Calendrier du mois de septembre 2024
Programme de la semaine précédente | Programme de la semaine | Programme de la semaine suivante | |
(du 2024-04-29 au 2024-05-06) | (du 2024-05-06 au 2024-05-12) | (du 2024-05-12 au 2024-05-19) |
Semaine du 2024-05-06 au 2024-05-12 |
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.
Du 06/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1-09
() *;
La séance est annulée
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.