Publications

Abstract It is well-known that, after decades of non-interest in the theme, economics has experienced a proper surge in inequality research in recent years. [...]
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Abstract This article examines the link between entrepreneurial motivation and business performance in the French microfinance context. Using hand-collected data on business microcredits from a Microfinance Institution (MFI), we provide an indirect measure of entrepreneurial success through loan repayment performance. Controlling for the endogeneity of entrepreneurial motivation in a bivariate probit model, we find that "necessity entrepreneurs" are more likely to have difficulty repaying their microcredits than "opportunity entrepreneurs". However, type of motivation does not appear to make a difference to business survival. We build a stylized model to develop formal arguments supporting this outcome. We test for the robustness of our results using parametric duration models, and show that necessity entrepreneurs experience difficulties in loan repayment earlier than their opportunity counterparts, corroborating our initial findings.
Keywords Business survival, Loan repayment, Business microcredit, Opportunity and necessity entrepreneurs
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Abstract In 2002 we published a paper in which we used state space time series methods to analyse the teenage employment-federal minimum wage relationship in the US (Bazen and Marimoutou, 2002). The study used quarterly data for the 46 year period running from 1954 to 1999. We detected a small, negative but statistically significant effect of the federal minimum wage on teenage employment, at a time when some studies were casting doubt on the existence of such an effect. In this note we re-estimate the original model with a further 16 years of data (up to 2015). We find that the model satisfactorily tracks the path of the teenage employment-population ratio over this 60 year period, and yields a consistently negative and statistically significant effect of minimum wages on teenage employment. The conclusion reached is the same as in the original paper, and the elasticity estimates very similar: federal minimum wage hikes lead to a reduction in teenage employment with a short run elasticity of around – 0.13. The estimated long run elasticity of between – 0.37 and – 0.47 is less stable, but is nevertheless negative and statistically significant.
Keywords Replication study, Unobserved components model, State space methods, Teenage employment, Minimum wage
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Abstract Holocene climate variability in the Mediterranean Basin is often cited as a potential driver of societal change, but the mechanisms of this putative influence are generally little explored. In this paper we integrate two tools-agro-ecosystem modeling of potential agricultural yields and spatial analysis of archaeological settlement pattern data-in order to examine the human consequences of past climatic changes. Focusing on a case study in Provence (France), we adapt an agro-ecosystem model to the modeling of potential agricultural productivity during the Holocene. Calibrating this model for past crops and agricultural practices and using a downscaling approach to produce high spatiotemporal resolution paleoclimate data from a Mediterranean Holocene climate reconstruction, we estimate realistic potential agricultural yields under past climatic conditions. These serve as the basis for spatial analysis of archaeological settlement patterns, in which we examine the changing relationship over time between agricultural productivity and settlement location. Using potential agricultural productivity (PAgP) as a measure of the human consequences of climate changes, we focus on the relative magnitudes of 1) climate-driven shifts in PAgP and 2) the potential increases in productivity realizable through agricultural intensification. Together these offer a means of assessing the scale and mechanisms of the vulnerability and resilience of Holo-cene inhabitants of Provence to climate change. Our results suggest that settlement patterns were closely tied to PAgP throughout most of the Holocene, with the notable exception Citation: Contreras DA, Hiriart E, Bondeau A, Kirman A, Guiot J, Bernard L, et al. (2018) Regional paleoclimates and local consequences: Integrating GIS analysis of diachronic settlement patterns and process-based agroecosystem modeling of potential agricultural productivity in Provence (France) of the period from the Middle Bronze Age through the Early Iron Age. This pattern does not appear to be linked to any climatically-driven changes in PAgP, and conversely the most salient changes in PAgP during the Holocene cannot be clearly linked to any changes in settlement pattern. We argue that this constitutes evidence that vulnerability and resilience to climate change are strongly dependent on societal variables.
Keywords Climate change damages, Mediterranean Basin, Paleoclimates, Human consequences, Agricultural productivity, Holocene climate variability, Analysis of archaeological
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Abstract The speculative nature of the stock market in Mainland China has attracted the attention of many observers. However while the degree of integration of the Hong Kong market with its Mainland counterpart has monopolized the interest of researchers, they have neglected the diffusion of bubbles from the latter to the former. We thus propose the first study of such bubble migration. Focusing on the period 2005–2017, we use the Phillips et al. (Int Econ Rev 56:1043–1078, 2015a; Int Econ Rev 52:201–226, 2015b) recursive explosive root test to detect and date speculative episodes in both markets. We then implement the Greenaway-McGrevy and Phillips (NZ Econ Pap 50:88–113, 2016) methodology to detect the presence of migration between the two markets. We detect significant, but dwindling, bubble migration from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
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Abstract We consider a network game with local complementarities. A policymaker, aiming at minimizing or maximizing aggregate effort, contracts with a single agent on the network to trade effort change against transfer. The policymaker has to find the best agent and the optimal contract to offer. Our study shows that for all utilities with linear best-responses, it only takes two statistics about the position of each agent on the network to identify the key player: the Bonacich centrality and the self-loop centrality. We also characterize key players under linear quadratic utilities for various contractual arrangements.
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Abstract T cell activation is initiated upon ligand engagement of the T cell receptor (TCR) and costimulatory receptors. The CD28 molecule acts as a major costimulatory receptor in promoting full activation of naive T cells. However, despite extensive studies, why naive T cell activation requires concurrent stimulation of both the TCR and costimulatory receptors remains poorly understood. Here, we explore this issue by analyzing calcium response as a key early signaling event to elicit T cell activation. Experiments using mouse naive CD4+ T cells showed that engagement of the TCR or CD28 with the respective cognate ligand was able to trigger a rise in fluctuating calcium mobilization levels, as shown by the frequency and average response magnitude of the reacting cells compared with basal levels occurred in unstimulated cells. The engagement of both TCR and CD28 enabled a further increase of these two metrics. However, such increases did not sufficiently explain the importance of the CD28 pathways to the functionally relevant calcium responses in T cell activation. Through the autocorrelation analysis of calcium time series data, we found that combined but not separate TCR and CD28 stimulation significantly prolonged the average decay time (τ) of the calcium signal amplitudes determined with the autocorrelation function, compared with its value in unstimulated cells. This increasement of decay time (τ) uniquely characterizes the fluctuating calcium response triggered by concurrent stimulation of TCR and CD28, as it could not be achieved with either stronger TCR stimuli or by coengaging both TCR and LFA-1, and likely represents an important feature of competent early signaling to provoke efficient T cell activation. Our work has thus provided new insights into the interplay between the TCR and CD28 early signaling pathways critical to trigger naive T cell activation.
Keywords T cell activation, Naive T cells, Co-stimulation, CD28, TCR-T cell receptor, Calcium signaling
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Abstract In this article, a misspecification test in conditional volatility and GARCH-type models is presented. We propose a Lagrange Multiplier type test based on a Taylor expansion to distinguish between (G)ARCH models and unknown GARCH-type models. This new test can be seen as a general misspecification test of a large set of GARCH-type univariate models. It focuses on the short-term component of the volatility. We investigate the size and the power of this test through Monte Carlo experiments and we compare it to two other standard Lagrange Multiplier tests, which are more restrictive. We show the usefulness of our test with an illustrative empirical example based on daily exchange rate returns.
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Abstract The pharmaceutical market is not tailored to cater the needs of patients who are located in the economically disadvantaged Southern countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. International organizations are working in numerous ways to overcome this challenge and to increase the access to medicines at affordable prices in the global South. They recommend and proscribe drugs, shape national policies, assure drug quality, provide funding and technical assistance, manage the supply chain, negotiate prices with manufacturers, decide who can compete and influence the behavior of competitors. Recently, some international organizations like Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) have successfully ventured into new drug development for tropical diseases. This has resulted in the evolution of complex relational dynamics and interdependencies between states, firms and international organizations. The structural power to bargain in such relationships often does not lie with states but rather with international organizations who create conditions under which firms would agree to invest in a particular venture. Thus, international organizations have acquired the role of “market makers” who not only convert the need for medicines into real demand but also shape the institutional environment for market functioning by setting up the rules of exchange for market transactions. However, this phenomenon is not well studied. In this regard, this study sheds light on the role of international organizations in the creation and functioning of the market for artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) for malaria. It explains the role of WHO treatment guidelines in the global acceptance and legitimization of ACTs and WHO prequalification program in assuring quality. It further elaborates on the importance of donor funding, negotiation with manufacturers, the introduction of new ACT formulations to increase competition and stabilization of the supply of raw artemisinin on the reduction of treatment prices. It also explains how business strategies of firms are shaped by the action of international organizations.
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Abstract Stated preference surveys are usually carried out in one session, without any follow-up interview after respondents have had the opportunity to experience the public goods or policies they were asked to value. Consequently, a stated preference survey needs to be designed so as to provide respondents with all the relevant information, and to help them process this information so they can perform the valuation exercise properly. In this paper, we study experimentally an elicitation procedure in which respondents are provided with a sequence of different types of information (social cues and objective information) that allows them to sequentially revise their willingness-to-pay (WTP) values. Our experiment was carried out in large groups using an electronic voting system which allows us to construct social cues in real time. To analyse the data, we developed an anchoring-type structural model that allows us to estimate the direct effect (at the current round) and the indirect effect (on subsequent rounds) of information. Our results shed new light on the interacted effect of social cues and objective information: social cues have little or no direct effect on WTP values but they have a strong indirect effect on how respondents process scientific information. Social cues have the most noticeable effect on respondents who initially report a WTP below the group average but only after receiving additional objective information about the valuation task. We suggest that the construction and the provision of social cues should be added to the list of tools and controls for stated preference methods.
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Abstract In this paper, we investigate on 39 Variable Selection procedures to give an overview of the existing 1 literature for practitioners. "Let the data speak for themselves" has become the motto of many applied researchers 2 since the amount of data has significantly grew. Automatic model selection have been raised by the search 3 for data-driven theories for quite a long time now. However while great extensions have been made on the 4 theoretical side still basic procedures are used in most empirical work, eg. Stepwise Regression. Some reviews 5 are already available in the literature for variable selection, but always focus on a specific topic like linear 6 regression, groups of variables or smoothly varying coefficients. Here we provide a review of main methods and 7 state-of-the art extensions as well as a topology of them over a wide range of model structures (linear, grouped, 8 additive, partially linear and non-parametric). We provide explanations for which methods to use for different 9 model purposes and what are key differences among them. We also review two methods for improving variable 10 selection in the general sense. 11
Keywords Sparse models, Variable selection, Automatic modelling
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Abstract This paper is intended to bridge the theoretical literature describing efficient intra-household behaviour and the development literature that collects empirical regularities pointing toward the existence of strategic decision-making among spouses. It examines the key elements of the collective model and discusses its relevance to analysing intra-household behaviour in poor countries. It explores the role that risk and uncertainty, information asymmetries, power imbalances, arranged marriages, strategic investment, gender norms, and extended households play in the attainment of efficiency.
Keywords Household, Efficiency, Development, Strategic behaviour
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Abstract The aim of the paper is to shed light on the question of why a country decides to set up a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). Despite the recent financial crisis, 43 SWFs have been created between 2005 and 2014. In particular, we test if the emergence of these new recent funds can be explained by the following economic, political and institutional factors : i) the excess foreign exchange reserves due to natural resources rents or persistent current account surpluses ; ii) the volatility of commodity prices ; iii) a way to mitigate the "Dutch Disease" effect and iv) the governance of the country. We test these hypotheses on a sample of 37 countries that created a SWF over the period 2000-2014 and compare them to a large panel of countries that did not set up a SWF. In order to allow the temporal dimension as well as the unobserved heterogeneity between SWFs, a Logit panel model with random effects is estimated. The results show that countries for which the creation of a SWF is more appropriate are those with foreign exchange excess reserves, which are dependent on a commodity and on its volatility and which suffer from an appreciation of the real exchange rate. We also find that non-democratic countries with a high level of corruption are more likely to create a SWF. Our results may be of interest for policymakers debating whether or not it can be optimal for the country to establish a SWF. "Modern Sovereign Wealth Funds are not new. The first, the Kuwait Investment Office, was set up in 1953 just as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were setting out to climb Mount Everest. The number of funds has been increasing since then like the traffic on the slopes of Everest" (John Gieve, former deputy Governor of Bank of England in a speech in London, 2008).
Keywords G23, Country Factors, Natural Resources Rents, Sovereign Wealth Funds, F39, H59 Corresponding author, Logit Panel Model JEL classification E21, E61
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Abstract Le 3 e Colloque international Philosophie économique a été organisé les 15 et 16 juin 2016 à Aix-en-Provence par le Greqam/Amse. Il a réuni des conférenciers venus de vingt-quatre pays, avec pour orateurs pléniers Cristina Bicchieri, John Davis et Daniel Hausman autour du thème de « l’agent économique et ses représentations ». Nous avons rassemblé dans le présent numéro spécial une sélection de textes présentés et discutés à cette occasion. La manière dont on peut représenter « l’agent économique » importe à la fois du point de vue de la philosophie économique qui l’interroge, de la théorie économique qui l’utilise, et des travaux empiriques qui s’appuient sur les modèles qu’elle propose et, parfois, impose. Elle importe encore afin de comprendre la façon dont les institutions émergent, dont les sociétés s’organisent et dont divers mécanismes contribuent au « bien-être général » – que ceux-ci apparaissent spontanément ou qu’ils soient le résultat d’une création volontaire et pragmatique. Elle importe enfin également pour envisager (et possiblement) corriger des situations dans lesquelles les marchés sont incomplets ou n’existent tout simplement pas. La question de l’agence (ou de l’« agentivité ») se pose en économie d’une manière dont la spécificité mérite discussion – prolongeant ainsi les travaux sur cette question. Malgré la diversité des termes rencontrés, en anglais comme en français (le colloque s’étant tenu dans les deux langues), pour désigner cet élément-clé des analyses proposées par les diverses sciences sociales, il semble que les économistes lui prêtent un intérêt qui ne se retrouve pas autant dans les autres disciplines…
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Abstract Since the early 2000s, the question of access to medicines at affordable prices for Southern populations has appeared as one of the major challenges for the international governance of health. But what is at stake is the creation of market for medicines in the global South, particularly countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa. These markets are new in nature in the sense that they are driven by international organisations where Southern firms, especially from India, occupy an increasingly important position. However, the specificity of these markets and the way they are constituted have been little analysed. In this article, we suggest focusing the attention on the constitution of the market of antimalarial drugs and highlighting the role played by Southern firms in this market. Our study focuses on the public sector market of antimalarial drugs. We provide an institutional and quantitative analysis of the creation of this public market. We then discuss the growing importance of the Southern firms, mainly Indian and Chinese, in this market.
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Abstract Background: Measuring homophobia at country level is important to guide public health policy as reductions in stigma are associated with improved health outcomes among gay men and other men who have sex with men. Methods: We developed a Homophobic Climate Index incorporating institutional and social components of homophobia. Institutional homophobia was based on the level of enforcement of laws that criminalise, protect or recognise same-sex relations. Social homophobia was based on the level of acceptance and justifiability of homosexuality. We estimated the Index for 158 countries and assessed its robustness and validity. Results: Western Europe is the most inclusive region, followed by Latin America. Africa and the Middle East are home to the most homophobic countries with two exceptions: South Africa and Cabo Verde. We found that a 1% decrease in the level of homophobia is associated with a 10% increase in the gross domestic product per capita. Countries whose citizens face gender inequality, human rights abuses, low health expenditures and low life satisfaction are the ones with a higher homophobic climate. Moreover, a 10% increase in the level of homophobia at country level is associated with a 1.7-year loss in life expectancy for males. A higher level of homophobia is associated with increased AIDS-related death among HIV-positive men. Conclusion: The socioecological approach of this index demonstrates the negative social, economic and health consequences of homophobia in low- and middle-income countries. It provides sound evidence for public health policy in favour of the inclusion of sexual minorities.
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Abstract We provide an axiomatic characterization of a family of criteria for ranking completely uncertain and/or ambiguous decisions. A completely uncertain decision is described by the set of all its consequences (assumed to be finite). An ambiguous decision is described as a set of possible probability distributions over a set of prizes. Every criterion in the family compares sets on the basis of their conditional expected utility , for some “likelihood” function taking strictly positive values and some utility function both having the universe of alternatives as their domain.
Keywords D81, Axioms JEL classification numbers D80, Ranking Sets, Expected Utility, Conditional Probabilities, Ambiguity, Ignorance
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Abstract Generic Bordeaux red wine (basic claret) can be regarded as being similar to an agricultural commodity. Production volumes are substantial, they are traded at high frequency and the quality of the product is relatively homogeneous. Unlike other commodities and the top-end wines (which represent only 3% of the traded volume), there is no futures market for generic Bordeaux wine. Reliable forecasts of prices can to large extent replace this information deficiency and improve the functioning of the market. We use state-space methods with monthly data to obtain a univariate forecasting model for the average price. The estimates highlight the stochastic trend and the seasonality present in the evolution of the price over the period 1999 to 2016. The model predicts the path of wine prices out of sample reasonably well, suggesting that this approach is useful for making reasonably accurate forecasts of future price movements.
Keywords Q11, L66, Forecasting JEL CLASSIFICATION C53, State-space methods, Wine prices, Forecasting
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Abstract Heterogeneity in how some independent variables affect a dependent variable is pervasive in many phenomena. In this respect, this paper addresses the question of constant versus nonconstant effect through quantile regression modelling. For linear quantile regression under endogeneity, it is often believed that the fitted-value setting (i.e., replacing endogenous regressors with their exogenous fitted-values) implies constant effect (that is: the coefficients of the covariates do not depend on the considered quantile, except for the intercept). Here, it is shown that, under a weakened instrumental variable restriction, the fitted-value setting can allow for nonconstant effect, even though only the constant-effect coefficients of the model can be identified. An application to food demand estimation in 2012 Egypt shows the practical potential of this approach.
Keywords Two-stage estimation Quantile regression Fitted-value setting Nonconstant effect Partial identification
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Abstract This article presents an assessment of individual uncertainty about longevity. A survey performed on 3,331 French people enables us to record several survival probabilities per individual. On this basis, we compute subjective life expectancies (SLE) and subjective uncertainty regarding longevity (SUL), the standard deviation of each individual’s subjective distribution of her or his own longevity. It is large and equal to more than 10 years for men and women. Its magnitude is comparable to the variability of longevity observed in life tables for individuals under 60, but it is smaller for those older than 60, which suggests use of private information by older respondents. Our econometric analysis confirms that individuals use private information—mainly their parents’ survival and longevity—to adjust their level of uncertainty. Finally, we find that SUL has a sizable impact, in addition to SLE, on risky behaviors: more uncertainty on longevity significantly decreases the probability of unhealthy lifestyles. Given that individual uncertainty about longevity affects prevention behavior, retirement decisions, and demand for long-term care insurance, these results have important implications for public policy concerning health care and retirement.
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