Calendrier du mois de mai 2024
Occasional Empirical Environmental Group
Du 31/05/2024 de 15:00 à 16:30
R1-15
WEBER Giacomo (UC BERKELEY)
Will cleaning up the local environment narrow or widen inequality?
If cleaning up a local environment also raises prices, does that widen
or narrow inequality? We combine an equilibrium sorting model
characterizing location choices with a new approach to causally
estimate the impact of a cleaner environment on location utility to
answer this question. We estimate the model leveraging a plausibly
exogenous change in the local environment due to shale gas propensity,
together with spatially-granular bilateral migration, air quality, and
emissions data. Our preliminary results characterize relative welfare
changes by racial groups under the observed environmental quality
improvements, as well as simulated changes under counterfactual
environmental policies. The results aim to quantify the connection
between equity-oriented place-based environmental policies and
residential location choices.
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 31/05/2024 de 13:00 à 14:00
R1-15
TESCHKE Eric (PSE)
Dynamic Poverty Targeting
EU Tax Observatory Seminar
Du 31/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:00
Salle R1-14
TIAN Lin (INSEAD)
CANCELLED
écrit avec with Miguel Almunia, David Henning, Justine Knebelmann, and Dorothy Nakyambadde
PSE Internal Seminar
Du 31/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:00
GRITTERSOVA Jana(PSE)
GRENET Julien(PSE)
“The Effects of Social Diversity at School: Evidence from a Desegregation Program”
This paper investigates whether social desegregation in schools fosters social cohesion and reduces social inequality in educational outcomes. We analyze an initiative launched in 2015 by the French Ministry of Education to desegregate public middle schools, by comparing the schools that participated in the program with similar schools that were not involved. Our findings indicate that in the initially more segregated schools, the program was successful at increasing the exposure of low-SES to high-SES students, and vice versa. Using detailed administrative data along with survey data on students' wellbeing and attitudes, we find that school desegregation does not adversely affect the academic performance of high-SES students, while it positively affects their academic self-esteem. Although our results do not reveal significant short-run effects on the academic performance of low-SES students, we find that they derive social and psychological benefits from being exposed to a more diverse student body.
Co-authors: Ghazala Azmat (Sciences Po), Élise Huillery (Université Paris Dauphine), Youssef Souidi (Université Paris Dauphine), and Yann Algan (HEC).
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This study explores how central banks discuss climate change and whether such communication affects the behavior and expectations of financial markets. Specifically, it examines whether the frequency of central bank communication on climate-related risks influences the inflation expectations of financial markets. Central bank communication about climate change can influence these expectations by creating uncertainty about future climate policies that the central bank might adopt. When a central bank incorporates climate objectives into its policy discourse, it creates uncertainty among financial market participants about its commitment to its mandates, such as maintaining price stability and safeguarding central bank autonomy. There is also the concern that the central bank could be perceived as the last resort to rescue the financial system in the face of climate-induced risks. To investigate this, we compiled a comprehensive database of speeches addressing climate change by representatives of the European Central Bank and national central banks of the eurozone countries from January 2008 to December 2022. This dataset enables us to examine how central bankers' speeches influence private inflation expectations, as measured by market-based indicators. Using local projections, we find that more frequent speeches on climate change and higher intensity of climate-related language within speeches are associated with increased inflation expectations among financial market participants across various maturity horizons, spanning from one year to ten years. Moreover, we found that the effect of these speeches varies depending on the speaker; notably, speeches delivered by representatives of central banks from the founding members of the eurozone influence shifts in inflation expectations. This holds true even when accounting for macroeconomic surprises, central bank interest rate decisions, and a range of other factors. Overall, our findings suggest that central bank discourse on climate change offers valuable insights into future financial market inflation expectations.
Co-authors: Eleonora Mavroeidi (Bloomberg Paris) and Murilo Silva (University of California, Riverside)
Du 30/05/2024 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R1-09
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 30/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-16
MOREIRA Humberto (Fundação Getulio Vargas’ Brazilian School of Economics and Finance)
Market Power and Insurance Coverage
écrit avec GOTTLIEB Daniel (London School of Economics)
We study how market power affects insurance policies in a general class of models. We show that exclusion is a robust feature of insurance with a monopolistic firm (or when firms have enough market power), but not with perfect competition. However, the reduction in coverage relative to competitive markets is not uniform. While monopolists under-provide coverage for individuals with low willingness to pay, competitive markets under-provide coverage for those with a high willingness to pay to avoid cream skimming by competitors. The welfare comparison between perfectly competitive and monopolistic markets depends on whether the distortion at the extensive margin (higher under monopoly) exceeds the distortion at the intensive margin (higher under competition for those with a high willingness to pay). Using simulations based on an empirical model of preferences, we find that those both of these effects are quantitatively important.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 30/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09
CARLANA Michela (Harvard)
How Far Can Inclusion Go? The Long-term Impacts of Preferential College Admissions
écrit avec M. Tincani and E. Miglino
Affirmative action and preferential admission policies play a crucial role in fostering social mobility by bolstering the prospects of disadvantaged groups. In this paper, we analyze the long-term effects of a Chilean policy (PACE) that targets students in underprivileged schools, offering guaranteed admission to selective colleges to those graduating in the top 15 percent of their high school class. Leveraging both the randomized expansion of PACE and the admission discontinuity, our analysis reveals that PACE yields positive labor market effects for the average targeted student, especially women, driven by the selectivity of the attended colleges. However, for marginally eligible students, higher dropout rates and negative labor market outcomes emerge, suggesting PACE may induce a mismatch between their skills and the academic rigor of selective programs. Finally, we find that students in the bottom 85 percent of their schools experience positive effects on labor market outcomes. We identify equilibrium effects on local labor markets as a potential mechanism. The results suggest that there is a limit to how far preferential admissions can go while delivering on their promises.
Behavior seminar
Du 30/05/2024 de 11:00 à 12:00
R1.14
ISAKSSON Siri (Norwegian School of Economics, Norway)
Will Artificial Intelligence Get in the Way of Achieving Gender Equality?
The promise of generative AI to increase human productivity relies on developing skills to become proficient at it. There is reason to suspect that women and men use AI tools differently, which could result in productivity and payoff gaps in a labor market increasingly demanding knowledge in AI. Thus, it is important to understand if there are gender differences in AI-usage among current students. We conduct a survey at the Norwegian School of Economics collecting use and attitudes towards ChatGPT, a measure of AI proficiency, and responses to policies allowing or forbidding ChatGPT use. Three key findings emerge: first, female students report a significantly lower use of ChatGPT compared to their male counterparts. Second, male students are more skilled at writing successful prompts, even after accounting for higher ChatGPT usage. Third, imposing university bans on ChatGPT use widens the gender gap in intended use substantially. We provide insights into potential factors influencing the AI adoption gender gap and highlight the role of appropriate encouragement and policies in allowing female students to benefit from AI usage, thereby mitigating potential impacts on later labor market outcomes
Development Economics Seminar
Du 29/05/2024 de 16:30 à 18:00
R2.01
FIORIN Stefano (Bocconi University ) *;
La séance est annulée
Du 29/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1.09
KESSLER Amalia ()
l'arbitrage corporatiste et la poursuite de la démocratie industrielle aux Etats Unis (1900-1940)
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 28/05/2024 de 17:00 à 18:00
R1-14
ANDRé Loris (PSE)
Land Conversion and Species Extinction
Econometrics Seminar
Du 28/05/2024 de 14:45 à 16:00
Sciences Po, room H405
MOLINARI Francesca (Cornell University)
Inference for an Algorithmic Fariness-Accuracy Frontier
écrit avec Co-author: Yiqi Liu
Decision-making processes increasingly rely on the use of algorithms. Yet, algorithms' predictive ability frequently exhibit systematic variation across subgroups of the population. While both fairness and accuracy are desirable properties of an algorithm, they often come at the cost of one another. What should a fairness-minded policymaker do then, when confronted with finite data? In this paper, we provide a consistent estimator for a theoretical fairness-accuracy frontier put forward by Liang, Lu and Mu (2023) and propose inference methods to test hypotheses that have received much attention in the fairness literature, such as (i) whether fully excluding a covariate from use in training the algorithm is optimal and (ii) whether there are less discriminatory alternatives to an existing algorithm. We also provide an estimator for the distance between a given algorithm and the fairest point on the frontier, and characterize its asymptotic distribution. We leverage the fact that the fairness-accuracy frontier is part of the boundary of a convex set that can be fully represented by its support function. We show that the estimated support function converges to a tight Gaussian process as the sample size increases, and then express policy-relevant hypotheses as restrictions on the support function to construct valid test statistics.
Texte intégral
GPET Seminar
Du 28/05/2024 de 13:45 à 17:30
R1-13
• 13:40 -14:20 : Gísli Gylfason : From Tweets to the Streets : Twitter and Extremist Protests in the United States
• 13:20-15:00 : Vitaliia Eliseeva : Failing to forge the New Soviet Woman: Long-term effect of WW2-induced sex ratios on family formation.
Break
• 15:15-15:55 : Maximilian Dörfler : The Political Consequences of Adverse Labor Market Shocks
• 15:55-16:35 : Ninon Moreau-Kastler Multiplicative difference-in-differences, staggered treatment and proportional treatment effect.
Break
• 16:50-17h30 : Heddie Moreno : export survival of African firms
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 28/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.21
VAN EFFENTERRE Clémentine( University of Toronto)
AMER Abdelrahman(University of Toronto)
CRAIG Ashley(Australian National University)
Decoding Gender Bias: The Role of Personal Interaction
Subjective performance evaluation is an important part of hiring and promotion decisions. We combine experiments with administrative data to understand what drives gender bias in such evaluations in the technology industry. Our results highlight the role of personal interaction. Leveraging 60,000 mock video interviews on a platform for software engineers, we find that average ratings for code quality and problem solving are 12 percent of a standard deviation lower for women than men. Half of these gaps remain unexplained when we control for automated measures of coding performance. To test for statistical and taste-based bias, we analyze two field experiments. Our first experiment shows that providing evaluators with automated performance measures does not reduce the gender gap. Our second experiment removed video interaction, and compared blind to non-blind evaluations. No gender gap is present in either case. These results rule out traditional economic models of discrimination. Instead, we show that gender gaps widen with extended personal interaction, and are larger for evaluators educated in regions where implicit association test scores are higher.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 27/05/2024 de 17:00 à 18:30
R1-09
LIZZERI Alessandro (Princeton)
Facts and Opinions
We study a sender-receiver communication game with quadratic preferences and an additive sender bias. When the sender can communicate only through verifiable but noisy information and her bias is small, we show that complete information unraveling is not an equilibrium and that more informative equilibria exist. In these equilibria, the sender uses silence not to hide information from the receiver but to communicate that the information she has, while verifiable, is misleading. Thus, mandating disclosure hurts the receiver in these cases. We then enrich our baseline model by allowing the sender to also communicate by using unverifiable information. We illustrate how verifiable and unverifiable information can complement each other and that this complementarity is maximal for moderately biased senders
Paris Migration Economics Seminar
Du 27/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-14
This session will welcome Sofia Meister (EHESS et Fellow IC Migrations) and Ilse Ruyssen (Ghent University) around the topic Disentangling the climate-migration-health nexus.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 27/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1-09
WOLAK Frank (Stanford University)
Market power and incentive-based capacity payment mechanisms
Recent rolling blackouts in industrialized economies have highlighted the need for
a capacity mechanism to ensure a reliable electricity supply. We demonstrate severe
shortcomings of a popular capacity mechanism—reliability options—caused by their
interaction with fixed-price forward contracts for energy. Large generators can trigger
the reliability option exercise, nullifying the incentive that forward contracts provide
for firms to not exercise market power. Hydroelectric generators sell more forward
contracts and store less water, reducing system reliability. We empirically demonstrate
that Colombian generators respond to these incentives in the short and long run.
The objectives of reliability options could be achieved at lower cost by reforming the
forward contract market.
Du 24/05/2024 de 13:00 à 14:00
R1-15
DIAZ Oscar Mauricio (PSE)
*
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 24/05/2024 de 12:45 à 13:45
R1-15
MEDELLIN Juan Camilo (PSE)
Firm size, liquidity and optimal heterogeneous hedging
In this paper we depict the market imperfections and policy distortions that limit the development and sophistication of the FX hedging market in an Emerging Market such as Colombia. We find that: i) the market of FX hedging presents lack of liquidity related to the financial frictions faced by banks; which limits entry of small firms and the extent of large firms' hedges. ii) Policy interventions that aim at protecting the economy against exchange rate movements lower the incentives of small firms to protect themselves through the financial sector.
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 23/05/2024 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R1-13
LUETTICKE Ralph (University of Tübingen)
HANK's Response to Aggregate Uncertainty in an Estimated Business Cycle Model
This paper studies a HANK model with agents who respond to both idiosyncratic and aggregate uncertainty. Since aggregate uncertainty is modeled as ambiguity, it affects both the steady state and the linearized dynamics, allowing for fast computation and estimation with linear methods. The estimated model jointly fits cyclical variation in US macro aggregates and asset prices. In the presence of portfolio frictions, aggregate uncertainty shocks are a powerful driver of the business cycle, more so than idiosyncratic uncertainty shocks. Their effect is much stronger than in a representative agent model: portfolio substitution by capital owners helps fit investment and return dynamics.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 23/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:45
R1-09
MARIOTTI Thomas (TSE)
The war of attrition under uncertainty: Theory and robust testable implications
We study the war of attrition with symmetric information when players’ payoffs depend on a homogeneous linear diffusion. We first show that a player’s mixed Markov strategy can be represented by an intensity measure over the state space along with a subset of the state space over which the player concedes with probability 1. We then show that, if players are asymmetric, then, in all mixed-strategy Markov-perfect equilibria, these intensity measures must be discrete, and characterize any such equilibrium through a variational system for the players’ value functions. We illustrate these findings by revisiting the standard model of exit in a duopoly under uncertainty and construct a mixed-strategy Markov-perfect equilibrium in which attrition takes place on path despite firms having different liquidation values. We show that firms’ stock prices comove negatively over the attrition zone and exhibit patterns documented by technical analysis
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 23/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-13
DIEGERT Paul (Duke University)
The Role of Skills and Sorting in Explaining Wage Inequality
A large literature argues that technological change since the 1980s altered the demand for workers’ skills, increasing wage inequality and polarization. By estimating a model of occupational choice using panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), I find that changes in the supply of workers’ skills were also major driving factors in increasing inequality and polarization. Specifically, I find that (1) as tasks in high-skill jobs have become increasingly complex, the distribution of workers’ ability to perform those tasks has become more dispersed, (2) workers’ ability to perform low-skill work tasks has become more homogenous, and (3) workers have increasingly sorted into occupations by skill level, even if this does not maximize their income. These results suggest that skill formation has been a key channel through which long run changes in the nature of work have affected wage inequality. Finally, to obtain my estimates I prove a new identification result in a multi-dimensional potential outcome model and show how to robustly estimate it semiparametrically adapting results from mixture models.
Behavior seminar
Du 23/05/2024 de 11:00 à 12:00
R1-13
DIECIDUE Enrico (Insead)
Why Do People Discount? The Role of Impatience and Future Uncertainty
Despite the intuition that risk preferences affect intertemporal choice because the future is uncertain, time discounting is commonly regarded as a reflection of impatience. Our experimental data show that approximately 43% of the observed time discounting can be explained by an aversion against future uncertainty rather than impatience, even when controlling for utility curvature. Future uncertainty receives disproportional weight because subjects engage in subproportional probability weighting, a behavioral regularity that does not feature in the standard risk framework of most intertemporal choice models. We find that many people do not demand compensation for waiting but rather for an uncertain future
Development Economics Seminar
Du 22/05/2024 de 16:30 à 18:00
R2.01
DUFLO Esther (MIT)
Can microfinance unlock a poverty trap for some entrepreneurs" (With Abhijit Banerjee, Emily Breza and Cynthia Kinnan)
Can microcredit help unlock a poverty trap for some people by putting
their businesses on a different trajectory? Could the small microcredit treatment effects often
found for the average household mask important heterogeneity? In Hyderabad, India, we find
that “gung ho entrepreneurs” (GEs), households who were already running a business before
microfinance entered, show persistent benefits that increase over time. Six years later, the
treated GEs own businesses that have 35% more assets and generate double the revenues as
those in control neighborhoods. We find almost no effects on non-GE households. A model
of technology choice in which talented entrepreneurs can access either a diminishing-returns
technology, or a more productive technology with a fixed cost, generates dynamics matching
the data. These results show that heterogeneity in entrepreneurial ability is important and
persistent. For talented but low-wealth entrepreneurs, short-term access to credit can indeed
facilitate escape from a poverty trap.
Histoire des entreprises et de la finance
Du 22/05/2024 de 16:00 à 17:30
R2.20
FABRE Antoine ()
La fabrique managériale de l’Anthropocène, Le rôle du prix de revient des plantations d’hévéa dans la déforestation en Indochine au début du XXe siècle
écrit avec Labardin P., Loizeau J., Boyer C.
Economic History Seminar
Du 22/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1.09
JUHASZ Reka (UBC)
Codification and Technology Absorption: Evidence from Trade Patterns
écrit avec Réka Juhász, Shogo Sakabe, David E. Weinstein,
This paper studies technology absorption around the world in the late nineteenth
century. We construct several novel datasets to test the idea that the codification of
useful knowledge in the vernacular was necessary for countries to absorb the technologies
of the Industrial Revolution. Using the rapid and unprecedented codification
of useful knowledge in Meiji Japan as a natural experiment, we show that productivity
growth in Japan was higher in industries that had a higher supply of Western
useful knowledge, but only after the Japanese government undertook a large public
good investment to provide this knowledge to its citizens. We find no similar patterns
in other parts of the world which did not codify knowledge. Taken together,
our findings shed new light on the frictions associated with technology diffusion, and
offer a novel take on why Meiji Japan was unique among non-Western countries in
successfully industrializing during the first wave of globalization.
*
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 21/05/2024 de 17:00 à 18:00
R1-14
SANTOS-CáRDENAS Daniela (PSE)
What Women Want: Misperceived Preferences in the Marriage Market
Virtual Development Economics Seminar
Du 21/05/2024 de 17:00 à 18:00
Zoom
CORNO Lucia ((Cattolica University and CEPR))
*
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 21/05/2024 de 14:30 à 16:00
PSE, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-01
JUHASZ Reka (UBC)
The Who, What, When, and How of Industrial Policy: A Text-Based Approach
écrit avec Nathan Lane, Emily Oehlsen and Verónica C. Pérez
Since the 18th century, policymakers have debated the merits of industrial policy
(IP). Yet, economists lack basic facts about its use. This study sheds light on
industrial policy by measuring and studying global policy practice for the first
time. We first create an automated classification algorithm for categorizing
industrial policy practice from text. We then apply it to a global database of
commercial policy descriptions and quantify policy use at the country, industry,
and year levels (2009-2020). These data allow us to study fundamental policy
patterns across the world. We highlight four findings. First, IP is common (25%
of policies in our database) and has expanded since 2010. Second, instead of
blunt tariffs, IP is granular and technocratic. Countries tend to use subsidies
and export promotion measures, often targeted at individual firms. Third, the
countries engaged most in IP tend to be wealthier (top income quintile) liberal
democracies. In our data, IP is rarer among the poorest nations (bottom quintile).
Fourth, IP is targeted toward a subset of industries and is highly correlated with
an industry’s revealed comparative advantage. We show that industrial policy is
a prominent feature of the global economy and a far cry from industrial policies
of the past.
STEP (Seminar of Trade Economists in Paris)
Du 21/05/2024 de 13:00 à 14:00
R1-13
BOEHM Johannes (IHEID)
Trade and the End of Antiquity
écrit avec Thomas Chaney
What caused the end of antiquity, the shift of economic activity away from the Mediterranean towards Northern Europe? Henri Pirenne (1939) proposes that it was caused by the disruption of trade linkages following the Arab conquests of Northern Africa and Iberia by the Arabs and the associated loss of Byzantine naval power in the Western Mediterranean. To test the ‘Pirenne Thesis’ we assemble a large database of coin flows between the 4th and 10th century which we study through the lens of a dynamic gravity model of trade. Coins gradually diffuse alongside trade linkages. Coins contain information on the date and place of minting, which allows us to reconstruct trade flows from data on the spatial and temporal distribution of coins found in coin hoards. We estimate changes in trade costs arising from changing political and religious borders following the Arab conquests. Border effects can explain the relative decline of the eastern Mediterranean, but not the increased urbanization in Muslim Spain and in the Frankish lands. These patterns can be explained when we further account for technological change and for increased mint output. The estimated model points to the large effects that geopolitical changes can have by disrupting long-distance trade.
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 21/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.21
CHIOCCHETTI Alice ()
The Global Allocation of Extractive Windfalls
écrit avec Ninon Moreau-Kastler
Profits of oil, gas and mining companies are strongly linked to commodity prices, but little is known on how those windfall profits are distributed between corporations and states. To answer this question, we build a new dataset covering a large share of tax payments made by extractive firms worldwide by combining all mandatory reports on their tax payments. Using this new dataset, we estimate that a 1% increase in commodity prices results in a 0.45% increase in fiscal windfalls for states, with significant heterogeneity across types of payments and countries. In a second part, we investigate how fluctuations in profits arising from commodity price changes are distributed worldwide using a multi-country unconsolidated firm-level database matched with production data covering a large number of extractive firms from 2012 to 2022. We find that the profits of subsidiaries located in tax havens are more elastic to changes in commodity prices compared to other subsidiaries.
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 17/05/2024 de 13:00 à 14:00
R2-21
REUTZEL Fabian (PSE)
Inequality of Opportunity and Access to Internet: Evidence from India
EU Tax Observatory Seminar
Du 17/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:00
Salle R1-14
PARADISI Matteo (EIEF)
Audit Rule Disclosure and Tax Compliance
écrit avec with Enrico Di Gregorio, Matteo Paradisi and Elia Sartori
We show that tax authorities can stimulate tax compliance by strategically releasing audit-relevant information. We focus on audit policies that disclose to taxpayers that audit risk discretely drops above a threshold determined by their predicted revenues. In a theoretical framework, we derive conditions for the existence of improvements over flat undisclosed audit rules, and we build a test for such improvements that relies on a change in the probability jump at the threshold. Our empirical analysis relies on the Sector Studies, an Italian policy with a disclosed threshold-based design. We leverage more than 26 million Sector Study files submitted between 2007 and 2016. First, we show that taxpayers bunch at the threshold to a great extent, and that this behavior is related to evasion proxies, availability of evasion technologies, and tax incentives. Then, we exploit a staggered Sector Studies reform that widens the initial audit risk discontinuity. In line with our theory, taxpayers who benefit from audit exemptions above the threshold reduce their relative compliance, while those below the threshold improve it. However, mean reported profits increase by 16.2% in treated sectors over six years, suggesting – in light of our test – that a disclosed rule performs better than an undisclosed one.
Behavior Working Group
Du 17/05/2024 de 11:00 à 12:00
MSE salle 115
KLOPFENSTEIN Aurélien ()
Cognitive Barriers to Impact Investing
Sustainable investing has been gaining traction as a means to speed up the environmental transition. Recent theoretical work highlights that a sustainable investor looking to maximize their impact should focus not just on their own stocks' emissions, but should also internalize the whole market's emissions – following a broad mandate. Sustainable investors should therefore coordinate with other fellow sustainable investors, as well as with the market as a whole. The goal of this project is to explore behavioral barriers to broad-mandate investing. In a first experiment, we find that some market structures make broad-mandate investing very counterintuitive for investors, irrespective of their preferences. Further experiments are planned in order to identify the precise cognitive mechanism at play
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 16/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-14
BLUMENTHAL Benjamin (ETH Zurich)
Informational Lobbying and Implementation Standards
Policymakers are often uncertain about the right course of action. To inform their decisions, policymakers might rely on information provided by interest groups (IGs). Given that their interests are often misaligned, IGs might under-provide information to policymakers. This paper explores the possibility for policymakers of committing to implementation standards prior to IGs' lobbying, to induce more information transmission. I show that setting implementation standards ex-ante can benefit policymakers, despite possible ex-post inefficiencies, by inducing informational lobbying in cases in which IGs would not have lobbied with implementation standards set ex-post. I discuss implications of these results for constitutional design, legislative politics, and bureaucratic politics.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 16/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21
ISPHORDING Ingo (IZA)
Feedback, Overconfidence and Job Search Behavior
Job seekers face uncertainty about their abilities, and whether these match with job requirements. Such uncertainty may result in sub-optimal job search outcomes and job matches. We conduct a field experiment among job seekers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Participants underwent a skill assessment and were asked about their willingness to pay (WTP) for information about their relative performance on a test of general intelligence. WTP is positive for about 80 percent of the population, and is associated with gender and personality. Feedback provision leads individuals to update their beliefs which only persists for individuals with low WTP. We provide evidence that suggests imperfect recall as potential mechanism for the lack of persistence. Feedback increases job search intensity but relatively less for initially overconfident individuals and those with negative or zero WTP. This results in lower realized wages for these groups. The heterogeneity in belief updating, recall and job search behavior is consistent with some overconfident job seekers being unable to forget information and, thus, to maintain motivated beliefs, but being sophisticated about this inability to forget.
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 16/05/2024
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle
GUVENEN Fatih (University of Minnesota)
International Macroeconomics Chair Lecture
Development Economics Seminar
Du 15/05/2024 de 16:30 à 18:00
R2.01
MOBARAK Musfiq (Yale University)
Remittance Frictions and Seasonal Poverty
écrit avec ,Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corey Vernot , Arjun Kharel
Seasonal migration is a common strategy to mitigate rural seasonal deprivation, but migrants need to remit money back during the lean season to family
members facing food shortages. We observe counterintuitively low remittances
in rural Nepal during periods of seasonal hunger, and migrants return with remittances later during harvest when food is relatively abundant. To indirectly
overcome this apparent constraint in remittance timing, we provide a $90 consumption loan to randomly selected rural households during the pre-harvest
lean season. Loan-recipient households increase pre-harvest investments in fertilizer and time spent working on their own farm, smooth consumption, and
save more of their migration income to bring it back home. Food security, subjective well-being, rice harvest and revenues improve. 98% of beneficiaries repay
the loan with the increased harvest-period remittance. In a two-period model of
household decision-making, we show that remittance frictions – a market failure
– are necessary to qualitatively match our experimental results.
Histoire des entreprises et de la finance
Du 15/05/2024 de 16:00 à 17:30
R2.20
RIEDER Kilian (Oesterreichische Nationalbank, CEPR & SUERF)
Income Shocks, Strategic Default and Financial Stability: Evidence from the 1920s
The widespread U.S. bank failures between 1921 and 1929 are conventionally attributed to asset-side losses resulting from banks' exposure to bad agricultural debts. Exploiting a new annual database on farm real estate transfers at the county-level, we provide evidence for a complementary funding channel to bank exits during the 1920s. We find that deposit withdrawals from banks are highly correlated with bank suspensions, even after directly controlling for the asset-side impact of farm distress. Building on a simple theoretical framework, we empirically link deposit withdrawals to the agricultural income shock following 1920, farmers' expectations about future returns, and their decision to strategically default on mortgages.
Economic History Seminar
Du 15/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1.09
LAMOUROUX Christian (EHESS)
Histoire économique et données en miettes — comment écrire l'histoire économique de la Chine des Song (960-1279) ?
Comment écrire une histoire économique sans archives ? Comment évaluer des volumes de production ou de consommation à partir de chiffres parfois nombreux mais disparates, recensés dans des régions différentes et dans des conditions souvent imprécises, voire douteuses ? Comment comparer des prix quand les monnaies diffèrent d’une région à l’autre, en incluant des monnaies « privées », circulant sur les marchés et plus ou moins tolérées par les autorités locales ? Bref, qu’est-ce qu’une histoire économique sans quantification fiable ? C’est à ce défi qu’est confronté l’historien de la Chine impériale au tournant du premier et du second millénaires, alors que les textes et l’archéologie attestent que l’empire des Song connaissait un essor sans précédent de l’économie marchande, soutenue par un développement des instruments financiers dont le premier papier-monnaie émis à partir de 1024. Le présent exposé cherchera à montrer que l’interprétation des données disponibles, y compris chiffrées, permet cependant de mettre en évidence la cohérence des mécanismes qui permit aux différents échelons de l’État dynastique de diversifier leurs finances tout en faisant de la Chine un des grands carrefours des échanges asiatiques.
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 14/05/2024 de 17:00 à 18:00
R1-14
REUTZEL Fabian (PSE)
Income Opportunities across the Lifecycle: Evidence from Swedish Admin Data
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 14/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
Salle R2.21
BERLAND Ondine (Paris Saclay Applied Economics, Paris Saclay University and INRAE)
Households' Food Carbon Footprint
Global food systems are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, yet strategies to mitigate food-related emissions receive low public acceptance. To better understand this gap, this study pioneers a comprehensive analysis of household-level food carbon footprints using a representative panel survey for France from 2017-2019. Using machine learning techniques to match food purchases and environmental data, I unveil significant emission disparities, with a notable portion of these differences attributable to unobserved heterogeneity. By segmenting households into quartiles based on their current emission levels, I estimate a structural demand model that reveals distinct profiles in consumption behavior and price sensitivity, particularly contrasting low and high-emission households. These findings underscore the need to consider households' heterogeneous reactions to price changes when designing climate-related food policies.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 13/05/2024 de 17:00 à 18:30
R1-09
HAUSER Daniel (Aalto)
Behavioral Foundations of Model Misspecification
écrit avec Aislinn Bohren
We link two approaches to biased belief formation: non-Bayesian updating rules and model misspecification. Each approach has advantages: updating rules transparently capture the underlying bias and are identifiable from belief data; misspecified models are `complete' and amenable to general analysis. We show that misspecified models can be decomposed into an updating rule and forecast of anticipated future beliefs. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for an updating rule and belief forecast to have a misspecified model representation, show the representation is unique, and construct it. This highlights the belief restrictions implicit in the misspecified model approach. Finally, we explore two ways to select belief forecasts---introspection-proof and naive consistent---and derive when a representation of each exists.
Econometrics Seminar
Du 13/05/2024 de 16:15 à 17:30
CREST, room 3001
SOKULLU Senay (University of Bristol)
Identification and Estimation of Demand Models with Endogenous Product Entry and Exit
écrit avec Co-authors: Victor Aguirregabiria and Alessandro Iaria
This paper deals with the endogeneity of firms’ entry and exit decisions in demand estimation. Product entry decisions lack a single crossing property in terms of demand unobservables, which causes the inconsistency of conventional methods dealing with selection. We present a novel and straightforward two-step approach to estimate demand while addressing endogenous product entry. In the first step, our method estimates a finite mixture model of product entry accommodating latent market types. In the second step, it estimates demand controlling for the propensity scores of all latent market types. We apply this approach to data from the airline industry.
Paris Migration Economics Seminar
Du 13/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-14
RUYSSEN Ilse (Ghent University)
Irrigation as mitigator for migratory aspirations following drought
écrit avec Alix Debray, Lucile Dehouck, Katrin Millock
This article aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the causal relationship between climate and migration, which has remained inconclusive and often fails to consider alternative adaptive mechanisms. Specifically, we investigate the effect of drought on aspirations to migrate in and out of 11 West African countries, controlling for irrigation. Our analysis uses cross-country comparable Gallup World Poll surveys combined with fine-grained geo-local information on irrigation coverage as well as drought occurrence and intensity. Our preliminary findings confirm the potential of irrigation to diminish the negative effect of drought on migration aspirations. However, further robustness checks and estimations on different samples will allow determining whether this correlation would encourage individuals to continue investing in their local communities or rather enable them to fulfil their migration aspirations. Overall, the article highlights the potential of alternative adaptation mechanisms in shaping migration patterns and emphasizes the need for a more nuanced understanding of the climate-migration nexus
Régulation et Environnement
Du 13/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1-09
BRETSCHGER Lucas (ETH Zurich)
Green Road is Open: Economic Pathway with a Carbon Price Escalator
The paper develops the concept of "Economic Pathways" (EPs), which char-
acterizes theory-based scenarios for an economy that strives for decarbonization
by the middle of the century. The theoretical framework derives closed-form an-
alytical solutions for consumption, innovation, emissions, and population. The
EPs di§er in the stringency of assumed policies and associated income and emis-
sion development. Unlike the well-known "Shared Socioeconomic Pathways",
they allow the inclusion of important causalities between the economy and the
environment and considerably narrow down the scope of likely future develop-
ments. The quantitative part serves to illustrate the long-term consequences of
climate policy. I show that deep decarbonization only moderately delays eco-
nomic development, but requires increasing escalation of the carbon price. The
paper argues that the adoption of more stringent climate policies becomes more
likely as the phase-out of fossil fuels increases. The "Green Road" is not only
feasible but also attractive and realistic.
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 10/05/2024 de 13:00 à 14:00
R1-09
FIETZ Katharina (GIGA)
Improving employment quality in Africa’s small firms: Evidence from Côte d‘Ivoire
Employment quality in many micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) remains low in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper assesses the impact of a light-touch consulting programme with a decent work component for MSMEs in Côte d'Ivoire on employment quality. While the programme itself did not reduce any costs beyond the provision of information, it served as a reminder to employers of their legal obligations and the potential benefits associated with providing decent employment standards. We find that the consulting intervention had a positive impact on employment quality at 6 and 18 months after implementation. For example, the share of employees paid minimum wages increases by 9.2 percentage points 18 months post-intervention. Unusually for an RCT in this area, we collect information from both business owners and dependent workers to create a unique matched employer-employee dataset across multiple time points. This enables us to assess the effects of an enterprise-level intervention from an employee perspective and examine discrepancies between worker- and employer-based reports. We thus identify that those who benefit most from the programme are less experienced employees and employees working in firms outside the economic capital, Abidjan.
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 07/05/2024 de 14:30 à 16:00
PSE, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-01
GUIGUE Etienne (ENSAE)
Markups and Markdowns in the French Dairy Market
écrit avec Rémi Avignon
Separately measuring firm buyer and seller power is important for policy-making, but chal-
lenging. In this paper, we suggest a new methodology to do so and apply it to French dairy
processors. These firms exert buyer power when purchasing raw milk, and seller power when
marketing dairy products. The analysis is based on plant-level data on dairy firms, with obser-
vations on prices and quantities of raw-milk input by origin and output by product from 2003
to 2018. We rely on a production function approach to estimate total margins. The existence
of a commodity, (i) substitutable as an input or as an output, and (ii) exchanged on global
markets where firms are price-takers, allows us to separately estimate firm-origin markdowns
and firm-product markups. We show this methodology can also be useful in other contexts,
with more limited data. Markdown estimates imply that dairy firms on average purchase raw
milk at a price 16% below its marginal contribution to their profits, while markup estimates
indicate that firms sell dairy products at a price exceeding their marginal costs by 41%. Our re-
sults show substantial variations in buyer and seller power exploitation across firms, products,
and time. We analyze how shocks to local farmer costs and international commodity prices
pass through the supply chain. Processors partially absorb such shocks by adjusting markups
and markdowns, thus smoothing variations in farmer revenues. It further implies that 65% of
subsidies are currently diverted from farmers due to processor buyer power. A price floor on
raw milk could be an alternative welfare-improving policy.
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 07/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R2-21
TOCHEV Todor (IPP)
Financial Support and Training Participation for Job-Seekers: Evidence from France
How does financial support affect job-seeker participation in adult vocational training? To answer this question, I focus on a 2019 reform in France using a triple-differences methodology that exploits variation over regions, time, and eligibility. Increased monthly financial support only increases training starts when coupled with an upfront training grant. This is primarily driven by courses preparing for further training. Using a novel dataset with information on absenteeism, I find that only increasing the monthly training grant results in more missed hours of training, suggesting at least some job-seeker trainees are credit-constrained.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 07/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-09
LLEONART ANGUIX Manuel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Firm Organization Under Cover-Ups
This paper explores the dynamics of optimal organizational hierarchies in environments where supervisors may engage in cover-ups upon detecting mistakes. Employing a theoretical model, I investigate how firm size, the cost of mistakes, and their probability influence the wage structure within firms. I discuss the potential implications of organizational culture and the likelihood of cover-ups on the optimal firm hierarchy. This study contributes to the understanding of optimal organizational design and provides insights for firms seeking to mitigate the risks associated with errors and cover-ups in hierarchical structures
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 06/05/2024 de 17:00 à 18:30
DILLENBERGER David (UPenn)
Allocation Mechanisms with Mixture-Averse Preferences
écrit avec Uzi Segal
Consider an economy with equal amounts of N types of goods, to
be allocated to agents with strict quasi-convex preferences over lotteries. We show that ex-ante, all feasible and Pareto efficient allocations
give almost all agents binary lotteries. Therefore, even if all preferences are the same, some identical agents necessarily receive different
lotteries. Our results provide a simple criterion to show that many
popular allocation mechanisms are ex-ante inefficient. Assuming the
reduction of compound lotteries axiom, social welfare deteriorates by
first randomizing over these binary lotteries. Efficient full ex-ante
equality is achieved if agents satisfy the compound independence axiom.
Paris Migration Economics Seminar
Du 06/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-14
EMERIAU Mathilde (SciencesPo)
In or Out? Xenophobic Violence and Immigrant Integration. Evidence from 19th century France
écrit avec Stephane Wolton
How do foreigners respond to xenophobic violence? We study Italian immigrants' response to anti-Italian violence triggered by the assassination of the French president by an Italian anarchist in June 1894. Using French nominative census records from 1881, 1886, 1891 and 1896 and official naturalization decrees published between 1887 to 1898, we study the decision of Italian immigrants to either leave their local communities or apply for naturalization using a difference-in-differences design, comparing the change in exit and naturalization application rate of Italians before and after the assassination to that of other foreigners in the same period. We document how xenophobic violence triggered an increase in both exits and naturalization applications, with greater violence or threat thereof associated with more exits. We also find that well-integrated Italians, as proxied by intermarriage, occupation, and position in the household, are more likely to naturalize and less likely to exit than less integrated ones and less integrated ones are more likely to exit. We present a stylized model of immigrants' choices to make sense of these findings.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 06/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1-09
OLLIVIER Hélène (PSE)
The Cost of Air Pollution for Workers and Firms
This paper shows that even moderate levels of air pollution, such as those found in Europe, harm the economy by decreasing firm performance. We estimate the causal effect of fine particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) on firms' monthly sales and worker absenteeism using matched employer-employee data from France from 2009 to 2015. We exploit variation in air pollution induced by changes in monthly wind directions at the postcode level. We find that a 10 percent increase in monthly PM2.5 exposure decreases sales in the following two months by 0.7 percent on average, with heterogeneous effects across sectors ranging from a 0.4 percent decrease in manufacturing, construction, and business-to-business trade and services, 1.0 percent in food retail and supermarkets, to 1.4 percent in other business-to-consumer services. Concurrently, worker absenteeism due to sick leave increases by 1 percent, underscoring the negative effects of air pollution on workers' health. Yet sales losses are an order of magnitude larger than we would expect if worker absenteeism was the main channel underlying sales decrease. A heterogeneity analysis by sector and industry highlights two other important mechanisms: a detrimental effect of air pollution on the productivity of non-absent workers, and on local demand. The results from our study suggest that reducing air pollution in line with the World Health Organization's guidelines generates economic benefits largely exceeding the cost of regulation in France.
Du 06/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1-09
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La séance est annulée
Casual Friday Development Seminar - Brown Bag Seminar
Du 03/05/2024 de 13:00 à 14:00
R1-09
AHMED Resuf ()
Does Political Quotas Lead to Development? Evidence from India
EU Tax Observatory Seminar
Du 03/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:00
Salle R1-14
STAGE Barbara (WHU)
The Value of a Loss: The Impact of Restricting Tax Loss Transfers
écrit avec with Theresa Bührle, Elisa Casi and Johannes Voget
We study the economic consequences of anti-loss trafficking rules, which disallow the use of loss carry-forwards as tax shield after a substantial ownership change. We use staggered changes to anti-loss trafficking rules in the EU27 Member States, Norway and United Kingdom from 1998 to 2019 and find that limiting the transfer of tax losses reduces the number of M&As by 18%. The impairment is driven by loss-making targets. Turning to the broader impact on industry dynamics, we find decreases in survival rates of young companies in response to tighter regulations. Some of these start-up deaths are compensated by new firm entrants. We further detect that loosening of regulation spurs firm entry and survival. Finally, tightening (loosening) anti-loss trafficking rules impairs (increases) return on assets, especially for R&D-intensive firms that are more prone to loss-making in their life cycle.
EPCI (Economie politique du changement institutionnel) Seminar
Du 03/05/2024 de 11:00 à 12:30
MSE salle 116
FLORES Ignacio (World Inequality Database, PSE)
Does Land Inequality Magnify Climate Change Effects? Evidence from France
This paper investigates how the concentration of farmland mediates the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity, with direct implications on resilience to heatwaves. We use a unique combination of French cadastral data and satellite imagery to demonstrate that more unequally distributed land entail greater losses during and after climatic shocks, primarily due to a lack of crop diversity resulting from specialisation. Contrarily to what is found in natural ecosystems in the biology literature, we uncover a productivity-resilience tradeoff, according to which more unequal regions, i.e, less diverse, tend to be less resilient but more productive. Our findings have implications for farmers and policymakers, who should consider these tradeoffs to ensure food security and price stability in the face of the climate crisis.
Macroeconomics Seminar
Du 02/05/2024 de 16:00 à 17:15
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, salle R2-21
CANTORE Cristiano (Sapienza University )
A tail of labor supply and a tale of monetary policy
écrit avec Filippo Ferroni Chicago Fed, Haroon Mumtaz Queen Mary University of London and Angeliki Theophilopoulou Brunel University London
We study the interaction between monetary policy and labor supply decisions at the household level. We uncover evidence of heterogeneous responses and a strong countercyclicality of hours worked in the left tail of the income distribution, following a monetary policy shock in the U.S. and the U.K. That is, while aggregate hours and labor earnings decline, employed individuals at the bottom of the income distribution increase their hours worked in response to an interest rate hike. Moreover, their response is stronger in magnitude relative to other income groups. We rationalize this using a two-agent New-Keynesian (TANK) model where our empirical findings can be replicated with heterogeneity in the sensitivity of marginal utility of consumption and a stronger income effect for the Hand-to-Mouth households. This setup uncovers a novel channel of transmission of monetary policy via inequality generated by the Hand-to-Mouth substitution of leisure for consumption following a negative income shock. Using a quantitative model with both intensive and extensive margin of labor
supply that replicates our evidence, we show that this new channel reduces the amplification of monetary policy via inequality generated by the heterogeneous behavior of unemployment along the income distribution.
Travail et économie publique externe
Du 02/05/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R2-21
RAUH Christopher (University of Cambridge)
Beliefs About Maternal Labor Supply
écrit avec Teodora Boneva, Marta Golin, and Katja Kaufmann
We provide representative evidence on the perceived returns to maternal labor supply. A mother’s decision to work is perceived to have sizable impacts on child skills, family outcomes, and the mother's future labor market outcomes. Beliefs about the impact of additional household income can account for some, but not all, of the perceived positive effects. Perceived returns are predictive of labor supply intentions under different policy scenarios related to childcare availability and quality, two factors that are also perceived as important. An information experiment reveals that providing information about benefits of mothers working causally affects labor supply intentions.
Behavior seminar
Du 02/05/2024 de 11:00 à 12:00
ZOOM
FRIEBEL Guido (Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany)
Gender Promotion Gaps in Knowledge Work: The Role of Task Assignment in Teams
écrit avec Cagatay Bircan, Guido Friebel ,Tristan Stahl
Using rich data on personnel records, work assignments, and performance in a financial
institution, we uncover the mechanisms leading to promotion gaps in knowledge
teamwork. There is a substantial promotion gap for women in early careers. Analyzing
over 10,000 investment projects, we find that assignments to project team leaderships
(a “promotable” task) are crucial in explaining the gaps in promotions and affect longterm
careers. We find causal evidence that male supervisors favor male bankers. A
survey among employees indicates that women perceive to be disadvantaged in the
assignments of tasks, but they do not differ in aspirations and demand for these roles.