Publications

Résumé Abstract In this paper, we develop an overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility and calibrate it to the Swedish historical data in order to estimate the economic cost of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic. The model identifies survivors from younger cohorts as main benefactors of the windfall bequests following the influenza mortality shock. We also show that the general equilibrium effects of the pandemic reveal themselves over the wage channel rather than the interest rate, fertility or labor supply channels. Finally, we demonstrate that the influenza mortality shock becomes persistent, driving the aggregate variables to lower steady states which costs the economy 1.819% of the output loss over the next century.
Mots clés Endogenous fertility, 1918-19 influenza, Overlapping generations models, Epidemics
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Résumé We study repeated zero-sum games where one of the players pays a certain cost each time he changes his action. We derive the properties of the value and optimal strategies as a function of the ratio between the switching costs and the stage payoffs. In particular, the strategies exhibit a robustness property and typically do not change with a small perturbation of this ratio. Our analysis extends partially to the case where the players are limited to simpler strategies that are history independent―namely, static strategies. In this case, we also characterize the (minimax) value and the strategies for obtaining it.
Mots clés Zero-sum games, Switching Costs, Repeated Games, Stochastic Games
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Résumé This paper assesses how national leaders' quality of governance varies with their career and education. Using a sample of 1,000 rulers between 1931 and 2010, I identify three types of leaders: military leaders, academics, and politicians. Military leaders are associated with an overall negative performance, while politicians who have held important offices before taking power tend to perform well. Academics have on average non-significant effects. These results are partially driven by differences in policy decisions and in leadership styles. Military leaders spend less in health and education, are more likely to establish a personalistic regime, to disrespect the constitution, and to move towards a nonelectoral regime, while the reverse holds for politicians. Additionally, this paper highlights the weakness of using educational attainment as a proxy for politicians' quality, and of growth as a measure of national leaders' performance.
Mots clés Military rulers, Politician, Governance quality, Leader characteristics
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Résumé Using a change in EU food aid policy in 1996 as an instrument for EU food aid allocation, I investigate how other donors react to the EU’s food aid allocation. At that time, the EU suddenly divided by two the number of its food aid recipients. On average, other donors imitate the EU at both extensive and intensive margins. Donors’ reactions are heterogeneous: European countries and Canada herd the EU, while the World Food Programme substitutes. The USA do not react. Those results can be explained by competition for relative impact and information effects. For a recipient country who constantly received food aid from the EU before 1996, the number of donors decreases by almost 0.5. This behavior reinforces the problem of orphan and darling recipients.
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Résumé This paper has two aspects. Mathematically, in the context of global optimization, it provides the existence of an optimum of a perturbed optimization problem that generalizes the celebrated Ekeland variational principle and equivalent formulations (Caristi, Takahashi), whenever the perturbations need not satisfy the triangle inequality. Behaviorally, it is a continuation of the recent variational rationality approach of stay (stop) and change (go) human dynamics. It gives sufficient conditions for the existence of traps in a changing environment. In this way it emphasizes even more the striking correspondence between variational analysis in mathematics and variational rationality in psychology and behavioral sciences.
Mots clés Traps, Changing environment, Variational rationality, The Ekeland variational principle, Quasi-metric space
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