Publications

Abstract The growth incidence curve of Ravallion and Chen (2003) is based on the quantile function. Its distribution-free estimator behaves erratically with usual sample sizes leading to problems in the tails. The authors propose a series of parametric models in a Bayesian framework. A first solution consists in modeling the underlying income distribution using simple densities for which the quantile function has a closed analytical form. This solution is extended by considering a mixture model for the underlying income distribution. However, in this case, the quantile function is semi-explicit and has to be evaluated numerically. The last solution consists in adjusting directly a functional form for the Lorenz curve and deriving its first-order derivative to find the corresponding quantile function. The authors compare these models by Monte Carlo simulations and using UK data from the Family Expenditure Survey. The authors devote a particular attention to the analysis of subgroups.
Keywords Bayesian inference, Growth incidence curve, Distributional changes, Inequality, Mixtures of log-normals, Lorenz curves
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Abstract This paper studies a model of vertical successive monopolies where students/workers buy qualication from an university then sell skilled labor to a monopolist who itself sells its nal product to consumers, linking this way for the rst time the education sector to the labor and output markets. The question is whether a public university should be partially or fully privatized. The partially privatized university xes the tuition fees in order to maximize a weighted sum of prots and social welfare. A larger share of the private sector means lower training costs but, at given training costs, higher margins and lower nal output levels. We prove that partial privatization of the university is optimal when public ineciency is not too severe and that the State keeps in this case a large majority of university's shares. When the ineciency parameter increases above some critical level, one switches discontinuously to full privatization. We show that these results are robust to the introduction of a feasibility constraint requiring university prots to be non-negative following privatization.
Keywords State regulation, Partial-privatized university, Vertical dierentiation, Successive monopolies, Labor Market, Education
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Abstract In the case of ordered categorical data, the concepts of minimum and maximum inequality are not straightforward. In this chapter, the authors consider the Cowell and Flachaire (2017) indices of inequality. The authors show that the minimum and maximum inequality depend on preliminary choices made before using these indices, on status and the sensitivity parameter. Specifically, maximum inequality can be given by the distribution which is the most concentrated in the top or bottom category, or by the uniform distribution.
Keywords Uniform distribution, Minimum, Maximum, World Values Survey, Ordinal data, Inequality
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Abstract This paper examines the distributional effects of monetary policy in 12 OECD economies between 1920 and 2016. We exploit the implications of the macroeconomic policy trilemma with an external instrument approach to analyze how top income shares respond to monetary policy shocks. The results indicate that monetary tightening strongly decreases the share of national income held by the top 1 percent and vice versa for a monetary expansion, irrespective of the position of the economy. This effect (i) holds for the top percentile and the ultrarich (top 0.1 percent and 0.01 percent income shares), while (ii) it does not necessarily induce a decrease in income inequality when considering the entire income distribution. Our findings also suggest that the effect of monetary policy on top income shares is likely to be channeled via real asset returns.
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Abstract Limited access to information is one of the main health insurance market imperfections in developing countries. Differential access to information may determine individuals' awareness of health insurance schemes, thereby influencing their probability of enrollment. Relying on primary data collected in 2019-2020 in rural Senegal, we estimate the uptake of community-based health insurance using a Heckman-type model to correct for awarenessbased sample selection bias. Besides showing that health insurance awareness is a precondition for effective enrollment in community-based health insurance schemes, we also bring new evidence on the roles which geographic factors and individual risk preference play in health insurance uptake by rural dwellers. We show that geographic distance prevents individuals from accessing information on health insurance schemes, and discourage those who are informed from enrolling, because of the additional distance they must travel to benefit from covered healthcare services. Results also show that individual risk preference influences health insurance uptake, but only when information barriers are taken into account. Overall, our results could help decisionmakers better shape the universal health coverage roadmap, as policies to improve health insurance awareness differ substantially from policies to improve the features of health insurance schemes.
Keywords Sub-Saharan Africa, Senegal, Selection bias, Risk preference, Health insurance, Geographic distance, Awareness
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Abstract This paper evaluates how three different international accreditations for business schools (AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA) affect student preferences, expressed via enrollment decisions. Focusing on the French context, we build a relative preference indicator to compare schools using data collected by the central clearinghouse that allocates students to schools. We observe that all three accreditations positively and significantly influence students, but that the impact of the AACSB accreditation is larger than the other two accreditations. Having an AACSB accreditation is equivalent to moving up four places in rankings by L’étudiant magazine, whereas the impact of having EQUIS or AMBA is similar to moving up two places. We also find a sizeable “triple crown” effect, meaning that the three accreditations tend to complement each other. Our results are robust to different ways of assessing potential self-selection into accreditation.
Keywords Enrollment, Accreditations, Business schools
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Abstract This paper proposes new estimates of potential growth for 5 major industrialized countries. We use a state-space approach to obtain joint estimates of potential growth and the natural interest rates. The model is a reduced-form of a partial equilibrium model with a Phillips curve and an IS curve. In addition to the usual determinants of prices and business fluctuations, we consider financial variables as a determinant of the business cycle.
Keywords Industrialized countries, Long-memory, State-space models, Potential growth
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Abstract In this paper, we take a global view at air pollution looking at cities and countries worldwide. We pay special attention at the spatial distribution of population and its relationship with the evolution of emissions. To do so, we build i) a unique and large dataset for more than 1200 (big) cities around the world, combining data on emissions of CO2 and PM2.5 with satellite data on built-up areas, population and light intensity at night at the grid-cell level for the last two decades, and ii) a large dataset for more than 190 countries with data from 1960 to 2010. At the city level, we find that denser cities show lower emissions per capita. We also find evidence for the importance of the spatial structure of the city, with polycentricity being associated with lower emissions in the largest urban areas, while monocentricity being more beneficial for smaller cities. In sum, our results suggest that the size and structure of urban areas matters when studying the density-emissions relationship. This is reinforced by results using our country-level data where we find that higher density in urban areas is associated with lower emissions per capita. All our main findings are robust to several controls and different specifications and estimation techniques, as well as different identification strategies.
Keywords Development, City structure, Cities, Pollution, Density
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Abstract Self-assessed health (SAH) is a widely used tool to estimate population health. However, the debate continues as to what exactly this ubiquitous measure of social science research means for policy conclusions. This study is aimed at understanding the tenability of the construct of SAH by simultaneously modelling SAH and clinical morbidity. Using data from 17 waves (2001–2017) of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which captures repeated response for SAH and frequently updates information on clinical morbidity, we operationalise a recursive semi-ordered probit model. Our approach allows for the estimation of the distributional effect of clinical morbidity on perceived health. This study establishes the superiority of inferences from the recursive model. We illustrated the model use for examining the endogeneity problem of perceived health for SAH, contributing to population health research and public policy development, in particular, towards the organisation of health systems.
Keywords Russia, Semi-ordered, Recursive, Perceived health, Endogeneity, Clinical morbidity
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Abstract This paper focuses on the new approach studying variations in city size and the impact that the Silk Road had on the structure of cities, demonstrated through the study of economic aspects of the Bukhara oasis. We use archaeological data, compare the ancient economy to modern ones, use modern economic theory and methods to understand ancient society, and use what we have learned about the ancient economy to understand modern economies better. In sum, we explore the past through the present and the latter through the former. Our main finding is the generation of models able to answer to the city-size distribution in different territories, comparing them between the past and the present. This study first revealed that, through Zipf's Law, we found similarities between modern post-Industrial Revolution and medieval economics. Secondly, we also found that in ancient times the structure of the city was linked with the local economic demand. We have demonstrated this through the study of cities along the Silk Road.
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Abstract In this paper, we study the asymmetric information between asset managers and investors in the socially responsible investment (SRI) market. Specifically, we investigate the lack of transparency of the extra-financial information communicated by asset managers. Using a unique international panel dataset of approximately 1500 equity mutual funds, we provide empirical evidence that some asset managers portray themselves as socially responsible yet do not make tangible investment decisions. Furthermore, our results indicate that the financial performance of mutual funds is not related to asset managers’ signals but should be evaluated relatively using extra-financial ratings. In summary, our findings advocate for a unified regulation framework that constrains asset managers’ communication.
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Abstract Jan Hontelez and co-authors discuss the use of different types of evidence to inform HIV program integration.
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Abstract Exploring rich panel data from the Niakhar Health and Demographic Surveillance System, this study investigates the effects of migration on child mortality among families left behind in rural areas. Migration, particularly short-term, is positively associated with the survival probability of under-5 children in the household. We also find that the short-term moves of working-age women impact child mortality more than those of working-age men. Moreover, we detect crossover effects between households in the same compound, consistent with the idea that African rural families share part of their migration-generated gains with an extended community of neighbours. Lastly, we investigate the effect of maternal short-term migration on the survival of under-5 children. The aggregate effect is still positive but much weaker. Specifically, maternal migration during pregnancy seems to enhance children’s survival immediately after birth, but the probability of survival tends to decrease after age 1 when the mother is absent.
Keywords Child mortality, Long-term migration, Short-term migration, Senegal, Niakhar
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Abstract Background Integration of HIV services with other health services has been proposed as an important strategy to boost the sustainability of the global HIV response. We conducted a systematic and comprehensive synthesis of the existing scientific evidence on the impact of service integration on the HIV care cascade, health outcomes, and cost-effectiveness. Methods and findings We reviewed the global quantitative empirical evidence on integration published between 1 January 2010 and 10 September 2021. We included experimental and observational studies that featured both an integration intervention and a comparator in our review. Of the 7,118 unique peer-reviewed English-language studies that our search algorithm identified, 114 met all of our selection criteria for data extraction. Most of the studies (90) were conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in East Africa (55) and Southern Africa (24). The most common forms of integration were (i) HIV testing and counselling added to non-HIV services and (ii) non-HIV services added to antiretroviral therapy (ART). The most commonly integrated non-HIV services were maternal and child healthcare, tuberculosis testing and treatment, primary healthcare, family planning, and sexual and reproductive health services. Values for HIV care cascade outcomes tended to be better in integrated services: uptake of HIV testing and counselling (pooled risk ratio [RR] across 37 studies: 1.67 [95% CI 1.41–1.99], p < 0.001), ART initiation coverage (pooled RR across 19 studies: 1.42 [95% CI 1.16–1.75], p = 0.002), time until ART initiation (pooled RR across 5 studies: 0.45 [95% CI 0.20–1.00], p = 0.050), retention in HIV care (pooled RR across 19 studies: 1.68 [95% CI 1.05–2.69], p = 0.031), and viral suppression (pooled RR across 9 studies: 1.19 [95% CI 1.03–1.37], p = 0.025). Also, treatment success for non-HIV-related diseases and conditions and the uptake of non-HIV services were commonly higher in integrated services. We did not find any significant differences for the following outcomes in our meta-analyses: HIV testing yield, ART adherence, HIV-free survival among infants, and HIV and non-HIV mortality. We could not conduct meta-analyses for several outcomes (HIV infections averted, costs, and cost-effectiveness), because our systematic review did not identify sufficient poolable studies. Study limitations included possible publication bias of studies with significant or favourable findings and comparatively weak evidence from some world regions and on integration of services for key populations in the HIV response. Conclusions Integration of HIV services and other health services tends to improve health and health systems outcomes. Despite some scientific limitations, the global evidence shows that service integration can be a valuable strategy to boost the sustainability of the HIV response and contribute to the goal of ‘ending AIDS by 2030’, while simultaneously supporting progress towards universal health coverage.
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Abstract We show that a majoritarian relation is, among all conceivable binary relations, the most representative of the profile of preferences from which it emanates. We define “the most representative” to mean that it minimizes the sum of distances between itself and the preferences in the profile for a given distance function. We identify a necessary and sufficient condition for such a distance to always be minimized by a majoritarian relation. This condition requires the distance to be additive with respect to a plausible notion of compromise between preferences. The well-known Kemeny distance does satisfy this property, along with many others. All distances that satisfy this property can be written as a sum of strictly positive weights assigned to the ordered pairs of alternatives by which any two preferences differ.
Keywords Aggregation, Distance, Majority, Binary relations
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Abstract Since the start of the oil counter-shock in June 2014, Algeria has experienced unprecedented twin deficits. The excessive monetisation of the public deficit coupled with other deep anomalies in the economy of this country acutely calls for reconsideration of its monetary policy. To this end a prior study of the long-run stability of money demand is needed. We estimate the demand for money for monetary aggregates M1 and M2, and cash in Algeria over the period 1979–2019, and study its long-run stability. We show that the transaction motive is significant for all three aggregates, especially for the demand for cash, reflecting the weight of informal economy “practices”. The elasticity of the scale variable is very close to unity for M2 and M1, and even equal to unity for cash demand (1.006). The elasticity of inflation is also significant for all three aggregates, although its level is higher in the case of cash demand (−6.474). Despite the persistence of certain financial repression mechanisms, interest rate elasticity is significant for all three aggregates, but higher for M1 and cash. The same observation is made for elasticity of the exchange rate, reflecting the effect of monetary substitution, especially for M1 and cash. Finally, our study concludes that the demand for money in terms of M1 remains stable, the same observation being confirmed for the M2 aggregate. However, the demand for fiat currency proves not to be stable. The consequences for the optimal design of monetary policy in Algeria are clearly stated.
Keywords Co-integration, Algeria, Resource-rich countries, Long-run stability, Money demand, Monetary policy
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Abstract We study physicians’ incentives to use personalised medicine techniques, replicating the physician’s trade-offs under the option of personalised medicine information. In a laboratory experiment conducted in two French Universities, prospective physicians played a real-effort game. We vary both the information structure (free access versus paid access to personalised medicine information) and the payment scheme (pay-for-performance (P4P), capitation (CAP) and fee-for-service (FFS)), implementing a within-subject design. Our results are threefold: (i) Compared to FFS and CAP, the P4P scheme strongly and positively impacts the decision to adopt personalised medicine. (ii) Although expected to dominate the other schemes, P4P is not always efficient in transforming free access to personalised medicine into higher quality of care. (iii) When it has to be paid for and after controlling for self-selection, personalised medicine is positively associated with quality, suggesting that subjects tend to make better use of information that comes at a cost. We find this effect to be stronger for males than for females prospective physicians. Quantification of our results however suggests that this positive impact is not strong enough to justify generalising the payment for personalised medicine access. Finally, we develop a theoretical model that includes in its set-up a commitment device component, which is the mechanism that we inferred from the data of the experiment. Our model replicates the principal results of the experiment, reinforcing the interpretation that the higher quality provided by subjects who bought personalised medicine can be interpreted as a commitment device effect.
Keywords Pay-for-performance, Fee-forservice, Capitation, Personalised medicine, Laboratory Experiment, Prospective physicians
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Abstract This paper analyzes the effect of a pay-as-you-go pension system on the evolution of capital and pollution, and on the efficiency of an environmental versus health policy. In an overlapping generations model, we introduce endogenous longevity that depends on pollution and health expenditures. Global dynamics may display multiple balanced growth paths (BGPs). We show that by discouraging savings, a policy that promotes the pension system enlarges the environmental poverty trap. More surprisingly, the environmental policy has contrasting effects according to the significance of the pension system. If it has a small size, a more environmentally-friendly policy enlarges the environmental poverty trap and leads to a rise in capital over pollution at the highest stationary equilibrium. In contrast, in economies where intergenerational solidarity is well developed, capital over pollution decreases at the highest BGP. In such a case, the environmental policy does not necessarily lead to a better longevity and growth.
Keywords Pollution, Pension system, Longevity, Health, Environment, Endogenous growth
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