Documents de travail

Résumé We propose a new approach to measure the sensitivity of economic growth to natural disasters in developing countries at different time horizons (short, medium, and long term). We allow for heterogeneous effects across growth regimes and intensities of disaster shocks using quantile-on-quantile regressions and wavelet decomposition.Our findings yield several insights. First, small disaster shocks boost GDP per capita growth in low-growth countries across all horizons. By contrast, in high-growth countries, such shocks cause sharp short-term growth declines, followed by a rapid recovery in the medium term, albeit without regaining the pre-disaster growth trajectory in the long term. Second, severe disaster shocks lead to long-term growth losses in highgrowth countries, despite their initial resilience. Conversely, low-growth countries experience immediate and persistent growth declines that worsen over time. Third, the role of macroeconomic variables in mitigating or amplifying growth losses varies depending on the growth regime, disaster severity, and time horizon.
Mots clés Natural disasters, Growth, Developing countries, Quantile-on-quantile
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Résumé I study how a significant increase in the compulsory schooling leaving age, from 15 to 18 years old, can contribute to reducing early school leaving and changing students’ educational paths. I analyse the Portuguese reform of 2009, exploiting the fact that grade retention in the 7th grade in this year provides quasi-experimental variation in exposure to the new policy. While effects for the overall student population are small or null, lower-achieving students significantly increase their schooling duration. Additionally, some sub-groups of lower-achieving students, particularly boys and those enrolling in upper-secondary school, increased their graduation probabilities. At the same time, I do not find that school quality decreased. These findings carry implications for research using compulsory schooling reforms as instruments for education, and inform policies aimed at supporting at-risk students.
Mots clés Grade retention, Differencein- differences, Early school leaving, School dropout, Compulsory schooling age
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Résumé Anxiety and depression may have serious disabling consequences for health, social, and occupational outcomes for people who are unaware of their actual health status and/or whose mental health symptoms remain undiagnosed by physicians. This article provides a big picture of unrecognised anxiety and depressive troubles revealed by a low score on the Mental Health Inventory-5 (MHI-5) with the help of machine learning methods using the 2012 French National Representative Health and Social Protection Survey (Enquête Santé et Protection Sociale, ESPS) matched with yearly healthcare consumption data from the French Sickness Fund. Compared to people with no latent symptoms who did not declare any depression over the last 12 months, those with unrecognised anxiety or depression were found to be older, more deprived, more socially disengaged, at a higher probability of adverse working conditions, and with higher healthcare expenditures backed, to some extent, by chronic conditions other than anxiety or mood disorder.
Mots clés Tree-based methods, SHAP values, Workplace outcomes, Healthcare consumption, Mental health inventory-5 MHI-5, Unrecognised mental disorders
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Résumé This paper uses French data to simultaneously estimate the impact of two types of connections on government subsidies allocated to municipalities. Investigating different types of connection in a same setting helps to distinguish between the different motivations that could drive pork-barreling. We differentiate between municipalities where ministers held office before their appointment to the government and those where they lived as children. Exploiting ministers' entries into and exits from the government, we show that municipalities where a minister was mayor receive 30% more investment subsidies when the politician they are linked to joins the government, and a similar size decrease when the minister departs. In contrast, we do not observe these outcomes for municipalities where ministers lived as children. These findings indicate that altruism towards childhood friends and family does not fuel pork-barreling, and suggest that altruism toward adulthood social relations or career concerns matter. We also present complementary evidence suggesting that observed pork-barreling is the result of soft influence of ministers, rather than of their formal control over the administration they lead.
Mots clés Personal connections, Political connections, Distributive politics, Local favouritism
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Résumé As large language models (LLMs) become integrated to decision-making across various sectors, a key question arises: do they exhibit an emergent "moral mind" -a consistent set of moral principles guiding their ethical judgments -and is this reasoning uniform or diverse across models? To investigate this, we presented about forty different models from the main providers with a large array of structured ethical scenarios, creating one of the largest datasets of its kind. Our rationality tests revealed that at least one model from each provider demonstrated behavior consistent with stable moral principles, effectively acting as approximately optimizing a utility function encoding ethical reasoning. We identified these utility functions and observed a notable clustering of models around neutral ethical stances. To investigate variability, we introduced a novel non-parametric permutation approach, revealing that the most rational models shared 59% to 76% of their ethical reasoning patterns. Despite this shared foundation, differences emerged: roughly half displayed greater moral adaptability, bridging diverse perspectives, while the remainder adhered to more rigid ethical structures.
Mots clés PSM, LLM, Artificial intelligence, Rationality, Revealed Preference, Decision Theory
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Résumé Background. Earlier detection of neurodegenerative diseases may help patients plan for their future, achieve a better quality of life, access clinical trials and possible future disease modifying treatments. Due to recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), a significant help can come from the computational approaches targeting diagnosis and monitoring. Yet, detection tools are still underused. We aim to investigate the factors influencing individual valuation of AI-based prediction tools. Methods. We study individual valuation for early diagnosis tests for neurodegenerative diseases when Artificial Intelligence Diagnosis is an option. We conducted a Discrete Choice Experiment on a representative sample of the French adult public (N=1017), where we presented participants with a hypothetical risk of developing in the future a neurodegenerative disease. We ask them to repeatedly choose between two possible early diagnosis tests that differ in terms of (1) type of test (biological tests vs AI tests analyzing electronic health records); (2) identity of whom communicates tests’ results; (3) sensitivity; (4) specificity; and (5) price. We study the weight in the decision for each attribute and how socio-demographic characteristics influence them. Results. Our results are twofold: respondents indeed reveal a reduced utility value when AI testing is at stake (that is evaluated to 36.08 euros in average, IC = [22.13; 50.89]) and when results are communicated by a private company (95.15 €, IC = [82.01; 109.82]). Conclusion. We interpret these figures as the shadow price that the public attaches to medical data privacy. The general public is still reluctant to adopt AI screening on their health data, particularly when these screening tests are carried out on large sets of personal data.
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Résumé This paper studies dynamic contracts in illegal addictive markets where individuals' tastes for addictive goods develop through prolonged consumption and contract enforcement is limited. Our theoretical analysis uncovers the optimality of a 'freefirst-dose' strategy where sellers intensify buyers' addiction by offering consumption credit to newcomers. We show that buyers default a certain portion of the debts for early period consumption but are never imposed any penalty on the equilibrium path. This implies that illegal markets might favor non-violent interactions over violent ones, defying the stereotypical association of illegality with violence. Meanwhile, in illegal gambling markets, a distinct equilibrium phenomenon known as the long-shot bias emerges due to the influence of addiction, illustrating another complex dynamic within these markets. We discuss the implications of the model in the context of illegal sports wagering, narcotics, and religious sects.
Mots clés Addiction, Dynamic Contracts, Illegal Markets
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Résumé The modernisation theory of regime change is often perceived to be a murky paradigm, lacking theoretical or empirical foundations. In response, we clarify the links between education and regime change. More specifically, we propose that education contributes indirectly to the collapse of autocratic regimes because educated people engage in non-violent (civil) resistance that reduces the effectiveness of the security apparatus. We empirically test the validity of this ‘defanging effect’ of education. We indeed find that the combination of high autocracy and high education levels tends to trigger non-violent campaigns, which in turn increases the likelihood of a regime change, often associated with political liberalisation and, to a lesser degree, democratisation.
Mots clés Autocracy, Civil resistance, Democratisation, Education, Modernisation, Regime change
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Résumé When estimated from survey data alone, the distribution of high incomes in a population may be misrepresented, as surveys typically provide detailed coverage of the lower part of the income distribution, but offer limited information on top incomes. Tax data, in contrast, better capture top incomes, but lack contextual information. To combine these data sources, Pareto models are often used to represent the upper tail of the income distribution. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian approach for this purpose, building on extreme value theory. Our method integrates a Pareto II tail with a semi-parametric model for the central part of the income distribution, and it selects the income threshold separating them endogenously. We incorporate external tax data through an informative prior on the Pareto II coefficient to complement survey micro-data. We find that Bayesian inference can yield a wide range of threshold estimates, which are sensitive to how the central part of the distribution is modelled. Applying our methodology to the EU-SILC micro-data set for 2008 and 2018, we find that using tax-data information from WID introduces no changes to inequality estimates for Nordic countries or The Netherlands, which rely on administrative registers for income data. However, tax data significantly revise survey-based inequality estimates in new EU member states.
Mots clés Extreme value theory, EU-SILC, Bayesian inference, Pareto II, Top income correction
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Résumé In this paper, we present a critical raw materials index (CRMI) that represents the price dynamics of the raw materials required for the low-carbon transition. Using a unique market and trade dataset covering 29 critical raw materials from 2012 to 2023, we construct a weekly trade weighted price index following a robust methodological framework. The relevance of our index is demonstrated through a validation process including a plausibility analysis and a comparability analysis. In addition, a sensitivity analysis provides empirical evidence of the robustness of our index to alternative data treatment, weighting factors and weighting schemes. Our framework offers policymakers a useful price benchmark to track the underlying metal market dynamics required by the growing clean energy sectors.
Mots clés Critical Raw Materials Index CRMI, Energy Transition, Index Construction, Metal prices
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Résumé Endogenous uncertainty acts as an aggregate-demand amplification mechanism of supply shocks. Using U.S. data, we first stress that taking into account time-varying macroeconomic uncertainty leads to a significantly stronger recession and less inflationary pressures, in response to a TFP shock. In addition, we show empirically that households' misperception increases during recessions. To rationalize these findings, we build a noisy-information New-Keynesian model where the precision of signals increases with economic activity. Pro-cyclical precision of information gives rise to an amplified precautionary saving behavior. A fullfledged model parametrized by using consumer-based forecast errors generates a demandlike recession of supply shock.
Mots clés Uncertainty, Imperfect information, Keynesian supply shocks
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Résumé Low fertility rates, mortality outstripping the birth rate and population contraction characterize a new demographic transition (the so-called "fifth stage"). This paper seeks to evaluate how this phenomenon has impacted the Japanese economic structure and overall productivity. We test two key mechanisms that have been at play since the mid-2000s: i) a growing complementarity between goods and services consumption, and ii) the substitution of older workers engaged in routine tasks with technological capital. According to Autor and Dorn's (2013) model, this should promote the concentration of low-skilled workers in the service sector, and aggravate productivity gaps between industry and services. Using stochastic frontier models and EU-KLEMS data, we compute industry-by-industry TFP growth frontiers in order to check if theoretical predictions match with Japanese reality.
Mots clés Demographic transition, Productivity, Technological change, Economic structure, Japan
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Résumé In the literature on secular stagnation, demographic aging is widely blamed for lowering the IS curve of aggregate demand and therefore the natural interest rate. However, very little is said about the impact of workforce aging on long-term aggregate supply, or so-called potential GDP. To fill this gap, this study delves into the effects of workforce aging on two key components of the remarkably sluggish potential GDP growth of developed countries: hours worked and labour productivity. First, using a novel macro-accounting decomposition of EU-KLEMS data, we find that old-labour input has the highest contribution to growth, through both increased hours worked and shifts in labour composition in the EU, US and Japan. Second, we use panel stochastic frontier models highlighting that, however, old workers have an adverse effect on labour productivity growth frontier—though increasing technical efficiency, i.e., reducing the distance to this frontier.
Mots clés Labour Productivity, EU-KLEMS, Stochastic frontier analysis, Labour Input, Potential growth, Demographic Aging
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Résumé 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 behaviour 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 behaviour 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.
Mots clés Relative income, Children, Female labor supply, Gender identity norms
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Résumé I consider an electoral competition model where each candidate is associated with an exogenous initial position from which she can deviate to maximize her vote share, a strategy known as flip-flopping. Citizens have an intrinsic preference for consistent candidates, and abstain due to alienation, i.e. when their utility from their preferred candidate falls below a common exogenous threshold (termed the alienation threshold). I show how the alienation threshold shapes candidates’ flip-flopping strategy. When the alienation threshold is high, i.e. when citizens are reluctant to vote, there is no flip-flopping at equilibrium. When the alienation threshold is low, candidates flip-flop toward the center of the policy space. Surprisingly, I find a positive correlation between flip-flopping and voter turnout at equilibrium, despite voters’ preference for consistent candidates. Finally, I explore alternative models in which candidates’ objective function differs from vote share. I show that electoral competition can lead to polarization when candidates maximize their number of votes.
Mots clés Flip-flopping, Turnout, Electoral competition, Alienation, Polarization
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Résumé In developing countries, many policy interventions aim to enhance female entrepreneurship by giving access to cash inflows targeting women. However, important investment decisions are usually made at the household level and may be influenced by local cultural norms about female labour force participation. Using a standard collective household model, this paper studies spouses’ joint investment decisions. We show that the individual optimal investment levels are not necessarily aligned between spouses, though costly utility transfers can realign spouses’ incentives. The required transfer is increasing in the stringency of the gender norm against female labour participation, making investment potentially too costly. We test these predictions using two different empirical settings and strategies. First, we exploit original data from a field experiment in India, which gave access to new investment opportunities to women through microcredit. We find that treated women belonging to castes that are relatively more favourable to women investing are more likely to engage in home agricultural production and less likely to engage in casual low-wage jobs. Yet, they seem to enjoy lower utility levels in some dimensions such as health and freedom. To the contrary, we do not find any change in the occupation or independence of women belonging to castes that traditionally impose strong restrictions on women’s behaviour, suggesting that investment is then too costly. Second, we exploit India’s accession to the GATT in 2005 as a natural experiment and use Indian household surveys to study the effect of the termination of quotas imposed on textile exports, a female-dominated activity, on women’s well-being. We find that in districts that are more suitable for cotton growing, a feminine-oriented occupation, removing the quotas increases specialization in garments and decreases health indicators for women belonging to castes that are relatively more in favour of women working. Those empirical findings are consistent with our model, showing that, in the presence of gender norms, female entrepreneurship entails intra-household transfers that impact female well-being and can eventually prevent investment.
Mots clés Female Entrepreneurship, Gender Norms, Intra-household allocation
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Résumé Motivated by recent examples, this study proposes a dynamic multistage optimal control problem to explain the instability of International Fishery Agreements (IFAs). We model two heterogeneous countries that exploit shared fishery resources, and investigate the conditions that lead to a shift from cooperation to competition. We assume that countries differ in their time preferences, initially behave as if the coalition will last indefinitely, use fixed sharing rules during cooperation, and adopt Markovian strategies after withdrawal. Our findings reveal that, for any sharing rule, coalitions of heterogeneous players always break down in finite time. We use the dynamic Shapley Value to decompose the coalition’s aggregate worth over time, thereby eliminating the incentive to leave the agreement. Additionally, we show that a fishing moratorium policy accelerates the recovery of near-extinct fish stocks; however, fishing should resume under a cooperative regime once sustainable levels are achieved.
Mots clés Fisheries, International Fishery Agreements, Dynamic games, Multistage optimal control
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Résumé Public pension schemes serve as mechanisms for inter-temporal income smoothing and within-cohort redistribution. This paper examines the influence of income and lifespan inequalities on the structure of a democratically chosen tier-pension scheme. We use a probabilistic voting model where agents vote on the size and the degree of redistribution (i.e. the Beveridgean factor) of the pension scheme and can supplement it with voluntary contributions. Our analysis reveals that when all agents can supplement the public scheme with private contributions, their voting behavior depends solely on the share of total income redistributed through the pension system, referred to as the redistributive power of the pension. Income inequality positively correlates with the equilibrium redistributive power, while lifespan inequality exhibits the opposite effect, leading to a resource-time trade-off; particularly when both inequality measures are correlated. In scenarios where low earners are hand-to-mouth and unable to make voluntary contributions, the effects on pension size (through mandatory contributions) and degree of redistribution become disentangled. Income inequality diminishes pension size while augmenting redistribution, whereas lifespan inequality increases pension size while reducing redistribution. We provide empirical evidence from OECD countries supporting these theoretical findings and calibrate the model on French data to quantify the effects.
Mots clés Tier pensions, Inequality, Income, Lifespan, Intra-generational redistribution
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Résumé This paper provides a macroeconomic explanation for the United States suffering from a health disadvantage relative to other rich European countries despite spending much more on health care. We introduce health capital à la Grossman in the neoclassical growth model and assume that its rate of depreciation increases with labor supply. The steady-state share of GDP devoted to health expenditure increases with labor supply, but the relationship between the health capital stock and the number of hours worked is hump-shaped, meaning that there is a country-specific health-maximizing level. We calibrate the model to the United States and assess how much of this ‘American Health Puzzle’ can be explained by the greater number of hours American workers work. Higher labor supply in the US accounts for 2 to 3 percentage points in extra health expenditure as a share of GDP and between 10% and one-third of the American health disadvantage.
Mots clés American Health Puzzle, Health-Maximizing Level of Labor Supply, Health Expenditure, Health Capital, Working Time
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Résumé This paper examines an endogenous growth model that allows us to consider the dynamics and sustainability of debt, pollution, and growth. Debt evolves according to the financing adaptation and mitigation efforts and to the damages caused by pollution. Three types of features are important for our analysis: The technology through the negative effect of pollution on TFP; The fiscal policy; The initial level of pollution and debt with respect to capital. Indeed, if the initial level of pollution is too high, the economy is relegated to an endogenous tipping zone where pollution perpetually increases relatively to capital. If the effect of pollution on TFP is too strong, the economy cannot converge to a stable and sustainable long-run balanced growth path. If the income tax rates are high enough, we can converge to a stable balanced growth path with low pollution and high debt relative to capital. This sustainable equilibrium can even be characterized by higher growth and welfare. This last result underlines the role that tax policy can play in reconciling debt and environmental sustainability.
Mots clés Environmental damage, Sustainability, Public debt, Fiscal policy, Pollution
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