Calendrier du 06 avril 2022
Development Economics Seminar
Du 06/04/2022 de 16:30 à 17:45
Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan
SINGH Abhijeet (PSE)
The incidence of affirmative action: Evidence from quotas in private schools in India
écrit avec with Mauricio Romero
This paper studies the effects of India’s main school-integration policy — a 25% quota in
private schools for disadvantaged students, whose fees are reimbursed by the state — on direct
beneficiaries. Combining survey and administrative data from the state of Chhattisgarh, with
lottery-based allocation of seats in oversubscribed schools, we show that receiving a quota seat
makes students more likely to attend a private school (by 24 percentage points). However, within
eligible caste groups, quota applicants are drawn disproportionately from more-educated and
economically better-off households and over three-quarters of the applicants who were not allotted
a quota seat also attended a private school as fee-paying students. Consequently, we estimate
that 70% of the total expenditure on each quota seat is inframarginal to school choice. The
policy delivers clear gains for direct beneficiaries but is unlikely to affect school integration without
broadening the pool of applicants.
Economic History Seminar
Du 06/04/2022 de 12:00 à 13:30
Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan
VALEONTI Sofia (MSE)
The Money War: An Interpretation of Democracy, Depreciation, and Taxes in the U.S. Civil War
écrit avec with Ariel Ron (Southern Methodist University)
Both sides in the U.S. Civil War financed military spending by issuing new fiat currencies. The Union “greenback” underwent moderate inflation (by wartime standards), but the Confederate “grayback” suffered hyperinflation. Existing explanations for these price movements typically treat only one of the two cases and adopt either a quantity-theory or rational-expectations approach. We compare Union and Confederate policies directly and highlight the importance of taxation for assuring the value of inconvertible money. Combining monetary and fiscal history literatures, we find that tax policies were determined by long-term development of democratic governing institutions. Higher levels of democracy in the North, as compared to the slaveholding South, meant greater tax policy legitimacy and administrative competence. The Union drew on this legacy to back its money effectively, while the Confederacy failed to do so. We contribute to the theory of chartalist money by drawing attention to the political determinants of effective fiscal policy.
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