Cecilia Garcia Peñalosa

Faculty ,  CNRS , EHESS

Macro, labor and international economics
Garcia Peñalosa
Status
Research professor
Research domain(s)
Development economics, Labour economics, Macroeconomics
Thesis
1995, University of Oxford
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CV
Contact
cecilia.garcia-penalosa[at]univ-amu.fr
+33(0)4 13 55 25 51 / +33(0)4 13 94 20 13
Address

AMU - AMSE
5-9 Boulevard Maurice Bourdet, CS 50498
​13205 Marseille Cedex 1

Website
https://sites.google.com/view/ceciliagarciapenalosa
Abstract This paper asks whether macroeconomic policy can affect fertility and education by documenting a slow-down of long-term improvements in these two outcomes in the wake of a major protectionist shock that shielded low-skilled individuals from the adverse consequences of the first wave of globalisation. We build a novel dataset for 19th-century France where, following decades of rising grain imports at low prices, high tariffs on cereal were introduced in 1892, shifting relative prices in favour of agriculture and away from industry. We exploit regional data that allow us to measure differences in the intensity of the protectionist shock and find that the tariff halted the long-term increase in schooling and slowed-down the decline in fertility that were already well underway.
Keywords Fertility, Education, Unified growth theory, Protectionism, France
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Abstract A considerable body of work has shown that motherhood is accompanied by a reduction in labor market participation and hours of market work, while more recent findings indicate that women who earn more than their husbands tend to subsequently take actions that reduce their market income. Both patterns of behavior have been interpreted as women trying to conform to child-rearing norms and to the prescription that the husband should be the main breadwinner. In this paper, we use panel data for US couples to re-examine women's behavior when they become mothers and when they are the main breadwinner. We start by asking whether the arrival of a child affects women who are the main breadwinner and those who are not in the same way, and then turn to how mothers and childless women react when they are the main breadwinner. Our results are consistent with the breadwinner norm only affecting mothers, suggesting that the salience of gender norms may depend on the household's context, notably on whether or not children are present. Concerning the arrival of a child, we find that although the labor supply of women who earn more than their husbands initially responds to motherhood less than that of secondary earners, the two groups converge after 10 years. Moreover, women in the former category exhibit a disproportionately large increase in the share of housework they perform after becoming mothers. The latter results suggest that the presence of children pushes women to seek to compensate breaking a norm by adhering to another one.
Keywords Children, Female labor supply, Gender identity norms, Relativeincome
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Abstract The increase in employment polarization observed in several high-income economies has coincided with a reduction in inter-generational mobility. This paper argues that the disappearance of middling jobs can drive changes in mobility, notably by removing a stepping stone towards high-paying occupations for those from less well-off family backgrounds. Using data from two British cohorts who entered the labour market at two points in time with very different degrees of employment polarization, we examine how parental income affects both entry occupations and occupational upgrading over careers. We find that transitions across occupations are key to mobility and that the impact of parental income has grown over time. At regional level, using a shiftshare IV-strategy, we show that the impact of parental income has increased the most in regions experiencing the greatest increase in polarisation. This indicates that the disappearance of middling jobs played a role in the observed decline in mobility.
Keywords British cohort, Parental income, Occupational transition, Job polarization, Inter-generational mobility
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Abstract A large literature characterises urbanisation as resulting from productivity growth attracting rural workers to cities. Incorporating economic geography elements into a growth model, we suggest that causation runs the other way: when rural workers move to cities, the resulting urbanisation produces technological change and productivity growth. Urban density leads to knowledge exchange and innovation, thus creating a positive feedback loop between city size and productivity that initiates sustained economic growth. This model is consistent with the fact that urbanisation rates in western Europe, most notably England, reached unprecedented levels by the mid-eighteenth century, the eve of the Industrial Revolution.
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Abstract This year‘s report addresses the future role governments and the challenges they are confronted with in post-pandemic times. It takes a broader perspective and relates the current situation to economic and political developments since the 1970s and examines whether and how the role of governments will change after the Covid-19 crisis.
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Abstract The coronavirus crisis has led to the sharpest economic downturn in modern times and poses unparalleled challenges to policy both on a national and an EU level, as well as globally. The European Union has launched the ground-breaking Next Generation EU (NGEU) program, which involves common burden-sharing and explicitly aims to strengthen social cohesion within the European Union. If it succeeds, it will strengthen both the role of the European Union and cohesion within the European Union. If it fails, it will be yet another example of a promising project that remains on paper, and only serves to erode social capital in the European Union. New resources will need to be well invested with an overall aim of overcoming market failures. This year's report shows how the crisis is affecting existing structures and makes recommendations for potential future investments in childcare, education, environment, firms and the economy as a whole.
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Abstract The Great Recession has strongly influenced employment patterns across skill and gender groups in EU countries. We analyse how these changes in workforce composition might distort comparisons of conventional measures of gender wage gaps via non-random selection of workers into EU labour markets. We document that male selection (traditionally disregarded) has become positive during the recession, particularly in Southern Europe. As for female selection (traditionally positive), our findings are twofold. Following an increase in the labour-force participation of less-skilled women, due to an added-worker effect, these biases declined in some countries where new female entrants were able to find jobs, whereas they went up in other countries which suffered large female employment losses. Finally, we document that most of these changes in selection patterns were reversed during the subsequent recovery phase, confirming their cyclical nature.
Keywords Gender employment gaps, Gender wage gaps, Sample selection
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Abstract The corona pandemic has created a health and economic crisis without modern parallel. As it hit affected countries ill-prepared and spread quickly within the EU, member states had to adopt more interventionist approaches than ever before – particularly in the areas of fiscal and monetary policy, labor markets and redistribution, and industrial policy. EU member states started controversial discussions about how to support those that were hit particularly hard. This debate has become a litmus test for solidarity in the world's richest bloc of nations. The decisions and measures taken in each country and at the European level will set the course for economic development in the coming years and shape the countries' long-term prospects for decades to come. This EEAG policy brief is a supplement to the group's usual annual report. The authors examine the various effects of the crisis, how Europe can react effectively and how political measures should evolve as the pandemic subsides. In addition, the authors analyze how an efficient supranational insurance mechanism might look like.
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Abstract In the 1930s, countries fought destructive trade conflicts – now we have a similar situation, but the conflicts are taking place in the tax system. These conflicts arise out of the twin impacts of globalization and digitalization. Once upon a time, there was an implicit understanding of fairness in taxation, meaning how countries tax within their borders and how the tax burden is distributed. More specifically, companies and individuals were taxed based on their residence and consumption in the destination country. Such an approach worked while these events were mostly perceived as national. However, the world has changed, and in an increasingly globalized, digitalized, and mobile world, these understandings no longer appear to work smoothly, efficiently, and uncontentiously.
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Abstract The promotion system for French academic economists provides an interesting environment to examine the promotion gap between men and women. Promotions occur through national competitions for which we have information both on candidates and on those eligible to be candidates. Thus, we can examine the two stages of the process: application and success. Women are less likely to seek promotion, and this accounts for up to 76 percent of the promotion gap. Being a woman also reduces the probability of promotion conditional on applying, although the gender difference is not statistically significant. Our results highlight the importance of the decision to apply.
Keywords Gender gaps, Professional advancement, Competition
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Abstract A sizable literature has established the positive impact of social infrastructure on economic development, but the determinants of social infrastructure itself have yet to be fully explored. Competing theories suggest a variety of political institutions as driving forces of social infrastructure, but the empirical literature has been hampered by the small set of available proxies, many of which are broadly defined. We leverage a new, comprehensive dataset that codes political institutions directly from countries’ constitutions. By employing a statistical methodology that is designed to juxtapose candidate regressors associated with many competing theories, we test each individual political institution's effect on social infrastructure. Our results show that constitutional rules pertaining to executive constraints as well as to the structure of electoral systems are crucial for the development of high-quality social infrastructure. We also find that the determinants of social infrastructure are much more fundamental than previously thought: not only the general structure of electoral systems matter, but also highly detailed aspects such as limits on campaign contributions and the freedom to form parties. Moreover, the granularity of our data allows us to highlight the profound effect of basic human rights on social infrastructure, a dimension which has not been explored in the literature to date.
Keywords Bayesian Model Averaging, Social Infrastructure, Institutions, Constitutions
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Abstract This articles focuses on the recent research efforts to incorporate income, wage and wealth inequality in macroeconomic models. I start by reviewing recent models on the impact of inequality on, on the one hand, long-run growth and, on the other, and macroeconomic fluctuations. The articles then reviews the literature concerned with the macroeconomic determinants of wage and wealth inequality. It concludes by discussing a number of possible avenues of research that seem to me particularly important, such as the impact of macroeconomic policy on distribution or the effect that firm size can have on both growth and wage inequality.
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Abstract The long-term costs of protectionism are difficult to evaluate as very few countries have switched back to this economic policy after a long period of free trade. One country that did make the move was France in 1892, when the Chamber of Deputies, encouraged by the president of the customs commission, Jules Méline, decided to sharply raise cereal import duties. This decision slowed the upwards trend in education levels as it made farming jobs more attractive than manufacturing jobs, thereby reducing the relative return on an education. These findings are consistent with the theory of unified growth which associates demand for education with technological improvement. They also suggest that educational progress is reversible.
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Abstract Cet article s’intéresse aux inégalités de répartition des salaires et du patrimoine comme programme de recherche macroéconomique. Après un bref aperçu des modèles récents liant inégalités et croissance à long terme d’une part, et inégalités et fluctuations macroéconomiques d’autre part, nous passons en revue la littérature sur les facteurs macroéconomiques à l’origine des inégalités de répartition des salaires et du patrimoine. En guise de conclusion, nous proposons quelques pistes de recherches futures qui nous semblent importantes à mener telles que le rôle des politiques macroéconomiques sur la répartition ou encore celui de la taille des entreprises sur la croissance et leur contribution aux inégalités.
Keywords Redistribution, Croissance, Richesse, Inégalités
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Abstract Earnings are the product of wages and hours of work; hence, the dispersion of hours can magnify or dampen a given distribution of wages. This paper examines how earnings inequality is affected by the dispersion of working hours using data for the USA, the UK, Germany, and France over the period 1989–2012. We find that hours dispersion can account for over a third of earnings inequality in some countries and that its contribution has been growing over time. We interpret the expansion in hours inequality in European countries as being the result of weaker union power that led to less successful bargaining concerning working hours.
Keywords Economie quantitative
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Abstract We examine the determinants of income mobility and inequality in a Ramsey model with elastic labor supply and heterogeneous wealth and ability (labor endowment). Both agents with lower wealth and with greater ability tend to supply more labor, implying that labor supply decisions may have an equalizing or unequalizing effect depending on the relative importance of the two sources of heterogeneity. Moreover, these decisions are central to the extent of mobility observed in an economy. The relationship between mobility and inequality is complex. For example, a reduction in the interest rate and an increase in the wage rate reduce capital income inequality and allow upward mobility of the ability-rich. However, the increase in the labor supply of high ability agents in response to higher wages raises earnings dispersion and thus has an offsetting effect. As a result, high mobility can be associated with an increase or a decrease in overall income inequality. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Keywords Transitional dynamics, Inequality, Income mobility, Endogenous labour supply
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Keywords Inégalités salariales, France, Politiques publiques, Travail
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Abstract Focusing on the promotion system for French academics, the authors aim at understanding the causes behind the underrepresentation of women among the highest positions. Three potential explanations are tested: gender discrimination, self-selection of women into competition, and poorer performance of women in contests conditional on applying for promotion. A rich database including information on candidates, those eligible to be candidates and the results of competitive examinations is used. They find that women have a lower probability to be candidates. It remains to understand why women tend to participate less than men in contests.
Keywords Economie quantitative
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Abstract After a decade of research on the relationship between institutions and growth, there is no consensus about the exact way in which these two variables interact. In this paper we re-examine the role that institutions play in the growth process using data for developed and developing economies over the period 1975–2005. Our results indicate that the data is best described by an econometric model with two growth regimes. Political institutions are the key determinant of which regime an economy belongs to, while economic institutions have a direct impact on growth rates within each regime. These findings support the hypothesis that political institutions are one of the deep causes of growth, setting the stage in which economic institutions and standard covariates operate.
Keywords Growth, Institutions, Mixture regressions
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Abstract A substantial literature has examined the determinants of support for democracy and although existing work has found a gender gap in democratic attitudes, there have been no attempts to explain it. In this paper we try to understand why females are less supportive of democracy than males in a number of countries. Using data for 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, we test whether the gap is due to individual differences previously ignored or to country-wide characteristics. We find that controlling for individual characteristics does not offset the gender gap, but our results indicate that the gap is eroded by high levels of human development and political rights.
Keywords Support for democracy, Policy priorities, Institutions, Gender Gap, Gender Gap
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Abstract This paper uses data from the Luxembourg Income Study to examine some of the forces that have driven changes in household income inequality over the last three decades of the twentieth century. We decompose inequality for six countries (Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.) into the three sources of market income (earnings, property income, and income from self-employment) and taxes and transfers. Our findings indicate that although changes in the distribution of earnings are an important force behind recent trends, they are not the only one. Greater earnings dispersion has in some cases been accompanied by a reduction in the share of earnings which dampened its impact on overall household income inequality. In some countries the contribution of self-employment income to inequality has been on the rise, while in others, increases in inequality in capital income account for a substantial fraction of the observed distributional changes.
Keywords Income inequality, Factor decomposition, Decomposition by population subgroups
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Abstract This paper presents a model of self-fulfilling expectations by firms and households which generates multiplicity of equilibria in pay and housework time allocation for ex-ante identical spouses. Multiplicity arises from statistical discrimination exerted by firms in the provision of paid-for training to workers, rather than from incentive problems in the labor market. Employers' beliefs about differences in spouses' reactions to housework shocks lead to symmetric (ungendered) and asymmetric (gendered) equilibria. We find that: (1) the ungendered equilibrium tends to prevail as aggregate productivity in the economy increases (regardless of the generosity of family aid policies), (2) the ungendered equilibrium could yield higher welfare under some scenarios, and (3) gender-neutral job subsidies are more effective that gender-targeted ones in removing the gendered equilibrium.
Keywords Economie quantitative
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