Calendrier du mois de décembre 2018
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 21/12/2018 de 12:45 à 13:45
R2.01, campus Jourdan
() *;
La séance est annulée
brown bag Travail et Économie Publique
Du 20/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
JANNIN Nicolas (Paris School of Economics)
Behavioral responses to local public spending: theory and evidence from French cities
écrit avec Co-author: Aurélie Sotura
This paper revisits the local public good provision debate in a quantitative spatial equilibrium framework. We develop a model in which households are imperfectly mobile across cities that differ in their endogenous wages, rents, local public goods and taxes. Importantly, we allow for three kinds of externalities: public good spillovers (i.e. households enjoy public goods of neighbouring cities), fiscal agglomeration effects (when public goods are not fully rival, bigger cities offer more public good benefits for less taxes) and congestion effects (mobile households congest the public goods of neighbouring cities). Knowing their magnitude is crucial for measuring the inefficiency cost of fiscal decentralization and for designing optimal spatial policies. Our model identifies the key structural parameters behind these externalities and estimates them with GMM using several administrative datasets on French cities. We rely on a new identification strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous variation in investment subsidies to instrument for local public good supply. We notably find significant evidence of spillovers.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 20/12/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
COMBE Julien (UCL)
The Design of Teacher Assignment: Theory and Evidence
écrit avec Olivier Tercieux (CNRS & PSE) and Camille Terrier (HEC Lausanne)
The reassignment of teachers to schools is a central issue in education policies. In several countries, this assignment is managed by a central administration that faces a key constraint: ensuring that teachers obtain an assignment that they weakly prefer to their current position. To satisfy this constraint a variation on the Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism of Gale and Shapley (1962) has been proposed in the literature and used in practice---for example, in the assignment of French teachers to schools. We show that this mechanism fails to be efficient in a strong sense: we can reassign teachers in a way that i) makes them better-off and ii) better fulfills the administration's objectives represented by the priority rankings of the schools. To address this weakness, we characterize the class of mechanisms that do not suffer from this efficiency loss and elicit a set of strategy-proof mechanisms within this class. To empirically assess the extent of potential gains associated with the adoption of our mechanisms, we use a rich dataset on teachers' applications for transfers in France. These empirical results confirm both the poor performance of the modified DA mechanism and the significant improvements that our alternative mechanisms deliver in terms of teachers' mobility and administration's objectives.
Texte intégral
Behavior seminar
Du 20/12/2018 de 11:00 à 12:00
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
TOUSSAERT Séverine (LSE London School)
Revealing temptation through menu choice: Evidence from a weight loss challenge
In the context of a weight loss challenge, I use the menu choice approach of Gul and Pesendorfer (2001) to provide new insights on the link between commitment and temptation. First, I study commitment to eating healthy by eliciting participants’ preferences over a set of lunch reimbursement options, which differed in their food coverage. Extracting information from the entire ordering, I develop measures of temptation to study its source, strength and structure, and validate those measures with survey data. Finally, I test whether temptation revealed through menu choice can predict other behaviors that could be symptomatic of self-control problems, such as take-up of, and performance on, a goal setting contract. In this rich environment, I find a tight link between commitment and temptation. First, nearly 50% of participants strictly preferred a coverage that excluded the foods they rated as most tempting and unhealthy. Second, those who revealed their temptation through menu choice were more likely to take up the contract and less likely to achieve their goals. The elicitation of menu preferences thus offers a promising venue for measuring self-control problems.
Behavior Working Group
Du 20/12/2018 de 10:00 à 10:45
Jourdan, R1-11
JACQUEL Pierre (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, CES)
The impact of overconfidence on information cascade: A new experimental approach
Economic History Seminar
Du 19/12/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R1.09 Campus Jourdan - 48 Boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris
DELALANDE Nicolas (Sciences Po)
La lutte et l'entraide. Les solidarités ouvrières face à la mondialisation du capital (1864-1914)
La mondialisation du XIXe siècle a donné naissance à des formes inédites et multiples de solidarités internationales. Les ouvriers n’étaient pas les seuls à vouloir s’aider par-delà les frontières : les philanthropes, les missionnaires, les exilés politiques cherchaient aussi à établir des relations à longue distance pour porter secours à d’autres. Le projet internationaliste ouvrier, apparu au cours des années 1860, avait cependant de fortes spécificités. Il visait à rassembler les travailleurs, quels que soient leur pays, leur langue ou leur culture, pour les unir dans un même combat, tourné contre la mondialisation du capital et la domination des États bourgeois. Le but initial n’était pas de prendre le pouvoir ou de limiter les circulations, plutôt de proposer une solidarité internationale alternative. Ce projet s’inspirait d’une conception horizontale des liens économiques et sociaux, dans l’espoir que le partage et la circulation des richesses ouvrières puissent profiter à tous, plutôt que d’entretenir les concurrences et les rivalités. Le diagnostic posé par Marx et par les fondateurs de la Première Internationale était sans appel : sans solidarité universelle, les ouvriers seraient toujours les grands perdants de la mondialisation, participant, par leurs luttes sectorielles et leurs revendications particularistes, à leur propre asservissement.
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 18/12/2018 de 14:45 à 16:15
Sciences Po, 28 rue des Saints-Pères 75007 Paris, 4ème étage, salle H 401
YOTOV Yoto (Drexel)
The Effectiveness of Sanctions: New Evidence Based on Structural Gravity and a New Database
écrit avec G. Felbermayr, C. Syropoulos, E. Yalcin
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 18/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LE PENNEC Caroline (HEC Montréal)
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.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 17/12/2018 de 17:00 à 18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
PESKI Marcin (University of Toronto)
Bargaining with Incomplete Information about Preferences
We study a war-of-attrition bargaining over a pie with heterogeneous parts, where players have incomplete information over their opponent preferences as well as behavioral types. Before the war of attrition, players choose their bargaining demands. If the preference uncertainty has a full support and players demands are simple offers, then, in equilibrium, players divide each part of the pie equally. Next, we consider the case when each player may demand that the opponent chooses from a menu of allocations. In the on-sided incomplete information case, the player with known preferences proposes a menu of all allocations that give her at least a half of the value of the whole pie; such a menu is accepted. Finally, we show that the war of attrition game with two sided incomplete information may have multiple equilibria.
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 14/12/2018 de 12:45 à 13:45
Salle R2.01, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
LUKSIC Juan Diego (PSE)
Impact of South-South migration on the Chilean school system
EPCI (Economie politique du changement institutionnel) Seminar
Du 14/12/2018 de 11:00 à 12:30
Salle S115/ MSE Paris 106-112 Bd de l'Hôpital 75013 Paris
M. RANALDI Marco (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, City University of New York)
Distributional Aspects of Economic Systems
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 13/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:45
BOUGUEN Adrien (Berkeley)
Heterogeneous Preschool Impact and Close Substitutes: Evidence from a Preschool Construction Program in Cambodia
écrit avec Co-author: Jan Berkes
We study the impact of preschools and the issue of close substitutes in a Cambodian
context where newly built formalized preschools are competing with
existing alternative early childcare arrangements. In addition to estimating
the reduced-form impact of a vast preschool construction program using a
random assignment, we implement several empirical techniques to isolate the
impact on children who would have stayed at home if they had not been enrolled
in the newly built preschools. We argue that this parameter is both
critical for the preschool literature and, because it does not depend on the
quality of alternative preschool, is often more externally valid than standard
treatment parameters. Our results show that after one year of experiment, the
average Intention-To-Treat impact on cognitive and socioemotional development
measures is significant but small in magnitude (0.05 SD). Our analysis,
however, suggests that the impact on the children who would have stayed at
home will likely be high and significant, between 0.13 SD and 0.45 SD. In a
context where infrastructures are improving in low-income countries, our analysis
suggests that accounting for close substitutes is crucial to produce more
external valid statements on programs’ performance and make appropriate
policy recommendations.
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 13/12/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
salle R2-01 campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
PONS Vincent (Harvard)
Rankings Matter Even When They Shouldn’t: Bandwagon Effect in Two Round Elections
écrit avec Clémence Tricaud
To predict others’ behavior and make their own choices, voters and candidates can rely on information provided by polls and past election results. We isolate the impact of candidates’ rankings using an RDD in French local and parliamentary two-round elections, where up to 3 or 4 candidates can qualify for the second round. Candidates who barely ranked first in the first round are more likely to run in the second round (5.6pp), win (5.8pp), and win conditionally on running (2.9 to 5.9pp), than those who barely ranked second. The effects are even larger for ranking second instead of third (23.5, 9.9, and 6.9 to 12.2pp), and ranking third instead of fourth also increases candidates’ second round outcomes (14.6, 2.2, and 3.0 to 5.0pp). These results are largest when the candidates have the same political orientation (making coordination relatively more important and desirable), but they remain strong when two candidates only qualify for the second round (and there is no need for coordination), suggesting that bandwagon effect is an important driver of voter behavior and election outcomes.
Behavior seminar
Du 13/12/2018 de 11:00 à 12:00
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
SUGDEN Robert (University of East Anglia UK)
Are violations of rational-choice theory errors that reasoning can correct? A re-examination of Savage’s response to the Allais Paradox
écrit avec Franz Dietrich and Antonios Staras
Decision theory, as used in economics, is based on axioms that are usually interpreted as principles of rationality. When decision theory is used to explain actual behaviour, the usual justification is that, in the situations to which the theory is applied, individuals can be expected to reason correctly. Thus, there is an implicit assumption that if an individual reasons correctly, his preferences will satisfy the rationality axioms. The same assumption often appears in behavioural economics, as the claim that observed deviations from standard decision theory are the result of ‘errors’ and that the satisfaction of individuals’ ‘true’ (i.e. error-free) preferences can be used as a normative criterion. But very little effort has been made to explain what correct reasoning is, or how it leads to the satisfaction of rationality axioms. A few writers have expressed scepticism about whether any process that might plausibly be called ‘correct reasoning’ can achieve this (e.g. Broome, Rationality through Reasoning, 2013; Cubitt and Sugden, Economics and Philosophy, 2014; Infante, Lecouteux and Sugden, Journal of Economic Methodology, 2016). Broome argues specifically that one cannot achieve rationality by ‘second-order’ reasoning from the premise that one’s preferences ought to satisfy rationality properties.
In this paper, I re-examine the famous case of Savage’s (1954) response to the Allais Paradox. Savage is the creator of the canonical axiomatisation of rational choice theory, and is explicit that his axioms are axioms of rationality, analogous with principles of logic. But when confronted with Allais’s decision problems, he discovered that his preferences contravened his own axioms. His response was to persuade himself that his original preferences were erroneous. I analyse the process of reasoning by which he reached this conclusion. I argue that Savage’s reasoning is first-order in Broome’s sense, and so not vulnerable to Broome’s objection, but that it draws on his own mental states in a way that goes beyond formally ‘correct’ reasoning. My conclusion is that Savage’s own position is coherent and defensible, but on the issue of whether rationality can be achieved by reasoning, the sceptics are right.
Development Economics Seminar
Du 12/12/2018 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
NIEHAUS Paul (University of California San Diego)
Authentication and targeted transfers: experimental evidence from India
In developing countries, the state often has limited capacity to effectively target transfers. We examine the effects of enhanced authentication technology on the performance of India's largest targeted transfer scheme, the Public Distribution System. We conduct an experiment at scale with the state government of Jharkhand, randomizing the rollout of "Aadhaar"-based biometric authentication. On its own, this reform had little effect on corruption or on average beneficiary access to transfers while slightly increasing transaction costs. When paired with new protocols for reconciling supply chain balances using data from authenticated transactions, however, it significantly reduced both corruption and beneficiary access (and was swiftly suspended). Contrasted with results from (our own) earlier work, these findings highlight the importance of “construct validity” and of political economy when extrapolating from past program evaluations to predict the effects of future reforms.
Economic History Seminar
Du 12/12/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
JO Yoon (TAMU)
The impact of the redistribution of Church land during the Revolution on 19th c. agricultural investments and output
This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property
that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction
costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental
institutional reform. French districts with a greater proportion of land redistributed
during the Revolution experienced higher levels of agricultural productivity in 1841
and 1852 as well as more investment in irrigation and more efficient land use. We
trace these increases in productivity to an increase in land inequality associated with
the Revolutionary auction process. We also show how the benefits associated with
the head-start given to districts with more Church land initially, and thus greater
land redistribution by auction during the Revolution, dissipated over the course of the
nineteenth century as other districts gradually overcame the transaction costs associated
with reallocating the property rights associated with the feudal system.
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 11/12/2018 de 17:00 à 18:00
FAJEAU Maxime ()
Non-linearities in finance-growth nexus
Du 11/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
écrit avec B. Garbinti, F.Savignac
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 11/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
YANG Li (ZEW Mannheim and WIL)
Robin Hood or Crony Capitalism? Income inequality trend in Malaysia (1984-2014) under long standing affirmative action program
écrit avec 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.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 10/12/2018 de 17:00 à 18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SANNIKOV Yully (Stanford Graduate School of Business)
Dynamic Trading: Price Inertia and Front-Running
écrit avec Andy Skrzypacz
We build a linear-quadratic model to analyze trading in a market with private information and heterogeneous agents. Agents receive private taste/inventory shocks and trade continuously. Agents differ in their need for trade as well as the cost to hold excessive inventory. In equilibrium, trade is gradual. Trading speed depends on the number and market power of participants, and trade among large market participants is slower than that among small ones. Price has momentum due to the actions of large traders: it drifts down if the sellers have greater market power than buyers, and vice versa. The model can also answer welfare questions, for example about the social costs and benefits of market consolidation. It can also be extended to allow private information about common value.
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 10/12/2018 de 12:00 à 13:00
PSE, campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan - 75014 Paris, salle R1-13
TAYLOR Scott (University of Calgary)
Is Free Trade Good for Resources (Labellisé par les Assises de la recherche de l'Université Paris 1)
écrit avec Jevan Cherniwchan (Alberta Business School)
This paper develops a simple and tractable model of international trade and renewable resource use to facilitate an empirical assessment of international trade's impact on natural resource stocks. We do so by generalizing earlier theoretical work, within a small open economy framework, to derive a simple estimating equation linking changes in resource stocks to country characteristics and trade barriers. An empirical application studying deforestation in Indonesia is presented to provide a proof of principle test for the new method.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 10/12/2018 de 12:00 à 13:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
TAYLOR Scott (University of Calgary)
Is Free Trade Good for Resources - Labellisé par les Assises de la recherche de l'Université Paris 1
Paris Migration Seminar
Du 10/12/2018 de 09:00 à 17:30
46, quai Alphonse Le Gallo - 92100 Boulogne - Billancourt
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 07/12/2018 de 12:45 à 13:45
Salle R2.01, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
Du 06/12/2018 de 15:45 à 17:00
PSE - 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 06/12/2018 de 15:45 à 17:00
PSE - 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
GIOVANNI Ricco (Warwick)
A Model of the Fed’s View on Inflation
écrit avec Thomas Hasenzagl, Filippo Pellegrino, Lucrezia Reichlin,
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 06/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LAMBERT-MOGILIANSKY Ariane (PSE)
Phishing for (quantum-like) Phools: Theory and evidence.
écrit avec V. I. Danilov (Russian Academy of Sciences), A. Calmettes (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna) and H. Gonay (GetQuanty)
The presentation will be based on two articles:
1. Targeting in quantum persuasion problems JME (2018) joint with V.I Danilov
Abstract: In this paper we investigate the potential for persuasion arising from the quantum indeterminacy of a decision-maker's beliefs, a feature that has been proposed as a formal expression of well-known cognitive limitations. We focus on a situation where an agent called Sender only has few opportunities to influence the decision-maker called Receiver. We do not address the full persuasion problem but restrict attention to a simpler one that we call targeting, i.e. inducing a specific belief state. The analysis is developed within the frame of a n-dimensional Hilbert space model. We find that when the prior is known, Sender can induce a targeted belief with a probability of at least 1/n when using two sequential measurements. This figure climbs to 1/2 when both the target and the belief are known pure states. A main insight from the analysis is that a well-designed strategy of distraction can be used as a first step to confuse Receiver. We thus find that distraction rather than the provision of relevant arguments is an effective means to achieve persuasion. We provide an example from political decision-making.
2. The power of distraction: An experimental test of quantum persuasion (2018) joint with A. Calmettes, H. Gonay forthcoming in LNCS Springer.
Abstract: Quantum-like decision theory is by now a well-developed field. We here test the predictions of an application of this approach to persuasion as developed by Danilov and Lambert-Mogiliansky in (Danilov and Lambert-Mogiliansky 2018). One remarkable result entails that in contrast to Bayesian predictions, distraction rather than relevant information has a powerful potential to influence decision-making. We conducted an experiment in the context of donations to NGOs active in the protection of endangered species.We first tested the quantum incompatibility of two perspectives 'trust' and 'urgency' in a separate experiment. We next recruited 1371 respondents and divided them into three groups: a control group, a first treatment group and the main treatment group. Our main result is that 'distracting' information significantly affected decision-making: it induced a switch in respondents' choice as to which project to support compared with the control group. The first treatment group which was provided with compatible information exhibited no difference compared with the control group. Population variables play no role suggesting that quantum-like indeterminacy may indeed be a basic regularity of the mind. We thus find support for the thesis that the manipulability of people's decision-making is linked to the quantum indeterminacy of their subjective representations (mental pictures) of the choice alternatives.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 06/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:45
SARSONS Heather (University of Toronto)
Interpreting Signals in the Labor Market: Evidence from Medical Referrals
This paper provides evidence that a person’s gender influences the way others interpret
information about his or her ability and documents the implications for gender
inequality in labor markets. Using data on physicians’ referrals to surgical specialists,
I find that the referring physician views patient outcomes differently depending on
the performing surgeon’s gender. Physicians become more pessimistic about a female
surgeon’s ability than a male’s after a patient death, indicated by a sharper drop in
referrals to the female surgeon. However, physicians become more optimistic about a
male surgeon’s ability after a good patient outcome, indicated by a larger increase in
the number of referrals the male surgeon receives. After a bad experience with one female
surgeon, physicians also become less likely to refer to new female surgeons in the
same specialty. There are no such spillovers to other men after a bad experience with
one male surgeon. Consistent with learning models, physicians’ reactions to events
are strongest when they are beginning to refer to a surgeon. However, the empirical
patterns are only consistent with Bayesian learning if physicians do not have rational
expectations about the true distribution of surgeon ability.
Economic History Seminar
Du 05/12/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
YAMAMOTO Koji (U. of Tokyo)
Taming Capitalism before its Triumph: A Case of Early Modern England
Development Economics Seminar
Du 04/12/2018 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R2.01, Campus Jourdan - 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
KHWAJA Asim(Harvard Kennedy School)
KHWAJA ASIM (Harvard Kennedy School)
1° Glass Walls: ExperimentalEvidence on Access Constraints faced by Women - 2° Addressing Selection: Experimental Evidence from Design Variations in a Skills Training Program
écrit avec Ali Cheema, Asim I Khwaja, Farooq Nasser, Jacob N Shapiro
1) Glass Walls: Experimental Evidence on Access Constraints faced by Women
Growth is enabled when individuals can access the opportunities offered to them. Yet there are often significant barriers, especially for women, in doing so. This paper provides evidence on the importance of such barriers in the context of skill acquisition. Using experimental evidence from over 243 villages in rural Pakistan, we show that physical distance poses a significant hurdle: Women whose villages are randomly selected to receive a training center are more than three times as likely to enroll and complete a skills development course than women who have to travel an average distance of just a few kilometers. Over half of this distance penalty is paid simply upon crossing the village boundary and therefore cannot be readily reconciled with time or economic costs associated with travel. Instead it is likely due to non-economic/social costs women face when leaving the perceived safety of their villages. This constraint is costly to financially compensate: Using exogenous variation in stipend offered, we estimate that an amount equivalent to half of household expenditure would need to be paid to allow women to cross this boundary. Furthermore, we find that there are multiple such boundaries women may have to cross - within the village, crossing one's own settlement also incurs a similar cost. In examining factors that may ameliorate this barrier, we find that the boundary penalty is lower for women who come from more ethnically diverse communities. While informational and social interventions have little impact, we find that providing reliable group transportation helps in addressing the access constraint. This suggests that while non-economic obstacles faced by women are indeed substantial, policy interventions attuned to the local context can offer feasible ways to ameliorate them.
2) Addressing Selection: Experimental Evidence from Design Variations in a Skills Training Program
When people choose to participate in public welfare programs, selection gaps often arise between participants and non-participants. This can lead to substantial under-coverage of the most deserving members of the target population and/or misallocation of resources. We attempt to understand such selection gaps and how they may be undone in the context of a tailoring skills training program for women in Pakistan. We first document significant selection effects: women who self-enroll are richer, more educated, less burdened, and more confident as compared to the average woman in their village. We then find that a simple “nudge”, whereby women are provided a voucher that notes their ex-ante desire to enroll, almost entirely undoes this selection. Offering additional stipend conditional on attendance goes a bit further, but the primary selection reversal comes from just the voucher. Our results hold not just when we consider applicants to the course but also among those women who eventually complete the 4-month long tailoring course. We argue that our results are consistent with the behavioral literature on bandwidth depletion among the poor. Our paper provides one of the first experimental results on how public programs can be designed to mitigate undesirable beneficiary selection.
Development Economics Seminar
Du 04/12/2018 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
KHWAJA Asim(Harvard Kennedy School)
KHWAJA ASIM (Harvard Kennedy School)
TBA
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 04/12/2018 de 14:45 à 16:15
Sciences Po, 28 rue des Saints-Pères 75007 Paris, 1er étage, salle A 13
BERNARD Andrew (PSE)
Heterogeneous Globalization: Offshoring and Reorganization
écrit avec Teresa Fort, Valerie Smeets and Frederic Warzynski
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 04/12/2018 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
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.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 03/12/2018 de 17:00 à 18:30
salle R1-09, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
SAHUGUET Nicolas (HEC Montréal)
On the Optimality of Closed Lists under Proportional Representation
écrit avec Benoit Crutzen and Sabine Flamand
A large number of democracies rely at least partially on closed-list proportional representation for their legislative elections. With closed lists, voters can only vote for a party, not candidates. The literature often associates closed lists with perverse incentives for individual candidates. We reconsider this argument in a model of a contest between teams for multiple individual prizes. We show that closed lists can actually maximize a party's electoral success.
Our finding is robust to allowing for the introduction of biases in the contest due to voter ideological preferences, having more than two parties competing in the election, candidates also caring about their party winning a majority of legislative seats and allowing parties to offer lists with more candidates than the number of available prizes.
Du 03/12/2018 de 12:45 à 13:45
Salle R2.01, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
Régulation et Environnement
Du 03/12/2018 de 12:00 à 13:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
POZZI Andrea (EIEF)
The Cost of Steering in Financial Markets: Evidence from the Mortgage Market
écrit avec Leonardo Gambacorta, Luigi Guiso, Paolo Mistrulli and Anton Tsoy
Many households lack sophistication required to make complex financial decisions and
can be steered by intermediaries to certain financial products via informative or distorted
advice, advertisement, shrouding, etc. We build a model of the mortgage market in which
banks attain their optimal mortgage portfolio by both setting rates and steering their clientele.
“Sophisticated” households know which mortgage type is best for them; “naive” are
susceptible to bank’s steering. Using data on the universe of Italian mortgages, we estimate
the model and quantify the welfare implications of steering in this market. The average
cost of the distortion is equivalent to an increase in the annual mortgage payment by 11%.
However, since steering often also conveys information about mortgages, restricting steering
results in a loss of 998 euros per year on average. A financial literacy campaign is beneficial
for naive households, but hurts sophisticated ones.