Stéphane Benveniste

2024-10

Political and Business Dynasties: a Social Gradient in Returns to Elite Education

Stéphane Benveniste

Résumé Dynasties constitute a visible sign of intergenerational persistence and raise questions about the legitimacy of the ruling elite. This paper uses data on graduates of elite colleges to explore the influence of political and business dynasties in France. I link nominative data on 103,309 graduates of 12 French Grandes ´ Ecoles born between 1931 and 1975 to their professional careers as politicians with national-level mandates or as board members of French firms. Identifying lineage through surnames, I find that sons of political and business leaders were substantially more likely than their graduate peers to pursue elite careers themselves, revealing a social gradient in returns to elite education. Political dynasties were particularly sizeable, although progressively declining. These dynasties also affected the composition of the French elite: fewer dynastical board members were graduates of top colleges than their first-generation colleagues. Yet, they were propelled much younger into top business and political positions.

Mots clés Politics, Business, Grandes Écoles, Elite Occupations, Intergenerational Mobility, Returns to College Education, Dynasties

Télécharger HAL Google Scholar

2023-18

Like Father, Like Child: Intergenerational Mobility in the French Grandes Écoles throughout the 20 th Century

Stéphane Benveniste

Résumé While the educational expansion of the 20 th century promoted social mobility overall, the top of the social hierarchy may have remained privileged. This paper examines the evolution of intergenerational mobility in admissions to the French elite colleges-the Grandes Écoles (GE)-over more than a century. Admission to these institutions is subject to partially anonymous competitive examinations, and their degrees are the ticket to top positions in the public and private sectors. In the growing literature measuring intergenerational mobility through surnames, I design a novel method and apply it to a self-collected dataset on all 285,286 graduates from ten of the most prestigious Grandes Écoles between 1886 and 2015. Principally, I find that children of male GE graduates were highly over-represented in the top colleges throughout the 20 th century. Importantly, unlike previous studies exploiting fathers' socio-professional categories, I find a stable low level of intergenerational mobility for all cohorts born since 1916: chances of GE admission for children of GE graduates were approximately 80 times higher than for the rest of the population.

Mots clés N34 Intergenerational mobility, I23, JEL Classification J62, JEL Classification J62 I23 N34 Intergenerational mobility Higher education Elites Grandes Écoles Historical economics, Historical economics, Grandes Écoles, Elites, Higher education, Intergenerational Mobility

Télécharger HAL Google Scholar

2022-01

The (Market) Value of State Honors

Stéphane Benveniste, Renaud Coulomb, Marc Sangnier

Résumé State awards to civilians are a widespread social phenomenon across space and time. This paper quantifies the impact of State awards given to Directors on the stock value of their firms. We link a comprehensive dataset of recipients of the Légion d'honneurthe most prestigious official award in France-over the 1995-2019 period to Board positions in French listed firms. We document large abnormal returns in the stocks of recipients' firms at the date of the award, suggesting that awards signal valuable access to policy-makers. This interpretation is corroborated by the absence of any market reaction for recipients who were already identified before award receipt as being close to the Government.

Mots clés Political connections, Symbolic Capital, State Honors, Awards

Télécharger HAL Google Scholar