rationalize these two factors.
SICSIC Michaël : The elasticity of labor income: evidence from French tax and benefit reforms, 2006-2015
I provide estimates of the elasticity of labor income with respect to the marginal net-of-tax rate (MNTR) on the 2006-2015 period for France. I follow the methodology of the ETI literature using panel data, with several contributions. I exploit not only income tax reforms but also means-tested benefits reforms in order to compare these elasticities. Over the 2006–2015 period covered, the reforms went to different directions (leading to up and downs of MNTR) and some reforms affected MNTR differently for individuals with the same level of income depending on family configuration, which provide good source identification. This variety of reforms enables me to estimate different elasticities for different types of people. I focus on the individual response of labor income but I also compute cross elasticities of other income of the household (spouse labor income and capital income). Finally, I also test various ways to deal with means reversion, heterogeneous income trend, and endogeneity of MNTR, and add lots of controls since the data used provides a great variety of socio-demographic covariates. Estimation yields compensated elasticities of approximately 0.1 for all reforms, 0.2 for income tax reforms, 0.1 for in-work reforms (RSA activité), and not significant for other means-tested benefits (family allowance). This can be explained by the fact that income tax reforms are more salient than benefit reforms. Other results include the fact that the elasticities are higher for the top decile, for single people, and for people between 20 and 30 years old. Moreover, cross elasticities are negative, which is consistent with income shifting.
SEGAL Paul (KCL ) : Inequality as Entitlements over Labour
The study of economic inequality is fundamentally concerned with differing entitlements over goods and services. Economists of inequality have neglected a different aspect of economic inequality discussed by social commentators at least since Rousseau: that it also implies that one person is entitled to command the labour of another person for their own consumption purposes. I call this inequality as entitlements over labour. I propose a measure called the service ratio, which calculates the extent to which the rich can afford to buy the labour of their compatriots. Unlike standard measures of economic inequality the service ratio is not welfarist, but instead has its normative basis in the economic relations between people. I estimate service ratios in a selection of countries over time, and illustrate the relationship between this measure and standard measures of inequality. Beyond its normative interpretation, I argue that inequality as entitlements over labour is salient in two dimensions. First, it is sociologically salient because the ability to employ domestic service is essential to conceptions of upper middle class lifestyles. Relatedly, it has also underpinned rising female labour market participation. Second, it is politically salient because the extent of domination through command over labour is a zero-sum game between the rich and the non-rich.
VISKANIC Max (Sciences Po) : Dismantling the Jungle: Migrant Relocation and Extreme Voting in France
Can a small scale inflow of migrants a.ect electoral outcomes? We study whether the relocation of migrants from the Calais "Jungle" to temporary migrant-centers (CAOs) in France a.ected the results of the 2017 presidential election. Using an instrumental variables approach that relies on the size of holiday villages present in municipalities, we .find that in the presence of a CAO, the percentage growth rate of vote shares for the main far-right party (Front National) between 2012 and 2017 is reduced by about 15.7 percentage points. Given that the FN vote share increased by 20% on average between 2012 and 2017 in French municipalities, this estimation suggests that the growth rate of FN vote in municipalities with a CAO was only 25% the one of municipalities without a CAO (which corresponds to an increase lower by 4 percentage points). These e.ffects, which dissipate spatially and depend on city characteristics and on the size of the inflow, point towards the contact hypothesis (Allport (1954))
MURARD ELIE (IZA) : Immigration and Attitudes toward Redistribution in Europe
Alberto Alesina, Hillel Rapoport
We examine the relationship between immigration and attitudes to redistribution by assembling a new dataset of immigrant stocks at the regional level in 140 regions of 16 Western European countries. We combine census and population register records with attitudinal data from the biannual 2002-2016 rounds of the European Social Survey. We find that center and rightwing natives display lower support for redistribution when the share of immigrants in their region of residence is higher. This holds particularly in regions of countries with relatively large Welfare-States. This negative relationship between immigration and support for redistribution is robust to the inclusion of a rich set of regional and individual controls, as well as to using alternative measures of preferences for redistribution. All these effects are stronger for immigration originating from non-European countries.
GOUPILLE-LEBRET Jonathan : Inequality and Redistribution in France
Antoine Bozio, Bertrand Garbinti, Malka Guillot et Thomas Piketty.
LIPPMANN Quentin : Gender and Lawmaking in Times of Quotas. Evidence from the French Parliament
This article investigates whether female legislators defend the interests of women more than their male counterparts. I collected data from more than 300,000 amendments discussed in the French Parliament during the 2001-2017 period and combine quasi-experimental variations with text analysis. First, I exploit mixed-gender close races in the Lower House to show that female legislators are twice more likely to initiate and to co-sponsor gender-related amendments. Second, as compared to other topics, I establish that gender issues constitute the key topic on which women are more active relatively to men, followed by health and child issues. At the other end of the spectrum, men are more involved in war issues. Third, I investigate the mechanisms and provide evidence that the activity of female legislators cannot be entirely explained by constituencies' demographics or political parties' strategies but stems from individual preferences of parliamentarians. Fourth, I replicate these findings in the Upper House using a difference-in-differences strategy that directly exploits the introduction of a gender quota. I obtain similar results.
YAKOVLEV Evgeny (NES ) : Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Sizable Conditional Child Subsidy
Ilia Sorvachev
The paper documents the strong effect of sizable child subsidy on fertility. The effect is significant in the short run and facilitates in the long run. To identify the causal effect of the subsidy in the short run, we apply Regression Discontinuity strategy within a short time interval near child subsidy's adoption. The long-run effect is documented using various Dif-in-Dif estimates, where we 1) compare fertility across Russian regions that implemented different regional child subsidies; 2) compare Russia with Eastern European countries that showed similar pre-reform trends in fertility. The subsidy is conditional and can be used mainly to buy apartments (houses). We find that fertility grew faster in regions with a shortage of housing, with a higher ratio of subsidy to price of apartments, as well as in poorer regions. At the individual level, in regions outside Moscow, the subsidy affects the fertility decisions of families with higher (relative to the regional average) level of income and higher education more. Finally, we find that the subsidy has substantial general equilibrium effect. It affected family stability. It results in the decrease of the share of single mothers, and in higher marriage rates. It also affected the housing market. We find that housing prices and the supply of new houses increased significantly as a result of the reform
FRYER Roland G. (Harvard University) : Understanding Intergenerational Mobility. A Machine Learning Approach.
COULOMB Renaud (University of Melbourne) : Political Connections and White-collar Crime: Evidence from Insider Trading in France
Marc Sangnier, Thomas Bourveau
This paper investigates whether political connections affect individuals' propensity to engage in illegal activities in financial markets. We use the 2007 French presidential election as marker of change in the value of political connections, in a difference-indifferences research design. We examine the behavior of directors of publicly listed companies who are connected to the future president through campaign donations or direct friendships, relative to that of other non-connected directors, before and after the election. We uncover indirect evidence that connected directors do more illegal insider trading after the election. More precisely, we find that purchases by connected directors trigger larger abnormal returns, and that connected directors are more likely not to comply with trading disclosure requirements and to trade closer to major corporate events.
Wednesday 15 August 2018 12:30-13:30
Wednesday 8 August 2018 12:30-13:30
MACOURS Karen (PSE) : Young Women's Labor Market and Fertility Outcomes 10 years after a CCT
Tania Barham, John Maluccio
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are some of the most popular policy instruments to increase investment in nutrition, health, and education in developing countries. The principal motivation underlying CCTs has implicitly and often explicitly been that investment in human capital will help improve the lives of the poor in the longer term, with the expectation that it can lead to higher income generating potential in adulthood for beneficiary children. Whether and how such potential materializes remains an open question. For girls of school-going ages, CCT do not only provided incentives and means to stay in school longer, but also may affect fertility outcomes through improved nutrition (with implications for the onset of puberty). Understanding the later mechanism is important, as young women's decisions regarding economic and reproductive activities tend to be closely intertwined. This paper exploits an experimental design and a 10-year tracking survey for a CCT program in Nicaragua that introduced random variation in the age of exposure that allows isolating the fertility mechanism. For a cohort of 9 to 12 year old girls, the variation in age of exposure does not lead to differences in educational outcomes, but leads to differential impacts on fertility, and subsequent long-term labor market outcomes and income. While the differential impacts are modest, they suggest that health and nutrition components of CCT programs are important to account for when analyzing long-term impacts on labor market outcomes.
ZHU Junyi (Bundesbank) : Love and money with inheritance: marital sorting by labor income and inherited wealth in the modern partnership
PASTEAU Etienne (PSE)
As the importance of capital is resurging in rich countries, the dynamics of wealth inequality are being increasingly affected by inheritance distribution. The relative attraction derived from inherited wealth and acquired human capital in marital choices may be undergoing change. We expand the traditional dimension of assortative mating through only labor income to cover both labor income and inheritance. This paper studies the concentration and substitutability of these two traits in forming partnerships using data for Germany from the Panel on Household Finances (PHF). Relative to France, Germany's aristocratic wealth has experienced more negative shocks since WWII, social stratification is perceived as less acute, and half of the country went through decades of communism. However, our results come quantitatively close to the distributional outcomes seen in France. By assuming a sequential revelation of inheritance and labor income in marital sorting, we develop a stylized multidimensional matching model which adequately replicates the sorting pattern observed using marginal distributions of these two traits from either gender. Our estimate suggests inheritance is about two and a half times more important than labor income in explaining marriage choice. This quantitative result seems to characterize the expected lifetime inheritance and labor income after marriage for Germany under the actual rate of return, growth rate, demographics as well as rapid expansion of bequest flows in recent history.
Full text [pdf]
SOTURA Aurélie (BdF) : Spatial disparities - France - 1960-2014
BONNET Florian (PSE)
This study explores the evolution of spatial inequality in France from 1960 to 2014. It builds on works by Combes & al. (2011) and Roses & al. ( 2016) and shed new light on living standards convergence by using a new and unique database on income distribution of each French \textit{départements} since 1960. We have constructed this database using 4500 fiscal tabulations collected in the archives of the French Ministry of Finance, a new demographic database by Bonnet (2018), and income distribution for France computed by Garbinti $\&$ al. (2018). First we show that total income inequality in France comes mostly from within \textit{départements} inequality and that between \textit{départements} income inequality has strongly decreased during the 20th century. Second, while value added per capita inequality, after following an inverted U-shaped relationship from the middle of the 19th century since the 80's, has considerably increased in the last decades, income inequality has decreased then stabilized. We argue that value added per capita inequality in the last decades has increased because value added has concentrated. This, we suspect, stems from agglomeration economies and skill-biased technical change in big cities. We cannot prove it with our data but we do find some evidence such as the fact that top earners have concentrated in urban \textit{départements} with big cities in the last decades. Increasing value added per capita inequality did not lead to increasing income divergence between \textit{départements} for two reasons: first, retirees relocating to non productive but attractive places have homogenized income sources over the French territory. Second, as we know from Guillot & al. (2016), net wage inequalities have decreased while labor cost inequalities have increased over the 1976-2010 period. Therefore, we believe that taxation has mitigated labor cost inequality leading to smaller spatial income inequality than value added per capita inequality.
LARDEUX Raphael (CRED PARIS 2) : Who Understands The French Income Tax ? Bunching Where Tax Liabilities Start
Lack of tax transparency may strongly impact taxpayers' behavior. This pa- per disentangles responses to incentives from attention to taxes at the level where French income tax liabilities start. When reporting their earnings, tax filers may be confused between two potential thresholds: the true Tax Collection Threshold (TCT), a notch, and a wrong Taxation Threshold (TT), which is a kink. Using a comprehensive dataset on individual income tax returns from 2008 to 2015, I highlight significant bunching in the taxable income distribution at both thresholds. Within a model of tax misperception, I estimate that taxpayers are far from paying full attention to the income tax system, yet display strong reactions to the marginal tax rate they perceive. This framework can account for behavioral responses to a rise in the virtual marginal tax rate at the wrong threshold and may prove useful to detect policies improving attention to taxes. Contrasting hard-copy and online tax filers, the misperception model reveals a better understanding of the tax system by the latter.
MUNOZ Mathilde (Paris School of Economics) : The effect of labour taxation on top earners mobility: Evidence from Europe
As a geographic zone with no internal barriers to migration but substantially different levels of taxation, the European Union provides a unique laboratory to examine the effect of taxation on migration. This paper analyses the effects of top earnings tax rates on the mobility of top earners in Europe. Building a detailed micro-level dataset from the largest European labour survey, I investigate how heterogenous levels of taxation affect the migration behaviour of top income migrants and top earners mobile workers. Exploiting country-by-year variation in top marginal tax rates and differential impacts of changes in top tax rates on workers of different earnings level, I estimate macro and micro-level elasticities of migration with respect to taxation.
BACH Laurent (ESSEC Business School) : From Saving Comes Having? Disentangling the Impact of Saving on Wealth Inequality
This paper investigates the channels through which saving flows impact the dynamics of wealth inequality. The analysis relies on an administrative panel that reports the assets and income of every Swedish resident at the yearly frequency. We document that the saving rate, defined as saving from labor income divided by net worth, is on average a decreasing function of net worth itself. The saving rate is also highly heterogeneous within net worth brackets. Heterogeneity across and within net worth brackets have conflicting effects on wealth inequality. As a result, saving rate heterogeneity is measured to have a strong impact on social mobility but only a weak impact on the distribution of net worth. Heterogeneity in wealth return is instead the main driver of the recent increase in top wealth shares.
PONTHIÈRE Grégory (PSE) : Premature deaths, accidental bequests and fairness
Marc Fleurbaey, Marie-Louise Leroux, Pierre Pestieau, Stephane Zuberk
While little agreement exists regarding the taxation of bequests in general, there is a widely held view that accidental bequests should be subject to a confiscatory tax. We propose to reexamine the optimal taxation of accidental bequests in an economy where individuals care about what they leave to their offspring in case of premature death. We show that, whereas the conventional 100 % tax view holds under the standard utilitarian social welfare criterion, it does not hold under the ex post egalitarian criterion, which assigns a strong weight to the welfare of unlucky short-lived individuals. From an egalitarian perspective, it is optimal not to tax, but to subsidize accidental bequests. We examine the robustness of those results in a dynamic OLG model of wealth accumulation, and show that, whereas the sign of the optimal tax on accidental bequests depends on the form of the joy of giving motive, it remains true that the 100 % tax view does not hold under the ex post egalitarian criterion.
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Facts, Alternative Facts, and Fact Checking in Times of Post-Truth Politics
BARRERA Oscar
GURIEV Sergei (Science Po)
HENRY Emeric (Science Po)
How persuasive are "alternative facts," i.e., misleading or outright false statements by populist politicians, in convincing voters? How effective is fact checking in countervailing the alternative facts? We conduct a randomized online experiment to address these questions in the context of the 2017 French presidential election campaign. Marine Le Pen (MLP), the extreme-right candidate who reached the runoff, regularly used misleading arguments in support of her policy proposals, to which mainstream media responded with systematic fact checking. We expose randomly selected subgroups of a sample of 2480 voting-age French to quotes from MLP containing misleading information about immigration and/or to facts from official sources. We find that alternative facts are highly persuasive: voters exposed to MLP rhetoric move their policy conclusions and voting intensions toward MLP. Fact checking does nothing to undo these effects despite improving factual knowledge of voters. In contrast, without fact-checking, exposure to MLP's quotes moves posteriors on facts toward more extreme views away from the truth. Being exposed only to official facts increases political support for MLP while moving factual knowledge toward the truth.
FRÉMEAUX Nicolas (Université Paris 2 Panthéon Assas) : The individualisation of wealth - Evidence from France
LETURCQ Marion (INED)
FABRE Adrien (PSE) : French Favored Redistribution Derived From Surveys: A Political Assessment of Optimal Tax Theory
An original method of estimating desired income tax rates ispresented, which is in turn usedto assess the political acceptability of the optimal tax theory. Two surveys have been conductedin 2016 to quantify French preferences for income redistribution. In the first survey, respondentspicked their preferred values for parameters which were used to determine the shapes of redistri-butions. These parameters included the proportion of winners and losers from a tax reform, andthe minimum guaranteed income. Using different algorithms,several redistributions were derivedfrom the interpolation of the median choices of each parameter (50% of winners, 10% of losersand a monthly demogrant of 800€). They resulted in transfersfrom high to low incomes of onetenth of the national disposable income. In the second survey, a majority of respondents agreed onimplementing these redistributions. These results are in line with previous literature and robustto alternative specifications. Interestingly, the averagedesired redistribution corresponds closelyto the shape of the optimal taxation derived from an utilitarian criterion. This allowed to showthat this redistribution fails to obtain a significant majority support (contrarily to others), despiteits good reception in a setting inhibiting self-interest. Finally, this study provides evidence thatFrench citizens support a more direct democratic procedureto define the income tax rates, andproposes a way to do so.
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Forced Migration and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from Post-WWII Population Transfers
BECKER Sascha O. (University of Warwick)
IRENA Grosfled (PSE)
NICO Voigtlaender (UCLA)
Sascha O. Becker, Irena Grosfeld, and Nico Voigtlaender
We exploit a unique historical setting to study the long-run effects of forced migration on investment in education. As a result of World War II, the Polish borders were redrawn, resulting in large-scale migration. Poles were forced to move from the Kresy territories in the East (taken over by the USSR) and were resettled mostly to the newly acquired Western Territories, from which Germans were expelled. We combine historical censuses with newly collected survey data to show that Poles with a family history of forced migration are significantly more educated today, while there were no pre-WWII differences in education. This result holds when we restrict ancestral locations to a subsample around the former Kresy border, and when including fixed effects for the destination of migrants. The historical setting also allows us to narrow the comparison to forced migrants vs. voluntary migrants. The latter arrived from Central Poland, attracted by government programs to settle the largely emptied Western Territories. We find that -- even within municipalities -- descendants of forced migrants are more educated than the descendants of voluntary migrants. This difference is not driven by the selection of either group of migrants or by pre-war differences. Instead, survey evidence suggests that forced migration led to a shift in preferences, away from material possessions and towards investment in mobile assets such as human capital. The effects persist over three generations.
GODECHOT Olivier (Sciences Po) : The Great Separation. Job Polarization in Six (and more) Countries
With Feng Hou (Canada), Martin Hallsten (Sweden), Lasse Henriksen (Denmark), Are Hermansen (Norway), Naomi Kadoma (Japan), Max Thaning (Sweden), Nina Bandelj, Irene Boeckmann, István Boza, David Cort, Avent-Holt Dustin, Gergely Hajdu, Andrea Hense, Jiwook Jung, Aleksandra Kanjuo-Mr?ela, Joseph King, Alena Krizkova, Zoltán Lippényi, Silvia Maja Melzer, Eunmi Mun, Andrew Penner, Trond Petersen, Andreja Poje, William Rainey, Mirna Safi, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Zaibu Tufail
Growing inequality comes also with growing separation between the top and the bottom. Analyses of social cohesion have documented this phenomenon mainly through the study of school and residential segregation. This increased separatism between majority group and minorities, or between upper classes and lower classes is therefore interpreted as a growing avoidance of deprived groups by privileged ones. However this process neglects a major sphere of social life where people spend most of their daily time: work. In this article, we study thanks to linked employer employee panel administrative database the evolution of the probability of working in the same establishment for groups defined along several socio-economic dimensions —wage, occupation, education, age, gender, migratory status— in six countries: Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, Norway, and Sweden (results from Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, and South Korea are forthcoming). For wage fractile groups, we utilize traditional measures of exposure (and respectively of isolation) with the "drop one" rule. For other groups, whose size varies throughout the period, we propose a relative net exposure. We find that the most dramatic shift is the growing separation of the top 1% earners at work and the decline in the exposure of this group to the bottom 25% and vice versa. This trend is particularly pronounced for France, Denmark and Sweden. The growing separation at work of top and bottom earners surpasses that of migrant and non-migrant, or that of male and female workers. We don't find a similar isolation of the bottom 25%. The latter generally increases its intertwining with mid quartiles. These results show that the assortative matching mechanisms invoked for explaining the growing job polarization between high paying and low paying firms (Card et al., 2013; Song et al., 2015) may only be present at the very top of the wage hierarchy. We explore some of the mechanisms driving this trend: it takes place much more between firms than within firms with multiple establishments. Financialization, global cities, decrease in firm and establishment size also partly account for this evolution. We then look at some of the consequences of growing separation at work on social cohesion. We find also that residential segregation is also growing, although slower than segregation at work, with top earners increasingly living in different municipalities than bottom and median earners. Work segregation and residential segregation are correlated. We show that the former contributes to the later. This renews are understanding of residential segregation which is not only due to individual reluctance to interact but also to socio-economic process structuring work and territories.
RAVALLION	Martin	(Georgetown University) : Bounds on Welfare-Consistent Global Poverty Measures
CHEN Stéphanie (University of Chicago)
New measures of global poverty are presented that take seriously the idea of relative-income comparisons but also acknowledge a deep identification problem when the latent norms defining poverty vary systematically across countries. Welfare-consistent measures are shown to be bounded below by a fixed absolute line and above by weakly-relative lines derived from a theoretical model of relative-income comparisons calibrated to data on national poverty lines. Both bounds indicate falling global poverty incidence, but more slowly for the upper bound. Either way, the developing world has a higher poverty incidence but is making more progress against poverty than the developed world.
PIKETTY Thomas (EHESS/PSE) : Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right. Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict (Evidence from France, Britain and the US, 1948-2017)
PERSAUD Alexander (University of North Carolina Asheville) : A (Paid) Passage to India:Migration and revealed willingness to pay for upper-caste status
How much are upper-caste individuals willing to pay for upper-caste status? Traditional dis-crimination models view discrimination from the vantage point of a group that receives worsetreatment due to its non-economic characteristics vis-a-vis a reference group. Discriminatedgroups pay a cost in the labor market for these characteristics. However, the corollary may betrue: a privileged group may pay a fee in order to receive better, rather than equal, treatment.In the case of caste, I hypothesize that high-caste Indians abroad are willing to pay more toreturn to India and reap the labor and non-labor benefits of high-caste status. I utilize uniquedata on indentured Indians in Fiji in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. This contextremoves confounding labor-market factors and cleanly identifies the gross value of upper castes.I show that the lower bound of the value of the highest castes in north India roughly 2.5 years'gross wages. Robustness using hypothesized inter-caste hierarchies lead to the same orderingand diminishing effects as caste status falls. The effects are entirely driven by men, as women'scaste status appears delinked from return migration. My results show some of the first evidencequantifying a caste's value and speak to caste's persistence today.
ELLISON Sara (MIT) : The efficiency of Race-Neutral Alternatives to Race-Based Affirmative Action: Evidence from Chicago's Exam Schools
PATHAK Parag (MIT)
Parag Pathak
Several public K-12 and university systems have recently shifted from race-based affirmative action plans to race-neutral alternatives. This paper explores the degree to which race-neutral alternatives are effective substitutes for racial quotas using data from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), where a race-neutral, place-based affirmative action system is used for admissions at highly competitive exam high schools. We develop a theoretical framework that motivates quantifying the efficiency cost of race-neutral policies by the extent admissions decisions are distorted more than needed to achieve a given level of diversity. According to our metric, CPS's race-neutral system is 24% and 20% efficient as a tool for increasing minority representation at the top two exam schools, i.e. about three-fourths of the reduction in composite scores could have been avoided by explicitly considering race. Even though CPS's system is based on socioeconomic disadvantage, it is actually less effective than racial quotas at increasing the number of low-income students. We examine several alternative race-neutral policies and find some to be more efficient than the CPS policy. What is feasible varies with the school's surrounding neighborhood characteristics and the targeted level of minority representation. However, no race-neutral policy restores minority representation to prior levels without substantial inefficiency, implying significant efficiency costs from prohibitions on affirmative action policies that explicitly consider race.
ANGELUCCI Charles (Columbia Business School) : The Medieval Roots of Inclusive Institutions: From the Norman Conquest of England to the Great Reform Act
VERHAGEN Annelore (Maastricht University) : Does Active Living affect school performance?
This paper investigates whether stimulating physical activity in everyday life affects primary school performance. We use data from the Active Living field experiment, which aims to increase active transportation and active play among 8-12 year-olds living in low-SES areas in the Netherlands. Difference-in-differences estimations reveal that while Active Living increases time spent on physical activity during school hours, it negatively affects school performance, especially among the worst-performing students. Our results suggest that although physical exercise may be beneficial for health, stimulating active play can have negative effects on educational outcomes.
SANTINI Paolo (PSE) : Do unions have egalitarian wage policies for their own employees? Evidence from exhaustive earnings data in the US
BREDA Thomas (Paris School of Economics)
BRYSON Alex (University College London)
ALSTADSAETER Annette (NMBU) : Accounting for Business Income in Measuring Top Income Shares: Integrated Accrual Approach Using Individual and Firm Data from Norway
Business income is important in the upper tail of the personal income distribution, but the extent to which it is captured by measures of personal income varies substantially across tax regimes. Using linked individual and firm data from Norway, we are able to attribute business income to personal owners as it accrues rather than when it is realized. This adjustment leads to an increase in top income shares, and the size of this effect varies dramatically depending on the tax regime in place. After a tax reform in 2005 that created strong incentives to retain earnings within businesses, the increase was massive: accounting for earnings retained in the corporate sector leads to more than doubling of the share of income of top 0.1% in some years. Furthermore, adjusting for retained earnings stabilizes the composition of the top income group before and after the reform. We also show that the response is driven by majority owners in closely held firms and facilitated through indirect ownership. As the result, traditional measures of top income shares become misleadingly low (even when accounting for capital gains). We speculate on the implications of our findings for levels and trends in top income shares observed in other countries. In particular, we note that the major tax reforms of the 1980s in the United States correspond to a shift toward business income being passed through to personal owners, and argue that top income shares constructed using income tax statistics before 1987 are likely to be significantly understated relative to those afterwards.
CARBONNIER Clement ( Université de Cergy-Pontoise) : Wage Incidence of Corporate Income Taxes: market equilibrium versus rent sharing
MALGOUYRES Clement (IPP)
PY Loriane (Banque de France & IPP)
URVOY Camille (Science Po)
We take advantage of the introduction of a large tax credit (Competitiveness and Employment Tax Credit - CETC) in France in 2013 to assess the wage incidence of corporate income tax. The eligibility rules of the scheme - proportional to the wagebill for individual compensations lower than 2.5 minimum wage - generate a strong discontinuity, upon which we build our identification strategies. Thanks to the match of employer and employee exhaustive admistrative databases, we are able to contrast the corporate income tax incidence on wages at individual and firm levels. The individual-data based analysis studies the deformation of the distribution of wages and hires around the notch, following bunching literature. The firm-level analysis consists in difference-in-difference between firms matched within cells defined according to their wage cumulative density function. The source of variation in treatment intensity stems from pre-reform wage differences in a tight window around the threshold. We show that there exists a discrepancy between the absence of bunching at the individual level and the substantial incidence on wages at the firm level, espcially for high-skill workers. This suggests that rent-sharing or other firm-level wage setting mechanisms are key to fully understand the incidence of such tax credit policy.
ROY Sutanuka (LSE) : Disruptive Effects of Preferential Policies: Evidence from Large Scale Field Experiments in India
This paper reports on the first large-scale randomized field experiment (which includes 14,190undergraduate students) involving legally-recognized minorities to examine the causal effects ofproviding performance based financial incentives to disadvantaged students on high stakes universitytest scores. Two definitions of being disadvantaged are examined separately: 1) income disadvantage2) social disadvantage of belonging to minority groups, i.e., the lower caste groups. The aim ofthe paper is to measure the impact of two types of affirmative action policies on the disadvantagedgroups that the policies target and on the excluded relatively advantaged peers. When only poorstudents were given the opportunity to win the prize incentives, the average test scores of wholecohort decreased by .14 standard deviations. There is a negative spillover effect on the test scores ofthe nonpoor peers who are excluded from the opportunity to win the prize incentives. Mechanisms ofacademic non co-operation as a response to preferential policies are explored. The paper providesevidence of social tension and consequent non-cooperation among peers when only poor students areincentivized and majority of the peers, who happen to be non poor, are excluded.
CASSAN Guilhem : Deprivation measures combining poverty and mortality: Theory and global evidence
BALAND Jean Marie (University of Namur)
DECERF Benoit (University of Namur)
LUO Yiyang (University of Essex)
JANNIN Nicolas (Paris School of Economics) : The impact of local taxes on the French housing markets
Aurélie Sotura
SCHMUTZ Benoit (Crest,IPP,Polytechnique) : Frictional Labor Mobility
Modibo Sidibe (Duke university)
DUFLO Esther (MIT) : Comparing two programs evaluated on different populations: Evidence from two entrepreneurship programs in France
Bruno Crépon, Elise Huilery, William Pariente, Juliette Seban
ALAN M. Taylor : The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015
BERMAN Yonatan (PSE) : Drivers of wealth inequality in the United States: the surprising impact of savings.
ASSOUAD Lydia : Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990-2016: The World's Most Unequal Region?
F. Alvaredo and T. Piketty
In this paper we combine household surveys, national accounts, income tax data and wealth data in order to estimate the level and evolution of income concentration in the Middle East for the period 1990-2016. According to our benchmark series, the Middle East appears to be the most unequal region in the world, with a top decile income share as large as 61%, as compared to 36% in Western Europe, 47% in the USA and 55% in Brazil. This is due both to enormous inequality between countries (particularly between oil-rich and population-rich countries) and to large inequality within countries (which we probably under-estimate, given the limited access to proper fiscal data). We stress the importance of increasing transparency on income and wealth in the Middle East, as well as the need to develop mechanisms of regional redistribution and investment
LOPEZ-FORERO Margarita : International Sourcing and Employment in Times of Financial Crisis: The case of France
Jean-Charles Bricongne and Fabrizio Coricelli
BEHNENDA Asma (PSE) : Absence, Substitutability and Productivity: Evidence from Teachers
Worker absence is a frequent phenomenon but little is known on its effects on productivity nor on organizations' strategies to cope with this temporary disruptive event through substitute workers. Using a unique French administrative dataset matching, for each absence spell, each missing secondary school teacher to her substitute teacher, I find that the expected loss in daily productivity from teacher absences is on par with replacing an average teacher with one at the 15th percentile of the teacher value-added distribution. On average, tenured substitute teachers are able to compensate 30 % of this negative impact while contract substitute teachers do not have any statistically significant impact. This result has important implication for public policy in the context of the shortage of tenured teachers in disadvantaged areas, where contract teachers are more and more concentrated.
RANJBAR RAVASAN Farshad (PSE) : The excess burden of collateral
Developing a model of adverse selection with heterogeneous borrowers across risk and return dimensions, this paper shows that in developing countries that have poor institutional quality of collateral and bankruptcy laws, the aggressive collateralization makes the risk taking behavior of borrowers suboptimally more costly. This discourages entrepreneurship activities and thus hinders the potential growth among young firms with high impact on job creation in the economy. I provide the empirical evidence by investigating the performance of 76 cohorts of firms that entered the market between 1934 to 2009 during the fiscal year of 2012 in four MENA economies with weak collateral and bankruptcy laws. Matching data on the location of firms and bank branches, I construct the index for local collateral policy that prevails in the vicinity of each firm. I find that new enterprises expand their employment faster when they are located in areas in which banks with less stringent collateral policy have a stronger presence. They are also less likely to be discouraged from applying for a loan, more likely to have access to bank finance and more likely to make investments.
FERNANDEZ SANCHEZ Martin : School Segregation and Long-term Happiness: Evidence from the 1981 Privatization Reform in Chile
In 1981 the Chilean Military Government introduced a new system of school financing and choice that led to an exodus of middle-class students from public to subsidized private schools. Using contemporaneous household surveys and historical administrative data of enrollment before and after the reform, I examine the long-term impact of increasing subsidized private enrollment –and thereby segregation- on subjective well-being. The results show that children from poor families were negatively affected by the policy change. On average, being exposed to a 10 percentage point increase in subsidized private enrollment during childhood is associated with a drop in adult life satisfaction of 6% of a standard deviation, an effect equivalent to a fall in household income of 30%.
Salle R1-09 Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MEHMOOD Sultan : Judiciary's Achilles Heel: Executive Control via Appointment Power
How does an increase of executive constraints impact the judiciary? We exploit a change in judicial selection procedure in a weak democracy, from the president selecting the judges to the selection of judges through a judicial commission, to ascertain the causal effects of an increase in executive constraints on judicial independence. By exploiting the across-district and over-time variation in reform exposure generated by random exit of judges, we are able to ascertain the causal effect of this reform on judicial outcomes. We find that this reform has a large effect on judicial independence. In particular, we show that the change in the selection procedure of judges caused a 20% reduction in state victories. This increase in independence does not come at the expense of increased case delay. Furthermore, the analysis of mechanisms reveal that the steepest fall in state victories occurred in less politically connected districts. We also provide suggestive evidence that the new appointment procedure also incentivised the incumbent judges to adjudicate against the state more often, though less so than the judges appointed under the new selection procedure.
ROTUNNO Lorenzo (AMSE) : Trade in unhealthy foods and obesity: Evidence from Mexico
Osea Giuntella and Matthias Rieger
BANERJEE Abhijit (MIT) : How important are matching frictions in the labor market? Experimental & non-experimental evidence from India
Gaurav Chiplunkar
This paper provides evidence of substantial matching frictions in the labor market in India. In particular, placement officers in vocational training institutes have very little information about the job preferences of candidates they are trying to place in jobs. In the first part of this study, we adopt a number of methods to elicit genuine preferences of candidates over different types of jobs. In the second part, we find that providing placement officers with these preference information leads to a substantial improvement in matching candidates to jobs interviews and hence subsequent employment outcomes for up to six months after initial placement.
ZHU Shenghao ( National University of Singapore) : Earnings, Income, and Wealth Distributions in China: Facts from the 2011 China Household Finance Survey
Jijun Tan, Ting Zeng
We use 2011 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data to describe inequality of earnings, income, and wealth in China. We finnd high inequality of labor earnings, income, and wealth in China. We also find that the business income comprises a large share of incomes among top groups. Households with young heads tend to be rich in earnings and incomes, and their incomes are largely generated from businesses. We find that the top 1 percent income share in China in 2010 is comparable to that in the United States in 1928. In 1928 the social security system was still absent in the United States. This comparison gives us hints that the high inequality level in current China is probably due to the ine§ectiveness of redistribution policies in China.
SOLOW Ben : Labor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act: Evidence from Tax Notches
Kavan Kucko & Kevin Rinz
States that declined to raise their Medicaid income eligibility cutoffs to 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) created a "coverage gap" between their existing, often much lower Medicaid eligibility cutoffs and the FPL, the lowest level of income at which the ACA provides refundable, advanceable "premium tax credits" to subsidize the purchase of private insurance. Lacking access to any form of subsidized health insurance, residents of those states with income in that range face a strong incentive, in the form of a large, discrete increase in post-tax income (i.e. an upward notch) at the FPL, to increase their earnings and obtain the premium tax credit. We investigate the extent to which they respond to that incentive. Using the universe of tax returns, we document excess mass, or bunching, in the income distribution surrounding this notch. Consistent with Saez (2010), we find that bunching occurs only among filers with self-employment income. Specifically, filers without children and married filers with three or fewer children exhibit significant bunching. Analysis of tax data linked to labor supply measures from the American Community Survey, however, suggests that this bunching likely reflects a change in reported income rather than a change in true labor supply. We find no evidence that wage and salary workers adjust their labor supply in response to increased availability of directly purchased health insurance.
GUYON Nina (National University of Singapore) : Is Desegregation Possible? Evidence from Social Housing Demolitions in France
TEYSSIER Geoffrey : Inequality of Opportunity: New Measurement Methodology and Impact on Growth
BERGEAUD Antonin : Innovation, Firms and Wage Inequality
Philippe Aghion, Richard Blundell, Rachel Griffith
This paper uses matched employee-employer data from the UK that we augment with information on R&D expenditures, to analyze the relationship between innovativeness and average wage income across firms. And indeed, we show that more R&D intensive firms pay higher wages on average. Our second finding is that the premium to working in more R&D intensive firms seems to be higher for low-occupation workers than for high-occupation workers. To account for these findings, we develop a simple model of the firm where the complementarity between *high-occupation* and *low-occupation* employees within the firm increases with the firm's degree of innovativeness. An additional prediction of the model, which is also confirmed by the empirical analysis, is that low-occupation workers stay longer in more innovative firms.
LANDAIS Camille (London School of Economics) : The value of unemployment insurance
Johannes Spinnewijn
VISKANIC Max (Sciences Po) : What's in the Way of Women? Evidence of the Incumbency Disadvantage from French Politics
BLANCHET Thomas : Generalized Pareto Curves: Theory and Applications
Juliette Fournier and Thomas Piketty
We define generalized Pareto curves as the curve of inverted Pareto coefficients b(p), where b(p) is the ratio between average income or wealth above rank p and the p-th quantile Q(p) (i.e. b(p) = E[X|X > Q(p)]/Q(p)). We use them to characterize and visualize power laws. We develop a method to nonparametrically recover the entire distribution based on tabulated income or wealth data as is generally available from tax authorities, which produces smooth and realistic shapes of generalized Pareto curves. Using detailed tabulations from quasi-exhaustive tax data, we demonstrate the precision of our method both empirically and analytically. It gives better results than the most commonly used interpolation tech- niques. Finally, we use Pareto curves to identify recurring distributional patterns, and connect those findings to the existing literature that explains observed distributions by random growth models.
MONTIALOUX Claire (CREST) : The pass-through of minimum wage increases into US retail prices
Tobias Renkin (University of Zurich (UZH)) et Michael Siegenthaler (ETH KOF)
RUEDA Valeria (Oxford) : Sex and the Mission : the conflicting long-term effects of missionary activity on HIV prevalence
ARTOLA Miguel (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) : Executive Remuneration in Europe: From gentlemanly capitalism to the rise of the super-manager (1920-2000)
GASPARE TORTORICI (Trinity College Dublin) : Globalisation, agricultural markets, and mass emigration, 1876 - 1912
MONTALBAN-CASTILLA José (PSE) : The role of need-based grants on higher education achievement
Little evidence exists on the specific contribution of performance-based incentive components to the effect of need-based financial aid on student's outcomes. This paper aims at elucidate the causal effect of financial aid on the academic performance of low-income students in higher education, using administrative micro-data from Carlos III University of Madrid. Under the propitious Spanish national means-tested grant program, I am able to disentangle the impacts from two different grant schemes with different intensities of performance-based incentives. I use the sharp discontinuities that are induced by family income thresholds to estimate the effect of being eligible to different categories of scholarships, and exploit the fact that academic performance requirements (i.e. having passed a certain number of credits in the previous academic year) became more stringent for students who applied for the Spanish need-based grant after 2012. I find no effects of the large means-tested grant on students' academic performance with weak achievement component. However, I find positive effects on students' academic performance when the achievement component is more demanding, for those students who are more entitle to the grant. Students' also enhance their fraction of turned-up exams and their average GPA on subjects showed-up to final exam. No evidence is found on students' subjects selection and dropout effects that might contaminate the results.
BEKKOUCHE Yasmine (PSE) : The Price of a Vote: Evidence from France, 1993-2014
Julia Cagé (Sciences Po Paris)
GEORGES-KOT Simon (Insee-Crest) : Credit constraints, self-employment and entrepreneurship in France, 1945-2014
Arthur Bauer et Bertrand Garbinti
KHOURY Laura (Paris School of Economics) : The impact of unemployment benefits on the timing of economic dismissals
Salle 8, bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MUROGA Kiho (University of Tokyo) : To Work at the Office or Home? Mincer's Hypothesis and the Labor Supply Elasticity of Married Women in Japan
In this study, we empirically tested Mincer's (1962) hypothesis, which holds that the reason for an observed higher labor supply elasticity of married women than for men or single women is their longer household hours, which are highly substitutable with working hours. Using a time-use survey of Japanese working married women and the exogenous income tax shock that formed a natural experiment, we found that married women in Japan increased their working hours and decreased their household hours when taxes decreased, with an estimated compensated wage elasticity of market work of 0.13 to 0.30 and of housework -0.31 to -0.02. The results, particularly the near perfect substitutability of household and market work, confirm Mincer's hypothesis.
RAPOPORT Hillel (PSE) : Minimum Wages and the Labor Market Effects of Immigration
EDO Anthony (CEPII)
WALDENSTROM Daniel (Paris School of Economics) : Global earnings inequality, 1970-2015: Evidence from a new database
STEGER Thomas (Leipzig University) : Das House-Kapital: A Long Term Housing & Macro Model
Volker Grossmann (University of Fribourg)
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Eastern Europe
Joint with Irena Grosfeld and Seyhun Orcan Sakalli
Abstract: We present evidence to reconcile two seemingly contradictory observations: on the one hand, minorities often choose middleman occupations such as traders and creditors as a safeguard against violence; on the other hand, middleman minorities do become targets of persecution and ethnic violence. Using panel data on anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe between 1800 and 1939, we document that ethnic violence breaks out when income shocks hit at the times of a sharp increase in political uncertainty. In contrast, in times of a relative political stability, economic shocks do not instigate violence against middleman minorities. We also show that pogroms primarily affected localities where Jews dominated the credit sector as opposed to any other intermediary professions, including trade in agricultural or non-agricultural goods, suggesting that it is not the middlemen nature of the occupations of minorities that drove ethnic violence in times of economic and political crises, but the long-term character of the lending transactions.
HOUNGBONON Georges (TSE-IDEI) : Winners or Losers from Broadband Internet
Julienne LIANG (Orange)
Skill-biased technological change is identified as one of the drivers of worsening in-equality and unemployment in high-income countries. However, not all technologies are skill-biased. In this paper, we investigate the effects of fixed broadband Internet adoption on income inequality and employment in France. Using a unique town-level data, we find that broadband adoption raises income, lowers within-town inequality, particularly when the adoption rate reaches a critical mass of 30%, but widens the income gap between towns. Furthermore, broadband adoption has no significant effect on unemployment rate, but comes with jobs creation and destruction in specific economic sectors. These results are robust to the estimation strategy, and accord well with the findings of previous studies. In particular, our estimates imply that 10% increase in broadband penetration raises gross national income per capita by 2%, very close to existing cross-country estimates.
Salle 8, RDC Bâtiment G, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
SUARI-ANDREU Eduard (University of Groningen) : Giving With a Warm Hand: Evidence on Estate Planning and Bequests
Raun van Ooijen, Rob J.M. Alessie, and Viola Angelini
In this paper we contribute to the literature by empirically studying the presence of a bequest motive for saving using administrative data for the Netherlands. Building upon and expanding the previous work by Kopczuk (2007), we empirically identify the bequest motive by studying how terminally ill individuals manage their estate in the last instances of their life. We regress net worth at the end of life on length of terminal illness, while controlling for age and lifetime income. We hypothesize that a negative relationship reflects a decrease in net worth due to early bequests resulting from estate planning triggered by the onset of a terminal illness. Employing quantile regression, we find that having a terminal illness of above ten years has a considerable impact on net worth at death, specially for married males who are at the top of the net worth distribution. Among this group, we find that the effect is specially strong for younger individuals (below 65 years), and for individuals with children who are at the bottom quartile of the income distribution. We conclude that the effects we find reflect the presence of an underlying bequest motive for saving.
TENAND Marianne : Pay less, consume more? Estimating the price elasticity of home care demand of the disabled elderly
Quitterie Roquebert (PSE)
Although the consumption of home care is increasing with population ageing, little is known about its price sensitivity. This paper estimates the price elasticity of the demand for home care of the disabled elderly. We use an original dataset collected from a French County Council on the beneficiaries of the French home care program (Allocation personnalisée d'autonomie, "APA"). This cash-for-care allowance works as an hourly subsidy reducing the price of home care. APA administrative records provide unique information on out--of--pocket payments and home care consumption. Identification primarily relies on inter--individual variations in producer prices. Price endogeneity may arise if APA beneficiaries non--randomly select into a producer; we address this potential issue by exploiting the unequal spatial distribution of producers in the district. Our results point to a price elasticity lower than unity, around -0.4: a 10% increase in the out-of-pocket price is predicted to lower consumption by 4%, or 37 minutes per month for the median consumer. Copayment rates thus matter for allocative and dynamic efficiencies, while the generosity of home care subsidies also entails redistributive effects.
CYRUS CHU (WTO) : Income and wealth inequality in Taiwan
YANG Wenlu (MIT) : Capital accumulation, private property and rising inequality in China, 1978-2015
T. Piketty and G. Zucman
BRIOLE Simon (Paris School of Economics) : From teacher quality to teaching quality: Instruction time, teaching practices and student achievement in the US
Though teachers are consistently found to play a major role in shaping student learning, the determinants of instructional productivity remains a puzzle. In this paper, I implement a within-student between (math) topics strategy on TIMSS 2011 US student test scores to assess the average mathematics instructional productivity in the US. Then, I investigate the role of a largely unexplored and yet intuitive input of teachers' productivity, namely the teaching prac- tices they implement in the classroom. I find that, on average, one weekly hour of mathematics instructional time increases test scores by 4.4% of a standard deviation, and that the use of practices emphasizing student active participation in the lesson is positively and strongly corre- lated to instructional productivity. A one standard deviation increase in the relative use of these practices is related to a 0.08 standard deviation increase in student test scores over the year, which is equivalent to half the effect of a standard deviation increase in teacher value-added estimates from previous studies. Finally, I find suggestive evidence that teachers implementing these kind of practices are also better at improving student non cognitive skills related to math learning, and that they are particularly efficient with female students.
MARTNEZ-TOLEDANO Clara (PSE) : The distribution of wealth in Spain: Evidence from capitalized income tax data (1984-2013)
This paper combines different sources (income tax data, national accounts, wealth surveys) and the capitalization method in order to deliver consistent, unified wealth distribution series and their asset composition for Spain over the 1984-2013 period, with detailed breakdowns by age and gender over the 1999-2013 sub-period. My findings point out a moderate decrease in the top 10% wealth share from the mid-eighties until beginning of the 1990s, at the expense of the increase in both the middle 40% and the bottom 50% of the distribution. The top 10% wealth then starts to increase again, reaching a similar level to the mid-eighties in 2008, and then it stabilizes. The bulk in both housing and offshore wealth, together with rising inequality in rates of return and savings rates have pushed toward rising wealth concentration.
HE Yinghua (Rice U) : Absence, Substitutability and Productivity: Evidence from Teachers
Worker absence is a frequent phenomenon but little is known on its effects on productivity or on organizations' strategies to cope with this temporary disruptive event through substitute workers. Using a unique French administrative dataset on teacher absences and substitute teachers, the aim of this paper is (a) to estimate the effect of teacher absence on student achievement; (b) to analyze substitute teachers' assignment policies both across schools and within school, across classrooms; (c) to study how the effect of teacher absence can be mitigated through the assignment and quality of substitute teachers. Preliminary results suggest that the expected loss in daily productivity from teacher absences is on par with replacing an average teacher with one at the 15th percentile of the teacher value-added distribution. The effect on student test scores of the assignment of a tenured substitute teacher for a year is on par with replacing an average teacher with one at the 35th percentile. The effect of the assignment of a contract teacher for a year is on par with replacing an average teacher with a one at the second percentile. These results have major implications for educational inequality as contract teachers are mainly concentrated in disadvantaged areas.
BELLET Clément (INSEAD) : The Paradox of the Joneses: Superstar Houses and Mortgage Frenzy in American Suburbs
Despite a major upscaling of suburban houses over the last decades, average house satisfaction has remained steady in the United States. I show that upward comparison in size can explain this paradox, as top housing size mirrored the U-shaped pattern of top income inequality. Combining data from the American Housing Survey from 1984 to 2009 with an original dataset of three millions suburban houses built between 1920 and 2009, I find that suburban owners who experienced a relative downscaling of their home due to the building of bigger units in their suburb record lower satisfaction and housing values. These homeowners are more likely to upscale and subscribe to extra mortgage loans. Results are robust to household fixed effects and concentrated in counties with low levels of segregation, suggesting a causal link between inequality and mortgage debt.
JARAVEL Xavier (Stanford University) : The Unequal Gains from Product Innovations: Evidence from the US Retail Sector
Using detailed product-level data in the retail sector in the United States from 2004 to 2013, this paper shows that product innovations disproportionately benefited high-income households due to increasing inequality and the endogenous response of supply to market size. Annualized quality-adjusted inflation was 0.65 percentage points lower for high-income households, relative to low-income households. Using national and local changes in market size driven by demographic trends plausibly exogenous to supply factors, the paper provides causal evidence that a shock to the relative demand for goods (1) affects the direction of product innovations, and (2) leads to a decrease in the relative price of the good for which demand became relatively larger (i.e. the long-term supply curve is downward sloping). A calibration shows that this channel explains most of the observed difference in quality-adjusted inflation rates across the income distribution.
ROULET Alexandra (Harvard) : Unemployment Insurance and Reservation Wages: Evidence from Administrative Data
LE FORNER Héléne : What are the consequences of parents' separation on children ? An educational attainment perspective. Evidence from France
MARTINEZ Isabel (Institute of Socio-Economic Research LISER in Esch/Alzette) : Beggar-Thy-Neighbour Tax Cuts: Mobility in Response to a Regressive Income Tax Reform in Switzerland.
LABONNE Claire (ACPR-PSE) : Cheap Credit, Affordable Housing? Evidence from the French Interest-Free Loan Policy
Cécile Welter-Nicol (INSEE)
We use an arguably exogenous shift in credit to assess how borrowers' characteristics and house prices vary with credit conditions. We identify credit supply shifts using within ZIP-code variations in the Interest-Free Loan (IFL) policy in France between 2009 and 2011. We sample ZIP-codes in which the IFL policy is exogenous to both contemporaneous and expected house prices. IFL policy zoning and subsidy size reforms are not simultaneous which allows ruling out local demand-based reforms. These credit supply shocks alleviate loan-to-value conditions. This in turn reduces the difference between borrowers' and average incomes. Credit supply shifts are also channelled into housing prices. We find a high short-term elasticity of housing prices to credit (close to 0.7).
COMMAULT Jeanne (CREST) : How Does Consumption Respond to a Transitory Income Shock? Reconciling Natural Experiments and Structural Estimations
Results from natural experiments show that consumption responds strongly and significantly to a transitory variation in income such as a tax rebate or a lottery gain, while structural methods relying on theoretical restrictions to identify this response in survey data find that it is small and not statistically significant. I account for this discrepancy by showing that structural estimation methods neglect the correlation between log-consumption growth and past shocks induced by precautionary behavior in the baseline model, and reinforced by borrowing constraints, habit persistence or illiquid wealth in more general frameworks. This correlation undermines the validity of the restrictions used to identify the elasticity of consumption to a transitory shock and generates a downward bias. I develop a robust estimator that allows past shocks to affect log-consumption growth. The elasticity to a transitory shock becomes statistically significant and the results imply that, on average, 20% of a transitory gain in net income is consumed within the following year, which is comparable to the findings of the literature based on natural experiments.
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 8
IARIA Alessandro (CREST) : Frontier Knowledge and the Creation of Ideas: Evidence from the Collapse of International Science in the Wake of World War I
LANDAUD Fanny (Paris School of Economics) : Competitive schools and the gender gap in the choice of field of study
Son-Thierry Ly et Eric Maurin
FOREMNY Dirk (Universitat de Barcelona and Intitut d'Economia de Barcelona) : Relocation of the Rich: Migration in Response to Top Tax Rate Changes from Spanish Reforms
David Agrawal (University of Kentucky)
We quantify the importance of mobility as a response to top tax rate changes in a country where migration is relatively low. A recent Spanish tax reform granted states the authority to set income tax rates for the first time. This Spanish tax reform resulted in substantial tax differences across states for high-income tax payers. To study the effect of these tax changes, we use individual-level information from Social Security records over a period of one decade. The reform increases the probability of moving. In addition, conditional on moving, taxes have a significant effect on the location choice. A one percent increase in the net of tax rate for a region relative to others increases the probability of moving to that region by 1.7 percentage points.
HUSSAIN Iftikhar (University of Sussex) : Consumer Response to Short-Term Innovations in School Productivity: Evidence From the Housing Market and Parents' School Choices
FLÉCHE Sarah (LSE) : Teacher quality, test scores and non-cognitive skills: Evidence from primary school teachers in the UK
RANALDI Marco (PSE) : On the Measurement of Functional Income Distribution
HYPPOLITE Paul-Adrien : Towards a theory on the causes of the Greek crisis: an investigation of national balance sheet data (1997-2014)
LEHMANN Etienne (CRED, University Panthéon-Assas Paris II) : Optimal Income Taxation with Unemployment and Wage Responses: A Sufficient Statistics Approach
Kory KROFT (University of Toronto, NBER), Kavan KUCKO (Boston University) and Johannes SCHMIEDER (Boston University, NBER and IZA)
We derive a sufficient statistics optimal tax formula in a general model that incorporates unemployment and endogenous wages, to study the shape of the tax and transfer system at the bottom of the distribution. The sufficient statistics are the macro employment response to taxation and the micro and macro participation responses. We estimate these statistics using policy variation from the U.S. tax and transfer system. Our results suggest that the optimal tax more closely resembles a Negative Income Tax than an Earned Income Tax Credit relative to the case where unemployment and wage responses are not taken into account.
EFFENTERRE Clémentine (PSE) : How Does Maternal Labor Supply Respond to Changes in Children's School Schedule?
Emma Duchini
In this paper we analyze mothers' labor supply response to a reorganization of children's school schedule. Until 2013, French children between two and eleven years old had their class time spread over four days and they did not go to school on Wednesday. In 2013 a national reform shortened each school day by an average of 45 minutes and reallocated the resulting three hours to Wednesday morning. We look at the short-run impact on mothers' labor supply, exploiting variation in the implementation of this reform over time and across the age of the youngest child. We provide evidence of a reallocation of working hours over the week and no effect on the total number of hours worked. These results are driven by women who have a stronger bargaining power and face a low cost of flexibility at work.
STANCHEVA Stéfanie (Harvard) : Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for redistribution.
Alberto Alesina (Harvard) et Edoardo Teso (Harvard)
GARBINTI Bertrand : Inequality Dynamics in France 1910-2013: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (DINA)
J. Goupille et T. Piketty
NIEDDU Marco (Upf, Barcelona) : Bocconi or Camerino? Students' choices over quality of postgraduate education
RABATÉ Simon (PSE) : Can I Stay or Should I Go? Mandatory Retirement and Labor Force Participation of Older Workers
The growing pressure for reforming ?nancially unstable pension systems makes it crucial to understand the determinants of retirement decision. This article focuses on a paramount though often disregarded channel, namely demand-side induced retirement. Labor supply and demand determinants of retirement are often di?cult to disentangle. In this paper, I take advantage of a unique natural experiment, the progressive ban of mandatory retirement in France in the 2000s. Drawing on an extensive administrative dataset, I use inter-industry reform-induced variations in mandatory retirement legislation, to insulate this factor from other determinants of retirement, such as ?nancial incentives. I ?nd that demand-side determinants through mandatory retirement do play a role in retirement behavior, as the repeal of mandatory retirement increased employment of older workers. Exit rates from employment are estimated to be 6% higher when mandatory retirement is possible. Secondly, as in the French pension system the mandatory retirement age coincided with the full rate age, I exhibit a previously uncovered determinant of the large spike in retirement distribution at this age. Mandatory retirement is estimated to explain around 12.5% of the observed bunching at the full rate
CARBONNIER Clement ( Université de Cergy-Pontoise) : Progressive profile of local taxes and territorial disparities of public goods and purchasing power
Local taxes'progresive profile may be determined through three main channels: i) the way tax bases are calculated, ii) the schedules of rates and iii) the differences of taxation between territories partially segregated on income. The present paper aims at documenting these issues, taking profit of local government accounting data, aggregate tax returns at the level of these jurisdictions and the European SILC survey on households living conditions. Housing tax has globally a slightly progressive profile because of exemptions and reductions (ii) and positive correlation between local tax burden per capita and local mean income (iii). This second progressivity determinant is driven by two causes: on the one hand, the central government equalization between local jurisdictions through an overall operating grant depending on local mean income; on the other hand, the positive correlation between the size of territories and both the mean income and the local public expenditure. Nevertheless, due to a regressive tax base (i) and a larger number of exempted households in lower income territories (iii), housing tax is regressive among non-exempted households. Similar qualitative results are found for land taxes, with a globally more regressive pattern. Taking local purchasing power into account leads to progressivity attenuation (or regressivity accentuation), but the qualitative results stands.
GOUPILLE-LEBRET Jonathan : Measuring the Distribution of Wealth: Methods and Evidence for France 1800-2013
B. Garbinti et T. Piketty
BARTELS Charlotte (DIW Berlin) : Top incomes in Germany, 1871-2011
DURANTE Ruben (Sciences Po) : One Team, One Nation: Football, Ethnic Identity, and Conflict in Africa
E. Depetris-Chauvín
Can successful collective experiences that prime patriotic sentiments reduce inter-ethnic tensions and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa? We examine this question by looking at the case of football. Combining survey data for over 35,000 respondents in 20 countries with information on over 70 official games by African national football teams between 2000 and 2015, we document that individuals interviewed in the days following a victory of their country's national team are 3 to 4% less likely to report a strong sense of ethnic identity than those interviewed in the days before the match. The estimated effect is sizeable (i.e. a 20% decrease in the average probability of ethnic self-identification), and robust to controlling for country-year, language group, and even match fixed effects. National team's victories are also associated with an increase in trust in others, especially in people of different ethnicity, but have no impact on trust in the government or support for the incumbent. We also find that social unrest (i.e, riots, strikes, protests, and repression) significantly decreases in the two weeks following a victory in the Africa Cup of Nations or the FIFA World Cup finals. Finally, using exogenous variation from close qualification to the CAN tournament, we find that countries whose teams (barely) qualified experience significantly less internal conflict in the six months following the qualification than countries whose teams (barely) did not; this effect is particularly large for unexpected qualifications. Our findings suggest that, even in regions where ethnic tensions have deep historical roots, transitory patriotic shocks can reinforce national identity, reduce inter-ethnic mistrust and have a tangible impact on conflict intensity.
JULIA CAGE : The Production of Information in an Online World
Nicolas Hervé (INA) ; Marie-Luce Viaud (INA)
Information is costly to produce but cheap to reproduce. Who are the main providers of original news in the online world, and how are they rewarded for this? What are the benefits of breaking out a story, and how does information propagate? This paper addresses these issues by exploiting a unique dataset including all online content produced in French language by the universe of general information media outlets in France during year 2013. We develop a topic detection algorithm that identifies each news story, trace the timeline of each story and perform a plagiarism detection algorithm to distinguish between original reporting and copy-and-paste. We then merge this content data with data on investment in news gathering and daily audience to investigate the costs and benefits of information production. We first show that about 50% of all online information is copy-and-paste, with large variations across media outlets. We then highlight the specific role played by the French news agency: AFP has the largest newsroom and is the main provider of original information, reflecting the use of an adequate copyright system. We next find a positive relationship between the number of journalists and the quantity of original news production. Using daily-level variations, we finally show that producing original news leads to a statistically significant increase in online audience, but that the magnitude of this audience effect is very low. This illustrates the need to develop new paywall or copyright models.
MARGOLIS David (PSE) : Taxes and Technological Determinants of Wage Inequalities: France 1976-2010
ROUSSILLE Nina : Tax evasion and the "Swiss cheese" regulation
LEPINTEUR Anthony : Working time regulation and subjective well-being: evidence from Portugal and France
AKIKO Suwa-Eisenmann (PSE) : Intergenerational wealth mobility in France,19th and 20th century
Jérôme Bourdieu (PSE-INRA and EHESS) Lionel Kesztenbaum (INED and PSE), Gilles Postel-Vinay (PSE)
MARKEVICH Andrei (New Economic School; Hoover Institution Stanford University) : The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire
Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (PSE)
We document a very large increase in agricultural productivity, peasants' living standards, and industrial development in late 19th century Imperial Russia as a result of the abolition of serfdom in 1861. A counterfactual exercise shows that if serfs were freed in 1820, by 1913 Russia would have been more than one-and-a-half times richer, compared to what it actually was. We construct a novel province-level panel dataset of development outcomes, and conduct a difference-in differences analysis of the effects of the abolition of serfdom, relying on cross-sectional variation in the shares of serfs and the timing of the different stages of reform, controlling for unobserved variation across provinces and over time, as well as province-specific development trends. We disentangle the two stages of the abolition of serfdom: the emancipation of serfs and the subsequent land reform. We show that, in contrast to the large positive effect of emancipation, land reform negatively affected agricultural productivity. We provide evidence that a shift to more marketable crops from traditional non-marketable crops is the main mechanism behind the positive effect of emancipation, and the increase in the power of re-partition peasant communes is the main mechanism behind the negative effect of land reform.
BACH Laurent (ESSEC Business School) : Rich Pickings? Risk, Return, and Skill in the Portfolios of the Wealthy
Laurent Calvet et Paolo Sodini
SEGÚ ARTÉS Mariona (Laboratoire RITM Université Paris-Sud, Paris Saclay) : Taxing Vacant Apartments: Can fiscal policy reduce vacancy?
LANDAIS Camille (London School of Economics) : Children and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Denmark
Henrik Jacobsen Kleven, London School of Economics and Jakob Egholt Søgaard, University of Copenhagen
Despite considerable gender convergence over time, substantial gender inequality persists in all countries. Using Danish administrative data from 1980-2011, we show that most of the remaining gender inequality can be attributed to the dynamic effects of having children. The arrival of children leads to a long-run penalty in female earnings of 21% driven in roughly equal proportions by labor force participation, hours of work, and wage rates. Underlying this child penalty, we find clear dynamic effects of child birth on occupation, promotion to manager, and the family friendliness of the firm for women relative to men. The fraction of aggregate gender inequality that can be explained by children is strongly increasing over time— from 30% in 1980 to 80% in 2011—showing that non-child reasons for gender inequality have largely disappeared. Conditional on rich observables, the female child penalty in earnings is increasing in the relative skill of the female in the family, suggesting that mechanisms other than comparative advantage are at play. We probe into the potential role of "gender identity" effects by showing that the female child penalty is strongly related to the relative labor supply history of her parents. This is consistent with the notion that gender attitudes surrounding family and career are shaped in part by the environment in which individuals grow up.
GONZALES GARCIA Ignacio (Economics Departement EUI) : Tobin's Q and Inequality
VISKANIC Max (Sciences Po) : Undoing Gender with Institutions. Lessons from the German Division and Reunification.
Alexandre Georgieff and Claudia Senik
Social scientists have provided empirical evidence that "gender trumps money", in the sense that gender norms can be more powerful then economic rationality in shaping daily arrangements between spouses. In particular, it has been shown that when they deviate from the "male breadwinner" norm, women react by "doing gender", i.e. overplaying their feminine role by increasing the number of housework hours that they accomplish. It has also been shown that the risk of divorce increases when a woman earns more than her husband. This paper shows that, however powerful, these norms are cultural and can be trumped by institutions. We use the 41-year division of Germany as a natural experiment and look at differences between East and West Landers in terms of gender behavior after the German reunification. As most countries of the socialist bloc, the former GDR had designed institutions that were much more gender equalizing than their counterpart in the former FRG. We show that these institutions have created a culture that keeps influencing behavior up to the current period. In particular, in East Germany differs from West Germany in the sense that a woman can earn more than her husband without "doing gender" and without putting her marriage at risk.
FRANCESCO AVVISATI (OECD) : Learning mathematical problem solving through practice: a randomised field experiment on a global scale
CHANCEL Lucas (Science-Po) : Carbon and inequality: from Kyoto to Paris. Trends in the global inequality of carbon emissions (1998-2013) and prospects for an equitable adaptation fund
HE Yinghua (Rice U) : Stay a Little Longer ? Teacher Turnover, Seniority and Quality in French Disadvantaged Schools
Julien Grenet
GEORGIEFF Alexandre : Employment protection and subjective well-being: Evidence from Germany
HILLION Mélina (Paris School of Economics) : The happy survivors: Teaching accreditation exams reveal grading biases systematically favor women in male-dominated disciplines
Discrimination is seen as one of the possible causes behind the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, existing experiments and studies find contrasting results. We hypothesize that these discrepancies are explained by strong variations in evaluation biases according to both the extent of underrepresentation of women in each STEM and non STEM subject and the level at which the evaluation takes place. This is tested using as natural experiments French competitive teaching exams in 11 different fields and at 3 different levels of qualification. Comparisons of oral non gender-blind tests with written gender-blind tests reveal a bias in favor of women that is strongly increasing with the extent of its male-domination. The bias turns from pro-male in literature and foreign languages to strongly pro-female in math, physics or philosophy. The phenomenon is strongest at the highest level, suggesting that discrimination does not impair hiring chances of female students in STEM fields at the very end of their curriculum, although it may do so at earlier stages (e.g. middle school, high school and college).
WREN-LEWIS Liam (PSE/INRA, ICM) : The impact of school peers on interracial adult relationships
POULHES Mathilde (Sciences Po) : Are Enterprise Zones Benefi ts 'Capitalized' into Commercial "Property Values"? The French case
STEIN Mattea (PSE) : Reforming the Speed of Justice: Evidence from an Event Study in Senegal
Coauthor : Florence Kondylis (World Bank)
MULLEROVA Alzbeta : Family Policy and Maternal Employment in the Czech Transition: A Natural Experiment
VINAS Frederic (PSE) : The real effects of universal banking on firms' investment : Micro-evidence from 2004-2009
FABRE Brice : The impact of local income inequality on local public finance: evidence from French municipalities
SPAENJERS Christophe : Real Estate as a Luxury Good: Non-Resident Demand and Property Prices in Paris
Dragana CVIJANOVI (University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School)
ALMEIDA Vanda : Income inequality and redistribution in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 crisis: the US case
HIJZEN Alexander : More Unequal, but More Mobile? Earnings Inequality and Mobility in OECD Countries.
Andrea Garnero and Sebastien Martin (OCDE).
DUPRAZ Yannick (University of Warwick) : Public Finances in Colonial West Africa: British and French compared
Denis Cogneau et Sandrine Mesplé-Somps
GARROUSTE Manon (University of Lille) : More harm than good? Sorting effects in a compensatory education program
Laurent Davezies
MURTIN Fabrice (OECD) : The OECD Wealth database
DAHL Gordon (Department of Economics UC San Diego) : Do Politicians Change Public Attitudes?
DUPAS Pascaline (Stanford University) : Decentralization and Efficiency of Subsidy Targeting: Evidence from Malawi's Local Chiefs (joint with Pia Basurto and Jonathan Robinson)
NUR Jamil (PSE) : Contracting Tenure in a Dual Labor Market
CHRISTIAN Sikandra (Berkeley) : Community Based Preferences for Project Choice
WALDENSTROM Daniel (Université Paris Ouest) : Intergenerational wealth mobility and the role of inheritance: Evidence from multiple generations
ESTEVEZ BAULUZ Luis (PSE) : TBA
BACH Laurent : TBA
TERRIER Camille (PSE) : The Design of Teacher Assignment: Theory and Evidence.
SCHINKE Christoph (ifo Institut ) : Inter vivos transfers in German family firms
Wednesday 10 June 2015 12:30-13:30
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment G, rez-de-chaussée, salle 10
GABAIX Xavier (NYU, CEPR and NBER) : Optimal Taxation with Behavioral Agents
Co-author(s) : Emmanuel Farhi (Harvard, CEPR and NBER)
This paper develops a theory of optimal taxation with behavioral agents. We use a general behavioral framework that encompasses a wide range of behavioral biases such as misper- ceptions and internalities. We revisit the three pillars of optimal taxation: Ramsey (linear commodity taxation to raise revenues and redistribute), Pigou (linear commodity taxation to correct externalities) and Mirrlees (nonlinear income taxation). We show how the canonical optimal tax formulas are modi?ed and lead to a rich set of novel economic insights. We also show how to incorporate nudges in the optimal taxation frameworks, and jointly character- ize optimal taxes and nudges. Under some conditions, the optimal tax system is simple, in the sense that all tax rates are equal. For instance, all goods are optimally taxed at the same rate (or a few di¤erent rates), and the optimal income tax features just one marginal tax rate (or a few di¤erent marginal tax rates). This contrasts with the traditional optimal tax results, that generically features complex tax systems that depend on the details of the environment. Finally, we explore the Diamond-Mirrlees productive e¢ ciency result and the Atkinson-Stiglitz uniform commodity taxation proposition, and ?nd that they are more likely to fail with behavioral agents
LETURCQ Marion (INED) : Fertility and Labour Supply: New Evidence from the UK
BIONDI Yuri (CNRS) : Inequality and the Financial Accumulation Process: A Computational Economic Analysis of Income and Wealth Dynamics
LIBOIS François (Centre of Research in the Economics of Development - CRED - Namur) : Households in times of war: Adaptation Strategies during the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal
Households in times of war modify their behaviour. We identify short-term adaptation strategies of rural households in Nepal to different violence level during the Maoist insurgency. Using rich household level data collected before, during and after the war combined with time and geo-localized information on conflict related casualties, we show that economic opportunities outside agriculture decline with almost no compensation in agriculture. Out-migration is especially important for high castes. On the consumption side, food expenditures are stable while education and health expenses went down. In the long-run, out-migration and its associated remittances appears as a bounty for more severely affected area.
DAVID Géraldine (Université Libre de Bruxelles, CEB & Tilburg University, CentER) : Is art really a safe-haven? Evidence from the First World War in France
During crisis art is often considered as a safe haven both by the scientific literature and the financial advisors. For example, during WWII art markets encountered a massive boom in occupied countries. This paper questions this vision of art as a safe investment providing evidence that art has not always supplied a safe investing way during crisis. To do so it constructs, on basis of an original database of 22,000 entries, an art price index for the French art market during WWI and the postwar period in France (1911-1925). . The results show that the WWII boom mostly reflected the specificities of the occupation economy imposed by the Nazis. Indeed during WWI artworks underperformed gold, real-estate, bonds and stocks in terms of risk-return performances. This underperformance can be explained by several peculiarities of the market. Investors tended to prefer cheap artworks and old masters during WWI as these were less volatile at the time
HEMOUS David (INSEAD) : Innovation and Top Income Inequality
Co-author(s) : Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Antonin Bergeaud and Richard Blundell
In this paper we use cross-state panel data to show a positive and significant correlation between various measures of innovativeness and top income inequality in the United States over the past decades. Yet, the correlation between innovativeness and non-top income inequality appears to be negative and/or non-significant. Two distinct instrumentation strategies suggest that this correlation (partly) reflects a causality from innovativeness to top income inequality, and the effect is significant: for example, when measured by the number of patent per capita, innovativeness accounts on average across US states for around 17% of the total increase in the top 1% income share between 1975 and 2010. Next, we show that the positive effects of innovation on the top 1% income share are dampened in states with higher lobbying intensity. Finally, from cross-section regressions performed at the CZ level, we find that: (i) innovativeness is positively correlated with upward social mobility; (ii) the positive correlation between innovativeness and social mobility, is driven mainly by entrant innovators and less so by incumbent innovators, and it is dampened in states with higher lobbying intensity. Overall, our findings vindicate the Schumpeterian view whereby the rise in top income shares is partly related to innovation-led growth, where innovation itself fosters social mobility at the top through creative destruction.
VALFORT Marie-Anne (PSE - Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University) : Religious discrimination in the French labour market
COULOMB Renaud (LSE) : The Grey Paradox: How Fossil-fuels Owners Can Benefit >From Carbon Taxation.
This paper studies the distributional impacts of optimal carbon taxation on fossil-fuels owners. We show that optimal carbon taxation can increase the profits of owners of a carbon-emitting exhaustible resource. Such phenomenon contrasts with claims from fossil-fuels owners -especially from OPEC member countries- that carbon taxation will undermine their profits. We build a theoretical model of resource extraction where a polluting exhaustible resource competes with a dirtier abundant resource and a clean backstop. The atmospheric CO2 concentration has to be kept under a carbon ceiling and the optimal extraction path is decentralized by a carbon tax. As the carbon ceiling is tightened, the exhaustible-resource rent, and thus profits, is partly captured by the tax levier (the "capture effect"), but the dirtier resource is made less competitive (the "competition effect"). We determine conditions under which profits increase as the ceiling falls. The role of resource endowments, pollution contents, extraction costs and demand elasticity is analyzed. Calibrating the model for the transportation sector, we find that limiting cumulative new emissions in this sector between 322.7 and 637.5 GtCO2 increases profits of conventional-oil owners.
YAKOVLEV Evgeny (HSE - Moscou) : The Causal effect of Serving in the Army on Health: Evidence from Regression Kink Design and Russian Data
Co-author(s) : David Card
The paper estimates the causal effect of serving in the Russian Army on health. We explore a kink in the year-of-birth profile of the probability of compulsory service that happened as a result of the demilitarization process initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev. We find that serving in the Russian Army significantly increases rates of alcohol consumption and smoking ; it also results in a higher chance of getting hepatitis and tuberculosis, related to alcohol consumption and smoking chronic diseases and general health issues.
NOVOKMET Filip (PSE) : From public to private capital in Central-Eastern Europe
UEDA Kozo (School of Political Science and Economics Waseda University ) : Aging and Deflation from a Fiscal Perspective
Co-authors : Mitsuru Katagiri and Hideki Konishi
Negative correlations between inflation and demographic aging were observed across developed nations recently. To understand the phenomenon from a politico-economic perspective, we embed the fiscal theory of the price level into an overlapping-generations model. In the model, successive short-lived governments choose income tax rates and bond issues considering the political influence of existing generations and the policy response of future governments. The model sheds new light on the traditional debate about the burden of national debt. Because of price adjustments, the accumulation of government debt does not become a burden on future generations. Our analysis reveals that the effects of aging depend on its causes. Aging is deflationary when caused by an increase in longevity but inflationary when caused by a decline in birth rate. Numerical simulation shows that aging over the past 40 years in Japan generated deflation of about 0.6 percentage points annually.
CAGE Julia (Sciences Po) : Newspapers in Times of Low Adversiting Revenues
Co-author(s) : Charles Angelucci (Columbia University)
We investigate theoretically and empirically the determinants of second-degree price discrimination in two-sided markets. We build a model in which a newspaper must attract both readers and advertisers. Readers are uncertain as to their future benefit from reading, and heterogeneous in their taste for reading. Advertisers are heterogeneous in their outside option, taste for subscribers, and taste for occasional buyers. To estimate empirically the effect of the advertisers¹ side of the industry on price discrimination on the readers¹ side, we use a ³quasi-natural experiment². We exploit the introduction of advertisement on French Television in 1968, which we treat as a negative shock on adverting revenues of daily national newspapers (treated group), but not on daily local newspapers (control group). We build a new dataset on French local newspapers between 1960 and 1974 and perform a Differences-in-Differences analysis. We find robust evidence of increased price discrimination as a result of a drop in advertising revenues.
MENYHERT Balint (Central European University) : Economic growth spurred by diversity: Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century
HOUNGBONON Georges Vivien (PSE) : The effect of entry and merger on the nonlinear price of mobile telecommunications services
This paper evaluates the impact of a change in the market structure on nonlinear prices. Based on the entry of Free in France and the merger of Orange in Austria, it finds that neither the entry, nor the merger affects the access price of mobile telecommunications services. However, the entry in the French market has raised the unit price of mobile data services; contrary to the merger in the Austrian market. These results are driven by a bundling discount on the unit price which is lower following the entry; but higher following the merger. They are consistent with the fact that the entry of the fourth mobile operator in France has delayed the investment in new technologies; contrary to the merger from four to three operators in Austria.
ROGER Muriel (PSE, Banque de France) : Income and Wealth Distributions in the Euro Area
Co-author(s) : Luc Arrondel and Frédérique Savignac
GURGAND Marc (PSE) : Ready for Boarding? The effects of a boarding school for disadvantaged students.
Co-author(s) : Luc Behaghel (PSE) et Clément de Chaisemartin (Warwick)
Boarding schools substitute school to home, but little is known on the effects this substitution produces on students. We present results of an experiment in which seats in a boarding school for disadvantaged students were randomly allocated. Boarders enjoy better studying conditions than control students. However, they start outperforming control students in mathematics only two years after admission, and this effect mostly comes from strong students. Boarders initially experience lower levels of well-being but then adjust. This suggests that substituting school to home is disruptive: only strong students benefit from the school, once they have adapted to their new environment.
DE SOUSA Jose (U. Paris Sud, RITM & Sciences Po, Paris, LIEPP) : Labor Mobility and Racial Discrimination
CXo-author(s) : Pierre Deschamps (Sciences Po, Paris)
This paper assesses the impact of labor mobility on racial discrimination. We present an equilibrium search model that reveals an inverted U-shaped relationship between labor mobility and race-based wage differentials. We explore this relationship empirically with an exogenous mobility shock on the European soccer labor market. The Bosman ruling by the European Court of Justice in 1995 lifted restrictions on soccer player mobility. Using a panel of all clubs in the English first division from 1981 to 2008, we compare the pre- and post-Bosman ruling market to identify the causal effect of intensified mobility on race-based wage differentials. Consistent with a taste-based explanation, we find evidence that increasing labor market mobility decreases racial discrimination.
VAN EFFENTERRE Clémentine (PSE) : Understanding gender gap in science: evidence from France
Co-author(s) : Thierry Ly et Thomas Breda
GADENNE Lucie (Department of Economics - University College London ) : Non-linear commodity taxation in developing countries: theory and an application to India
Many developing countries simultaneously tax commodities and subsidize them up to a quota level through ration shops. This particular combination of taxes and subsidies plays an important role in the public budgets of developing countries; India spends 1 GDP point on its ration shop system and levies more than 60% of its revenues through commodity taxes. This paper first studies under what conditions this tax schedule - de facto convex commodity taxes - is welfare improving compared to standard linear taxes once we take into account the relevant characteristics of developing countries. These are i) limited government capacity to observe household incomes and ii) market fragmentation. I find that an inequality-averse government would set convex taxes on a wide range of goods to redistribute and to partially insure households against price risk. Welfare gains to introducing convex taxes are highest for normal goods that most poor households consume. I then take the model to Indian data and find that combining ration shops and commodity taxes is welfare improving for rice, wheat and kerosene, but not for sugar. Setting convex taxes on other goods not currently in the Indian ration shop system would not help the government redistribute across households but would yield small insurance gains.
GOUPILLE Jonathan (PSE) : Behavioral responses to inheritance tax:Evidence from notches in France
This paper investigates behavioral responses to inheritance taxation in an inter-temporal framework. Our empirical strategy exploits original quasi-experimental variation created by the French preferential tax scheme for transmission through life insurance. The analysis is based on a unique longitudinal data set of life insurance policies over the period 2003-2013. We obtain two main results. First, we document large bunching at age 70 leading to important timing responses in the short term but modest inter-temporal shifting in the medium term. Second, we find compelling evidence of a negative effect of inheritance taxation on life insurance accumulation at the individual level. Consistent with our estimated elasticity of taxable bequest, we find that optimal inheritance tax rate might be as large as 55%–70%. Our results can be rationalized by an inter-temporal model of transfer taxation with two assets. This model is able to take into account the different behavioral responses to taxation occurring over time and between assets. In this model, individuals face a trade-off between accumulating an asset A for fiscal purposes or enjoying greater utility from an asset B during their lifetime in return for a higher tax burden at death.
PHILIPPE Arnaud (Paris 1 - CREST) : "No hatred or malice, fear or affection": How do jurors think?
Co-author(s) : Aurélie Ouss
How does the media affect judicial decisions? We look at the effect of television broadcasting of crime and justice on sentencing decisions, by juries of civilians and professional judges. We find that news on the day before a trial affects sentencing of civilian juries: sentences are longer after coverage of crimes, and shorter after stories on judicial errors. However, this effect does not last over time, and we find no effect of media coverage on professional judges. This indicates that perception of gravity could be reference-dependent in a very contextual manner, rather than jurors reflecting social currents that would also be affected by longer-term media. This paper contributes to expanding the analysis of how the content of media affects public opinion to judges' and jurors' choice; and brings to the field questions of extraneous factors in judicial decisions.
ETILE Fabrice (PSE) : Heterogeneity, Censoring and Endogeneity in Estimates of Response to Soft Drink Tax
ZIPARO Roberta (PSE) : The Impact of the Matrimonial Regime on Female Education and Labor Supply: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in France
Campus Jourdan, bâtiment A, rez-de-chaussée, salle 2
ALGAN Yann (Sciences Po) : Social Motives and Organizations: Experimental Evidence from Peer-Production
Most organizations rely not only on monetary incentives, but also on a variety of other motives to elicit effort and encourage production. We rely on the community of open source software (OSS) developers to study how heterogeneous motivations affect the type and the intensity of individual contributions and how it affects success of the projects. Our primary focus is on the role of social motivations, which we elicit experimentally on a stratified sample of 1,194 OSS developers. Our initial finding is that success is positively related to the proportion of altruists, in particular in the role of administrators, and the proportion of reciprocators, in the role of developers. We propose a mechanism underlying these facts and empirical evidence consistent with this story.
MOULIN Hervé : Tuition fees and social segregation: lessons from a natural experiment at the University of Paris 9-Dauphine
David Flacher (Université Paris 13 Sorbonne Paris Cité – CEPN (CNRS UMR 7234)) and Hugo Harari-Kermadec (ENS Cachan – IDHES (CNRS UMR 8533))
Using a natural experiment (a sharp rise in certain fees at the University of Paris 9-Dauphine), we study the impact of fees on students' pathways and outcomes. We apply an optimal matching method to the national database of student registrations (SISE) to define a typology of pathways. We then use a non-ordered multinomial logit model to evaluate the impact of the rise in fees on the types of pathways selected by the university. We show that there is a significant impact on these pathways. The fee increase reduces geographic and social mobility, thereby accentuating phenomena of social segregation. Furthermore, contrary to what some of the studies on fees assert, the rise does not appear to encourage greater effort: we find no impact on the graduation success rate.
TERRIER Camille (PSE) : Giving a Little Help to Girls? Evidence on Grades Discrimination and its Effect on Students Achievement.
This paper tests whether we observe sex-discrimination in teachers' grades, and whether such biases affect pupils' achievement during the school year. I use a unique dataset containing standardized tests, teachers' attributed grades, and pupil's behavior, all three at different periods in time. Based on double-differences, the identification of the gender bias in teachers' grades suggests that (i) girls benefit from a substantive positive discrimination in math but not in French, (ii) girls' better behavior than boys, and their initial lower achievement in math explain less than 10% of this gender bias. Second, I use the heterogeneity in teachers' discriminatory behavior to show that classes in which teachers present a high degree of discrimination in favor of girls are also classes in which girls tend to progress more over the school year compared to boys.
LE BARBANCHON Thomas (CREST ) : Partial Unemployment insurance
Partial unemployment insurance enables UI claimants to take up small jobs and keep part of their unemployment benefits while working. We document that claimants in the US actually bunch at kink points of the partial UI schedule. This enables us to estimate their elasticity of earned income to marginal tax rate, a key parameter of the optimal form of the partial UI schedule. To take into account dynamic aspects of the partial UI schedule, we build a dynamic model of labor supply while on claim. This model shows how to extend standard static bunching estimator to our dynamic setting. We then study the dynamics of bunching along the claim.
GARBINTI Bertrand (Insee-Crest, PSE) : Living Standards after Divorce: Do Public and Private Transfers Balance Gender Economic Inequalities ?
Co-author(s) : Carole Bonnet (Ined) and Anne Solaz (Ined)
IMBERT Clément (Oxford) : Short-term Migration and Rural Workfare Programs: Evidence from India
Via short-term migration, rural workers gain access to better earnings opportunities outside of the village, but also incur significant monetary and non monetary costs. We use survey data from a high out-migration area in rural India to document the effect of a large public works program on short-term migration. Using cross-state variation in public employment provision for identification and controlling for the demand for work, we find that participation to the program significantly reduces short-term migration. Nationally representative data corroborate this finding. We also document that workers engaged both in short-term migration and public employment report wanting more public employment, despite the fact that earnings outside of the village are nearly two times higher than earnings from the program. We estimate a structural model of migration decisions which suggests that the flow cost of migration may be as high as 59% of daily earnings outside of the village.
BOUGUEN Adrien (PSE) : Giving content to teacher training programs : Evidence from a non-randomized experiment in French preschools
General statements on the eciency of teacher training programs is unable to provide valuable information to improve the supply of education. In this article, I look at the impact of a very specic training program given to last year of kindergarten teachers on reading skills. Implemented in France in 2010/2011 in some preschools, the impact of this training program can be assessed using achievement scores collected at the student level. Yet, such approach is compromised if teachers were selected into the program (teacher selection) or if schools dropped out from the experiment (attrition bias). Controlling for these potential sources of bias, I show that while attrition seem not to have biased the results, controlling for some teacher characteristics substantially reduce the estimation, suggesting that more experienced and skilled teachers rst benet from such program. Even when accounting for these corrections, treatment impact remain positive and signicant (+.094 sd on an overall score), consistent with the literature, and is suggested to reduce the gap between weaker and stronger students. Besides, this training program is shown to be a cost-eective solution to improve teacher impact on reading skills.
PAGE Lionel (Queensland University of Technology) : Estimating Preferences for Fairness: a New Empirical Strategy within a Unifed Theoretical Framework
Daniel Mueller (University of Mannheim)
This paper illustrates the nexus between Social Choice Theory, the Social Preferences literature (the study of other-regarding preferences in behavioral game theory) and decision making under risk, all of which study preferences over income distributions. Motivated by this connection we introduce a new functional for capturing preferences for fairness based on rank-dependent expected utility, which we call General Fairness Preferences, that includes most other proposals as special cases. We structurally estimate this functional using an incentivized laboratory experiment in which individuals decide over income distributions in three different treatments. In the first treatment subjects decide over risky prospects whose outcomes are only pay-off relevant for themselves. In the second treatment subjects decide over income distributions under the veil of ignorance, that is over an income distribution for the whole (laboratory) population without knowing their own position beforehand. Lastly, individuals make decisions while knowing their own position in advance. We introduce another novelty to the experimental economics literature as we generally allow for ten distinct lottery outcomes using a novel intuitively appealing lottery design. Our results allow us to disentangle risk aversion and social preferences as well as to test whether decision makers follow certain principles of fairness typically assumed in Social Choice theory.
PONTHIERE Grégory (ENS - PSE) : Fair retirement under risky lifetime
Co-author(s) : Marc Fleurbaey, Marie-Louise Leroux and Pierre Pestieau
ROSSI Pauline (PSE) : Sons as Widowhood Insurance: Evidence from Senegal
Co-author(s) : Sylvie Lambert
Exploiting original data from a Senegalese household survey, we provide evidence that fertility choices are partly driven by women's needs for widowhood insurance. We use a duration model of birth intervals to show that women most exposed to the risk of widowhood intensify their fertility until they get a son. Insurance through sons entails substantial health costs : short birth spacing raises maternal and infant mortality rates.
SAKALLI Seyhun Orcan (PSE) : Coexistence, Polarization, and Development: Armenian Legacy in Modern Turkey
This paper investigates the impact of historical presence of an ethno-religious minority group, Armenians, on long-term socio-economic and political development in Turkey. Presence of Armenians in Turkey ended as the Ottoman government deportated and persecuted Armenians in 1915-1916 under the pretext of an Armenian plan of insurgence during WWI. I employ Instrumental Variables (IV) strategy and instrument cross-sectional variation in the spatial distribution of Armenians in 1914 with travel distance to Mount Ararat, which is of particular significance for Armenians. I find that residents of localities with a greater historical presence of Armenians support Islamist parties more and perform religious activities more today, compared to residents of other localities. I also find that residents of these localities are less literate, less likely to complete primary school, and poorer today. I provide evidence in favor of the following mechanism: coexistence of different religious groups led to polarization, and perceived threat posed by Christians strengthened the identification of Muslims with their in-group identity, Islam. Additional evidence suggests that a deeper attachment of local Muslims to Islam due to historical Armenian presence translated itself to lower demand for education after secularization of education in 1920s. I test for and rule out alternative mechanisms such as inflow of migrants into former Armenian localities, increased land gini due to deportation of Armenians, and occupational choices of Muslims due to competition with Armenians.
MARTIN Daniel (PSE) : Bayesian Revealed Preferences
In this paper I identify a condition on stochastic choices from budget sets, called Bayesian GARP (BGARP), which characterizes the purchases of consumers who base their decisions on noisy signals of price. For a balanced panel of grocery purchases, I show that while most households fail GARP, BGARP is satisfied. In addition, I show that BGARP is restrictive for this data set.
PATNAM Manasa (CREST) : Risk Sharing with (Dis)Aggregate Shocks
Co-author(s) : Emmanouil Kitsios
In this paper we examine conditions under which optimal risk sharing may not fully insure individuals against idiosyncratic shocks to their endowments or income, even when markets are complete. We analyze the benchmark risk-sharing model, but allow for the possibility that idiosyncratic shocks can induce fluctuations in aggregate resources, affecting, in this way, the Pareto optimal allocation of consumption. In particular, we show that idiosyncratic shocks affect consumption under optimal risk-sharing, when endowments are drawn from a class of power law distributions or when output is produced through input supply networks with star-shape or scale-free architecture. Under these conditions, we document two important features of optimal risk sharing. First, the effect of idiosyncratic risk on consumption growth is heterogeneous, depending on each agent's contribution to the aggregate resource, and, second, risk sharing involves an exposure to systemic risk that is composite of the undiversified components of idiosyncratic shocks. Additionally, we show that the frequently used empirical tests of risk-sharing which ignore the distributional aspects of income and the network structure of production, may suffer from a specification bias when idiosyncratic shocks do not dissipate in the aggregate. We offer empirical evidence to show that individual consumption growth is affected by a systemic component of risk, such as, for example, the shocks to the top percentiles of the income distribution. Our results have important implications for empirical studies of risk-sharing carried out at the individual, household and national level, irrespective of the size of the reference group, be it the household, the village, or the country.
NEUMANN Michael (DIW Berlin) : Earnings Responses to Social Security Contributions: Evidence from Two German Administrative Data Sets
This paper exploits the discontinuities induced by earnings caps for social security contributions (SSC) in Germany to analyse the effect of SSC on gross labour earnings. Two complementary approaches based on two administrative data sets are conducted. First, I exploit an increase of the East German earnings cap of health and long-term care insurance as a natural experiment. In order to estimate short-term economic incidence a difference-in-differences approach is used to evaluates the effects on yearly changes in gross earnings. Second, I use the kinks in the budget set and cost function to identify labour supply and demand elasticities as well as economic incidence of SSC by analyzing cross-sectional earnings distributions similar to the bunching method. Both approaches robustly find that the burden of SSC is shared equally between employers and employees. I also find that labour supply and demand elasticities are low. Combined, both findings are consistent with a competitive labour market model.
CASSAN Guilhem (University of Namur) : Affirmative Action, Education and Gender: Evidence from India
We use a unique natural experiment in order to assess the impact of positive discrimination in India on targeted groups' educational attainment. We take advantage of the harmonization of the Scheduled Castes lists within the Indian states taking place in 1976 to measure the increase of the educational attainment of the new beneciaries. We show that this policy had heterogenous eects across genders, with males beneting from the SC status and females remaining essentially unaected. We show that this translated into a dierential increase in literacy and numeracy, and propose a novel method to measure the latter
ESTRADA Ricardo (PSE) : Rules rather than Discretion: Teacher Hiring and Rent Extraction"
There is mounting research evidence on both the importance of teacher quality in the production of learning and on the difficulty of identifying who actually is (can be) a good teacher. The participation of current teachers in the selection of new teachers may ease this informational problem if the former have superior information about teacher quality. However, a simple principal-agent model can show that asymmetric information between administrators and teachers may lead to an agency problem with rent extraction if current teachers have an objective function with different arguments from teacher quality. In this study, I use a recent policy reform in Mexico to evaluate the effect on student outcomes of receiving a teacher hired through a standardized test versus one hired in a discretionary process with strong involvement from the teachers' union. My difference-in-differences results indicate that the allocation of test-hired teachers reduces exam cheating in junior-secondary schools and increases student achievement. I also find that joint committees of state officials and union representatives allocate the discretionary-hired teachers to schools in more "desirable" localities. Taken together, these results suggest the existence of an agency problem with potential rent-extraction that the use of a hiring rule can mitigate.
HOSHI Takeo (Stanford & NBER) : DEFYING GRAVITY : CAN JAPANESE SOVEREIGN DEBT CONTINUE TOINCREASE WITHOUT A CRISIS ?
Co-auteur : Takatoshi Ito
LEGRAND Maxime (PSE) : Firms' efficiency and privatization – New evidence from France
The question of efficiency and ownership had been the center of numerous debates in the economy. This issue is even more important when the public versus private ownership is in question. The general belief is that private ownership is associated with better performance due to higher capital investment, higher incentives for workers through equity participation and better services at a lower price for consumers. In this paper, we show that, for the French case, the impact of privatization of a firm's performances depends on the firm's characteristics such as its sector and that private ownership is not always accompanied by higher economic outcomes.
LY Son Thierry (PSE) : Segregation and Mobility
Co-author(s) : Arnaud Riegert (PSE - INSEE - CREST)
Standard segregation indices measure the degree of separation between social groups at a given point of time. But if individuals move between different environments over time, segregation is not as strong as it seems from a cross-sectional perspective. For the first time, this paper examines the implications of mobility on the measurement of segregation. By analogy to the literature on income mobility, we discuss the theoretical meaning of mobility in the case of environment inequality. We propose a simple, intuitive mobility index and discuss its properties. In particular, we show that "long-term" segregation – the level of segregation measured using time-averaged social environments – has a lower bound that increases with the average instantaneous segregation. In the second part of the paper, we provide an application on segregation in French middle schools, using a unique exhaustive and longitudinal dataset. We compare standard measures of instantaneous segregation and long-term segregation that account for mobility between classrooms over years.
BEASLEY Elizabeth (Sciences Po) : The Long-Term Impact of Social Skills Training at School Entry : A randomized controlled trial
Early childhood social skills are strong predictors of adult socio-economic success, but little is known about how to improve these social skills, in particular among children the most at risk of engaging in criminal behavior or failing at self-sufficiency as adults. We use data from a long-term randomized evaluation of a childhood social skills training program in Montreal to answer this question. We match detailed data on behavior from adolescence with administrative criminal and educational records and self-reported socio-economic outcomes. As adults, the subjects in the treated group are about 30% less likely to have a criminal record, 50% more likely to have a secondary diploma, have significantly stronger labor market performance than the non-treated group. Self-reported data indicate that the treated group is 16% more likely to be active fulltime in either work or school during ages 17-16, and 68% more likely to have ever belonged to a civic or social group. We distinguish the different potential channels through which this intervention operates, and provide evidence that inattention is explains a substantial portion of increased secondary completion, delinquent behavior explains a substantial portion of reductions in adult criminality, and that generalized trust explains a substantial portion of the improved economic outcomes and social capital. Using conservative assumptions in a simple framework, we estimate overall rate of return of this program in terms of increased wages is 450%, implying that every $1 invested yields $4.5 in benefits.
BERGERON Augustin (PSE) : Top Incomes and Structural Change: Evidence from India Before 1922
Co-authors: Facundo Alvaredo & Guilhem Cassan
FABRE Brice (PSE) : Political alignment between municipalities and counties in France : the effect on the allocation of grants
ESCUDERO Verónica (International Labour Organization) : Are active labour market policies effective in activating and integrating low-skilled individuals? An international comparison
HARNOSS Johann (PSE) : Immigration and support for redistribution
co-author(s) : Alberto Alesina (Harvard University)and Hillel Rapoport (PSE)
We analyze the effect of immigration on the support for the welfare state in Europe. Using data for 29 European countries from the European Social Survey, we find that native workers lower their sup- port for redistribution if the share of immigration in their country (or occupation) is high. This effect is larger for individuals who hold negative views regarding immigration but is smaller for immigrants that are culturally closer to natives and come from richer origin countries. It also varies with native workers' and immigrants' education. In turn, more educated natives support more redistribution if immigrants are also relatively educated. This also holds for alternative measures of education such as job specific human capital and measures of task intensity. To address endogeneity concerns, we restrict identification to within country and within country-occupation variation and also instrument immigration using a gravity model. We interpret our results as indicative of group loyalty and labor market effects. The partial compensation of these two effects suggests that further immigration to Europe will only modestly decrease support for the welfare state in Europe.
HERGUEUX Jérôme (Harvard & Sciences Po) : Cooperation in a Peer Production Economy - Experimental Evidence from Wikipedia
Co-author(s) : Y. Algan, Y. Benkler & M. Fuster-Morell
The impressive success of peer production – a large-scale collaborative model of production primarily based on voluntary contributions – is difficult to explain through the assumptions of standard economic theory. The aim of this paper is to study the prosocial foundations of cooperation in this new peer production economy. We provide the first comprehensive field test of existing economic theories of prosocial motives for contributing to real-world public goods. We use an online experiment coupled with observational data to elicit social preferences within a diverse sample of 850 Wikipedia contributors, and seek to use to those measures to predict subjects' field contributions to the Wikipedia project. We find that subjects' field contributions to Wikipedia are strongly related to their level of reciprocity in a conditional Public Goods game and in a Trust game and to their revealed preference for social image within the Wikipedia community, but not to their level of altruism either in a standard or in a directed Dictator game. Our results have important theoretical and practical implications, as we show that reciprocity and social image are both strong motives for sustaining cooperation in peer production environments, while altruism may not be.
MURTIN Fabrice (OECD) : Beyond GDP : Is There a Law of One Shadow Price ?
Co-author(s): Romina Boarini, Juan Cordoba & Marla Ripoll
This paper builds a welfare measure encompassing household disposable income, unemployment and longevity, while using two different sets of "shadow prices" for non-income variables. The valuations of vital and unemployment risks estimated from life satisfaction data ("subjective shadow prices") and those derived from model-based approaches and calibrated utility functions ("objective shadow prices") are shown to be broadly consistent once a number of conditions are fulfilled. Subjective shadow prices appear to be inflated by the downward bias on the income variable in life satisfaction regressions conducted at the individual level, while the latter bias is largely removed when running regressions at the country level. On the other hand, objective shadow prices are typically underestimated as: i) the valuation of the unemployment risk is assumed to take place under the veil of ignorance (i.e. for a representative agent that has no information on her current or future unemployment situation); ii) the standard model relies on a Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) utility function, which has no specific relative risk aversion parameter for unemployment and vital risks; iii) the Value of Statistical Life that is used in standard approaches pertains to the adult lifespan while life expectancy at birth covers the entire lifetime.
HUILLERY Elise (Sciences Po) : Low Social Background, Low Aspirations at School? Evidence from French Teenagers
PISTOLESI Nicolas (TSE-GREMAQ) : The effect of advising students at college entrance: Evidence from a French university reform
MILANOVIC Branko (World Bank Group / University of Maryland) : Global income distribution: from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession
Co-author(s): Christoph Lakner
TO Maxime (Sciences Po) : ccess and Returns to Education and the Ethnic Wage Gap in France
GURIEV Sergei (New Economic School and Sciences Po) : Effect of Income on Trust: Evidence from the 2009 Crisis in Russia
Co-author(s): Maxim Ananyev
In this paper, we use a natural experiment to identify a relationship between income and trust. We use a panel dataset on Russia where GDP experienced a 8% drop in 2009 (the largest decline in G20 during the crisis). The effect of the crisis had been very uneven among Russian regions because of their different industrial structure inherited from the Soviet times. We find that the regions that specialize in producing capital goods and natural resources in 1989, had a more substantial income decline during the crisis. The 1989 variation in the industrial structure therefore allows creating an instrument for the change in income between 2008 and 2009. After instrumenting average regional income we find that the effect of income on trust is statistically and economically signicant. Controlling for conventional determinants of trust, we show that 10 percent decrease in income is associated with 5 percentage point decrease in the level of trust (the share of respondents saying that most people can be trusted). Given that the average level of trust in Russia was only 18 per cent in 2009, this magnitude is substantial. We also find that the effect of income on trust is concentrated in the subsamples of poorer, middle-aged and less educated individuals.
CHABE-FERRET Bastien (PSE) : Socioeconomic Characteristics, Fertility Norms and the Black-White Fertility Gap in the US
In this article, I examine the large Black / White fertility gap in the US. I question the "compositional argument" according to which differences in socioeconomic characteristics would be the main driver of this gap. Indeed, once controlled for education, other characteristics such as income, employment and marital status do not help to close the gap. I therefore test whether the difference could stem from the fact that individuals inherit of race-specic fertility norms. I show that Black women who were born in a state where past cohorts of Black women had a high fertility rate tend to have more children. Moreover I have found that this effect diminishes as education increases. The transmission of fertility norms therefore seems to be a good candidate to explain racial differences in fertility in the US, as it is consistent with larger differences for less educated individuals.
LEHMANN Etienne (Université Panthéon Assas & CREST ) : Tax Me If You Can! Optimal Nonlinear Income Tax between Competing Governments
Co-author(s) : Laurent Simula & Alain Trannoy
We investigate how potential tax-driven migrations modify the Mirrlees income tax schedule when two countries play Nash. The social objective is the maximin and preferences are quasilinear in income. Individuals differ both in skills and migration costs, which are continuously distributed. We derive the optimal marginal income tax rates at the equilibrium, extending the Diamond-Saez formula. The theory and numerical simulations on the US case show that the level and the slope of the semi-elasticity of migration on which we lack empirical evidence are crucial to derive the shape of optimal marginal income tax. Our simulations show that potential migrations result in a welfare drop between 0.4% and 5.3% for the worst-off and an average gain between 18.9% and 29.3% for the top 1%.
HEMET Camille (Sciences Po) : Local Diversity and Employment Prospects
This work aims at determining whether and how the level of diversity of a community in terms of origins affects its members' employment prospects. Relying on detailed data from the French Labor Force Survey, I measure diversity at two geographic levels: the neighborhood and the local labor market. The correlation between diversity and employment varies accordingly: it is negative at the local level but positive at a larger geographic level. I then tackle the endogenous location selection issue in two ways. Regarding neighborhood diversity, I adopt the strategy developed by Bayer et al. (2008) which takes advantage of the very precise localization of the data. Concerning employment zone diversity, I rely on a more standard instrumental variable approach. After correcting for endogeneity, the positive large scale effect of diversity is driven down to zero, revealing that it was mostly due to self-selection, while the negative effect of local diversity is reinforced. Another key result is that diversity in terms of nationalities (a proxy for cultural diversity) matters more than diversity based on parents' origins (a proxy for ethnic diversity). These results reveal that local diversity may act as a barrier to communication, preventing job information transmission, and hence reducing employment probability.
HENRIET Fanny (PSE) : A stylized applied energy-economy model for France
Co-author(s): N. Maggiar & K. Schubert
NOVOKME Filip (PSE) : Top incomes in Eastern Europe: the comparison of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia in the interwar period
ZUBER Stéphane (CERSES - CNRS and Université Paris Descartes) : Models-as-usual for unusual risks? On the value of catastrophic climate change
Co-author(s): Antoine Bommier & Bruno Lanz
LASLIER Jean-François (PSE) : About political polarization in Africa: An experiment on Approval Voting in Benin
Co-author(s) : Patoinnéwendé Alda Kabre, Karine Van der Straeten & Leonard Wantchekon
Uninominal majoritarian voting systems force voters to "choose sides", which might possibly be a factor of exacerbation of political, social, ethnic or religious divisions. Elaborating on this idea, we wanted to know if, in Africa, voters would be willing to vote "by approval", that is with the ability to approve of/vote for several candidates. This article reports on such an experiment, conducted in Benin on the day of the 2011 presidential election.
RIEGERT Arnaud (PSE) : Persistent Classmates: How Familiarity with Peers Protects from Disruptive School Transitions
Co-author(s): Son Thierry Ly
CHEUNG Diana (Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne) : Intergenerational persistence in China: from the perspective of food consumption
Co-author(s): Lin Chen
This article studies intergenerational persistence in China. We use data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey to estimate the intergenerational food consumption and intergenerational income elasticities in China (IFCE and IIE). We demonstrate that IFCE is a good indicator of intergenerational persistence when income data is insufficient to compute an accurate measure of permanent income. We find a particularly high IFCE (0.878) and a lower IIE (0.43), which is close to the one (0.47) estimated by Deng, Gustafsson and Li(2012). Parental food consumption greatly affects offspring food consumption and is homogeneous across individuals having different levels of education or who live in urban or rural areas. Finally, we also show that intergenerational linkages in consumption do not mainly result from the transmission of income but rather from the transmission of taste.
LAAJAJ Rachid (PSE, INRA) : Savings, Subsidies, and Sustainable Food Security: A Field Experiment in Mozambique
Co-author(s): Michael Carter et Dean Yang.
BEHAGHEL Luc (PSE) : Tax exemptions and rural development: Evidence from a quasi-experiment
Co-author(s): Adrien Lorenceau & Simon Quantin
VARELA Liliana (PSE) : Financial Liberalization, Competition and Productivity
CAGE Julia (PSE & Havard University) : Trash Media: How Competition Affects Information
JEDWAB Remi (George Washington University) : The Nature and Speed of Urbanization and Economic Development. New Historical Evidence from 40 Developing Countries
Co-author(s): Luc Christiaensen & Marina Gindeslky
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Historical Legacies in Contemporary Politics: Evidence from the Partitions of Poland
Co-author(s): Irena Grosfeld
GURGAND Marc (PSE) : Adjusting your dreams? The effects of school and peers on dropout behavior
Co-author(s): Dominique Goux & Eric Maurin
GEEROLF François (SciencesPo) : Dynamic inefficiency and capital taxation
TO Maxime (Sciences Po) : Will Sooner Be Better? The Impact of Early Preschool Enrollment on Cognitive and Noncognitive Achievement of Children
Co-author(s): Denis Fougère & Olivier Filatriau
In this paper we measure the effect of entering preelementary school at age 2 rather than 3 in France. Our identification strategy relies on ratios between the number of young children and the capacity of preelementary schools observed at the very local level. This information allows us to solve the endogeneity issue due to the potential correlation between unobserved determinants of early enrollment decision and children achievement. We measure this effect on schooling achievement in primary and lower secondary schools. We show that early enrollment in preelementary school improves cognitive and noncognitive skills at age six, and both literacy and numeracy from the third to the ninth grades.
LAFFETER Quentin (ENS Lyon) : VAT reduction for restaurant services in France and its effect on consumption prices
BEHAGHEL Luc (PSE) : When anonymous resumes do not help Lakisha and Jamal. A field experiment with real candidates
Co-author(s): Bruno Crépon & Thomas Le Barbanchon
APOUEY Bénédicte (PSE) : Social interactions and malaria preventive behaviors in Sub-Saharan Africa
Co-author(s): Picone Gabriel
BRODEUR Abel (PSE, CEP & IZA) : Giving your Addiction a Second Chance
Co-author(s): Alejandro Del Valle
An unanswered question is whether addicts really reengage in their old addiction if they are confronted to their old environment. This paper gives a first piece of evidence that the environment associated with an addiction may trigger relapse after quitting. Our main contribution is to rely on smoking bans in bars, restaurants and workplaces which have been repealed over the last 25 years. Citizens of many cities, counties and the state of Maryland have seen their smoking bans repealed over this period of time. Our preliminary findings seem to indicate that repeals cause former addicts to reengage in their old addiction by reintroducing a situation in which agents are allowed to smoke. The effect is heterogeneous across the types of repeals though. Only repealing a ban in restaurant increases smoking prevalence.
GARBINTI Bertrand (CREST, PSE) : Do the High-Income Households Save More?
Co-author(s): Pierre Lamarche
LEFRANC Arnaud (Université de Cergy-Pontoise) : Educational expansion, earnings compression and changes in intergenerational economic mobility: Evidence from French cohorts, 1931-1976
MARGOLIS David N. (CES) : A micro-simulation-based estimation of the effects of minimum wage changes in the Philippines
Co-author(s): Ximena Del Carpio & Yuko Okamura
VANDEN EYNDE Oliver (PSE) : Mining royalties and Maoist Violence: an Iron Logic?
DAUVERGNE Roy (ENS) : Who pays indirect taxes? Estimations from a microsimulation model
CAROLI Eve (PSE) : Does job insecurity deteriorate health? A causal approach for Europe
Co-author(s): Mathilde Godard
GOBILLON Laurent (PSE) : The Costs of Agglomeration: Land Prices in French Cities
Co-author(s): Pierre-Philippe Combes & Gilles Duranton
MARINESCU Ioana (University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy) : Applications, Wages and Skills
Co-author(s): Ronald Wolthoff.
GODZINSKI Alexandre (CREST & PSE) : Incentive Effects of the Lifetime Bonus
KURODA Sachiko (Waseda University) : Does downsizing take a toll on retained staff? An analysis of increased working hours during recessions using Japanese micro data
Co-author(s): Yuji Genda & Souichi Ohta
DUPREY Thibaut (PSE) : Bank Ownership and Credit Cycle : the lower sensitivity of public bank lending to the business cycle
FREMEAUX Nicolas (PSE) : More or less married: the evolution of marriage and matrimonial property regimes in France
Co-author(s): Marion Leturcq
SCHWIENBACHER Armin (Université Lille Nord de France -- SKEMA Business School) : Suffrage Institutions and Financial Development: Does the Middle Class Have a Say?
Co-author(s): Hans Degryse & Thomas Lambert
WREN-LEWIS Liam (PSE) : Accounting for changes in income inequality: Decomposition analyses for Great Britain, 1968-2009
Co-author(s): Mike Brewer
LECHEVALIER Sébastien (EHESS) : Wage and Productivity Differentials in Japan: The Role of Labor Market Mechanisms
Co-author(s): Yannick Kalantzis & Ryo Kambayashi
TOFT Christian (University of Kassel) : Pension Reform, Retirement Ages, and Labour Supply in the United States and the European Union (EU15) 1950-2060
Co-author(s): Edward Whitehouse & Gary Burtless
BARROT Jean-Noel (HEC) : Financial Strength and Trade Credit Provision: Evidence from Trucking Firms
GALBIATI Roberto (Sciences Po) : Earthquakes, Religion, and Institutional Change: Evidence from a Historical Experiment
Co-author(s):Marianna Belloc & Francesco Drago
GODECHOT Olivier (Centre Maurice Halbwachs) : Do contacts really help to get a job in the academic labor market ? A natural random experiment with French intellectuals at EHESS
GORMSEN Christian (PSE) : Diasporas and Foreign Direct Investments
Co-author(s): Mariola Pytlikova
RUEDA Valeria (Sciences-Po) : Newspapers and Political Participation: An Historical Approach
Co-auteur(s) : Julia Cagé
CHANCEL Lucas (IDDRI/Sciences Po) : Are younger generations higher carbon emitters than their elders?" Evidence from US and French household budget surveys
MATRAY Adrien (HEC Business School) : Banking competition and banking discrimination against poors and racial minorities
Co-author(s): Claire Célerier
ZUCMAN Gabriel (PSE) : Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries, 1870-2010
Co-auteur(s) : Thomas Piketty
FOURNIER Jean-Marc (OCDE) : The determinants of earnings inequality – evidence from quantile regressions
Co-author(s): Isabell Koske
Unconditional and conditional quantile regressions are used to explore the determinants of labour earnings at different parts of the distribution and, hence, the determinants of overall labour earnings inequality. The analysis combines several household surveys to provide comparable estimates for 32 countries. The empirical work suggests that, in general, a rise in the share of workers with an upper-secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary degree and a rise in the share of workers on permanent contracts are associated with a narrowing of the earnings distribution. By contrast, a shift in the sector composition of the economy is not found to have a large impact on overall earnings inequality. As for tertiary education, the impact remains ambiguous as there are several offsetting forces.
BRODEUR Abel (PSE) : Where the Streets Have a Name: Income Comparisons in the US
Co-author(s): Sarah Flèche
This paper analyzes the effects of income comparisons on utility using data on self-reported well-being. We rely on a very large survey (BRFSS) and an unprecedented survey conducted by the City of Somerville in order to study this relationship. These data sets allow us to study income comparisons at the county, ZIP code and street-levels. While there is a negative association between respondents' well-being and median income at the county and street-levels, this is the opposite at the ZIP code-level. We disentangle the effects of pure social comparisons and local public goods by including the relative rank in the income distribution in our model. Conditional on relative rank, there is a positive relationship between well-being and median county income. Last, we find evidence of asymmetry and nonlinearities in the comparison process.
STANCANELLI Elena (CES, Universite Paris 1) : Joint Leisure Before and After Retirement: a double Regression Discontinuity approach
Co-author(s): Arthur van Soest
In the scant literature on partners' joint retirement decisions one of the explanations for joint retirement is externalities in leisure. In this study, we investigate how retirement affects the hours of leisure together of individuals in a couple. Exploiting the law on retirement age in France, we use a regression discontinuity approach to identify the causal effect of retirement on hours of leisure separate and together of individuals in a couple. We find that the retirement probability increases significantly at age 60 for both partners, supporting our identification strategy. We conclude that retirement of the husband significantly increases own hours of leisure of the husband but it does not increase joint leisure hours of the couple. Retirement of the wife increases joint leisure. This asymmetry in responses is well in line with recent literature on joint retirement and suggests that leisure complementarities may not be the main engine of joint retirement.
BACH Laurent (Stockholm School of Economics) : Tax Collection and Corporate Governance: Evidence from French Small Businesses
COSTA Francisco J. M. (London School of Economics) : Just Do It: Temporary restrictions and new consumption habits
OREOPOULOS Philip (University of Toronto) : *
JEDWAB Remi (London School of Economics) : Colonial Investments and African Development: Evidence from Ghanaian Railways
Co-author(s): Alexander Moradi
We study the impact of colonial investments in modern transportation infrastructure on agriculture and development in Ghana. Two railway lines were built between 1901 and 1923 to connect the coast to mining areas and the large hinterland city of Kumasi. This unintendedly opened vast expanses of tropical forest to cocoa cultivation, allowing Ghana to become the world's largest producer. Using data at a very ne spatial level, we nd a strong eect of railroad connectivity on cocoa production in 1927, generating rents in the order of 4.5% of GDP. We show that the economic boom in cocoa-producing areas was associated with demographic growth and urbanization. We nd no eect for lines that were not built yet, and lines that were planned but never built. Lastly, railway construction had a persistent impact: railway districts are more developed today despite a complete displacement of rail by other means of transport. JEL classication codes: O18, R4, 013, F1, N17 Keywords: Transportation Infrastructure, Trade Costs, Agriculture, Africa
COMOLA Margherita (PSE) : The Effect of Financial Access on Networks: Evidence from a field experiment in Nepal
Co-author(s): Silvia Prina
VALFORT Marie-Anne (PSE) : One Muslim is Enough! Evidence from a Field Experiment in France
Co-author(s): Claire Adida & David Laitin
Anti-Muslim prejudice is widespread in Western countries. Yet, Muslims are expected to constitute a growing share of the total population in Western countries over the next decades. This paper predicts that this demographic trend, other factors held constant, will increase anti-Muslim prejudice. Relying on experimental games and a formal model, we show that the generosity of rooted French toward Muslims is significantly decreased with the increase of Muslims in their midst, and demonstrate that these results are driven by the activation of rooted French taste-based discrimination against Muslims when Muslim numbers increase. Our findings call for solutions to anti-Muslim prejudice in the West.
MAVRIDIS Dimitris Alexan (Université Paris-Sorbonne) : Can Subjective Well-Being Predict Unemployment Duration?
FREMEAUX Nicolas (PSE) : Pour l'amour du risque ? - Preferences for saving and assortative mating
Co-author(s): Luc Arrondel
SENOUCI Mehdi (PSE) : Malthusian Dynamics of Animal Populations
Co-author(s): Pablo Winant
CLAUSING Kimberly A. (Reed College) : In Search of Corporate Tax Incidence
This paper reviews existing theory and empirical evidence concerning corporate tax incidence. Corporate tax incidence is difficult to establish in theory since the burden of corporate taxation will depend on at least five crucial economic parameters. Further, even if these parameters can be agreed upon, theoretical models of corporate taxation neglect at least seven important considerations. Unfortunately, existing empirical work does not provide clarification, since much of the work either relies on inappropriate tests of general equilibrium tax incidence or suffers from data or methodological limitations. This paper attempts to improve knowledge in this area by undertaking a comprehensive series of analyses of multiple data sources on labor market outcomes and corporate taxation. The analyses are informed by open-economy general equilibrium corporate tax incidence models, and they focus on OECD countries over the period 1981-2009. Results indicate substantial uncertainty regarding what fraction of the corporate tax burden falls on labor, but there is no robust evidence that corporate tax burdens have large depressing effects on wages. These results stand in contrast to findings of other papers; I discuss several possible reasons for this divergence.
LEBARZ Claire (PSE) : Income Inequality and the Current Account
Co-author(s):Michael Kumhof & Romain Rancière
MESNARD Alice (Institute for Fiscal Studies ) : Sale of Visas: A Smuggler's Final Song ?
Co-author(s): Emmanuelle Auriol
We study how smugglers respond to different types of migration policies - legalisation through the sale of migration visas, or more traditional repressive policies through borders' enforcement, employers' sanctions or deportation - by changing the price they propose to illegal migrants. In this context a government that aims at eradicating smugglers and controlling migration flows faces a trade-off. Eliminating smugglers by the sale of visas increases the flows of migrants and may worsen their skill composition. In contrast, repressive policies decrease the flows of illegal migrants and may improve their skill composition but reinforce the smugglers' abusive power as they apply higher prices. We then study how a combination of increased repression -through reinforced external and internal controls- and sale of visas may be effective at eliminating smugglers and controlling migration flows while not weighing on public finances. Simulations allow us to quantify the partial equilibrium effects of the policies under study.
GOLLAC Sibylle (Centre Maurice Halbwachs) : Les ambigüités de l'aînesse masculine. Inégalités au sein des fratries en matière de propriété immobilière
LECAT Rémy (Banque de France) : Labour relations quality and productivity: An empirical analysis on French firms
Co-author(s) : Gilbert Cette, Nicolas Dromel & Anne-Charlotte Paret
This analysis characterizes empirically how good labour relations can alleviate the negative impact on productivity of regulatory constraints or workforce opposition. Our evidence of good labour relations lies in the existence of binding collective agreements, at the firm or at the industry level. The estimations are based on a unique dataset collected by the Banque de France about the obstacles French firms may face in increasing their utilisation of production factors. Data are an unbalanced sample of 9,185 observations, corresponding to 2,134 companies, over the period 1991-2008. Our main results may be summarised as follows: i) workforce or union opposition interacted with regulatory constraints has a negative significant impact on total factor productivity (TFP). Regulatory constraints would become really binding when workers or unions use them as a tool to oppose management's decisions; ii) workforce or union opposition interacted with firm agreement has a positive significant impact on TFP. Firm agreements, which reflect good-quality local labour relations, would be used by firms to offset the negative impact of local opposition from workers or unions; iii) regulatory constraints interacted with branch agreement has a positive significant impact on TFP. Branch agreements, which can only be obtained if labour relations at the industry level are supportive, would be used by branches to offset the negative impact of regulatory constraints. These results give a strong confirmation that labour relations quality, at the branch or the firm levels, is an important factor of productive performance. Keywords: Labour relation, collective bargaining, trade unions, productivity JEL Classification: J53, J52, J51 a: Banque de France and Université de la Méditer
KESZTENBAUM Lionel (INED) : The democratization of longevity: How the poor became old. Paris, 1880-1940
Co-author(s): Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
In the first decades of the 19th century, industrialized countries experienced both a decline in urban mortality and the reversal of the rural-urban mortality differentials, once vastly favorable to rural areas. This process can be linked with two broad phenomena: a rise in income and improved public goods. Here we focus on income and take advantage of the unusual quantity, quality, and variety of statistics computed by the statistical department of the Paris municipality under the lead of Louis-Adolphe and Jacques Bertillon. For the three decades preceding WWI, we have collected and standardized mortality data at the neighborhood (quartier) level. Therefore we have longitudinal data on mortality at a very small scale –Paris has 80 neighborhoods with an average population of 30,000 inhabitants– during the key period of the health transition. Life expectancy in Paris is not very different from the rest of the country –around 50 years at 5 years old– but the difference between the two extremes of the distribution is over 10 years in life expectancy. To explain such huge mortality differential between neighborhood, we add to this dataset various information on income and wealth from fiscal records, especially both the average rents and its distribution within neighborhoods. We document that the disparities in mortality between neighborhoods are strongly related to a variety of income indicators. Over time, mortality fell because of income increases rather than because of a change of the mortality income relationship. Keywords: differential mortality, wealth, urbanisation, Paris JEL codes: N33, N34
GOUJARD Antoine (LSE) : The externalities from social housing, evidence from housing prices
I investigate the impact of social housing on the sales price of neighboring flats in Paris. I construct a unique dataset including flat sales and social housing projects at the building level. To account for endogenous placement of social housing projects, I use a difference-in-differences strategy that includes fine geographical controls and trending unobservables. In my preferred specifications which control for building fixed effects, a particular spatial pattern emerges: a 10 percentage points increase in the social housing share implies a 1.2% increase in housing value within a radius of 50 meters. However, private properties located farther away from the social projects within a 350 to 500 meter belt experience price decrease by 5.5%. The positive effects appear more important for small dwellings and for properties located in poor neighborhoods while negative impacts dominate in high income neighborhoods and for family dwellings. Further estimates exploit the unexpected win of a left-wing mayor in Paris, which was followed by a sharp increase in social housing units driven by the direct conversion of private rental flats into social units without any accompanying rehabilitation. This natural experiment allows to identify the impact of the inflow into the neighborhood of low income tenants, separately from the effects of social housing on the quality of the existing housing stock. I do not find evidence of a positive impact of the conversion projects on housing prices. Keywords: Social housing, neighborhood eects, housing prices. JEL Classication: J0, H42, R38
SENIK Claudia (PSE) : The French Unhappiness Puzzle
The main objective of this article is to shed light on the important differences in self-declared happiness across countries of equivalent affluence. It hinges on the different happiness statements of natives and migrants in a set of European countries to disentangle the influence of objective circumstances versus cultural factors. The latter turns out to be of non-negligible importance in explaining international heterogeneity in happiness. In some countries, such as France, they are solely responsible for the country unobserved idiosyncratic source of happiness. JEL Codes: I31, H52, O15, O52, Z10 Keywords: Happiness, Subjective Well-Being, International Comparisons, France, Immigration, European Social Survey
SCHMUTZ Benoît (PSE) : Urban geography and the effectiveness of French enterprise zones
Co-author(s): Miren Lafourcade & Anthony Briant
This paper provides the results of a new econometric evaluation of the French enterprise zone program. According to previous evaluations, this program has only had a small positive average impact on firms and jobs creation rates. In addition, this impact was shown to be strongly heterogeneous across the targeted neighborhoods. We investigate here whether the geographical characteristics of these neighborhoods may account for part of these results. To that end, we estimate a series of augmented difference-in-differences models in which we interact the treatment indicator with a series of original indices of spatial isolation, which account for urban severance and transport access, at various scales. Results indicate that spatial isolation does matter to explain spatial differentials in jobs and firms' creation rates across enterprise zones, especially when the program is less efficient on average. Finally, we examine whether the results of our evaluation differ across sectors with different labor/capital intensities.
PHILIPPON Thomas (New York University) : Household leverage and the recession
Co-author(s): Virgiliu Midrigan
A salient feature of the recent recession is that regions that have experienced the largest changes in household leverage have also experienced the largest declines in output and employment. We study a cash-in-advance economy in which home equity borrowing, alongside public money, is used to conduct transactions. Declines in home prices tighten the cash-in-advance constraint, triggering recessions. We parameterize the model to match the key cross-sectional features of the data. The model implies that real activity is very sensitive to liquidity shocks, but not to credit shocks, and that monetary policy can significantly reduce the severity of credit-driven recessions.
IMBERT Clément (PSE) : Equilibrium Distributional Impacts of Government Employment Programs
Co-author(s) : John Papp
This paper presents evidence on the equilibrium labor market impacts of a large rural workfare program in India. Our identification strategy compares changes in outcomes in districts that received the program earlier to districts that received it later. These difference-in-differences estimates reveal that following the introduction of the program, public employment increased by .3 days per prime-aged person per month (1.3\% of private sector employment) more in early districts than in the rest of India. Casual wages increase by 4.5\% more in early districts, and private sector work for low-skill workers falls by 1.6\%. These changes are concentrated in the dry season, during which the majority of public works employment is provided. Estimates are larger for districts in states known to have better implemented the technical and administrative requirements of the act. We use the estimates along with household-level data on labor earnings, payments to hired labor, consumption, and program participation to compute the implied welfare gains of the program by consumption quintile. Our estimates suggest that the welfare gains to the poor from the equilibrium increase in private sector wages are large in absolute terms and large relative to the gains received solely by program participants. We conclude that the equilibrium labor market impacts are a first order concern when comparing workfare programs with other anti-poverty programs such as a cash transfer.
BEHAGHEL Luc (PSE) : Private and Public Provision of Counseling to Job-Seekers: Evidence from a Large Controlled Experiment
Co-auteur(s) : Bruno Crépon et Marc Gurgand
Contracting out public services to private firms has ambigous effects when quality is imperfectly observable. Using a randomized experiment over a national sample in France, we compare the efficiency of the public employment service (PES) vs. private providers in delivering very similar job-search intensive counseling. The impact of each program is assessed with respect to the standard, low intensity track offered by the PES to the unemployed. We find that job-search assistance increases exit rates to employment by 15 to 35%. But the impact of the public program is about twice as large as compared to the private program, at least during the 6 first months after random assignment. We argue that the observed contract structure with the private providers has not overcome the underlying agency problem. We find no evidence of cream-skimming: rather, it seems that profit maximizing private providers have found it optimal to enroll as many job-seekers as they could, but to make minimum effort on the placement of some of them.
LAURENT Thierry (Université Evry Val d'Essonne - UniverSud Paris) : Orientation sexuelle et emploi en France : les gays plus exposés au chômage que les autres ?
Co-author(s) : Ferhat MIHOUBI
Ce travail a pour objectif de mesurer la discrimination d'accès à l'emploi liée à l'orientation sexuelle. Il s'agit d'une première, puisqu'au niveau international très peu d'études de ce type ont été réalisées et aucune dans le cas français. L'évaluation économétrique de la discrimination d'accès à l'emploi est réalisée en empilant les données de l'enquête Emploi sur la période 1996-2009 et en identifiant des couples de même sexe à l'aide d'un critère de cohabitation. La probabilité d'être en emploi est modélisée en tenant compte de l'orientation sexuelle et de la sélection endogène mesurée par une équation de participation au marché du travail. Les résultats montrent que le taux de chômage des travailleurs gays serait de 1,6% plus élevé que celui de leurs homologues hétérosexuels, toutes choses égales par ailleurs. Cette mesure de la discrimination d'accès à l'emploi est loin d'être négligeable puisqu'elle dépasse la pénalité subie par les individus nés hors de France ou encore celle subie par les séniors. Nous montrons aussi que cette discrimination affecte prioritairement les gays de moins de 40 ans, puisque la probabilité d'être au chômage excède de 2,4% celle de leurs homologues hétérosexuels. Ce dernier résultat suggère un processus de recherche du «bon emploi» bien plus long pour les travailleurs gays que pour leurs homologues hétérosexuels.
ZUCMAN Gabriel (PSE) : The End of Bank Secrecy? An Evaluation of the G20 Tax Haven Crackdown
Co-auteur(s) : Niels Johannesen
During the financial crisis, G20 countries compelled tax havens to sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information. Is it the end of bank secrecy? Exploiting a unique panel dataset, we study how the treaties affected bank deposits in tax havens. Our results suggest that most tax evaders did not respond to the treaties but a minority responded by transferring their deposits to havens not covered by a treaty. Overall, the G20 tax haven crackdown has caused a modest relocation of deposits between havens but no significant repatriation of funds: the era of bank secrecy is not yet over.
STANTCHEVA Stefanie (MIT) : Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities
Co-author(s) : Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez
This paper analyzes the problem of optimal taxation of top labor incomes. We develop a model where top incomes respond to marginal tax rates through three channels: (1) the standard supply-side channel through reduced economic activity, (2) the tax avoidance channel, (3) the compensation bargaining channel through efforts in influencing own pay setting. We derive the optimal top tax rate formula as a function of the three elasticities corresponding to those three channels of responses. The first elasticity (supply side) is the sole real factor limiting optimal top tax rates. The optimal tax system should be designed to minimize the second elasticity (avoidance) through tax enforcement and tax neutrality across income forms, in which case the second elasticity becomes irrelevant. The optimal top tax rate increases with the third elasticity (bargaining) as bargaining efforts are zero-sum in aggregate. We then analyze top income and top tax rate data in 18 OECD countries. There is a strong correlation between cuts in top tax rates and increases in top 1% income shares since 1975, implying that the overall elasticity is large. But top income share increases have not translated into higher economic growth, consistent with the zero-sum bargaining model. This suggests that the first elasticity is modest in size and that the overall effect comes mostly from the third elasticity. Consequently, socially optimal top tax rates might possibly be much higher than what is commonly assumed.
RANCIERE Romain (PSE) : Credit Standards and Segregation
Co-auteur(s) : Amine Ouazad
How do credit standards on the mortgage market affect neighborhood choice and the resulting level of urban segregation? To answer this question, we first develop a model of neighborhood choice with credit constraints. The model shows that a relaxation of credit standards can either increase or decrease segregation, depending on racial income gaps and on races' preferences for neighborhoods. We then estimate the effect of the relaxation of credit standards that accompanied the 1995–2007 mortgage credit boom on the level of urban and school segregation. Matching a national data set of mortgage originations with annual racial demographics of each of the public schools in the United States from 1995 to 2007, we find that the relaxation of credit standards has caused an increase in segregation.
MONNET Eric (PSE) : Financing a planned economy. Institutions and credit allocation in the French Golden age of growth (1954-1974)
LANDAIS Camille (Stanford University) : Do taxes affect location decision of high-skilled labor? Evidence from Denmark
Co-author(s) : Henrik Kleven, Emmanuel Saez & Esben Schultz
This paper analyzes the eects of income taxation on the international migration of top earners using the Danish preferential foreigner tax scheme. This scheme, introduced in 1991, allows immigrants with high earnings (above 103,000 Euros per year as of 2009) to be taxed at a at rate of 25% for a duration of three years instead of the regular progressive schedule with a top marginal tax rate of 59%. Using population wide Danish administrative tax data, we show that the scheme doubled the number of highly paid foreigners in Denmark relative to slightly less paid ineligible foreigners, which translates into a very large elasticity of migration with respect to the net-of-tax rate in excess of one. There is bunching of earnings at the scheme eligibility threshold, evidence of a signicant but quantitatively very small response along the intensive earnings margin (work eort or earnings manipulation through tax avoidance). There is also evidence of sharp bunching of durations of stay at the three year duration limit which translates into a signicant but quantitatively small intensive duration response. In the end, the migration elasticity is much more larger than the conventional within country elasticity of earnings with respect to the net-of-tax rate. Hence, preferential tax schemes for highly paid workers could generate very harmful competition across European countries and severely limit the ability of European governments to use progressive taxation.
MAYNERIS Florian (Université catholique de Louvain, IRES, CORE) : The Impact of Urban Enterprise Zones on Establishment Location Decisions - Evidence from French ZFUs
Co-auteur(s) : Thierry Mayer & Loriane Py
Governments increasingly provide geographically-targeted tax incentives to promote the economic development of distressed urban areas. In this paper, we study the impact of a French Enterprise zones program (the ZFU policy) on establishment location decisions. Our empirical analysis is based on a microgeographic dataset which provides exhaustive information on the location of establishments in France over the period 1995-2007 at the census block level. In order to deal with endogeneity issues, we adopt a difference in dif- ference approach which combines spatial and time differencing. We alternately implement a triple difference estimation, using the fact that targeted urban areas have been selected in different waves over time. Finally, we exploit a discontinuity in the eligibility criteria of the policy as an exogenous source of variation to estimate the impact of the treat- ment. Our results show that the French ZFU policy has a positive and sizeable impact on the probability that establishments locate in targeted areas, this effect being robust to different estimation strategies. We then further investigate the mechanisms that drive this positive average effect and find that the impact of the policy is stronger for targeted areas that are initially less distressed and for sectors in which relocation costs are lower. Additionally, ZFU areas tend to attract smaller firms. However, the analysis of the spatial pattern of the effect reveals that the policy does not create economic activity per se at the municipality level, it rather operates as a spatial shifter within municipalities, induc- ing existing establishments, or new establishments to (re)locate in the ZFU part of the municipality.
BOZIO Antoine (Institute for Fiscal Studies) : Wealth and Savings of the Lifetime Rich: Evidence from the UK and the US
Co-author(s) : Carl Emmerson, Gemma Tetlow & Cormac O'Dea
MILAZZO Annamaria (Bocconi University) : Social Norms, Inheritance, and Human Capital: Evidence from a Reform of the Matrilineal System in Ghana
Co-auteur(s) : Eliana La Ferrara
PIKETTY Thomas (PSE) : A Theory of Optimal Capital Taxation
Co-auteur(s) : Emmanuel Saez L'article est consultable en cliquant sur le lien suivant : A Theory of Optimal Capital Taxation
This paper develops a realistic, tractable normative theory of socially-optimal capital taxation. We present a dynamic model of savings and bequests with heterogeneous tastes for bequests to children and for wealth accumulation per se. We derive formulas for optimal inheritance tax rates expressed in terms of estimable parameters and social preferences. The long-run optimal inheritance tax rate increases with the aggregate steady-state ?ow of inheritances to output, decreases with the elasticity of bequests to the net-of-tax rate, and decreases with the strength of preferences for leaving bequests. For realistic parameters, the optimal inheritance tax rate should be as high as 50%-60% -or even higher for top bequests- if the government has meritocratic preferences (i.e., puts higher welfare weights on those receiving little inheritance). In contrast to the Atkinson-Stiglitz result, bequest taxation remains desirable in our model even with optimal labor taxation because inequal- ity is two-dimensional: with inheritances, labor income is no longer the unique determinant of lifetime resources. In contrast to Chamley-Judd, optimal inheritance taxation is desir- able because our preferences allow for ?nite long run elasticities of inheritance to tax rates. Finally, we discuss how capital market imperfections and idyosincratic shocks to rates of return can justify shifting one-o¤ inheritance taxation toward lifetime capital taxation, and can account for the actual structure and mix of inheritance and capital taxation.
KESLAIR François (PSE) : The children of teachers in France
GODEFROY Raphael (PSE) : Voter Turnout and Governments Budget
Co-auteur(s) : Emeric Henry
CLARK Andrew (PSE) : Keep on Trucking? Preferences over Pay Profiles in a High-Quit Industry
Co-auteur(s) : Steve Burks
JEDWAB Rémi (PSE) : Why Is Africa Urbanized But Poor? Evidence from Resource Booms in Ghana and Ivory Coast
Africa is highly urbanized for its level of economic development. I argue that this paradox results from African countries exporting natural resources: resource windfalls drive urbanization, but not necessarily long-term economic growth. I develop a structural transformation model where the Engel curve implies that windfalls are disproportionately spent on urban goods and services. This drives urbanization through a rise of consumer cities. I illustrate the model by studying cocoa booms and urbanization at the district level in Ghana and Ivory Coast over one century. As an identication strategy, I use the fact that cocoa is produced by consuming the forest: (a) for agronomic reasons, farmers have to deforest a new region every 25 years, and (b) for historical reasons, the cocoa frontier has shifted westward in each country. I nd that cities boom in newly producing regions, but persist in old ones despite the fact those regions are poor. I discuss possible explanations for both urban irreversibility and the lack of long-term economic growth. JEL classication codes: O18, R00, O13, R12, N97 Keywords: Urbanization, Structural Transformation, Resource Curse, Africa
GUYON Nina (PSE) : Geographic Income Segregation: Empirical Evidence from France
SANGNIER Marc (PSE) : Efficient and inefficient welfare states
Co-auteur(s) : Yann Algan & Pierre Cahuc
GURGAND Marc (PSE) : Do labor market policies have displacement effect? Evidence from a clustered random experiment
Co-auteur(s) : Bruno Crépon, Esther Duflo, Roland Rathelot & Philippe Zamora.
Active Labor Market policies, where job seekers are given help to identify job offers and receive interview have become popular, particularly in Europe. The impact of job seeker counseling policies on its beneficiaries may be due to a combination of an increase in the number of job offers or to displacement effects. In this paper, we report on the results of a randomized experiment designed to evaluate the impact of reinforced job market counseling on the labor market outcomes of young, educated jobseekers in France. In order to identify both the direct and displacement effects, we use a two-step design. Before the experiment start, the proportions of jobseekers to be assigned to treatment are randomly drawn for each labor market (e.g. cities). Then, in each agency, jobseekers are assigned to treatment randomly, according to this previously drawn proportion. The program significantly improves the chance that a treated job seeker finds a job, but there is no evidence of any crowding-out effects on non-treated job seekers even where the proportion of treated people is high.
GADENNE Lucie (PSE) : Tax Me, but Spend Wisely : The Political Economy of Taxes, Evidence from Brazilian Local Governments
GRENET Julien (PSE) : Means-tested Grants and Academic Achievement in Higher Education. Evidence from France
PETROVA Maria (New Economics School) : Cross-border effects of foreign media: Serbian radio and nationalist in Croatia
Co-auteur(s) : Stefano DellaVigna, Ruben Enikolopov, Vera Mironova & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
BANERJEE Abhijit (MIT) : Do Informed Voters Make Better Choices? Experimental Evidence from India
Co-auteur(s) : Selvan Kumar, Rohini Pande & Felix Su
LY Son Thierry (PSE) : The Happy Few of Higher Education : Evidence of positive discrimination toward the gender in minority
Co-auteur(s) : Thomas Breda
LEHMANN Etienne (CREST - INSEE) : Labor Earnings Respond Differently to Income-Tax and to Payroll-Tax Reforms
Co-auteur(s) : Laurence Rioux & François Marical
LETURCQ Marion (PSE) : Would you civil union me? Did the reform of income taxation boost civil union in France?
DHERBECOURT Clément (PSE) : fertility rates and capital accumulation in very rich parisian dynasties
GODECHOT Olivier (CNRS, CMH, PSE ) : Finance and the rise in inequalities in France
VERDUGO Gregory (Banque de France) : The Great Compression of the Wage Structure in France, 1969-2008
DE LA RUPELLE Maelys (PSE) : Social Status and Inequality Persistence: the Long Term Effect of Mao's Land Reform in China
Co-auteur(s) : Li Shi
JAYARAMAN Rajshri (ESMT Berlin) : The impact of school lunches on primary school enrollment: evidence from India's midday meal scheme
Co-auteur(s) : Dora Simroth & Francis de Vericourt
MAURIN Eric (PSE) : Labour Supply Spillovers within Households : Lessons from Mandatory Workweek Reductions
Co-auteur(s) : Dominique Goux & Barbara Petrongolo
GODEFROY Raphael (PSE) : Political Determinants of Local Finances: Evidence from France
ZYLBERBERG Yanos (PSE) : Neither a borrower nor a lender be: resources misallocation in the wake of natural disasters
CASSAN Guilhem (PSE) : The impact of reservations in education in India : evidence from a double natural experiment
Co-auteur(s) : Ashwini Natraj
DE CHAISEMARTIN Clément (PSE) : Fuzzy Difference in Differences and Fuzzy Change in Change
PIKETTY Thomas (PSE) : Inherited vs Self-Made Wealth: Theory & Evidence from a Rentier Society (Paris 1872-1937)
Co-auteur(s) : Gilles Postel-Vinay & Jean Laurent Rosenthal
PAS DE SEANCE
FREMEAUX Nicolas (PSE) : Do we choose our spouse according to inheritance or labor income? - An essay on bi-dimensional assortative mating
This paper investigates the importance of inheritance relative to labor income in marital relations. I find that in France over the period 1992 - 2004, there is a clear positive assortative mating for the two dimensions. More interesting, the source of wealth seems to matter more than the amount. The preference towards a source of wealth depends on the appartenance to one of the two categories : inheritors or workers. Top inheritors men have higher probabilities than top income men to be in couple with top inheritance women. The reverse is true but the partition between the two dimensions is significantly stronger for inheritance. Two complementary reasons may explain this advantage of inheritors : the growing instability of couples and the long run evolution of inheritance.
DURANTE Ruben (Sciences Po) : Risk, cooperation and the economic origins of social trust: an empirical investigation
HANLON Walker (Columbia University) : A Theory of Leadership Selection in Small Groups - With Evidence from Ugandan Farmer Association
Co-auteur(s) : Guy Grossman
CELERIER Claire (Toulouse School of Economics) : Compensation in the Financial Sector: Are all Bankers Superstars?
ROUZET Dorothée (Harvard University) : Company brands and national brands. How reputation affects foreign sales?
PONS Vincent (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) : Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up - how a 2010 French canvassing campaign reached ethnic minorities disappointed by politics by knocking at their door
Co-auteur(s) : Guillaume Liegey
During the campaign for the French 2010 regional elections in Ile-de-France, half of a sample of 1,350 buildings were randomly selected to benefit from a partisan door to door canvassing campaign. The individual turnout of each of the 24,000 voters included in the sample was observed for both rounds of the election. The comparison between the treatment and control groups reveals that the impact of the intervention was significant and high only for voters belonging to ethnic minorities, defined as French people born abroad and in French territories abroad and their children. The heterogeneity of the impact is not explained by observed confounding variables or by differences in the baseline participation of the different groups. The impact is lower on the second stage participation, indicating that an important proportion of the voters that were affected by the intervention are not hard vote abstainers. The intervention did not increase the knowledge of the voters on questions related to the election, as measured by a post-electoral survey administered on a subsample, which possibly points out to other channels that might explain the observed impact.
COMOLA Margherita (PSE) : Network Targeting on Information Spillovers: lessons from an educational program in Nepal
DOYLE Joseph (MIT) : Measuring Returns to Healthcare
Co-auteur(s) : John Graves, Jon Gruber & Samuel Kleiner
CARBONNIER Clément (Université de Cergy-Pontoise ) : Avantages fiscaux et épargne retraite, les ménages répondent-ils aux incitations ?
SOARES Rodrigo (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro) : The Use of Violence in Illegal Markets: Evidence from Mahogany Trade in the Brazilian Amazon
Co-auteur(s) : Ariaster Chimeli
MARCASSA Stefania (PSE) : Labor Supply and Taxation in Europe
Co-auteur(s) : Fabrizio Colonna
VANDEN EYNDE Oliver (LSE) : Military Recruitment and Human Capital Accumulation -Evidence from Colonial India
The relationship between military service and economic outcomes has received little attention in the context of developing countries. This paper exploits the exogenous increase in military recruitment during World War I in order to estimate the impact of recruitment by the Indian Army on human capital accumulation. Relying on individual records of Indian casualties in WWI, I calculate the number of war deaths at the district-religion level in colonial Punjab. The resulting ratio of war deaths in the male population will be used as a proxy for the intensity of military recruitment. I also collect a panel of literacy outcomes from 1901 until 1931 at the district-religion level. A difference-in-difference approach is used to estimate the effect of military recruitment on literacy. I find that 10 additional WWI recruits per 1,000 of the 1911 male population were on average associated with 6 more literate males per 1,000 in 1931. Further analysis suggests that this improvement in the human capital stock was mainly driven by direct skill acquisition by soldiers. Additionally, military recruitment seems to have raised the literacy rate of children, but only for the religious group that enjoyed higher returns to education.
JEDWAB Rémi (PSE) : Urbanization, a Magic Bullet for African Growth? On Cocoa and Cities in Ivory Coast and Ghana
RANCIERE Romain (PSE) : Inequality, Leverage and Crises
Co-auteur(s) : Michael Kumhof
KAMBAYASHI Ryo (Hitotsubashi University and OECD) : Inequalities in Japan
Co-auteur(s) : Donatella Gatti & Sébastien Lechevalier
ZHURAVSKAYA Ekaterina (PSE) : Persistent anti-market culture: A legacy of the Pale of Settlement and of the Holocaust
Co-auteur(s) : Irena Grosfeld & Alexander Rodnyansky
TRANDAFIR Mircea (Université de Sherbrooke) : The Effect of Same-Sex Marriage Laws on Different-Sex Marriage: Evidence from the Netherlands
DE HOOP Jacobus (Tinbergen Institute) : Selective Secondary Education and School Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Malawi
PROST Corinne (PSE) : Teacher mobility: can financial incentives help disadvantaged schools to retain their teachers?
AEBERHARDT Romain (CREST et INSEE) : Discrimination à l'embauche : comment exploiter les procédures de testing ?
Co-auteur(s) : Denis FOUGÈRE & Roland RATHELOT
CAGE Julia (PSE) : Do Papivores Influence Politics? Local Media Competition and Political Outcomes in France since 1945
Co-auteur(s) : François Keslair
LAURENT Thierry (Université Paris-Evry) : Moins égaux que les autres ? Orientation sexuelle et discrimination salariale en France
Co-auteur(s) : Ferhat Mihoubi SEMINAIRE EXCEPTIONNEL
GOURINCHAS Pierre-Olivier (University of California) : Exorbitant Privilege and Exorbitant Duty
Co-auteur(s) : Helene Rey & Nicolas Govillot SEMINAIRE JOINT AVEC LE SEMINAIRE DE MACROECONOMIE
MONNET Eric (PSE) : Credit controls did matter. An evaluation of monetary policy during France's Golden Age, 1945-1973
MARINESCU Ioana (University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy) : VIH, salaires et productivite du travail
Co-auteur(s) : Jane Fortson
GODECHOT Olivier (CMH & PSE) : Getting a job in Finance. The strength of collaboration ties
ZUCMAN Gabriel (PSE) : The Missing Wealth of Nations: Evidence from Switzerland, 1976-2008
Wednesday 26 May 2010 12:30-13:30
ROBINSON James (Harvard University) : The Monopoly of Violence: Evidence from Colombia
Co-auteur(s) : Daron Acemogluy & Rafael J. Santos
SOMVILLE Vincent (FUNDP) : Intra-Household Bargaining and Income Concealment: Theory and Evidence from Urban Benin
TARASONIS Linas (PSE) : Insurance within the Firm : Evidence from France
Co-auteur(s) : Thomas Le Barbanchon
Using matched employer-employee panel data we evaluate the amount of insurance provision within the French firms. The estimation strategy is based on Guiso, Pistaferri, and Schivardi (2005) and allows for both temporary and permanent shocks to firm performance. We find that French workers are exposed to permanent shocks to firm's performance. We then examine factors associated with wage flexibility and find that small firms provide the least amount of insurance against permanent shocks.
CASSAN Guilhem (PSE) : The long term impact of having been a allied to the British : evidence from Punjab
SCHMUTZ Benoît (PSE et GREQAM ) : Residential Mobility and UnemploymentResidential Mobility and Unemployment of African Immigrants in France
BREZIS Elise S. (Bar-Ilan University) : Elites and Economic Development
COMOLA Margherita (PSE) : Are gifts and loans between households voluntary?
Co-auteur(s) : Marcel Fafchamps
BEHAGHEL Luc (PSE) : Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age
Co-auteur(s) : David Blau
SPECTOR David (PSE) : Long-term contracts and competition in electricity markets: a model with some calibration from French data
ZYLBERBERG Yanos (PSE) : Do tropical typhoons smash community ties? Theory and Evidence from Vietnam
BAZOT Guillaume (PSE) : Finance and Growth: Local Banking, Credit and Innovation in XIXth France. 1881-1911
LLENSE Fabienne (Université Paris I) : French CEOs' compensation: Whay is the cost of a mandatory upper limit?
IMBERT Clément (PSE) : Why should public employees always lose from the transition to market economy? A tale from Vietnam
CASSAN Guilhem (PSE) : Looking for fresh meat: the price of being an old and wrinkeld woman in the two sided market of love. Evidence for a French matrimonial agency
Co-auteur (s) : Marion Leturcq
MARCASSA Stefania (PSE) : Job Search Effort and Spouse's Income in France
PAS DE SEMINAIRE POUR CAUSE DE SEMINAIRE DE RECRUTEMENT
WALDENSTROM Daniel (Research Institute of Industrial Economics) : Intergenerational top income mobility in Sweden: A combination of equal opportunity and capitalistic dynasties
Co-auteur(s) : Anders Björklund & Jesper Roine
JEDWAB Remi (PSE) : Cash Crops and Urbanization in Africa: A Case Study on Ivory Coast 1900-2000
Under the hypothesis of agglomeration economies, the factors of city formation have a long-term impact on regional development and inequality. To the extent that locational fundamentals (LF) are the most determining of these factors, there is little scope for regional policy as no urban equilibrium can be undone. We explore this issue by investigating the role of two LF-related productive sectors in Africa _ cash crops and mining _ on urbanization. In particular, using district panel data from Ivory Coast for the period 1900-2000, we study the effect of cocoa production on urbanization. Our identification strategy is based on the fact that cocoa is a migrant culture: (a) areas suitable to cocoa production are forested regions, basically the southern half of the country, (b) for agronomic reasons, cocoa producers replant elsewhere when their cocoa trees are dying, and (c) it just happened that the cocoa front started from the (South-)East of the country. This forced the cocoa front to move westward, at a rather constant speed. We can thus instrument cocoa production with being close to the cocoa front interacted with land suitability for cocoa production. Our results suggest that: (i) local cocoa production has a strong impact on local urbanization. In terms of magnitude, this effect accounts for at least one third of urbanization over the period; (ii) local cocoa production explains relatively more city formation than city growth.
BREDA Thomas (PSE) : Are unionized workers and union representatives discriminated?
SENOUCI Mehdi (PSE) : Oil prices, the 'exorbitant privilege' and international adjustment
BOURGUIGNON François (PSE) : Evaluating Global Growth with non-anonymous growth incidence curves
RUIZ Nicolas (OCDE) : Peut-on desserrer l'étau fiscal des classes moyennes? Evaluation de réformes de l'impôt sur le revenu en faveur de leur pouvoir d'achat
Co-auteur(s) : Vanessa Denis
Cet article étudie l'impact de réformes alternatives d'importances graduées des prélèvements directs en France, et plus particulièrement de l'impôt sur le revenu. Notre cadre de travail lie fiscalité et pouvoir d'achat. Nous partons du constat désormais bien identifié dans le débat public d'un déclassement relatif des classes moyennes dû principalement au fait que ces dernières soient les perdantes relatives de la distribution des gains de pouvoir d'achat sur les dix dernières années. Conjuguée à la caractérisation de l'impact bi-polaire de l'imposition directe en France qui ne modifie que les positions relatives des extrêmes de la distribution des revenus, nous explorons alors les possibilités de réformes fiscales comme mesure de soutien au pouvoir d'achat des classes moyennes, réformes dont les effets doivent être visibles au niveau des ménages. Au final, nous trouvons qu'un élargissement de la base imposable de l'impôt sur le revenu couplé à une baisse significative de ses taux marginaux inférieurs d'imposition bénéficie fortement aux classes moyennes, et comble significativement le déficit redistributif de cet impôt. Les réformes sont menées à l'aide d'un nouveau modèle de microsimulation comportemental dont nous détaillons les caractéristiques. Classification JEL: C63, D31, H24 & H30 Mots-clés: fiscalité directe, pouvoir d'achat, microsimulation, offre de travail, redistribution
BACH Laurent (PSE) : Why are Family Firms so Small ? Theory and Evidence from France
In this paper, I ask whether family firms provide stability to their stakeholders at the expense of economic growth. I build a model where current owners of dynastic firms derive private benefits from keeping the control of the firm within the family over the generations. Because these preferences limit the recourse to external finance, they induce family-minded entrepreneurs to invest in smaller and less risky projects. Predictions of the model are tested using a newly constructed firm-level panel dataset covering both private and listed French firms for the period stretching from 1994 to 2006. The main finding is that family firms are on average 30% smaller than regular firms in terms of sales. However, these firms also choose significantly less volatile sales and employment growth paths. The empirical pattern of financial management in family firms is consistent with the model : family firms incur less debt and hold more cash than their regular counterparts, and these differences are statistically and economically very significant. The results hold in both cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis, after careful control for potential confounding factors.
CARLUCCIO Juan (PSE) : Wage Bargaining and the Boundaries of the Multinational Firm
Co-auteur(s) : Maria Bas
Do variations in labor market institutions across countries affect the cross-border organization of the firm? Using firm-level data on multinationals located in France, we show that firms are more likely to outsource the production of intermediate inputs to external suppliers when importing from countries with empowered unions. Moreover, this effect is stronger for firms operating in capital-intensive industries. We propose a theoretical mechanism that rationalizes these findings. The fragmentation of the value chain weakens the union's bargaining position, by limiting the amount of revenues that are subject to union extraction. The outsourcing strategy reduces the share of surplus that is appropriated by the union, which enhances the firm's incentives to invest. Since investment creates relatively more value in capital-intensive industries, increases in union power are more likely to be conducive to outsourcing in those industries. Overall, our findings suggest that multinational firms use their organizational structure strategically when sourcing intermediate inputs from unionized markets. Keywords: wage bargaining, trade unions, sourcing, multinational firms. JEL Classification: F10, J52, L22.
GADENNE Lucie (PSE) : A Tale of Procyclicality Aid Flows and Debt : Government Spending in Sub-Saharan Africa
Co-auteur(s) : Victor Lledo & Irene Yackovlev
This paper documents cyclical patterns of government expenditures in sub-Saharan Africa since 1970 and explains variation between countries and over time. Controlling for endogeneity and applying dynamic GMM techniques, it finds that government expenditures are slightly more procyclical in sub-Saharan Africa than in other developing countries and some evidence that procyclicality in Africa has declined in recent years after a period of sharp increase through the 1990s. Greater fiscal space, proxied by lower external debt, and better access to concessional financing, proxied by larger aid flows, seem to be important in diminishing procyclicality in the region. The role of institutions is less clear cut: changes in political institutions have no impact on procyclicality. JEL Classification Numbers: E62; E32; H30; O55. Keywords: Fiscal policy, government expenditures, business cycles, and sub-Saharan Africa
BEHAGHEL Luc (PSE) : Private and Public Provision of Counseling to Jobseekers: Evidence from a Controlled Social Experiment
Co-auteur(s) : B. Crépon & M. Gurgand
GODEFROY Raphael (PSE) : Choosing Choices: Agenda-Setting with Uncertain Issues
CAGE Julia (PSE) : Asymmetric Information, Rent Extraction and Aid Efficiency
Official Development Aid flows are volatile, non-predictable and not delivered in a transparent way. All these features reinforce asymmetric information between the citizens and the recipient government about the amount of aid flows received by developing countries. This article uses a political economy model of rent extraction to show how this asymmetry (i) encourages rent extraction by kleptocratic regimes, thus reducing aid efficiency, and (ii) increases the negative impact of aid volatility. It identifies a new channel - the "asymmetric information" channel - through which aid volatility is costly for recipient countries. The empirical relevance of the model is confirmed on a panel data of developing countries. Using various specifications and econometric methods, and developing new yearly estimates of aid volatility, I show that (i) introducing more information increases aid efficiency, that (ii) the negative impact of aid volatility on aid efficiency vanishes once one controls for information, and that (iii) this positive impact of information does not come from the fact that more transparent countries tend to have better institutions. JEL: F35, P16, 010, D82. Keywords: foreign aid, asymmetric information, rent extraction, volatility.
DORSCH Michael (The American University of Paris) : A lobbyist's field guide to buying influence over heterogeneous legislators
This paper estimates the impact that campaign contributions from the financial sector had in influencing U.S. legislators to support the financial sector bailout bill (TARP) passed by the United States Congress in October 2008. After expanding on a classic theory of moral hazard and electoral accountability, I use a probit analysis to estimate the probability that a legislator supported the bailout bill. The primary explanatory variables of interest, which are motivated by the theoretical section, are campaign contributions to legislators from special interest groups and a measure of constituency characteristics. Controlling for heterogeneity of districts follows from the paper's theoretical advancement, which is to allow for heterogeneous electoral constraints on the legislators' ability to collect rents from and vote with the financial special interest. The heterogeneity is based on the importance of the financial sector for employment in districts. The probit estimation results are nothing new to Public Choice adherents. Influence over Senators can be bought and this was true of the financial bailout of 2008: all else equal, an additional $100,000 in campaign contributions from the commercial banking interest is estimated to increase the probability that a Senator supported the bailout by 15.4 percentage points.
BOBBA Mattéo (PSE) : Credit, Risk, and Entrepreneurial Choices. Evidence from Rural Mexico
Co-auteur(s) : Milo Bianchi
We explore the effects of randomly assigned cash transfers on occupational choices in rural Mexico. We report three main findings. First, the treatment significantly increases the probability to become entrepreneur. Second, those who become entrepreneurs due to the treatment are likely to work more, concentrate into one occupation and earn more. Third, occupational choices do not depend on the size of current transfers (above some minimal level), but they are significantly affected by the amount of future transfers. In light of this evidence, we discuss the role of credit and especially insurance constraints in shaping occupational choices.
PAYSAN LE NESTOUR Elise (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) : Decision Making In Nonstationary Environments: An Experimental Study Of Human Adaptation
MICHAU Jean-Baptiste (LSE) : Dynamic Optimal Redistributive Taxation with Endogenous Retirement
While the participation decision is discrete in a static context, i.e. to work or not to work, such is not the case in a dynamic context where workers choose the fraction of their lifetime that they spend working. In this paper, I therefore characterize the optimal redistributive policy in a dynamic environment with both an intensive and an extensive margin to labor supply. The government should optimally design a history-dependent social security system which induces higher productivity individuals to retire later. Redistribution should be done through the social security system rather than with a non-linear income tax. Keywords: Extensive margin, Optimal social security, Redistribution, Retirement age JEL Classification: E62, H21, H55, J26
DE CHAISEMARTIN Clément (PSE) : What has been the impact of smoking ban on workplace in France ?
MARCASSA Stefania (PSE) : Divorce Laws and Divorce Rate in the U.S
GUYON Nina (PSE) : Educational effect of school segregation by ability : a natural experiment
Co-auteur(s) : Eric Maurin & Sandra McNally
PIKETTY Thomas (PSE) : On the long-run evolution of inheritance - France, 1900-2050
MAUREL Arnaud (ENSAE) : L'impact du travail étudiant salarié sur la réussite et la poursuite des études universitaires
BACH L. (PSE) : The effect of dynastic motivations on firm development : Theory and Evidence from France
FRIJTERS P. (Queensland University of Technology) : Groom price and female human capital: some empirical evidence
Co-auteur(s) : A. Sharma
This paper examines the effect of female human capital endowment on the groom price or dowry by using a newly available data set that was created by surveying the middleclass residents of Patna, Bihar. The estimates based on the OLS and 2SLS suggest the existence of positive association between the two variables for the sample under study. The result can be viewed as a positive; albeit, a small step towards settling the issue as to whether or not dowry is an obstacle to female human capital formation. Keywords: Dowry JEL Classifications: J12, J16, O12
RATHELOT R. (CREST) : Wrong origin or wrong neighborhood: Explaining lower labor market perfomance of French individuals of African origin
Monday 15 June 2009 12:30-13:30
CROWE C. (International Monetary Fund) : Irrational Exuberance in the US Housing Market: Were Evangelicals Left Behind?
PRZEWORSKI A. (New York University) : Force, Wealth, and Elections
Some countries, "failed states," are unable to establish any kind of a peaceful order. A few maintain order without holding elections. Many celebrate peaceful elections in which opposition is either not allowed at all or not given a chance to win. Finally, in some countries elections are competitive and peaceful. During most of modern history, civil peace was maintained when one political force consolidated its military power and potential challengers acquiesced to elections in which they had no chance to win: there is nothing new about "electoral authoritarianism." The shadow of violence fades only when people are wealthy enough that they do not want to bear the costs of ?fighting to increase their incomes. The paper analyzes why civil peace is frequently difficult to establish, why most often it emerges under the dominance of one party, and why some rulers allow competitive elections and leave office when they lose.
JEDWAB R. (PSE) : The Political Economy of Roads in Kenya
Co-auteur(s) : R. Burgess, E. Miguel & A. Morjaria
ALGAN Y. (Sciences Po, PSE) : Regulation and Distrust
Co-auteur(s) : P. Aghion, P. Cahuc and A. Shleifer
CHIODI Vera (PSE) : Poverty Traps, Migration and Asset Accumulation in Rural Mexico
CASSAN G. (PSE) : Manipulating one's ethnic identity : the Punjab Alienation of Land Act and the caste system
DE CHAISEMARTIN C. (PSE) : How much are we ready to pay to fight Climate Change. A choice experiment approach
Co-auteur(s) : T. Mahé & J. Jamison
We explore the willingness-to-pay (WTP) to fight climate change in a choice experiment. Since tree planting prevents climate change, subjects are offered to choose between receiving a high amount of money or receiving a lower amount of money plus participating to tree planting action. This allows us to get an individual interval of the WTP to prevent climate change. We also set the experiment to control for framing effects: we measure whether subjects WTP is higher not to prevent a tree planting action (negative framing) than to contribute to it (positive framing). Finally, we measure subjects' individual characteristics like altruism and risk aversion with a questionnaire, to understand the determinants of WTP. The results show that WTP to prevent climate change is high: subjects are ready to give up half their gains to participate to a tree planting action. Women tend to have a higher WTP. We also find that both altruistic and self-interested motives can explain WTP. Surprisingly, their degree of knowledge of climate change related issues do not influence subjects WTP. Finally, when the choice is negatively phrased, WTP increases: subjects are ready to pay more not to make the number of trees planted decrease than to increase it. This suggests that negative eco-labelling might have a greater impact on consumer preferences than positive labels.
CALVET L.E. (HEC Paris) : Portfolio diversification and rebalancing by individual investors
Co-auteur(s) : J. Campbell et P. Sodini
GADENNE L. (PSE) : Foreign influence, trade liberalization and the optimal path of tax transition
BLASCO S. (CREST) : A Structural Model of the Unemployment Insurance Non Take-up
Co-auteur(s) : F. Fontaine
ETILE F. (INRA-ALISS et PSE) : Food Price Policies and the Distribution of Body Mass Index
This paper uses French food-expenditure data to examine the effect of the local prices of 23 food-product categories on the distribution of Body Mass Index (BMI) in a sample of French adults. It is shown that the identification of price effects is in general not granted when individual physical activity is unobserved. However, identification is possible, when body weight is stationary, and the prices are orthogonal to both physical activity and the control variables correlated with the latter. Using quantile regressions, unconditional BMI distributions can then be simulated for various price policies. In the preferred scenario, increasing the price of alcohol, soft drinks, breaded proteins, pastries and desserts, snacks, and ready meals by 10%, and reducing the price of fruit and vegetables in brine by 10% would reduce the prevalence of overweight and obesity by 3.8 and 3.9 percentage points respectively.
SCHMUTZ B. ( GREQAM) : I don't want you as a neighbour: what will the landlord do? A matching model of housing market discrimination with externalities
Co-auteur(s) : P.P. Combes, B. Decreuse & A. Trannoy
BOBBA M. (PSE) : Scaling-up effects in social experiments
The scaling-up process of social programs evaluated under Randomized Control Trials is likely to generate interaction effects among units that would challenge the internal validity of the experimental results. In this paper, we attempt to evaluate the extent to which the potential indirect effects associated with the nation-wide expansion of the Progresa program in Mexico may affect behavioral responses to the policy itself. More specifically, we make use of both the experimental design of the program and variations in the proportion of treated localities across regions in order to identify and estimate average treatment effects at different degrees of within-region treatment intensity. Results show that behavioral responses to the program appear systematically affected by the local geographical density of the treatment.
MOGLIANI M. (PSE) : A Long-run Analysis of the Money Demand in Argentina: 1900-2006
Co-auteur(s) : C. Winograd & G. Urga
GUESNERIE R. (PSE) : Ecological intuition vs economic reason
PARENT Gwenn (PSE) : Is there an "inverse" gender wage gap in Argentina: Evidence from the crisis period
VALDENAIRE M. (PSE) : Are Private Schools More Efficient Than Public Schools? Evidence from France
COULOMBEL N. (LVMT) : Tackling the urban sprawl issue - A Monocentric Analysis of Housing Budget Restrictions, Including and Without Transportation
Considering the last surge in fuel prices, the policy to limit the share of housing expenses in the households' budget, so as to secure their solvency, has been criticized. Supposedly, it induces people to get farther from the city center in search of cheaper housing prices, but with subsequent increased transportation costs that are often disregarded during the house search process. To address this issue, several researchers have advocated to set a constraint on the share of both housing and transportation expenditure. The present paper analyzes and compares the effects of the two policies on the main features of the city and on the households' utility. The analysis is carried out within the classic monocentric model of urban economics. After a general analysis, an applied model is specified to capture the effects of each policy in straightforward formulae. I find that constraining housing expenses may increase the well-being of households. Additionally, both policies prove to be effective in reducing urban sprawl and thereby energy consumption. Thus the choice of the optimal policy will depend on the local authorities' objectives. Keywords: monocentric model, urban economics, housing expenses, transportation expenses, housing policy, location efficient mortgage
BENHABIB J. (New York University) : The distribution of wealth and fiscal policy in economies with finitely lived agents
Co-auteur(s) : A. Bisin
We study the dynamics of the distribution of wealth in an overlapping generation economy with ?finitely lived agents and intergenerational transmission of wealth. Financial markets are incomplete, exposing agents to both labor income and capital income risk. We show that the stationary wealth distribution is a Pareto distribution in the right tail.and that it is capital income risk, rather than labor income, that drives the properties of the right tail of the wealth distribution. We also study analytically the dependence of the distribution of wealth, of wealth inequality in particular, on various ?fiscal policy instruments like capital income taxes and estate taxes. We show that, contrary to Becker and Tomes (1979), capital income and estate taxes can significantly reduce wealth inequality. Finally, we study the effects of different degrees of social mobility on the wealth distribution.
REMPLACE PAR SEMINAIRE DE RECRUTEMENT
CANOVA L. (PSE) : An ex-ante impact evaluation of the implementation of the Revenu de Solidarité Active by microsimulation techniques
Co-auteur(s) : L. Piccoli et A. Spadaro
PONTHIERE G. (PSE) : Optimal tax policy and expected longevity: a mean and variance utility approach
Co-auteur(s) : M.L. Leroux
This paper studies the normative problem of redistribution between agents who can influence their survival probability through private health spending, but who differ in their attitude towards the risks involved in the lotteries of life to be chosen. For that purpose, a two-period model is developed, where agents' preferences on lotteries of life can be represented by a mean and variance utility function allowing, unlike the expected utility form, some sensitivity to what Allais (1953) calls the "dispersion of psychological values". It is shown that if agents ignore the impact of their health spending on the return of their savings, the decentralization of the first-best utilitarian optimum requires intergroup lump-sum transfers and group-specific taxes on health spending. Under asym- metric information, we find that subsidizing health expenditures may be optimal as a way to solve the incentive problem. Keywords: longevity, risk, lotteries of life, non-expected utility theory, moments of utility theory, health spending. JEL codes: D81, H21, I12, I18, J18.
ZUCMAN G. (PSE) : Les hauts patrimoines fuient-ils l'ISF ? Une estimation sur la période 1995-2006
APOUEY B. (PSE) : Winning Big But Feeling No Better? The effect of Lottery Prizes on Physical and Mental Health
Co-auteur(s) : A. Clark
MOSCHION J. (Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne) : Reconciling work and family life: the effect of the French paid parental leave
In France, having more than two children has a causal negative impact on mothers' labour supply. The question addressed in this paper is whether the paid parental leave alter this effect. To address this issue, we focus on a reform that modified the conditions in which labour decisions are taken. In July 1994, the Allocation parentale d'éducation was extended to parents of two children (among which one is less than three years old). We show that after the reform, that is when families of two and more than two children have the same incentive to take a paid parental leave, having more than two children has no longer a negative effect on the participation probability of mothers. In addition, this is particularly true for women having no more than the school-leaving certificate, which happen to be the main recipients of the benefit.
GAUTHIER S. (ENSAE) : The optimal grouping of commodities for indirect taxation
Co-auteur(s) : P. Belan & G. Laroque
Indirect taxes contribute to a sizeable part of government revenues around the world. Typically there are few different tax rates, and the goods are partitioned into classes associated with each rate. The present paper studies how to group the goods in these few classes. We take as given the number of tax rates and study the optimal aggregation (or classification) of commodities of the fiscal authority in a second best setup. The results are illustrated on data from the United Kingdom. Keywords: indirect tax, Ramsey, aggregation. JEL classification numbers: H21, H23
BACH L. (PSE) : What is the effect of additional political mandates on legislators' efforts ? Evidence from France
COMOLA M. (PSE) : Testing Unilateral versus Bilateral Link Formation
Co-auteur(s) : M. Fafchamps
Thursday 6 November 2008 12:30-13:30
FALLY T. (PSE) : Global Sourcing under Imperfect Capital Markets
Co-auteur(s) : J. Carluccio
Tuesday 4 November 2008
The session was canceled.
GALBIATI R. (Université Bocconi) : The deterrent effects of prison: Evidence form a natural experiment
Co-auteur(s) : F. Drago & P. Vertova
In this paper we test for the theory of deterrence. We exploit the natural experiment provided by the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006. As a consequence of the provisions of the bill, expected punishment to former inmates recommitting a crime can be considered as good as randomly assigned. Based on a unique data set on post-release behaviour of former inmates, we find that an additional month in expected sentence reduces the propensity to recommit a crime by 1.24 percent: this corroborates the general deterrence hypothesis. However, this effect depends on the time previously served in prison: the behavioural response to an additional month of expected sentence decreases with the length of the spell in prison. This second result can be hardly reconciled with the specific deterrence hypothesis according to which a stronger past experience of punishment should increase the sensitivity to future expected sanctions.
GRENET J. (PSE) : Le mois de naissance influence-t-il les trajectoires scolaires et professionnelles ? Une évaluation sur données françaises
ALDASHEV G. (University of Namur) : Awareness and AIDS: A Political Economy Model
Co-auteur(s) : J.M. Baland
OUSS A. (ENS) : The Effects of Incarceration Length on Recidivism: a natural experiment approach, using Bastille Day presidential pardons
Co-auteur(s) : E. Maurin
LANDAIS C. (PSE) : The elasticity of taxable income and the optimal taxation of top incomes in France
Co-auteur(s) : P.Y. Cabannes
HUILLERY E. (PSE) : Les colonies ont-elles coûté cher à la France ? L'exemple de l'Afrique Occidentale Française
Mots clefs : colonisation, budgets, Afrique de l'Ouest JEL classification: N10, O16, H50
VALDENAIRE M. (EHESS) : *
GRENET J. (PSE) : Les managers français connaissent-ils leurs entreprises ? Les leçons de l'enquête REPONSE
Co-auteur (s) : P. Askenazy
Dans cet article, nous explorons systématiquement les écueils potentiels liés à l'utilisation des enquêtes sur les pratiques organisationnelles et technologiques des entreprises. Pour cela, nous développons une méthodologie générique pour estimer, sous certaines hypothèses, le niveau de véracité ou de cohérence des déclarations des dirigeants enquêtés, en extrayant l'information issue du rapprochement des réponses de couples ou de triplets de représentants de la direction travaillant dans différents établissements d'une même entreprise. Appliquée à l'enquête française REPONSE pour les aspects généraux de l'entreprise (taille, appartenance à un groupe, structure de l'actionnariat, etc.), notre méthodologie suggère que les dirigeants donnent en général des réponses plutôt cohérentes d'une question prise isolément à une autre et que les réponses sont d'autant plus précises que la question est simple et qu'elle relève du champ de compétences du dirigeant interrogé. On remarque cependant que les réponses aux questions portant sur les relations sociales et la représentation des syndicats dans l'entreprise sont relativement peu fiables et que la prise en compte des erreurs commises par les dirigeants conduit à réviser sensiblement à la fois le niveau et l'évolution d'un certain nombre de variables, telles que le poids des différents syndicats de salariés dans les entreprises. Nos résultats montrent également qu'on ne peut exclure que la subjectivité du répondant oriente les réponses à certaines questions portant sur les pratiques organisationnelles et technologiques : on remarque notamment que les dirigeants classés comme plutôt hostiles aux syndicats déclarent plus souvent la présence simultanée de pratiques et de technologies innovantes que leurs homologues classés comme plutôt favorables aux syndicats. Nous concluons notre étude en suggérant un certain nombre de pistes pour améliorer la fiabilité de ce type d'enquêtes. JEL Classification L23, O33 Mots-clés biais de réponse, clusters managériaux, changement technologique et organisationnel
MARBOT C. (CREST-INSEE) : An Evaluation of the French Tax Reduction for In-Home Services
FOURNIER J. M. (PSE) : Migration, risk and alleviation of vulnerability in rural China
AVVISATI F. (PSE) : Diploma Free-Riders
This paper documents large misclassification errors for employer reports of workers' educational attainment in a French employer-employee survey data set. I show that employers' errors have consequences on workers' wages. Results indicate that those who falsely appear as having a given diploma experience significant wage gains. Causal and non-causal interpretations of these estimates are discussed.
KAMBAYASHI R. (Hitotsubashi University) : Deferred Compensation: Evidence from Employer-Employee Matched Data from Japan
Co-auteur (s) : Kyoji Fukao, Daiji Kawaguchi,Hyeog Ug Kwon, Young Gak Kim, and Izumi Yokoyama
Wage increases, along with job tenure, are one of the most robust empirical regularities found in labor economics. Several theories explain these empirical regularities, and such theories offer sharp empirical predictions for the relation between productivity-tenure and wage-tenure profiles. The human capital model, with cost and benefit sharing between workers and employers, predicts a steeper productivity-tenure profile than wage-tenure profile. The matching quality model predicts that the two profiles will overlap. Theories that involve the information asymmetry between employers and employees predict a steeper wage-tenure profile than productivity-tenure profile to induce workers' effort and enhance efficiency. This paper first estimate the establishment-level production function using the total wage bill as a measure of labor input using employer-employee matched data from Japan. After conditioning on the total wage bill, those establishments with more of aged workers produce less. Then we estimate the productivity-tenure profile and the wage-tenure profile by estimating the plant-level production function and the wage equation. These estimations offer a comprehensive test for the relative applicability of the two theories on the wage-tenure profile. Estimation results indicate a steeper wage-tenure profile than productivity-tenure profile and point to the relative importance of the deferred wage payment contract. Key Words: Wage, Productivity, Employer-Employee Matched Data, Japan JEL Classification Code: J24, J31, J34
ROY D. (PSE) : Obtention d'une place en crèche, retour à l'emploi des mères et perception du développement de l'enfant : premiers résultats d'une enquête à Grenoble
Co-auteur (s) : E. Maurin
CHARNOZ P. (PSE) : Evaluation du dispositif de Zones franches urbaines à partir de l'enquête emploi
CASTANHEIRA M. (Université Libre de Bruxelles) : One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation
Co-auteur (s) : L. Bouton
This paper compares the properties of three electoral systems when voters have imperfect information. Imperfect information blurs voter decisions and may divorce the electoral outcome from the true preferences of the electorate. The challenge for electoral design is therefore to translate the (sometimes contradictory) elements of information dispersed in the electorate into the most efficient aggregate outcome. We propose a novel model of multi-candidate elections in Poisson games, and show that Approval Voting produces a unique equilibrium that is fully efficient: the candidate who wins the election is the one preferred by a majority of the electorate under full information. By contrast, traditional systems such as Plurality and Runoff elections cannot cope satisfactorily with information imperfections. JEL Classification: C72, D72, D81, D82 Keywords: Information Aggregation; Multicandidate Elections; Approval Voting; Poisson Games
OUAZAD A. (PSE) : The White Flight: Strategies of Real Estate Brokers
BOSSUROY T. (PSE) : Ethnicity and election outcomes in Africa: empirical evidence from Ghana
LEQUIEN L. (INSEE) : The impact of parental leave duration on later career
We investigate the existence of causal mechanisms from parental leave duration to subsequent wages. Our instrumental variable is a French reform giving financial incentives to take a parental leave. Two administrative datasets provide us with information on wages and familial background from 1976 to 2005. In our context, panel data estimations potentially suffer from unobserved heterogeneity, endogeneity and selection. We implement an innovative procedure proposed by Semykina and Wooldridge (2005) to take into account these three problems simultaneously. We find that parental leave duration has a significant negative causal impact on later wages. Keywords: Parental leave duration, wages, selection, endogeneity, panel data JEL Classification: C23, J38, J68
MOCCERO D. N. (EHESS) : Foreign Bank Presence and Credit Volatility: The Case of Latin American Countries
Co-auteur (s) : M. Haouat & R. Sosa Navarro
GURGAND M. (PSE) : A large scale experiment: wages and educational expansion in France
JEDWAB R. (PSE) : Household Income and Investments in Child Health and Education in Ivory Coast
Co-auteur (s) : D. Cogneau
We study the drastic cut of the administered cocoa producer price in 1990 Cote d'Ivoire and investigate the extent to which cocoa producers' children suffered from this severe income shock in terms of school enrollment, increased labor, height stature and sickness. Comparing pre-crisis (1985- 88) data and post-crisis (1993) data, we propose a difference-in-difference within-village strategy in order to identify the causal effect of family income on children outcomes. We find a strong impact of family income variation for at least two out of the four variables we examine. JEL classification codes: I21, I12, J13, J22, 012, O15, Q12
RECUERO VIRTO L. (Télécom Paristech - SES) : Cellular demand analysis in South Africa: Urban vs rural patterns of consumption
Co-auteur (s) : F. Gasmi & M. Ivaldi
We analyze demand for prepaid cellular voice and short message service (SMS) in South Africa by means of a demand-and-supply structural model based on a multinomial specification fitted to a cross-sectional data set on Vodacom customers collected in 2005. We find that consumers are very sen- sitive to changes in prices, with higher price elasticities than those typically found in developed countries. Consumers attach a higher value to commu- nications during peak hours but since these are priced highly, they are as much as twice more elastic than off-peak communications. In relative terms, demand for communications during peak hours is more elastic for urban than for rural consumers, while the reverse can be said about demand for off-peak hours. The highest valuations are those placed by rural consumers on work- ing hour communications. A policy implication of our analysis is that while in terms of access cellular deployment in South Africa has gone a long way into bridging the gap between the first and second economies, in terms of usage if market organizations or regulatory institutions were to encour- age further investment in network availability in rural areas this could be rewarding both for the firm and its rural customers. JEL-codes: C31, D12, D40, L96, R00 Key words: Cellular demand, discrete choice model, price elasticity November 2007
STICHNOTH H. (PSE) : Good-bye Lenin on Our Bank Account? Within-Household Allocation in East and West German Couples
FORSE M. (CMH) : Perceptions des inégalités économiques et sentiments de justice sociale
CHARLOT S. (INRA) : The impact of Local Taxation on Property Prices
Co-auteur (s) : S. Paty & M. Visalli
This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of local taxation on property prices in two French urban areas: Dijon and Besançon, using data on property taxation and real estate transactions over the period 1994-2004. Our empirical methodology pairs transactions in the same spatial environment to estimate the impact of property taxation, controlling the local public spending effect. Spatial differencing and IV method allow us to compare sales across municipalities boundaries and to control for the endogeneity of local taxation and public spending. Our estimation results suggest that local property taxation has the expected negative impact on property prices, but not significant. Key words: fiscal capitalisation, local taxation, property prices, borders. JEL classification: H2; R2
Sunday 24 February 2008 12:30-13:30
GREULICH A. (IRES) : Macroeconomic growth and the impact on female labor participation. Does panel data confirm the hypothesis of a Feminization U?
MAYER T. (Univ. de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) : Detection Of Local Interactions From The Spatial Pattern Of Names In France
Co-auteur (s) : K. Head
Using data on the geographic distribution of names in France, we investigate the social transmission of parental preferences. Drawing on recent work on nonmarket interactions, we develop a linear discrete choice model that relates choices made in one location to those made in nearby areas. We explain the shares of parents that give their children Saint, Arabic, and American-type names. We also examine the effect of distance between locations on differences in naming patterns. We find that the importance of geographic distance is declining over time while differences in class and national origins have increasing explanatory power.
ETILE F. (INRA-ALISS) : Social Norms, Ideal Body Weight and Food Attitudes
This paper uses French data on ideal body weight and food attitudes to analyse the role of social norms in the individual's weight control problem. A proxy measure of social norms is calculated by averaging individual perceptions of the ideal body mass index (BMI) over all observations within a reference group. Testing for dfferent definitions of the reference group, we find that individual representations of ideal body shape are differentiated mainly along gender and age lines. Social norms regarding body shape have a significant effect on perceptions of ideal BMI only for those women who want to lose weight, with an elasticity close to 0.5. For many women and for all men, ideal BMI is almost exclusively determined by habitual BMI. Last, ideal BMI predicts a number of attitudes toward food, while social norms do not. These results suggest that promoting medical norms regarding body shape should have little effect on individual food attitudes. JEL codes: C21, D11, D12, I10, Z13. Keywords: obesity, body mass index, ideal weight, social norms, social interactions.
DO Q. A. (Harvard University) : Keeping dictators honest: The role of population
Co-auteur (s) : F. R. Campante
In order to explain the apparently paradoxical presence of acceptable governance in many non-democratic regimes, economists and political scientists have focused mostly on institutions acting as de facto checks and balances. In this paper, we propose that population plays a similar role in guaranteeing the quality of governance and redistribution. We argue and demonstrate with historical evidence that the concentration of population around the policy making center serves as an insurgency threat to a dictatorship, inducing it to yield to more redistribution and better governance. We bring this centered concept of population concentration to the data through the lenses of four natural axioms, prove the existence and uniqueness of its measure, and show its empirical superiority to existing measures. The evidence supports our predictions: only in the sample of autocracies, population concentration around the capital city is positively associated with better governance and more redistribution (proxied by post-tax inequality), in OLS and IV regressions. Finally, we provide arguments to dismiss possible reverse causation as well as alternative, non-political economy explanations of such regularity, discuss the general applicability of our index and conclude with policy implications.
LEDEZMA I. (PSE) : Competition, innovation and distance to frontier
Co-auteur (s) : B. Amable & L. Demmou
LE SEMINAIRE EST ANNULE SUITE A LA PRESENTATION DU NOUVEL OPUSCULE DU CEPREMAP (N°10 : LES PÔLES DE COMPETITIVITE)
HUILLERY E. (PSE) : The long term effect of European settlement within former French West Africa: Did prosperous areas fall behind?
ALEKSYNSKA M. (Universita Luigi Bocconi) : Civic Participation of Immigrants: Culture Transmission and Assimilation
This paper studies culture transmission and assimilation of immigrants in the European Union with respect to civic participation. Culture assimilation is analysed within synthetic cohort methodology and by testing whether civic participation of natives affects immigrants' participation. Culture transmission is studied by testing whether civic participation at the origin matters as well. To account for immigrants' self-selection and to construct relevant reference groups, immigrants are matched to natives and compatriots who did not migrate. There is limited evidence for transmission of civic participation culture, although certain home country characteristics continue influencing participation behaviour of migrants. Instead, culture assimilation takes place. JEL Classification: J61, Z13 Keywords: immigration, civic participation, assimilation, culture transmission, social capital
LETURCQ M. (EHESS) : Le PaCS. La réforme de l'imposition des partenaires de 2005. Analyse des effets aux niveaux national et régional
BEHAGHEL L. (INRA) : Innovation and Skill Upgrading: The Role of External vs Internal Labour Markets
Co-auteur (s) : E. Caroli et E. Walkowiak
CARBONNIER C. (THEMA - Université de Cergy-Pontoise) : Spouse labor supply: fiscal incentive and income effect, evidence from French fully joint income tax system
The aim of the present paper is to measure the labor market participation elasticity with respect to income tax rates. A very complete data base of more than 500 000 observations a year is used. This data base is a large sample of the French income tax returns. The case of spouses is studied by comparing - for very similar couples - the probability of the secondary earner to participate in the labor market depending on the other foyer incomes on the one hand and depending on the tax rate which would apply on the income of this potential work on the other hand. Results find labor market participation elasticity with respect to income tax rate equal to -0.04 and with respect to income equal to -0.30. That for, it is outlined that joint income tax schedules have a negative impact on the secondary earners participation to labor market. As secondary earners are mainly women in France, joint income tax schedules have a negative impact on women participation to the labor market. Moreover, differences are detailed. Different elasticities are measured for the different population categories. Two facts appear, they confirm each other partially. On the one hand, there is a difference between spouses more or less constrained to participate in the labor market. The more constrained ones present elasticities weaker than the less constrained ones. On the other hand, there is a major difference between the capital holders and the others. The capital holders' elasticity with respect to income tax rate is higher than their elasticity with respect to income. The opposite occurred for the other households. Key words: Labor supply; Time allocation; Fiscal incidence. JEL classification: H22; H31; J32.
DE LA RUPELLE M. (PSE) : Social Status, Land Rights and Rural-Urban Migration: the Case of China
KESLAIR F. (London School of Economics and Political Science) : Special Educational Needs : Evaluation d'une politique destinée aux élèves en difficulté en Angleterre
Co-auteur (s) : E. Maurin et S. McNally
KAMINSKI J. (Toulouse School of Economics) : Cotton Reform and Cotton Boost: an Empirical Analysis in Burkina Faso
Co-auteur (s) : A. Thomas
Over the last 10 years, Burkina Faso experienced a reform of its cotton sector, and is now the first African cotton producer and exporter. The cotton boost consisted of a fast expansion of cotton areas through the growth of land shares allocated to cotton (and new producers), together with a global increase in total cultivated land. In this paper, we present an empirical setting to determine the contribution of total farmland changes in the increase of land dedicated to cotton, where both processes are represented by ordered endogenous variables. We apply this setting to the data that we collected in rural Burkina Faso in March 2006. From observed and subjective variables about the evolution of farming systems, we are able to identify both direct and indirect effects of the cotton reform on the extensive growth of cotton seed production: mechanization and technical assistance, labour intensification, enhanced managerial abilities (learning by doing and better environment for farmers), production incentives arising from the new local organizations of producers, guarantees and confidence stemming from the sector and an easier access to agricultural inputs. JEL Codes: N57, 013, O33, Q15, Q18 Keywords: Parastatal, Burkina Faso's cotton, land extension, privatization
DE CURRAIZE Y. (Institut National de la Jeunesse et de l'Education Populaire (INJEP)) : Une expérience naturelle sur l'offre de travail des mères isolées: l'introduction de l'API en 1976
Co-auteur (s) : H. Périvier
BIANCHI M. (PSE) : Financial development, entrepreneurship, and job satisfaction
In this paper, I show both theoretically and empirically that greater ?nancial development increases the job satisfaction of the self-employed, relative to employees. Financial development favors both job cre- ation and matching between talents and occupations. Hence, in more ?nancially-developed countries, individuals choose to become self-employed because of their talent, rather than for a lack of better opportunities. In addition, the e¤ects of ?nancial development are not only mone- tary. Increasing ?nancial development makes the self-employed rela- tively more satis?ed mainly because it allows them to enjoy greater independence in their job. Keywords: Financial development; entrepreneurship; job satisfac- tion. JEL codes: G20, J23, J28.
BAS M. (PSE) : Trade, Technology Adoption and Wage Inequalities
BACH L. (PSE) : Quel est l'impact des transmissions familiales sur la performance des entreprises ? Le cas de la France entre 1997 et 2002
PHILIPPON T. (New York univ.) : Financiers vs. Engineers: Should the Financial Sector be Taxed or Subsidized?
BREDA T. (ENS) : L'effet des syndicats français sur le niveau des salaires
OUAZAD A. (EHESS) : Assessed by a Teacher Like Me: Race, Gender and Subjective Evaluations
Tuesday 17 July 2007 12:30-13:30
BILGEL F. (EHESS) : The Political Economy of Presumed Consent: A Cross-country Analysis of Cadaveric Donation
GUECHEVA M. (PSE) : Experience and Growth
LANDAIS C. (PSE) : Les hauts revenus en France (1998-2006) : Une explosion des inégalités ?
SAFIR A. (EHESS) : Temporary migration and labor supply responses to climatic shocks in rural India
Séance initialement prévue le 05/06/2007
SAUZE D. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Les stratégies de recours par les entreprises des CDD en France : une analyse économétrique sur données d'entreprise (1985-2000)
ANDRE P. (EHESS) : Redoublement et déscolarisations au Sénégal
MAHJOUB M. B. (Univ. de Paris 1) : The Treatment Effect of Grade Repetitions
GROSSMAN J. (Princeton univ.) : The effects of mentoring children in schools
LINNEMAYR S. (PSE) : Reducing Child Malnutrition in Senegal through Community Intervention Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
FACK G. (PSE) : Are Fiscal Incentives towards Charitable Giving Efficient ? Evidence from France
Le lunch séminaire d'économie appliquée est remplacé par la présentation du nouvel opuscule du CEPREMAP de J.P. LAFFARGUE
ZUBER S. (GREMAQ) : Transferts entre générations et équité
Co-auteur (s) : A. Bommier, J. Bourdieu, R. Lee, T. Miller & A. Suwa-Eisenmann
The Welfare State is generally thought to transfer resources from young and future generations to old ones. This opinion is however based on a narrow view of the transfer system that focuses on pensions and elderly care programs. Our paper shows that taking into account downward educational transfers modifies the intergenerational picture. Generations born between 1910 and 1920 who benefitted most of the public pension scheme also paid large educational transfers to their children and grand-children. Younger generations (born between 1990 and 2000) who will pay substantial upward transfers to their parents are going to receive educational transfers of similar size. Ultimately, generations born between 1950 and 1960 are the least favoured but their losses remain low compared to the income growth that educational investments have presumably created. Sensitivity analysis partially changes the magnitude and the timing of transfers but the general picture remains the same: when upward and downward transfers are both included, there is no glaring evidence that younger generations are treated unfairly. Keywords: intergenerational transfers, generational accounts, education, pensions. JEL Classification: H0, H52, H55.
VALDENAIRE M. (PSE) : Pupil Mobility and School Choice. Theory and evidence from England and France
LE GRAND F. (PSE) : Imperfect market and the yield curve
Co-auteurs : E. Challe, X. Ragot
PARENT G. (PSE) : Wage Inequalities Decompositions in Argentina (1999-2003): Analysis by regions, industries, education and gender
AVVISATI F. (ENS) : Job Flows and Worker Flows in France (1996-2005): New Evidence and Micro-Macro Links
In dynamic labour markets the yearly employment growth rate con- ceals massive worker flows in and out of establishments and results from pronounced heterogeneity of behaviour at the establishment-level. We document the magnitude of labour market flows for France, based on an employer-employee data set spanning 10 years from 1996 to 2005. This leads to new results related to the time-series behaviour of our measures. We find that job reallocations are strongly procyclical, and document a marked increase in job instability over the last ten years, related to the rise of employment and instability within the tertiary sector. Finally, we test some hypotheses about how the evolution of aggregate flows over the business cycle results from plant-level behaviour. JEL Classification: J23, J63; D21; E32. Keywords: accessions, separations, job creations, job destructions, em- ployment instability.
BOSSUROY T. (EHESS) : Intergenerational mobility across time in five African countries
Co-auteur (s) : D. Cogneau &V. Hiller
PUHANI P. A. (Leibniz Universität Hannover) : Privatization and changes in the wage structure
Co-auteur (s) : B. Melly
We investigate wage and employment effects using person-level firm based data sets in a privatised and non-privatised public sector firm in the same country. Our observation period covers the years immediately before and after privatisation. Hence we can analyse before-after effects of privatisation controlling for individual and time fixed effects and allowing for firm specific trends. The investigated situation comes very close to a natural experiment for switching workers from the public to the private sector, as the change in the wage regime coincides with substantial losses in market share of the privatised firm but not of the non-privatised firm. We find significant changes in the wage structure in the privatised, but not in the non-privatised firm. The distribution of wages and of wage growth became significantly wider after privatisation. Conditioning on the characteristics of the workers, we find that younger employees and those with shorter tenure had gained from privatisation. There is also evidence that highskilled gained relative to middle-skilled workers. Surprisingly, low-skilled workers also gained; this seems to be a compensation given by the firm in order to increase the acceptance of privatisation. JEL classification: J3, J45, L33 Keywords : privatisation, competition, labor markets, wages, wage distributions
TOUBAL F. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Cultural proximity and trade
Co-auteurs : G. J. Felbermayr
Cultural proximity may influence bilateral imports through a preference and a tradecost channel. In empirical gravity models, conventional measures such as common language or religion fail to separately identify those channels. We use bilateral score data from the Eurovision Song Contest, a huge pan-European television show, to construct a measure of cultural proximity that correlates strongly with conventional indicators. Its statistical properties allow to identify the trade-cost and preference channels. For trade in differentiated goods, we find evidence for both channels, with the former accounting for about 65% of the total effect. There is no preference effect for homogeneous goods. (JEL Codes: F12, F15, Z10. Keywords: International Trade, Gravity Equation, Cultural Proximity, Identification.)
HUILLERY E. (PSE) : Le poids de l'histoire : l'impact des investissements coloniaux sur les trajectoires de développement en Afrique de l'Ouest
To what extend did colonial public investments influence current regional inequalities in French-speaking West Africa? This paper uses the differences in development outcomes across areas of the former French West Africa to show the existence of colonial long term effects on development paths. It innovates in underlying the role of public investments rather than the more general role of institutions. To correct from potential biases, I take carefully into account the districts' geographical and pre-colonial characteristics and use the spatial discontinuities of colonial investments policy to control for potential districts' unobservable characteristics. Results show that colonial investments in education, health and public works are a strong determinant of current development of former French West Africa's districts. They explain 12% of current stunting rate, 32% of current school attendance rate, and around 40% of current electricity, water tap and modern combustible equipment rates. The nature of public investments also matters: each type of current performance has been more specifically determined by the corresponding colonial investments. Colonial public policies had thus very persistent effects and played a strong spatial discriminating role.
Séance remplacée par la présentation du nouvel ouvrage du CEPREMAP
COMOLA M. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : Network Structure in Risk Sharing Arrangements: Evidence from Rural Tanzania
Rural households in developing countries manage their exposure to risk and stabilize consumption through informal insurance arrangements. This paper approaches risk-sharing arrangements from a network perspective, investigating how risk-sharing networks are formed. When agents form a new link they also gain access to the larger network of partner's friends and friends of these friends. I test the hypothesis that agents not only take into account the wealth of their direct partners, but also consider the benefits they would get from the net of indirect contacts. A network formation model with full heterogeneity among agents is first presented, following Jackson and Wolinsky (1996), an estimation procedure is then proposed and applied to data on rural Tanzania. Results show that agents take into account not only potential partners' characteristics, but also their social connections. This suggests that risk sharing partners are not short-sighted, but actually consider the net advantage of potential links, evaluating also indirect benefits deriving from changes in their relative position with respect to all other agents. This paper contributes to both network theory and literature on risk sharing, in that it proposes an innovative procedure to estimate endogenous network formation models, and also provides evidence that indirect contacts have an explanatory value disregarded by all previous studies which are focused on direct relations only.
LECHEVALIER S. (EHESS) : Collaborative R&D in the robot technology in Japan : an inquiry based on patent data analysis (1991-2004)
Co-auteur(s) : Y. IKEDA & J. NISHIMURA
AUBIER M. (PSE) : Could workplace accidents foster employment? The incentive role of the tarification of workers' compensation
FALLY T. (PSE) : Credit Constraints as a Barrier to the Entry and Post-Entry Growth of Firms: Lessons from Firm-Level Cross Country Panel Data
Co-auteur (s) : P. Aghion et S. Scarpetta
LEUVEN E. (CREST) : *
OUAZAD A. (PSE) : What Makes a Grade ? Respective Contributions of Pupils, Peers and Schools in Achievement
BACH L. (PSE) : Optimal savings' tax credits with credit constraints: theory and evidence
COGNEAU D. (DIAL) : L'Afrique des Inégalités : où conduit l'histoire
La discussion sera introduite par J. F. BAYART (Directeur de recherche CNRS/CERI)
DOBBELAERE S. (Ghent univ.) : Cross-sectional heterogeneity in production function coefficients and market imperfections
Co-auteurs : J. Mairesse
HAAN P. (German institute for economic research) : Optimal income taxation of lone mothers: an empirical comparison for Britain and Germany
Co-auteurs : R. Blundell, M. Brewer and A. Shephard
CARBONNIER C. (PSE) : Décentralisation, agglomération de communes et concurrence fiscale locale, illustrations théoriques
D'AUTUME A. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Comment imposer le capital ?
MURTIN F. (PSE) : American Economic Development Since the Civil War
CARBONNIER C. (PSE) : La concurrence fiscale au niveau local, influence des facteurs publics de production, France 2002-2004
SOMMEILLER E. (Univ. de Lyon 2) : Regional Income Inequalities in the United States, 1913-2003
CORCOS G. (PSE) : Productivity and Firm Selection: Intra-National vs Inter-National Trade
Co-auteur(s) : M. del Gatto, G. Mion et G. Ottaviano
STICHNOTH H. (PSE) : Immigration and Attitudes Towards the Social Security System: Evidence from Germany
FACK G. (PSE) : Do better schools raise housing prices? Evidence from Paris school zoning
KHARROUBI E. (Banque de France) : Labor Market Flexibility and Growth
GABLER A. (European university institute) : Is One Shock Enough? The Relative Price of Investment in the Short Run
FORSE M. (CNRS) : La ségrégation urbaine selon Schelling
Co-auteur : M. Parodi
BAS M. (PSE) : The impact of trade reform and the patterns of export specialization
Co-auteur(s) : Y. Ledezma
ALGAN Y. (PSE) : Monetary policy with heterogeneous agent models and credit constraints
Co-auteur(s) : X. Ragot
BOULHOL H. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Do capital market and trade liberalization trigger labor market deregulation?
NEFUSSI B. (EHESS) : An assessment of the export vs FDI trade off
HOMBERT J. (PSE) : Upstream-Downstream Competition with Integrated Firms and the Emergence of Competitive Intermediate Markets
Co-auteur(s) : M. Bourreau, J. Pouyet & N. Schutz
Tuesday 4 April 2006
DEMMOU L. (Univ. de Rotterdam) : Sector Specializations, Nonhomothetic demand and Welfare
Co-auteur(s) :
SRAER D. (INSEE) : Bottom up Corporate Governance
TRESSEL T. (International monetary fund) : Foreign Banks in Poor Countries: Theory and Evidence
Co-auteur(s) : E. Detragiache & P. Gupta
MOCCERO D. (ENS) : Argentina's exports to Brazil and to the rest of the world: which impact of real exchange rate volatility?
RANCIERE R. (Univ. Pompeu Fabra) : Exchange Rate Volatility and Productivity Growth: The Role of Financial Development
Co-auteur(s) : P. Aghion, P.Bacchetta & K. Rogoff
FALL F. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Distribution du Capital Humain, R et D, et croissance dans les pays développés
Co-auteur(s) : J. L. Esso
LE GRAND F. (PSE) : Nelson and Siegel, no-arbitrage and risk premium
JARA MORONI P. (PSE) : Strategic Complementarity, Heterogeneity and Eductive Stability
JACQUEMET N. (Univ. de Lyon 2) : The Reliability of the Bertrand Curse: An Experimental Investigation of Leniency Programs for Underground Work
ALVAREDO F. (PSE) : Income and Wealth Concentration in Spain in Historical Perspective
Co-auteur(s) : E. Saez
KOENIG P. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Immigration and the Export Decision to the Home Country
MACCHIAVELLO R. (London school of economics and political science) : Contractual Imperfections, Credit Markets and Vertical Integration: Theory and Evidence
BOZIO A. (EHESS) : Le chômage et les retraites en France: 30 ans de politique malthusienne
PROST C. (EHESS) : Teachers' Training, Class Size and Students' Outcomes: Evidence from Third Grade Classes in France
Co-auteur(s) : P. Bressoux & F. Kramarz
BACH L. (PSE) : Dans quelle mesure les entreprises françaises font-elles face à des contraintes de crédit ?
DONNI O. (Univ. de Cergy-Pontoise) : Targeting Rotten Kids
Co-auteur(s) : O. Bargain
DUPAS P. (EHESS) : Perceived Health Risk, Peer Effects and the Choice of Sexual Partners: Evidence from Kenya
MARZO F. : HIV/AIDS indigenous transfers and public food aid: impacts and implications
Co-auteur(s) : F. Murtin
AZMAT G. : The Incidence of an Earned Income Tax Credit: Evaluating the Impact on Wages in the UK
VIDA P. (PSE) : A Detail-free Mediator
CORCOS G. (ENS) : Public policy towards FDI with an endogenous choice between acquisition and greenfield investment
OLIVIER A. (ENS) : Evaluation de l'impact sur les ménages de la hausse du tarif de l'eau à Manaus (Brésil)
LAURENT R. (ENS) : Un modèle de duopole avec elimination by aspects
MURTIN F. (PSE) : The World Distribution of Human Capital, 1870-2000
Co-auteur(s) : C. Morrisson
COEURDACIER N. (ENS) : Do trade costs in goods markets lead to home bias in equities ?
HUILLERY E. (PSE) : Institutions coloniales et inégalités régionales dans les pays d'Afrique de l'Ouest
ESPANOL P. : Contrainte financière, investissement et structure productive : une étude de cas sur des firmes argentines
ALGAN Y. (Univ. de Paris 1) : The Roots of Low European Employment : Familiy Culture ?
Co-auteur(s) : P. Cahuc
HENRY E. : Disclosure of research results
DE ROSA D. : Natural Resources and Institutional Quality: Evidence from Russia
VALDENAIRE M. : Les enfants plus grands ont-ils moins besoin de classes plus petites ? Estimation de l'impact des tailles de classes sur la réussite scolaire dans les écoles primaires, les collèges et les lycées
LINNEMAYR S. : Consumption smoothing and HIV/AIDS : evidence from South Africa
Co-auteur(s) : S. Freire
MARTIN P. (Univ. de Paris 1) : Make Trade, not War?
Co-auteur(s) : T. Mayer et M. Thoenig
TURNER L. : Individual Differences in Scientific Research Productivity: How important are Institutional and Individual Determinants? An Econometric study of French CNRS Physicists' publications and citations (1980-1997)
Co-auteur(s) : J. Mairesse
POUGET J. : Who wants to be a « fonctionnaire » ? The effects of individual wage differentials and unemployment probabilities on the queues for public sector jobs
Co-auteur(s) : D. Fougère
GEOFFARD P.Y. : Assurance-maladie : séparation des effets de sélection et d'incitation
MAURIN E. : Vive la révolution ! Long term return of 1968 to the angry students
Co-auteur(s) : S. Mc Nally
RAGOT X. : Equivalence ricardienne et neutralité de l'inflation
COEURDACIER N. (ENS) : International equity holdings and stock returns correlation : a paradox and its resolution
Co-auteur(s) : S. Guibaud
STASAVAGE D. (LSE) : Religion and preferences for social insurance
Co-auteur(s) : K. Scheve
MURTIN F. (PSE) : Computing the ability bias of the college premium: an application of linear mixed models with regime switching
DEFEVER F. : Functional Specialization and the Location of Multinational Firms in the Enlarged Europe
JOLIVET G. : Job-to-Job Mobility and Compensating Differentials
Co-auteur(s) : S. Bonhomme
CORCOS G. (ENS) : Globalisation, Vertical Linkages and 'Relational Contracts
DE ROSA D. : Firm Characteristics and External Conditions : Explaining Russian Manufacturing Export
STANCANELLI E. : Evaluating the impact of the French tax credit programme "Prime pour l'emploi": a difference-in-difference model
BOULHOL H. : Pro-competitive policies and convergence of markups
FALL F. : Endogenous Persistent Inequality when Markets are Perfect
COUPET M. : Revisiting the Dornbush's overshooting with a constrained structural VECM approach
DELL F. (PSE) : Wealth Mobility and Wealth Taxation - Evidence from French Panel Data
Co-auteur(s) : D. Echevin
DUMAS C. (PSE) : Mobilité scolaire au Sénégal
STECLEBOUT E. (PSE) : Pourquoi est-il si difficile de réformer le Pacte de stabilité et de croissance ?
JAKUBOWICZ M. (PSE) : Retraite universelle et travail des jeunes. Le cas du Brésil rural
ALDASHEV G. (PSE) : Voter turnout and political rents: theory and evidence
DIRER A. (PSE) : Lottery Game Design and Preference under Risk
DUBEY P. (PSE) : Grading Exams : 100, 99,...., 1 or A, B, C ? Incentives in Games of Status
CARBONNIER C. (PSE) : Qui paie la TVA? Existence d'un hystérésis dans l'ajustement des prix aux variations de TVA en France, 1990-2000
DOBROTKOVA Z. : Stable matchings in an economy with strong and weak agents
DESBONNET A. (EUREqua) : Inégalités de patrimoine et progressivité de l'impôt
Co-auteur(s) : J.O. Hairault
BOZIO A. (PSE) : Quel est l'impact de l'augmentation de la durée de cotisation lors de la réforme des retraites de 1993 ?
NATICCHIONI P. (PSE) : Volatility, higher education and inequality in Latin America. Micro and macro evidence from Argentina and Brazil
Co-auteur(s) : D. Panigo
BARGAIN O. (PSE) : In-work policies in Europe : killing two birds with one stone
HAUTCOEUR P.C. (DELTA) : The Paris Bourse in the interwar period : a tale of various indices
Co-auteur(s) : M. Petit
DELL F. : Pourquoi les hauts revenus sont-ils plus concentrés en Allemagne qu'en France ?
BEGORRE BRET M. (DELTA) : Education Investment and Globalization in a Heterogenous Population
RUSSO G. : Voting on mass immigration restriction
Co-auteur : Francisco Magris
XENOGIANI T. : Demand for education and labour market outcomes: lessons from the abolition of compulsory conscription in France
LOISEL O. : Simulation of the UK Business Cycle Under EMU Membership
BEHAGHEL L. : Les effets de la contribution Delalande sur le chômage des travailleurs âgés: évaluation dans un modèle d'appariement
KESZTENBAUM L. (INRA-LEA) : Comportement d'accumulation et mobilité de cycle de vie en France, 1870-1940
GUIBAUD S. : International Risk Sharing, Financiel Integration and Trade
GRENET J. : Suffit-il d'allonger la scolarité obligatoire pour augmenter les salaires ? Le cas de la réforme Berthoin (1959-1967)
KALANTZIS Y. (DELTA) : Modele de crise financière dans un régime de croissance soutenu par l'endettement externe
AVIAT A. (DELTA) : En quoi les flux d'actifs suivent-ils un modèle de gravité ?
Co-auteur(s) : N. Coeurdacier
MASSON A. (DELTA) : Préférences face au risque et à l'avenir: types d'épargnants
Co-auteur(s) : L. Arrondel et D. Verger
NOUVEAU C. : Non-emploi régional et transitions sur le marché du travail
R2-01 Jourdan
Accounting for Business Income in Measuring Top Income Shares: Integrated Accrual Approach Using Individual and Firm Data from Norway
PSE Publications
ERC-European Research Council
INET-Institute for New Economic Thinking
ESRC-Economic and Social Research Council
ANR-Agence Nationale de la Recherche
EIB-European Investment Bank, STAREBEI
Data production and diffusion
IPP tax and benefit tables
D-FIH - Data for Financial History
NGO campaign data
The World Inequality Database
PSE Research Centers
Center for Economic and Social History François Simiand
The Institut des politiques publiques (IPP)
J-PAL Europe - The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
The World Inequality Lab - WIL