Bazen

Publications

Musicians and the Creative Commons: A survey of artists on JamendoJournal articleStephen Bazen, Laurence Bouvard et Jean-Benoît Zimmermann, Information Economics and Policy, Volume 32, Issue C, pp. 65-76, 2015

Piracy and the peer-to-peer diffusion of music deprive artists of income and constitute a challenge to music industry. Many consumers, especially in younger age groups, consider that is normal not to pay in order to listen to music yet artists have intellectual property rights. The reconciliation of these two features of the music market is increasingly difficult within the traditional business model of the music industry. This paper uses an original survey of artists whose music is diffused freely on the online platform Jamendo (the largest of its kind) and which uses Creative Commons (CC) licences rather than copyright firstly to examine why so many artists would adhere to such an approach and secondly what the artists feel about CC. Age is clearly a factor in the choice of CC licence type, as well as whether artists derive income from their music. The choice of CC over copyright is also found to be related to its greater flexibility, its role in the development of musical creation and its function as means of sharing. It can be seen as a basis for an alternative business model in the music industry, in which sales of albums no longer constitute the main source of artists’ remuneration.

The measurement of unemployment using completed durations: evidence on the gender gap in unemployment in FranceJournal articleStephen Bazen, Xavier Joutard et Mouhamadou M. Niang, Journal of Economic Inequality, Volume 12, Issue 4, pp. 517-534, 2014

This paper examines how unemployment can be measured in a normative fashion - taking into account the mean and inequality of spell lengths - and how the extent of unemployment can be estimated from cross section data of the type found in labour force surveys. The issue is not straightforward since in these surveys completed durations of unemployed individuals are not observed yet they constitute the basis for calculating the kind of index that has been proposed to measure the extent of unemployment in a way that goes beyond the unemployment rate. The index proposed by Shorrocks has robust normative foundations and has an equivalent representation in terms of average complete duration and the density of completed durations. Building upon earlier work applied in the United States for estimating the average completed duration, we present a method that enables the index to be calculated based on an estimate of the density of completed durations. The approach is illustrated in the context of comparing male-female unemployment differences in France, where historically female unemployment has been higher than that of males. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Elitism and stochastic dominanceJournal articleStephen Bazen et Patrick Moyes, Social Choice and Welfare, Volume 39, Issue 1, pp. 207-251, 2012

Stochastic dominance has been typically used with a special emphasis on risk and in-equality reduction something captured by the concavity of the utility function in the expected utility model. We claim that the applicability of the stochastic dominance ap-proach goes far beyond risk and inequality measurement provided suitable adaptations be made. We apply in the paper the stochastic dominance approach to the measurement of elitism which may be considered the opposite of egalitarianism. While the usual stochastic dominance quasi-orderings attach more value to more equal and more effi-cient distributions, our criteria ensure that, the more unequal and the more efficient the distribution, the higher it is ranked. Two instances are provided by (i) comparisons of scientific performance across institutions like universities or departments, and (ii) com-parisons of affluence as opposed to poverty between countries.

Econometric Methods for Labour EconomicsBookStephen Bazen, OUP Catalogue - Practical Econometrics, 2011, 160 pages, Oxford University Press, 2011

This book provides an accessible presentation of the standard statistical techniques used by labour economists. It emphasises both the input and the output of empirical analysis and covers five major topics concerning econometric methods used in labour economics: regression and related methods, choice modelling, selectivity issues, duration analysis, and policy evaluation techniques. Each of these is presented in terms of model specification, possible estimation problems, diagnostic checking, and interpretation of the output. It aims to provide guidance to practitioners on how to use the techniques and how to make sense of the results that are produced. It covers methods that are considered to be 'standard' tools in labour economics, but which are often given only a brief and highly technical treatment in econometrics textbooks. It will be a useful reference for postgraduates and advanced undergraduates, researchers embarking on empirical labour market analysis, and for more experienced economists wishing to apply these techniques for the first time. Available in OSO:

The impact of parental health on child labor: the case of BangladeshJournal articleStephen Bazen et Claire Salmon, Economics Bulletin, Volume 30, Issue 4, pp. 2549-2557, 2010

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of studies that examine the economics of child labor and more particularly the determinants of children's labor supply in developing countries. This paper provides a new angle on the causes of child labor force participation by showing that parents' health affects child labor through family labor supply decisions. Using a survey with detailed information on health matters for Bangladesh, we find that child labor supply is sometimes takes the form of an added worker effect in reaction to certain types of health shock.

The state-federal dichotomy in the effects of minimum wages on teenage employment in the United StatesJournal articleStephen Bazen et Julie Le Gallo, Economics Letters, Volume 105, Issue 3, pp. 267-269, 2009

For the period 1984-1997, we find that state-level minimum wage hikes had no negative employment impact whereas federal hikes did. This dichotomy may account for the differences between the results of the 'new economics of the minimum wage' and time series studies.

The impact of minimum wages on the distribution of earnings and employment in the United StatesBook chapterStephen Bazen, S. Jenkins et J. Micklewright, In: Poverty and Inequality Re-examined, 2007, Oxford University Press, 2007

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Econométrie: des fondements à la modélisation, Avant propos par Robert Engle, Prix NobelBookStephen Bazen et Mareva Sabatier, Collection Dynasup’, 2007, 234 pages, Editions Vuibert, 2007

Cet ouvrage présente les outils de base de l'analyse économétrique et les illustre de nombreuses applications. Il porte une attention particulière au type de données utilisées (coupe transversale, séries chronologiques). Il s'adresse aux étudiants de dernière année de licence ou de master 1 (économie, gestion, MASS, économétrie, etc.) et aux étudiants de certaines classes préparatoires. Il sera également utile aux étudiants se spécialisant dans le domaine de l'analyse et des études économiques. En un minimum de temps, il permet : de s'approprier les outils économétriques mobilisés dans les analyses économiques ; de se familiariser avec leurs applications concrètes grâce à de nombreux exemples commentés ; de contrôler l'acquisition des fondements et leurs applications grâce à 60 questions de OCM corrigées ; de s'entraîner grâce aux 16 exercices complets, tous corrigés ; d'entreprendre de manière autonome ses propres études économétriques grâce à un guide de la démarche méthodologique à adopter pour de tels travaux.

Do Minimum Wages Have a Negative Impact on Employment in the United States?Journal articleStephen Bazen, Économie publique/Public economics, Issue 17, 2005

Les études récentes de l'impact du salaire minimum sur l'emploi mettent en cause un consensus qui s'est établi parmi des économistes. Jusqu'en 1980, il semblerait que les hausses du salaire minimum donnent lieu à une diminution de l'emploi des jeunes travailleurs. Or, l'expérience des années 1980 et 1990 a mis en cause cette conclusion. Dans cet article, nous évaluons la portée des études récentes. Nous avançons l'hypothèse selon laquelle les hausses du salaire minimum ont bien un effet négatif sur l'emploi des jeunes mais les relèvements des salaires minima instaurés par des états individuels n'ont eu aucun impact sur l'emploi. La distinction des deux types de salaire minimum permet de réconcilier les résultats obtenus avant les années 1980 ainsi que ceux des études plus récentes qui n'identifient aucun impact sur l'emploi.

Looking for a Needle in a Haystack? A Re‐examination of the Time Series Relationship between Teenage Employment and Minimum Wages in the United StatesJournal articleStephen Bazen et Vêlayoudom Marimoutou, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Volume 64, Issue s1, pp. 699-725, 2002

The work of Card and Krueger has cast doubt on the nature of the relationship between the minimum wage and teenage employment in the United States. The earlier ‘consensus’ finding of a small but statistically significant negative effect was based on time series data whereas Card and Krueger's findings are based mainly on cross‐section data. In this article, we re‐examine the time series relationship between minimum wage and teenage employment. We find that previous models break down due to their inability to capture changes in the trend, cyclical and seasonal components of teenage employment. We propose an alternative approach in which these components are treated as stochastic components and which contains the traditional, deterministic approach as a special case. The model when estimated up to 1979 accurately predicts what happens to teenage employment subsequently, when the minimum wage was frozen after 1981 and then increased quite substantially in the early 1990s. Moreover, we find that there is a significant, negative effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment and its size has hardly changed during the 1980s and early 1990s.