Calendrier du mois de septembre 2024
Programme de la semaine précédente | Programme de la semaine | Programme de la semaine suivante | |
(du 2024-09-16 au 2024-09-23) | (du 2024-09-23 au 2024-09-29) | (du 2024-09-29 au 2024-10-06) |
Semaine du 2024-09-23 au 2024-09-29 |
Occasional Empirical Environmental Group
Du 27/09/2024 de 16:30 à 17:30
R1-09
JEGARD Martin (INRAE)
An Optimal Distribution of Polluting Activities Across Space
Should air quality policies target industries within the largest cities? On the one hand, we should seek to reduce atmospheric pollutants’ emissions in places where most of the population is concentrated. On the other hand, more stringent policies can hurt local industries and targeting the cities that contribute the most economically may decrease welfare. Extending recent quantitative spatial economics models, I analyze these counteracting forces. I find that when the local damages from pollution are not internalized by the industry and workers react to low air quality through migration, the largest cities can be too small. As a result, an optimal set of policies imposes higher emission taxes in these locations relative to the rest of the country. I estimate the model using French data and find that current policies impose higher costs of emissions in larger cities but raising them even higher could achieve welfare gains.
PSE Internal Seminar
Du 27/09/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-15
CHALLE Edouard(Pse & Cnrs)
PONCET Sandra(Pse & University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)
Inequality and Optimal Monetary Policy in the Open Economy
We study the transmission and optimality of monetary policy in a tractable small open economy model in which households face uninsured idiosyncratic earnings risk and unequal access to financial markets. As is typical in open economies, the stabilisation of the output gap and inflation (the "internal" objectives) may conflict with the stabilisation of the exchange rate and the current account (the "external" objectives), and our economy is no exception. Uninsured shocks and unequal financial market access further complicate matters for the central bank, as the domestic and foreign demands for home goods now both affect the distribution of earning shocks domestically and, ultimately, domestic inequality. Under plausible calibrations for the trade elasticities, the elasticity of intertemporal substitution, and the cyclicality of income risk, the central bank finds it optimal to stabilise the exchange rate more than in the benchmark economy without idiosyncratic earnings shocks.
EU Tax Observatory Seminar
Du 27/09/2024 de 12:00 à 13:00
R1-14
KYSAR Rebecca (Fordham University)
The Global Tax Deal and the New International Economic Governance
The ethos of economic integration and trade liberation no longer reigns supreme. Instead of multilateral trade agreements, nations are turning towards protectionism and unilateralism. Yet in late 2021, nearly 140 countries agreed to a new global tax deal that is aimed at coordinating their tax systems to curtail tax competition and corporation profit shifting to tax havens, as well as constructing a new allocation of taxing rights among nations.
Although multilateral trade agreements now seem out of reach, tax multilateralism is ascendant. This is surprising given the deep tradition of national control over tax policy. It also perplexing since international tax does not exhibit the same theoretical harmony between national and worldwide welfare that international trade enjoys. The traditional account offered by economists is that trade liberalization is a rising tide that will lift all boats because countries will produce according to their competitive advantages and trade the rest, making trade suitable for international coordination. In contrast, tax is largely described as a zero-sum contest for a fixed pot of tax revenues, deeming it ill-suited for collective action.
If multilateralism in the economic sphere is dead, then how did this agreement come to be? And perhaps more puzzlingly, why did a global deal emerge in international tax, of all places? This Article attempts to explain the forces by which the global tax deal came to pass. It contends that we must look beyond traditional rationales for the explanation, instead examining the global tax deal within a broader foreign and domestic economic policy context. The Article concludes that the fall of multilateralism in the trade context and its rise in international tax can be explained by the same phenomenon—widespread dissatisfaction with the distribution of gains from globalization.
This account not only illuminates the stakes at issue in the debate over the implementation of the new global tax system, but also extends the rationales for each of its two parts, or “Pillars,” beyond those proffered (and indeed beyond those typically discussed in international tax policy). Further, this explanation provides evidence that an alternative international economic order is emerging rather than the old Washington Consensus simply dying —one where marshaling resources to reverse fiscal austerity and address distributional concerns is on the agenda. Finally, the story of the global tax deal helps to identify troubling aspects of the new industrial and trade strategies that nations are embracing and offers alternatives to them.
EPCI (Economie politique du changement institutionnel) Seminar
Du 27/09/2024 de 11:00 à 12:30
MSE salle du 6e étage
SALESSE Camille (U. Montpellier, Center for Environmental Economics Montpellier)
Air Pollution and Educational Inequalities
écrit avec Simon BRIOLE (U. Montpellier, CEE-M)
This paper assesses the impact of air pollution on human capital using comprehensive data on the results in the two main national exams in France, the Brevet (9th grade) and the Baccalauréat (12th grade), for the cohorts 2010 to 2017. By leveraging daily random variations in air pollution between exam days, we show that fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentration above the WHO threshold significantly decreases the test score only for the poorest and foreign students. This result is robust using the instrumental variables method, exploiting day-to-day variations in wind direction. Taking a Brevet exam on a day when PM2.5 levels exceed WHO recommendations results in a 5% standard deviation decrease in test score for the poorest students. These students also have the greatest academic difficulties, further exacerbating educational inequalities.
Behavior Working Group
Du 27/09/2024 de 11:00 à 12:00
MSE (salle S1)
RIMBAUD Claire (Université Paris-Dauphine.)
Consumers’ (mis)perception of second-hand clothing
Our research project aims to understand consumers' attitudes towards second-hand goods, specifically related to image concerns in the clothing industry, through two connected survey experiments. The first survey investigates if there is a negative perception of buyers of second-hand clothes. The second survey aims to improve people's negative perception of second-hand clothes by presenting them with unbiased opinions from the first survey and asking them to choose between vouchers for first or second-hand clothes.
brown bag Travail et Économie Publique
Du 26/09/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
PSE- 48 boulevard Jourdan, 74014 Paris, salle R1-09
GEUNA Pietro (PSE)
Political Consequences of Adverse Labor Market Shocks.
It is commonly argued that adverse labor market shocks, e.g. mass layoffs, fuel political discontent and/or disengagement. However, few papers try to establish how mass layoffs causally impact political activity. We use high-frequency data on contributions to US political parties and self-reported data on mass layoffs in the last decade in the United States to try to address this gap. We find evidence against the hypothesis that mass layoffs lead to disengagement; on the contrary, we find an increase in political activity in the months following a large event. We propose that these findings can be explained by a desire to punish the incumbent politician for the perceived mismanagement of the economy.
PEPES (Paris Empirical Political Economics) Working Group
Du 26/09/2024 de 12:30 à 13:45
R2-01
DESMET Klaus (SMU)
Latent Polarization
écrit avec Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín and Romain Wacziarg
We develop a new method to endogenously partition society
into groups based on homophily in values. The between-group
differentiation that results from this partition provides a novel
measure of latent polarization in society. For the last forty years,
the degree of latent polarization of the U.S. public has been high and
relatively stable. In contrast, the degree of partisan polarization
between voters of the two main political parties steadily increased
since the 1990s, and is now converging toward that of underlying
values-based clusters. Growing partisan polarization in the U.S. is a
reflection of partisan views becoming increasingly aligned with the
main values-based clusters in society.
TOM (Théorie, Organisation et Marchés) Lunch Seminar
Du 26/09/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-14
GHERSENGORIN Alexis (Oxford)
Robust regulation and flexibility in labour markets
We study the robust regulation of labour contracts in the canonical moral hazard
problem with limited liability. When offering a contract, the principal trades off sur-
plus creation – i.e., incentivising a more productive action – and surplus extraction –
i.e., minimizing the incentive rent paid to the agent. A regulator may therefore inter-
vene and restrict the set of permissible contracts to (i) restore efficiency and (ii) protect
the worker. When the regulator does not know the details of the production environ-
ment, we show that imposing a minimum wage minimizes her worst-case regret. The
optimal regulation allows all contracts that exceed a linear one. The slope of the min-
imal wage balances the worker’s protection (by guaranteeing a minimal share of the
production) and the necessary flexibility for incentives provision
Du 25/09/2024 de 16:30 à 18:00
R2-01
SENNE Jean-Noël (Université Paris Saclay)
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Development Economics Seminar
Du 25/09/2024 de 16:30 à 18:00
R2-01
GROSSET-TOUBA Florian (CREST-ENSAE)
Complementarities in Labor Supply: How Joint Commuting Shapes Work Decisions
écrit avec Aletheia Donald
Commuting is notoriously challenging in lower-income country cities, limiting firms’ ability to attract workers from different neighborhoods and reducing the economic benefits of urban agglomeration. This paper examines whether decreasing the non-financial cost of commuting—by commuting with peers rather than alone—reduces this friction and increases labor supply. We conduct two field experiments in urban Côte d’Ivoire. In the first experiment, job seekers are 16pp more likely to accept a formal full-time factory job if their peers also receive a job offer, and 15pp more likely to remain in that job four months later—but only if they will be employed in the same shift (rather than different shifts). These effects are driven by workers with long commute times, who can commute to work together. Consistent with this channel, workers’ own attendance and turnover are predicted by the attendance and quits of co-commuting peers. In a second field experiment with a different firm, we again randomize whether a worker’s peers are offered a job and whether they could commute together. We also randomize job location—inducing exogenous variation in commute time. We replicate the finding of complementarities in labor supply, but only in the case of long assigned commute times. These findings indicate that commuting together serves as an important job amenity with large impacts on labor supply. Our results provide a novel explanation for key features of urban labor markets, including firms’ widespread use of referrals for hiring and persistent gaps in employment across social groups.
Economic History Seminar
Du 25/09/2024 de 12:30 à 14:00
R1-09
XUE Mélanie (LSE)
British Industrialization and Cultural Change: Evidence From the Use of Proverbs
Our study explores the cultural dimension of the Industrial Revolution through a pioneering analysis of proverbs. Using a dataset of 25,000 proverbs prevalent in early modern England, we apply advanced data analytics techniques, including large language models and BERTopic clustering, to uncover the cultural narratives embedded in these sayings. Our findings highlight the interplay between pre-industrial economic activities and the development of pro-market cultural norms, providing partial evidence of culture’s independent role in facilitating industrialization. Additionally, we trace the transformation of cultural values in response to industrialization, revealing shifts in themes like practical knowledge, time management, and bravery. These results emphasize the dynamic relationship between economic growth and cultural change, offering a novel method for studying the historical evolution of cultural attitudes.
PSI-PSE (Petit Séminaire Informel de la Paris School of Economics) Seminar
Du 24/09/2024 de 17:30 à 18:30
R1-09
Virtual Development Economics Seminar
Du 24/09/2024 de 16:00 à 17:00
Zoom
CASSEN Guilhem (University of Namur)
Political Determinants of the News Market: Novel Data and Quasi-Experimental. Evidence from India
écrit avec Julia Cagé (Sciences Po), Francesca Jensenius (University of Oslo)
Information conveyed through news media influences political behavior. But to what extent are media markets themselves shaped by political determinants? We build a novel panel dataset of newspaper markets in India from 2002 to 2017 to measure the impact of changes in apportionment on how news markets develop over time. We exploit the announcement of an exogenous change in the boundaries of electoral constituencies to causally identify the relationship between the (future) apportionment of news markets and the change in the number and circulation of newspapers. Using an event-study, a staggered difference-in-differences approach and placebos, we show that markets that became more electorally important experienced a significant rise in both circulation and the number of titles per capita. We document how effects vary with prior levels of political competition and newspapers’ characteristics, and discuss implications for voting behavior and democratic accountability.
Paris Trade Seminar
Du 24/09/2024 de 15:15 à 16:30
Sciences Po, 28 rue des Saints-Pères, 75007 Paris (M° Saint Germain des prés), salle H401 / Jean-Paul Fitoussi
BLANCHARD Emily (Dartmouth)
Justice for Sale: Explaining the Rise in Investor-State Dispute Settlement
écrit avec Monika Sztajerowska (PSE and IMF)
We build a novel database linking the universe of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)
cases with detailed financial, ownership, and operating data for the foreign investors ini-
tiating these disputes, from 2000-2020. We document a sharp and sustained increase in
the number of ISDS cases that is not explained by changes in the scope of international
investment treaties or the expansion of multinational firms’ global operations. This in-
crease in case initiation corresponds instead to a fundamental change in the composition
of ISDS-suing firms, with significantly more small and credit-constrained firms pursuing
litigation against sovereign states after the mid 2000s. Guided by theory, and augmenting
our database with hand-collected information on case(-investor) specific choice of litigation
technology, we find evidence that the advent and expansion of third-party funding (TPF)
can explain a significant share of the observed increase in ISDS cases over the past two
decades. Further analysis suggests that third party funding may also increase firms’ odds
of winning, which could induce additional disputes in the years to come.
STEP (Seminar of Trade Economists in Paris)
Du 24/09/2024 de 14:00 à 15:00
Science Po
CORCOS Gregory (ENSAE & Polytechnique)
Firm-level export and import survival over the business cycle
écrit avec Silviano Esteve-Pérez, Salvador Gil-Pareja and Yuanzhe Tang
This paper examines how business cycle conditions affect the dynamics of exporting and importing firms, using micro-level data on trade spells initiated by French firms over the period 1998-2015. First, we find evidence of firm reallocation during recessions. Entry rates fall while exit rates increase. Both entrants and exiters exhibit higher productivity, suggesting tougher selection into export and import participation. Second, business cycle conditions at times of entry have persistent effects on exporters and importers: cohorts ’born’ in recessions have a systematically lower exit rate at any age. They also exhibit persistently different characteristics from firms that enter in better times. In the case of exports, cohorts born at recessions and booms display a similar age-dependence path. In other words, firms entering export markets in a recession enjoy a one-off premium to their spell duration prospects. Third, conclusions are largely unaffected when we use a joint model of export and import duration. Our estimates reveal a positive correlation in the unobservable factors explaining both decisions. To put it simply, exporters-importers tend to have either short-short or long-long spells. Overall, our results suggest that business cycle conditions affect trade participation in the short- and long-run, with recessions having both ’cleansing’ and ’scarring’ effects.
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 24/09/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R221
WIDMER Philine (PSE)
On the Effects of Recommender Algorithms
We examine the impact of Twitter/X's recommender algorithm on political attitudes. In a field experiment, we randomly assigned active U.S.-based users to either an algorithmic feed or a reverse-chronological feed for seven weeks, measuring their political attitudes and online behavior. Several key findings emerged: Switching from a reverse-chronological to an algorithmic feed increases user engagement and shifts political opinions toward more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump, and views on the war in Ukraine. Using NLP methods to analyze the content of users' feeds, we confirm that the algorithm promotes more conservative content. In contrast, we do not find symmetrical effects among users randomized to switch from the algorithmic feed to the reverse-chronological feed, suggesting that exposure to recommender algorithms persistently affects political attitudes.
Roy Seminar (ADRES)
Du 23/09/2024 de 16:00 à 17:15
R1-09
SALMI Julia (Copenhagen)
Dynamic Evidence Disclosure: Delay the Good to Accelerate the Bad
écrit avec Jan Knoepfle
We analyze the dynamic tradeoff between the generation and the disclosure of evidence. Agents are tempted to delay investing in a new technology in order to learn from information generated by the experiences of others. This informational free-riding is collectively harmful as it slows down innovation adoption. A welfare-maximizing designer can delay the disclosure of previously generated information in order to speed up adoption. The optimal policy transparently discloses bad news and delays good news. This finding resonates with regulation demanding that fatal breakdowns be reported promptly. Remarkably, the designer's intervention makes all agents better off.
Paris Migration Economics Seminar
Du 23/09/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R1-15
DESMET Klaus (Southern Methodist University)
On the Geographic Implications of Carbon Taxes
écrit avec Bruno Conte ( Universita di Bologna) and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg (SMU)
Using a multisector dynamic spatial integrated assessment model (S-IAM), we argue that a carbon tax introduced by the European Union (EU) and rebated locally
can, if not too large, increase the size of Europe’s economy by concentrating economic activity in its high-productivity non-agricultural core and by incentivizing
immigration to the EU. The resulting change in the spatial distribution of economic activity improves global efficiency and welfare. A carbon tax introduced
by the US generates similar effects. This stands in sharp contrast with standard
models that ignore trade and migration in a world shaped by economic geography
forces.
Régulation et Environnement
Du 23/09/2024 de 11:00 à 12:15
r1-09
RUBIN Edward (Oregon State University)
Power plants, air pollution, and regulatory rebound
: Interactions between overlapping air quality regulations can have unintended impacts on polluting activities. We document one such potentially important interaction. Local regulators in areas constrained by one type of regulation—e.g., threshold-based local air quality standards—are incentivized to permit more local pollution in response to a decline in emissions induced by another kind of regulation—e.g., rules targeting power plant emissions. We combine a state-of-the-art particle trajectory model, machine learning, and an econometric model of local air pollution exposure to quantify the relationship between sustained reductions in upwind power-plant emissions of pollution (PM2.5) precursors and downwind pollution levels. We use this integrated air quality modeling framework to test whether pollution levels in constrained counties appear to rebound when emissions from upwind pollution sources decline. We document evidence that is consistent with a local emissions rebound.