Calendrier du mois de mai 2019
Economic History Seminar
Du 29/05/2019 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
PONTHIÈRE Grégory ()
Human lifetime entropy in a historical perspective (1750-2014)
Abstract
This paper uses Shannon's entropy index to the base 2 to quantify
the risk relative to the age at death in terms of bits (i.e. the amount of
information revealed by tossing a fair coin). We first provide a simple
decomposition of Shannon's lifetime entropy index that allows us to an-
alyze the determinants of lifetime entropy (in particular its relation with
Wiener's entropy of the event death at a particular age conditional on
survival to that age) and to study how the risk about the duration of
life is resolved as the individual becomes older. Then, using data on 37
countries from the Human Mortality Database, we show that, over the
last two centuries, (period) lifetime entropy at birth has exhibited, in all
countries, an inverted U shape pattern with a maximum in the ?rst half
of the 20th century (at 6 bits), and reaches, in the early 21st century, 5.6
bits for men and 5.5 bits for women. It is also shown that the entropy
age profile shifted from a non-monotonic profile (in the 18th and 19th
centuries) to a strictly decreasing profile (in the 20th and 21st centuries).
Keywords: mortality risk, longevity, age at death, entropy, measure-
ment.
WIP (Work in progress) Working Group
Du 29/05/2019 de 11:00 à 11:30
salle R1-11, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
ÖZGÜZEL Cem(CES & IZA)
LUKSIC Juan Diego(PSE)
SCHNEIDER-STRAWCZYNSKI Sarah(PSE)
Impact of migration on learning opportunity
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 28/05/2019 de 17:00 à 18:00
DOUENNE Thomas()
FABRE Antoine()
Tax me if I win: overcoming reluctance to French carbon tax
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 28/05/2019 de 14:30 à 16:00
PSE, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014, Paris - salle R2-21
NAGY David (CREI - UPF)
All aboard: The aggregate effects of port development
écrit avec César Ducruet (CNRS), Réka Juhász (Columbia University), Claudia Steinwender (MIT Sloan)
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 28/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
salle R2-20, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KE Shaowei (China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).)
Behavioral neural networks
We provide an axiomatic foundation for a class of neural network models applied to decision making under risk, called the neural-network expected utility (NNEU) model. We weaken the independence axiom from expected utility theory in a new way consistent with many experimental findings. We show how to use simple neurons, referred to as behavioral neurons, in the NNEU model to capture behavioral biases such as reference dependence, certainty effect, overweighting of small probabilities, etc. Empirically, we find that using standard estimation approaches, the NNEU model usually has small training error but large testing error due to overfitting. However, by requiring the neural network of the NNEU model to carry behavioral neurons, its performance can be significantly improved.
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 28/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
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.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 27/05/2019 de 17:00 à 18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
EKMEKCI Mehmet (Boston College)
Reputation and Screening in a Noisy Environment with Irreversible Actions
écrit avec Lucas Maestri
We introduce a class of two-player dynamic games to study the effectiveness of screening in
a principal-agent problem. In every period, the principal chooses either to irreversibly stop the
game, or to continue. In every period until the game is stopped, the agent chooses an action
that affects the flow payoffs to the players. The agent’s type is his private information, and
his actions are imperfectly observed. Players receive a lump-sum payoff when the game stops,
and the principal’s payoff depends on the agent’s type. Both players are long-lived and share
a common discount factor. We study the limit of the equilibrium outcomes as both players get
arbitrarily patient. We show that Nash equilibrium outcomes of the dynamic game converge
to the unique Nash equilibrium outcome of an auxiliary two-stage game with observed mixed
actions. Hence, dynamic screening eliminates noise in monitoring, but beyond that, it is
ineffective. We calculate the probability that the principal eventually stops the game, against
each type of the agent. The principal learns some but not all information about the agent’s
type. All payoff relevant information is revealed at the beginning of the game. Applications
include procurement, promotions and demotions within organizations and venture-capital
financing.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 27/05/2019 de 12:00 à 13:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
KALKUHL Matthias (University of Potsdam)
The Impact of Climate Conditions on Economic Production. Evidence from a Global Panel of Regions
écrit avec Wenz Leonie
We estimate the impacts of climate on economic growth using Gross Regional Product (GRP) for more than 1,500 regions in 77 countries. In temperate and tropical climates, annual temperature shocks reduce GRP whereas they increase GRP in cold climates. With respect to long-term climate conditions, one degree of temperature increase reduces output by 2-3%. The effect of annual or long-term precipitation is found to be less important and less robust among specifications. For projected global warming of 4°C until 2100, we find that regions lose 9% of economic output on average and more than 20% of output in tropical regions.
Texte intégral
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 24/05/2019 de 12:45 à 13:45
Room R1-09, Campus Jourdan
OLCKERS Matthew (PSE)
Sports betting in Kenya
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 23/05/2019 de 15:45 à 17:00
PSE - 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
SCHAAL Edouard (CREI)
Herding Cycles
écrit avec Mathieu Taschereau-Dumouchel
We embed a theory of rational herding into a business-cycle framework. In the model, technological innovations arrive randomly over time. New innovations are not immediately productive, and there is uncertainty about how productive the technology will be. Investors receive private signals about the future productivity and decide whether to invest in the technology or not. Macroeconomic variables and prices partially aggregate private information but do not reveal the true fundamentals as the agents ignore the degree of correlation in their information sets. Herd-driven boom-bust cycles may arise in this environment when the technology is unproductive but investors' initial signals are optimistic and highly correlated. When the technology appears, investors mistakenly attribute the observed high investment rates to high fundamentals, leading to a pattern of increasing optimism and investment until the economy reaches a peak, followed by a quick collapse, as agents ultimately learn their mistake. As such, the theory can shed light on bubble-like episodes in which excessive optimism about uncertain technology fueled overinvestment, and were followed by sudden recessions. We calibrate the model to the U.S. economy and show that the theory can rationalize various patterns observed during technology-driven cycles like the IT-led boom and bust of 1995-2001. Finally, we show that leaning-against-the-wind policies can be welfare improving as they can increase the amount of private information that becomes public.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 23/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
salle R2-20, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BIZET Romain (Mines ParisTech)
Keep calm and carry on: A theory of governmental crisis communication
écrit avec Pierre Fleckinger (Mines ParisTech and PSE)
This paper develops a model of strategic communication which questions how informed
governments can credibly and effectively disclose warning information to exposed populations in the wake of major disasters. Credible public communication strategies take the
form of severity scales whose optimal design hinges on the divergence between individual
and social preferences, typically embodied by the existence of external effects of individual
responses. Private and committed modes of communication are also investigated and shown
to increase expected welfare. The paper also considers combinations of crisis communication
with disaster management strategies. In particular, when ex post transfers are available -
e.g. through public relief funds or emergency response plans - it is optimal for the government to subsidize pro-social actions and to provide partial public insurance when responses
entail negative externalities. These transfers facilitate communication and improve response.
Several policy aspects and applications of the model are discussed.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 23/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:45
STANGE Kevin (University of Michigan)
Migration from Sub-National Administrative Data: Problems and Solutions with an Application to Higher Education
écrit avec Co-author: Andrew Foote
Recent research in many fields of social science makes extensive use of subnational administrative data, such as from states, counties, or school districts. Recent work on the labor market consequences of post-secondary education, in particular, have used administrative data from institutions matched with in-state earnings data. However, none of these papers have the ability to follow workers outside of the state, which could bias measured effects on earnings. While most of these papers acknowledge the issue, they are unable to quantify the effect that non-random attrition has on their results. In addition to these academic papers, a number of states have produced and publicized average earnings of graduates to inform students, again using in-state earnings data. Using new data merging college records with both in-state and national earnings from the LEHD, this paper documents how earnings estimates are biased in practice. We also document how this differs by field of study and college selectivity, as well as the extent to which attrition is differential across the earnings distribution. We find that out-of-state migration is particularly problematic for high-earners, flagship graduates, and computer science majors and grows with time since graduation. In our empirical example, we find that the effect of graduating from a flagship university (relative to less selective public 4-year) is 26% higher than one would estimate using in-state earnings exclusively. Various approaches to testing for and bounding this bias are considered.
Behavior seminar
Du 23/05/2019 de 11:00 à 12:00
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
DESSI Roberta (Toulouse School of Economics )
Public goods and future audiences: acting as role models?
écrit avec Giuseppe Attanasi, Frédéric Moisan, Donald Robertson
We study how participants' behavior in an experimental public good game is affected when they know that information about their choices and outcomes, together with different sets of information about their identity, will be transmitted the following year to a set of new, unknown participants - with no payoff linkages between the two sets of players. We explore two questions: first, does knowing that they will be acting as role models for future players influence individuals' choices? Second, how does behavior vary with the degree of future visibility of participants' identity? We find no evidence of a significant role model effect, but a surprising effect of visibility: when subjects know their photo will be transmitted to future, unknown and unrelated participants, they contribute significantly less. We consider different possible explanations, and argue that the most convincing is a sucker aversion explanation according to which subjects in the photo treatment become more sensitive to being perceived as exploited by their peers.
Behavior Working Group
Du 23/05/2019 de 10:00 à 10:45
Jourdan, R2-20
LOBECK Max ( University of Konstanz)
Principals' Distributive Preferences and the Incentivization of Agents
Development Economics Seminar
Du 22/05/2019 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R1.09, Campus Jourdan - 48 boulevard Jourdan, Paris 14ème
BEN YISHAY Ariel (College of William & Mary)
The Economic Efficiency of Aid Targeting
How efficient is the targeting of foreign aid to populations in need? A long literature has focused on the impacts of foreign aid, but much rarer are studies that examine how such aid is allocated within countries. We examine the extent to which donors efficiently respond to exogenous budget shocks by shifting resources toward needier districts within a given country, as predicted by theory. We use recently geocoded data on the World Bank’s aid in 23 countries that crossed the lower-middle income threshold between 1995 and 2010 and thus experienced sharp aid reductions. We measure locations’ need along a number of dimensions, including nighttime lights emissions, population density, conflict exposure, and child mortality. We find little evidence that aid project siting is increasingly concentrated in worse-off areas as budgets shrink; the only exception appears to be a growing share of funding in more conflict-affected areas. We further analyze the relationship of health aid to child mortality measures in six key countries, again finding little evidence of efficient responses to budget shocks. Taken together, these results suggest that large efficiency gains may be possible in the distribution of aid from the World Bank and other donors.
Economic History Seminar
Du 22/05/2019 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MC CARTIN Joseph A. (Georgetown University)
Bargaining with the Neo-Liberal State: Privatization, Taxation, Financialization, and Public-Sector Workers in the USA.
This lecture will explain how the vibrant movement of U.S.public-sector unionism which emerged in the 1960s was increasingly tamed and marginalized by the early 21st century. It will describe how privatization, tax cuts, tax subsidies, and the growing influence of financial interests over the public sector undercut public-sector collective bargaining, which had been built on a foundation too narrow to respond to these developments. It will address how the erosion of public-sector worker bargaining power interacted with declining private-sector bargaining power and rising inequality. And it will conclude with thoughts on recent developments and the future.
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 21/05/2019 de 17:00 à 18:00
ZABROCKI Leo (PSE)
Road Traffic, Air Pollution and Short-Term Mortality in Paris
Paris Migration Seminar
Du 21/05/2019 de 16:30 à 19:00
PSE, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris, Salle R1-09
SPECIALE Biagio(Paris 1/PSE)
ATKIN David(MIT& CPER)
How Do We Choose Our Identity? A Revealed Preference Approach Using Food Consumption
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 21/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
CAGE Julia (Sciences Po)
It Takes Money to Make MPs: New Evidence from 150 Years of British Campaign Spending
écrit avec 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.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 20/05/2019 de 17:00 à 18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
PEREZ CASTRILLO David (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona )
Conflict-free and Pareto-optimal Allocations in the One-sided Assignment Game: A Solution Concept Weaker than the Core
écrit avec Marilda Sotomayor
In the one-sided assignment game any two agents can form a partnership and decide how to share the surplus created. Thus, in this market, an outcome involves a matching and a vector of payoffs. Contrary to the two-sided assignment game, stable outcomes often fail to exist in the one-sided assignment game. We introduce the idea of conflict-free outcomes: they are individually rational outcomes where no matched agent can form a blocking pair with any other agent, neither matched nor unmatched. We propose the set of Pareto-optimal (PO) conflict-free outcomes, which is the set of the maximal elements of the set of conflict-free outcomes, as a natural solution concept for this game. We prove several properties of conflict-free outcomes and PO conflict-free outcomes. In particular, we show that each element in the set of PO conflict-free payoffs provides the maximum surplus out of the set of conflict-free payoffs, the set is always non-empty and it coincides with the core when the core is non-empty. We further support the set of PO conflict-free outcomes as a natural solution concept by suggesting an idealized partnership formation process that leads to these outcomes. In this process, partnerships are formed sequentially under the premise of optimal behavior and two agents only reach an agreement if both believe that more favorable terms will not be obtained in any future negotiations.
GSIELM (Graduate Students International Economics and Labor Market) Lunch Seminar
Du 20/05/2019 de 13:00 à 14:00
Campus MSE - Room 19
LAENGLE Katharina (Université Paris 1 - PSE) *;
La séance est annulée
Régulation et Environnement
Du 20/05/2019 de 12:00 à 13:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
BIANCINI Sara (Université de Cergy)
Mission Drift in Microcredit: A Contract Theory Approach
écrit avec David Ettinger, Baptiste Venet
We analyze the relationship between Micro
nance Institutions (MFIs) and external funding
institutions, with the aim of contributing to the debate on mission drift (the tendency
for MFIs to lend money to wealthier borrower rather than to the very poor). We suggest
that funding institutions build incentives for MFIs to choose the adequate share of poorer
borrowers and to exert effort to increase the quality of the funded projects. We show that
asymmetric information on both the effort level and its cost may increase the share of richer
borrowers. However the unobservability of the cost of effort has an ambiguous effect. It
pushes efficient MFIs to serve a higher share of poorer borrowers, while less efficient ones
decrease their poor outreach.
JEL codes: O12, O16, G21.
Keywords: Micro
nance, Funding Institutions, Mission Drift, Contract Theory.
Du 20/05/2019 de 12:00 à 13:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
BIANCINI Sara (Université de Cergy)
*
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 17/05/2019 de 12:45 à 13:45
LEHNE Jonathan (PSE)
Administering voter suppression? Evidence from 140 million voters' registrations in India
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 16/05/2019 de 15:45 à 17:00
PSE - 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
HERKENHOFF Kyle (University of Minnesota)
Production and Learning in Teams
écrit avec Jeremy Lise University of Minnesota and FRB Minneapolis, Guido Menzio NYU and NBER, Gordon Phillips Dartmouth College and NBER
The effect of coworkers on the learning and the productivity of an individual is measured combining theory and data. The theory is a frictional equilibrium model of the labor market in which production and the accumulation of human capital of an individual are allowed to depend on the human capital of coworkers. The data is a matched employer-employee dataset of US firms and workers. The measured production function is supermodular. The measured human capital function is non-linear: Workers catch-up to more knowledgeable coworkers, but are not dragged-down by less knowledgeable ones. The market equilibrium features a pattern of
sorting of coworkers across teams that is inefficiently positive. This inefficiency results in low human capital individuals having too few chances to learn from more knowledgeable coworkers and, in turn, in a stock of human capital and a ow of output that are inefficiently low.
Football et sciences sociales : les footballeurs entre institutions et marchés
Du 16/05/2019 de 14:30 à 16:30
salle R1-15 campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
HELLEU Boris (Université de Caen Normandie)
Twitter, l’autre terrain de jeu du football
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 16/05/2019 de 12:30 à 14:00
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
FERRAZ Claudio (University of British Columbia)
Internet Access, Social Media, and the Behavior of Politicians: Evidence from Brazil
écrit avec Pedro Bessone, Filipe Campante, and Pedro CL Souza
Recent years have witnessed the remarkable diffusion of social media, such as Facebook, in tandem with the spread of the cell phones that have become the key tool for access to those media. We ask whether this has affected the accountability of politicians, in a context where the coverage of local politicians by traditional media is negligible. Using data on the spread of 3G cell phone networks across municipalities in Brazil, we implement a triple-differences strategy to show how legislators respond when municipalities that are part of their electoral base obtain access to the 3G technology. The reaction takes place both in their social media activity – they increase the number of Facebook mentions to the municipality – and in their legislative activity – they decrease the amount of earmark transfers to the municipality and mentions to those municipalities in Congressional speeches. We thus find direct evidence of substitution between the online and offline types of responses. We also show that citizens increase their social media interaction with politicians, as measured by Facebook “likes,” “shares,” or “comments.” Taken together, our results suggest that the combination of social media and mobile phones creates the potential for substitution between online and offline behaviors of the politicians.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 16/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:45
WEBER Giacomo (PSE)
Free Mobility of Labor: How are neighboring labor markets affected by the EU Eastern enlargement of 2004?
In recent years there has been growing public and political opposition against the principle of free movement of labor within the European Union (EU). Concerns are often based on the belief that immigrants hurt residents' labor market opportunities and they are particularly pronounced toward the mobility of nationals from countries that joined the EU since 2004. In this paper, we provide the first evaluation of the labor market effects of an increase in immigration on neighboring markets that resulted from the EU Eastern enlargement of 2004. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that municipalities closer to the border received larger shares of immigrant workers after 2004 due to lower commuting costs. Relying on social security data on the universe of workers in Austrian municipalities within commuting distance to the new EU Member States from 1997 to 2015, we first show that the share of nationals from the new EU Member States among all employees increased by
a factor of four over our observation period and that this increase is larger in municipalities closer to the border. Second, comparing changes over time in labor markets closer to the border to those further away
within regions, we observe for subgroups of resident workers that their employment decreases relatively faster in municipalities closer to the border after 2004. This negative effect tends to be more pronounced in
blue-collar occupations and for non-Austrian workers.
Behavior seminar
Du 16/05/2019 de 11:00 à 12:00
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
BELLET Clément (Erasmus School of Economics, Rotterdam)
The Impact of Employee Mood on Productivity
écrit avec Jan-Emmanuel De Neve et George Ward
A growing number of firms claim to place a strong emphasis on the “happiness” of their
employees as a way to boost performance. Yet, despite this, there is a lack of causal field
evidence on the link between mood and productivity. We measure employee mood at a large
telecommunications firm using a novel weekly survey over a 6 month period, and link these
reports with detailed individual-level administrative measures of workplace behaviors and
performance. Being in a positive mood improves weekly sales by around 13%. Exploiting
variation in local weather conditions, we show that na¨?ve OLS estimates are a lower bound
on the causal effect of mood on productivity. We discuss various threats to the validity of
our instrumented analysis, and consider a number of different mechanisms. The data suggest
that the effect of mood on performance runs largely through workers converting more calls
to sales, rather than working any faster or putting in more hours.
Du 16/05/2019 de 11:00 à 12:00
ANDERSON Chris (LSE)
*
Economic History Seminar
Du 15/05/2019 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
HUBERMAN Michael (U.Montreal)
Against the Grain: Spanish Trade Policy in the Interwar Years
écrit avec Concha Betrán, University of Valencia
We study the effects of changes in Spanish trade policy on the margins of trade in the context of economic and political shocks external and internal to Spain in the interwar period. We have assembled a new granular data set on imports, as well as detailed product-level information on tariffs, trade agreements, quantitative controls, and other discriminatory practices. The establishment of the Republic in 1931, which gave voice to the emerging middle class, was a turning point in trade policy. The Republic abandoned policy principally designed to protect agriculture and cotton textiles for a less retaliatory and more accommodating stance that promoted bilateral exchanges of Spanish exports for foreign imports. This gave rise to large extensive margin. But Spain was hardpressed to find countries willing to exchange market access. In an unfavorable international environment, the Spanish case offers a cautionary tale of the perils of going against the grain.
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 14/05/2019 de 14:30 à 16:00
PSE, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014, Paris - salle R2-21
RODRIGUEZ CLARE Andres (Berkeley)
The Textbook Case for Industrial Policy: A Quantitative Exploration.
écrit avec Dominick Bartelme, Arnaud Costinot, Dave Donaldson
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 14/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
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.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 13/05/2019 de 17:00 à 18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LOEPER Antoine (UC3M)
Policy responsiveness versus stability: the role of institutions
écrit avec Wiola Dziuda
Institutions with checks and balances (e.g., supermajority requirements, bicameralism, constitutional courts) are often celebrated for their effect on the stability and predictability of policies, which is desirable for economic prosperity. However, checks and balances may also prevent governments from adapting policies to a changing environment. An ideal political system should balance these competing concerns.
To analyze the determinants of this trade-off, we build a parsimonious model of dynamic policy-making in which policy makers' preferences are subject to shocks, but policy change is inherently costly. Institutions are defined broadly as a mapping from current policies and power arrangement into future power arrangement. We show that the impact of institutions on policy change is exacerbated by the strategic response of the policy makers to the institution, which makes the comparison across institutions non-trivial. We characterize the optimal institution as a function of the primitives. Political turn-over make policies more unstable, but also makes policy makers vote in a more congruent way. Conversely, checks and balances make policies more unstable, but also make policy makers vote in a more polarized way. Checks and balances remain optimal when the policy makers' ideologies are sufficiently polarized.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 13/05/2019 de 12:00 à 13:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan - 75014 Paris
LEROUTIER Marion (PSE)
Carbon Pricing and Power Sector Decarbonisation: Evidence from the UK
The electricity and heat generation sector represents about 40 % of global greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions in 2016. Policy-makers have implemented a variety of instru-
ments to decarbonise their power sector. This paper examines the UK Carbon Price
Floor (CPF), a novel carbon pricing instrument implemented in the United Kingdom
in 2013. After describing the potential mechanisms behind the recent UK power sector
decarbonisation, I apply the synthetic control method on country-level data to estimate
the impact of the CPF on per capita emissions. I discuss the importance of potential
confounders and the amount of net electricity imports imputable to the policy. De-
pending on the speci_cation, the abatement associated with the introduction of the
CPF range from 104 to 156 millions tons of equivalent CO2 over the 2013-2017 period.
This implies a reduction of between 39% and 48% of total power sector emissions by
2017. Several placebo tests suggest that these estimates capture a causal impact. This
paper shows that a carbon levy on high-emitting inputs used for electricity generation
can lead to successful decarbonisation.
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 10/05/2019 de 12:45 à 13:45
GIGNOUX Jérémie (PSE)
Spillovers of elite school admission on origin school peers, evidence from Peru
écrit avec Ricardo Estrada and Agustina Hatrick
EPCI (Economie politique du changement institutionnel) Seminar
Du 10/05/2019 de 11:00 à 12:30
MSE-Paris 1, Salle S/18, 106-112 Bd de l’hôpital 75013
ZEMMOUR Michaël (U. Lille, CLERSE & LIEPP)
La distinction entre cotisations sociales contributives et non contributives est-elle justifiée ?
écrit avec *
Dans le financement de la protection sociale, il est d’usage d’opérer une distinction entre cotisations sociales « contributives » et « non contributives ». Cette distinction s’appuie à la fois sur des considérations théoriques, sur une réalité institutionnelle et sur des conventions politiques.
Cette distinction a plusieurs implications à la fois normatives et méthodologiques. D’un point de vue normatif, i) elle conduit à légitimer le financement par cotisations sociales des seuls systèmes d’assurance chômage et retraite, par opposition aux programmes universels ; ii) Le renforcement de la distinction contributif/non contributif constitue la pierre angulaire de plusieurs réformes de la protection sociale, dont celle à venir des retraites. D’un point de vue méthodologique, elle conduit à exclure couramment les cotisations contributives de la comptabilité distributive.
Ce travail exploratoire propose un retour critique sur cette distinction, en montrant d’une part qu’elle s’appuie sur une définition ambigüe, d’autre part, que cette distinction construit une représentation du financement de la protection sociale éloigné de la réalité institutionnelle française et Européenne. Ce constat devrait conduire à une mise à distance sinon à l’écart par les économistes de la distinction contributif/non contributif.
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La discussion sera introduite par Mathias ANDRE (INSEE).
brown bag Travail et Économie Publique
Du 09/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
SIGNORELLI Sara (University of Amsterdam)
Do Skilled Migrants Compete with Native Workers? Analysis of a Selective Immigration Policy
In recent years Western countries are expressing growing concerns about the regulation of migration flows and many are considering adopting some form of selective immigration policy. This paper analyzes the labor market effects of one of such reforms introduced in France in 2008 with the aim of encouraging the inflow of foreign workers with skills that are scarce among the local labor force. The analysis relies on administrative employer-employee data and it is based on a difference-in-differences approach. Results show that the reform increased the hiring of foreign workers in target occupations without causing any harm to native employment. As a result, the overall stock of labor grew in these jobs. Entry wages are lowered by 4% among natives and by 9% among foreigners, suggesting that these two groups may not be perfect substitutes, even when they are employed for the exact same task. The effects are stronger for the occupations with the most severe lack of native candidates and for those with an average salary largely above the minimum wage, indicating that the reform was successful in attracting candidates with rare skills and relatively high productivity.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 09/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BOBTCHEFF Catherine(PSE)
CHATTERJEE Kalyan(Penn State)
On the social value of (not) disclosing negative results
écrit avec Raphaël Levy (HEC) et Thomas Mariotti (TSE)
Behavior seminar
Du 09/05/2019 de 11:00 à 12:00
salle R2-21, campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
BELOT Quentin (Cresppa)
The Formation and Malleability of Dietary Habits: A Field Experiment with Low Income Families
écrit avec Noemi Berlin, Jonathan James and Valeria Skafida
We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the short and long term effects of two interventions targeting the dietary habits of low income families with young children. In one treatment, families received food groceries at home for free for twelve weeks and were asked to prepare five specific healthy meals per week. In the other treatment, families were simply asked to reduce snacking and eat at regular times, also for twelve weeks. We evaluate the impact of the interventions on diet and BMI over the course of three years. We find evidence that children's BMI distribution shifted significantly relative to the control group, i.e. they became relatively ``thinner''. This effect persists three years after the intervention for the first intervention, but fades away for the second. We find evidence that children reduced their sugar intake following both treatments. However, we find little evidence that their preferences changed in favor of healthier foods. A possible explanation is that children were restricted access to foods high in sugar in the treated groups. Parents, on the other hand, do not appear to have changed their diet as a result of the interventions, neither in the short run nor in the longer run.
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 07/05/2019 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MALGOUYRES Clement (CREST)
Incidence and Behavioral Responses to Changes in Local Business Taxation: Lessons from a Large Reform in France
écrit avec Clément Carbonnier, Antonin Bergeaud, Edouard Jousselin
Du 07/05/2019
SCHILLING Linda (Polytechnique)
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Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 06/05/2019 de 17:00 à 18:30
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
WEBB Duncan (PSE)
Pairwise Normalization: A Neuroeconomic Theory of Multi-Attribute Choice
écrit avec Peter Landry
We present a theory of multi-attribute choice founded in the neuroscience of perception. According to our theory, valuation is formed through a series of pairwise, attribute-level comparisons implemented by (divisive) normalization — a normatively-grounded form of relative value coding observed across sensory modalities and in species ranging from honeybees to humans. As we demonstrate, “pairwise normalization” captures a broad range of behavioral regularities, including the compromise and asymmetric dominance effects, the diversification bias in allocation decisions, and majority-rule preference cycles (among several others). In binary choice, the model also offers a potential neurobiological foundation for Cobb-Douglas preferences and other classic microeconomic preference representations.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 06/05/2019 de 12:00 à 13:00
salle R1-13, campus Jourdan, 75014 Paris
FABRE Antoine ()
Can We Reconcile French People with the Carbon Tax? Disentangling Beliefs from Preferences
écrit avec Thomas Douenne
Using anewsurvey and National households’surveydata, we investigate French perception over
carbon taxation. We find that French people largely reject a tax and dividend policy where revenues
of the tax would be redistributed uniformly. However, their perception about the properties of the tax
are biased: people overestimate the negative impact on their purchasing power, wrongly think the
scheme is regressive, and do no tperceive it as environmentally effective. Our econometric analysis
shows that correcting these three bias would suffice to generate majority acceptance. Yet, we find
that people’s beliefs are persistent and their revisions biased towards pessimism, so that only few
can be convinced.
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 02/05/2019 de 12:30 à 14:00
Sciences Po - 28 rue des Saint-Pères 75007 Paris
DELL Melissa (Harvard University & CEPR)
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