Working papers

In this paper we assess how two smoking-related parental health shocks, the diagnosis of lung cancer and the diagnosis of another smoking-related cancer, affect offspring smoking behavior depending on the timing of the health shock. We use two strategies to isolate the informational shock effect from the transmission effect associated with parental smoking. We first focus on individuals whose parents were diagnosed with smoking-related cancer and exploit heterogeneity in the individual's age at diagnosis. We then build a retrospective panel and use individual fixed effects to absorb the transmission effect. We find that receiving a parental diagnosis at the age when the decision to smoke is about to be made reduces the long-term probability of being a smoker and the duration of smoking.

The Balassa-Samuelson effect is still an important phenomenon in the theory of economic development, as Balassa states, "As economic development is accompanied by greater inter-country differences in the productivity of tradable goods, differences in wages and service prices increase, and correspondingly so do differences in purchasing power parity and exchange rates." To the best of our knowledge, the Balassa-Samuelson effect has not been formally examined in the framework of optimal growth theory. By embedding the Balassa-Samuelson’s original model in an optimal growth model setting, we investigate the validity of the Balassa-Samuelson effect in such a case and show that the Balassa-Samuelson effect follows from one of the properties of the optimal steady state.

The Balassa-Samuelson effect ("BS effect") has attracted attention as a theory to explain the stagnation of the Japanese economy over the past 30 years. In particular, it has been used to explain the long-term depreciation of the real effective exchange rate since 1995. Furthermore, macroeconomic data show that the BS effect explains well Japan's long-term economic stagnation. However, the BS effect was originally derived theoretically for small open economies, not for large economies like Japan. In other words, the BS effect cannot be theoretically applied to large economies. This is a serious problem in applying the BS effect empirically. In this paper, we embed Balassa-Samuelson's original argument into the optimal growth theory framework. That is, we set up an optimal growth problem for large countries. It is then shown that there exists a stable optimal steady state and that the BS effect is more directly valid in that optimal steady state. In other words, as a long-run property, the BS effect is applicable to large as well as small countries, although, contrary to the small open economy case, it does not depend on the capital shares of the two sectors.

When can exogenous changes in beliefs generate endogenous fluctuations in rational expectation models? We analyze this question in the canonical one-sector and two-sector models of the business cycle with increasing returns to scale. A key feature of our analysis is that we express the uniqueness/multiplicity condition of equilibirum paths in terms of restrictions on five critical and economically interpretable parameters: the Frisch elasticities of the labor supply curve with respect to the real wage and to the marginal utility of wealth, the intertemporal elasticity of substitution in consumption, the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor, and the degree of increasing returns to scale. We obtain two clear-cut conclusions: belief-driven fluctuations cannot exist in the one-sector version of the model for empirically consistent values for these five parameters. By contrast, belief-driven fluctuations are a robust property of the twosector version of the model-with differentiated consumption and investment goods-, as they now emerge for a wide range of parameter values consistent with available empirical estimates. The key ingredients explaining these different outcomes are factor reallocation between sectors and the implied variations in the relative price of investment, affecting the expected return on capital accumulation.

Ob jectives: To analyse how general practitioners (GPs) respond to insucient GP supply in their practice area in terms of quantity and quality of care, and how this response can be mediated by enrolment in integrated primary care teams (multi-professional group practices (MGP)).
Methods: We used three representative cross-sectional surveys (2019-2020) of 1,209 French GPs. Using structural equations, we assumed that low GP density inuences GPs' work-related stress (mediator 1) as well as their use of e-health tools (mediator 2) and ultimately quantity and quality of care. Quantity (respectively quality) of care were approximated by demand absorption capacities (respectively frequencies of vaccine recommendations). We estimated an additional specication where enrolment in an MGP was a mediator between GP density and the two mediators dened above.
Results: GP density was signicantly and positively associated with work-related stress, which was consecutively associated with deteriorated demand absorption capacity. Higher use of e-health tools was associated with greater involvement in vaccine recommendations. Lastly, GPs in MGP tend to use more e-health tools than those practicing outside MGP, with a favourable eect on quality of care.
Discussion: This study demonstrates that a lower level of work-related stress is the key mediator in handling patients' requests. Correcting for the self-selection into MGP, we amend some unstable results contained in the literature: there is no signicant mediation eect of enrolment in integrated primary care teams on the quantity of care, but rather an eect on the quality of care. Although probably disappointing for the quantity of care provided, our results pinpoint a novel added value of enrolment in an integrated practice as a response to decreasing GP density.

Aims: we propose a sociotechnical taxonomy for the analysis of socioeconomic disruptions caused by technological innovations. Methodology: a transdisciplinary principled approach is used to build the taxonomy through categorization and characterization of technologies using concepts and definitions originating from cybernetics, occupational science, and economics. The sociotechnical taxonomy is then used, with the help of logical propositions, to connect the characteristics of different categories of technologies to their socioeconomic effects, for example their externalities. Results: we offer concrete illustrations of concepts and uses, and an Industry 5.0 case study as an application of the taxonomy. We suggest that the taxonomy can inform the analysis of opportunities and risks related to technological disruptions, specially of those that result from the rise of cognitive machines.

Higher uncertainty about trade policy has recessionary effects in U.S. states. First, this paper builds a novel empirical measure of regional trade policy uncertainty, based on the volatility of national import tariffs at the sectoral level and the sectoral composition of imports in U.S. states. We show that a state which is more exposed to an unanticipated increase in tariff volatility suffers from a larger drop in real output and employment, relative to the average U.S. state. We then build a regional open-economy model and we argue that the transmission channels of uncertainty shocks, in particular the precautionary-pricing channel, are magnified in regions that feature the highest import share and a strongest export intensity. Furthermore, we show that an expansionary monetary policy may amplify the regional divergence since it worsens the recession in the most-exposed region to trade policy uncertainty.

Revolutions are often perceived as the key event triggering the fall of an autocratic regime. They are believed to be driven by the people with the purpose of establishing a democratic regime for the people. However, the historical record does not agree with this picture: revolutions are rare, elite-driven, and often non-democratising. We first develop a new set of stylised facts summarising and deepening the latter features. Second, to explain these facts, we develop a theory of elite-driven non-democratising institutional changes triggered by popular uprisings. Our model includes four key ingredients: (i) a minority/majority split in the population; (ii) the persistence of fiscal particularism post-revolution; (iii) the presence of windfall resources; (iv) a distinction between labour income and resource windfalls as well as endogeneity of the labour supply. We show that revolutions are initiated by the elite and only when fractionalisation is moderate. Resource windfalls and labour market repression can also play a role in triggering this 'alliance' between the majority and the elite. If a revolution happens, redistribution in the subsequent regime still favours the elite, although the masses are better off.

We consider public goods games played on a potentially non-symmetric network and provide comparative statics results on individual and aggregate contributions, as well as on the effect of transfers between players. We show that, contrary to the case of the complete and symmetric network, a positive shock on a player can have adverse consequences. First, it could actually decrease this player's contribution, unless the interaction matrix is a P-matrix. Second, a positive shock on a contributing player increases aggregate contributions, but a positive shock on a non-contributing player will decrease aggregate contributions, even if the player who benefited from the positive shock increases his own contribution. In each case we provide simple conditions to determine whether a positive shock will have positive or negative consequences on contributions, by looking at the unconstrained solution of an alternative, associated game. The sign of the coordinates of this solution determines the effect of a shock. With this in hand, we further show that the aggregate neutrality result of Andreoni [1990] regarding transfers between players generally does not hold on non-symmetric networks and provide conditions for it to hold. Finally, as an application of previous results, we consider introducing agents that follow Kantian moral principles and show that, depending on their position in the network, the presence of Kantian agents can, counter-intuitively, lead to a decrease in aggregate contributions.

Several representativeness issues affect the available data sources in studying populations' income distributions. High-income under-reporting and non-response issues have been evidenced to be particularly significant in the literature, due to their consequence in underestimating income growth and inequality. This paper bridges several past parametric modelling attempts to account for high-income data issues in making parametric inference on income distributions at the population level. A unified parametric framework integrating parametric income distribution models and popular data replacing and reweighting corrections is developped. To exploit this framework for empirical analysis, an Approximate Bayesian Computation approach is developped. This approach updates prior beliefs on the population income distribution and the high-income data issues pressumably affecting the available data by attempting to reproduce the observed income distribution under simulations from the parametric model. Applications on simulated and EU-SILC data illustrate the performance of the approach in studying population-level mean incomes and inequality from data potentially affected by these high-income issues.

As physics provides the equations of motion of a body, this paper formulates, for the first time, at the conceptual and mathematical levels, the inequations of motion of an individual seeking to meet his needs and quasi needs in an adaptive (not myopic) way. Successful (failed) dynamics perform a succession of moves, which are, at once, satisficing and worthwhile (free from too many sacrifices), or not. They approach or reach desires (fall in traps). They balance the desired speed of approach to a desired end (a distal promotion goal) with the size of the required immediate sacrifices to go fast (a proximal prevention goal). Therefore, each period, need/quasi need satisfaction success requires enough self control to be able to make, in the long run, sufficient progress in need/quasi need satisfaction without enduring, in the short run, too big sacrifices. A simple example (lose or gain weight) shows that the size of successful moves must be not too small and not too long. A second paper will solve this problem, using variational principles and inexact optimizing algorithms in mathematics. This strong multidisciplinary perspective refers to a recent mathematical model to psychology: the variational rationality theory of human life stay and change dynamics.

This paper provides a general and formalized theory of self-regulation success and failures as an application of the recent Variational rationality approach of stay and change human dynamics (Soubeyran, 2009, 2010, 2021.a,b,c,d). For concreteness purposes, it starts with an example in psychology: how to gain or to loose weight ? It ends with a general, conceptual, dynamical and computable formulation of self-regulation and goal pursuit in the context of variational principles and adaptive optimizing algorithms in mathematics.

We develop a model of incomplete employment contracts such that employees have some discretion over effort, which depends on their work morale. Nominal wage cuts have a strong negative effect on morale, while employee involvement in workplace decision-making tends to increase morale. We derive predictions on how these two mechanisms affect the decisions of firms to cut nominal wages. Using matched employer-employee and manager survey data from Great Britain, we find support for our model: nominal wage cuts are only half as likely when managers think that employees have some discretion over how they perform their work, but this reduced likelihood recovers partially when employees are involved in the decision-making process at their workplace.