Calendrier du 16 décembre 2020
Paris Migration Seminar
Du 16/12/2020 de 17:30 à 18:20
STANTCHEVA Stefanie (Harvard University)
Immigration and redistribution
écrit avec Alberto Alesina and Armando Miano
We design and conduct large-scale surveys and experiments in six countries to investigate how natives perceive immigrants and how these perceptions influence their preferences for redistribution. We find strikingly large misperceptions about the number and characteristics of immigrants: in all countries, respondents greatly overestimate the total number of immigrants, think immigrants are culturally and religiously more distant from them, and are economically weaker -- less educated, more unemployed, and more reliant on and favored by government transfers -- than is the case. Given the very negative baseline views that respondents have of immigrants, simply making them think about immigration before asking questions about redistribution, in a randomized manner, makes them support less redistribution, including actual donations to charities. Information about the true shares and origins of immigrants is ineffective, and mainly acts as a prime that makes people think about immigrants and reduces their support for redistribution. An anecdote about a "hard working'' immigrant is somewhat more effective, suggesting that when it comes to immigration, salience and narratives shape people's views more deeply than hard facts.
Texte intégral
Development Economics Seminar
Du 16/12/2020 de 16:30 à 18:00
via ZOOM
TAPSOBA Augustin (Toulouse School of Economics)
The Power of Markets: Impact of Desert Locust Invasions on Child Health
This paper investigates the consequences of a locust plague that occurred in Mali in 2004. We provide evidence of substantial crop market effects that explain the space-time pattern of the estimated impact of this plague. We argue first that the plague has affected households in Mali through two channels: first, a speculative price effect that kicked in during the plague itself, followed by a local crop failure effect. We find that, in terms of health setbacks, children exposed in utero only to the speculative price effect suffered as much as those exposed to the actual crop failure effect. Once we account for the impact on local crop prices, the estimated speculative effect vanishes, whereas the crop failure effect persists. Children born in isolated areas suffer more from the crop failure effect. Our results suggest that addressing local market reactions to this type of agricultural shocks is crucial for policy design.
Economic History Seminar
Du 16/12/2020 de 12:30 à 14:00
via ZOOM
ANDREESCU Marie(PSE)
SANTINI Paolo()
Do unions have egalitarian wage policies for their own employees? Evidence from the US 1959-2016
While labor unions bargain for more equality among their members and in the general society, little is known about their own compensation practices. Using administrative earnings data on U.S. labor unions over the period 1959-2016, we show that unions do “as they preach”. They pay wages that are on average 30% higher than in comparable U.S. private firms, but much more equally distributed: Gini coefficients are 20% smaller among unions and the share of total earnings accruing to the top 1% of wage earners is twice smaller. We show, moreover, that inequality has remained roughly stable in the past 60 years, contrary to what happened in the rest of the economy. We argue that such a low level of inequality, especially at the top, is puzzling because union leaders do have some margin to set their own pay due to the absence of a strong control mechanism on the pay-setting in such non-profit organizations. We confront two possible explanations to explain our findings: On one hand, unions are constrained to pay low salaries by market forces, on the other hand, union are unwilling to pay higher salaries to their leaders because of ideology and reputation concerns. We test these two alternative explanations in several ways landing strong support for the second view. In addition to helping understand the pay practices in the labor movement and the non-profit sector in general, these findings shed new light on how pay norms and ideology can affect real pay, even in a declining sector where firms have strong incentives to perform well in order to survive.
Histoire des entreprises et de la finance
Du 16/12/2020 de 10:30 à 12:00
Via Zoom
BUELENS Frans (University of Antwerp)
The Belgian Railways: financing, investors and performances