Publications

Résumé This paper examines an endogenous growth model that allows us to consider the dynamics and sustainability of debt, pollution, and growth. Debt evolves according to the financing adaptation and mitigation efforts and to the damages caused by pollution. Three types of features are important for our analysis: the technology through the negative effect of pollution on TFP; the fiscal policy; the initial level of pollution and debt with respect to capital. Indeed, if the initial level of pollution is too high, the economy is relegated to an endogenous tipping zone where pollution perpetually increases relatively to capital. If the effect of pollution on TFP is too strong, the economy cannot converge to a stable and sustainable long-run balanced growth path. If the income tax rates are high enough, we can converge to a stable balanced growth path with low pollution and high debt relative to capital. This sustainable equilibrium can even be characterized by higher growth and welfare. This last result underlines the role that tax policy can play in reconciling debt and environmental sustainability.
Mots clés Environmental damage, Pollution, Fiscal policy, Public debt, Sustainability
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Résumé Higher trade policy uncertainty has recessionary effects on U.S. states. To demonstrate this, we first build a novel empirical measure of regional trade policy uncertainty based on the volatility of national import tariffs at the sectoral level and on the sectoral composition of imports in U.S. states. We find that a state that is more exposed to an unanticipated increase in tariff volatility suffers from a larger drop in real GDP and employment than the average U.S. state. We then build a two-region open-economy model and find that the precautionary saving behavior is the main driver of the recession, although this effect is reinforced by high exposure to import tariffs. The feedback effect resulting from trade connections with the Foreign country primarily influences the persistence of these dynamics. ✩ The National Bureau of Economic Research has provided financial sponsorship to make this article open access and had no influence or involvement over the review or approval of any content. ✩✩ This article is part of a special issue entitled: ISOM 2024 published in Journal of International Economics. ★ We are grateful to the organizers of the 2024 NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics (ISoM), Jordi Galí and Kenneth West as well as our discussants, Andrea Raffo and Joseph Steinberg, the Editor Linda Tesar and the participants for their insightful comments. The comments and remarks provided
Mots clés Uncertainty shocks, Tariffs, Regional effects, Precautionary behavior
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Résumé In this article, we introduce the command beyondpareto , which estimates the extreme-value index for distributions that are Pareto-like, that is, whose upper tails are regularly varying and eventually become Pareto. The estimation is based on rank-size regressions, and the threshold value for the upper-order statistics included in the final regression is determined optimally by minimizing the asymptotic mean squared error. An essential diagnostic tool for evaluating the fit of the estimated extrerme-value index is the Pareto quantile–quantile plot, provided in the accompanying command pqqplot . The usefulness of our estimation approach is illustrated in several real-world examples focusing on the upper tail of German wealth and city-size distributions.
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Résumé Introduction: Expanding health insurance is viewed as a core strategy for achieving universal health coverage. In Senegal, as in many other developing countries, this strategy has been implemented by creating community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes with voluntary enrolment and a fixed premium paid by enrollees. Yet little is known about how the individuals’ experience of CBHI enrolment further influences their willingness to pay (WTP). In this paper, we test the existence of a reinforcement effect between effective enrolment in a CBHI and WTP for health insurance by analysing their mutual relationship. Methods: We rely on primary survey data collected in 2019–2020 in the rural area of Niakhar in Senegal. We use an econometric methodology involving: (1) Heckman-type selection models to estimate the determinants of CBHI membership conditioned on awareness of health insurance, addressing the issue of sample selection due to differential awareness and (2) a simultaneous equation model to jointly estimate the uptake and WTP for health insurance, addressing the issue of endogeneity due to reverse causality between both variables. We also focus on the roles that informational and geographical barriers, as well as individual risk preference and trust, play in both outcomes. Results: The final sample includes 1607 individuals. Results show that WTP further increases with the individuals’ direct experience in a CBHI scheme, despite an environment characterised by low enrolment rates. We also provide evidence for a U‐shaped relationship between risk tolerance and WTP for health insurance. Conclusion: We provide novel evidence on a reinforcement effect of enrolment in a CBHI on WTP for health insurance, with the presence of a substantial consumer surplus among enrolled individuals at the actual premium. Our findings suggest that policies aiming at improving health insurance awareness should foster the demand for health insurance in rural Senegal.
Mots clés Health insurance, Community-based health insurance, Uptake, Willingness to pay, Information, Rural health, Rural population, Senegal, Sub-Saharan Africa
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Résumé We propose a non parametric hypothesis test to compare two partitions of a same data set. The partitions may result from two different clustering approaches. The test may be done using any comparison index but we focus in particular on the Matching Error (ME) that is related to the misclassification error in supervised learning. Some properties of the ME and, especially, its distribution function for the case of two different partitions are analyzed. Extensive simulations and experiments show the efficiency of the test.
Mots clés Clustering, Comparing partitions, Hyposthesis test, Matching error
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Résumé This paper evaluates the importance of access to justice (ATJ) for economic growth. To do so, we create a new database on the number of judges per capita by collecting data from various public institutions and academic publications. We use these data as a country-level indicator to capture the structural evolution of ATJ from 1970 to 2019 for a wide range of developed and developing countries. Using an instrumental variable approach in a dynamic panel setting to deal with endogeneity, we show that ATJ has a sizable positive effect on economic growth. The substantial aggregate effect of ATJ on growth is independent of countries' legal origin, customary law, rule of law or level of democracy. However, we find evidence that the economic returns from ATJ are higher in poorer countries. In terms of mechanisms, our results suggest that ATJ promotes growth via higher government accountability and improved institutional quality.''Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels'' [Sustainable Development Goal 16 (United Nations, 2015)] ✩ We would like to thank the editor, Evi Pappa, several anonymous referees, as well as Alexia Autenne,
Mots clés Access to justice, Economic Growth, Institutions, Judges, Access to justice Economic growth Institutions Judges
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Résumé Firm entry and capital investment both vary over the business cycle. This paper analyzes the role of the firm entry delay option (waiting option) in the joint dynamics of firm entry and investment in a news-driven RBC model. We introduce the waiting option by restricting the number of potential firm entrants and demonstrate that the combination of news shocks and the waiting option effect yields empirically plausible joint dynamics of firm entry and investment over the business cycle. In contrast, the model without the entry delay option produces excessively volatile firm entry. We rationalize our findings using an analytical real-option model of firm entry.
Mots clés Entry delay option, Firm entry, News shocks, Real business cycle
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Résumé We study reputation dynamics within the household in a setting where women regularly receive transfers from their husbands for household purchases. We propose a signaling model in which wives try to maintain a good reputation in the eyes of their husbands to receive high transfers. This leads them to (i) avoid risky purchases (goods with unknown returns) and (ii) knowingly overuse low-return goods to hide bad purchase decisions—we call this the intrahousehold sunk cost effect. We present supportive evidence for the model from a series of experiments with married couples in rural Malawi.
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Résumé In this paper, we examine the quasi-equilibrium problem from a variational rationality perspective. To this end, we first study the convergence of the proximal point method proposed by Bento et al. [Ann. Oper. Res. 316 (2022), 1301-1318] in the more general context of quasi-equilibrium problems using a Bregman distance. Thus, we provide an application of the method through a recent behavioral perspective, more precisely, the variational rationality approach of staying and changing human dynamics, and the important example of climbing the goal ladder in goal pursuit theory. An illustrative simulation demonstrates that Bregman distances improve the computational performance of the method compared to the Euclidean distance.
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