Publications
How much do weather shocks matter? The literature addresses this question in two isolated ways: either by looking at long-term effects through the prism of calibrated theoretical models, or by focusing on both short and long terms through the lens of empirical models. We propose a framework that reconciles these two approaches by taking the theory to the data in two complementary ways. We first document the propagation mechanism of a weather shock using a Vector Auto-Regressive model on New Zealand Data. To explain the mechanism, we build and estimate a general equilibrium model with a weather-dependent agricultural sector to investigate the weather’s business cycle implications. We find that weather shocks: (i) explain about 35% of GDP and agricultural output fluctuations in New Zealand; (ii) entail a welfare cost of 0.30% of permanent consumption; (iii) critically increases the macroeconomic volatility under climate change, resulting in a higher welfare cost peaking to 0.46% in the worst case scenario of climate change.
Using two earned income/tax declaration experimental designs we show that only partial liars are affected by a truth-telling oath, a non-price commitment device. Under oath, we see no change in the number of chronic liars and fewer partial liars. Rather than smoothly increasing their compliance, we also observe that partial liars who respond to the oath, respond by becoming fully honest under oath. Based on both response times data and the consistency of subjects when several compliance decisions are made in a row, we show that partial lying arises as the result of weak preferences towards profitable honesty. The oath only transforms people with weak preferences for lying into being committed to the truth.
We present a model of market hyper-segmentation, where a monopolist acquires within a short time all information about the preferences of consumers who purchase its vertically differentiated products. The firm offers a new price/quality schedule after each commitment period. Lower consumer types may have an incentive to delay their purchases until next period to obtain a better introductory offer. The monopolist counters this incentive by offering higher informational rents. Considering the dynamic game played by the monopolist and its customers, we find that there is always a Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) in which the firm immediately sells the good to all customers, offering the Mussa-Rosen static equilibrium schedule to first time customers (and getting full commitment profits). However, if the commitment period between two offers is long enough, there is another MPE with gradual market expansion. Contrary to the Coasian result for a durable-good monopoly, we find that in both equilibria the profit of the monopolist increases (and the aggregate consumers surplus decreases) as the interval of commitment shrinks. The model yields policy implications for regulations on collection and storage of customers information. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Avant-propos
L’éloge funèbre est un exercice dont la solennité peut nuire à la mémoire de celui qui le reçoit. Dans le cas de Bertrand Lemennicier, une partie intangible de sa personnalité, cette capacité à partir d’un exemple loufoque pour développer un argument sérieux, de faire joyeusement des discussions complexes, et cette attitude de distance souriante face aux diverses formes de l’argumentation sont difficilement atteignables par un éloge standard. Avec le soutien de Marie Madeleine son épouse, de ses deux filles Alexandra et Béatrice, et de la théorie économique, j’ai pensé qu’un éloge félin serait plus adapté. Le Journal des Libertés a donc mis tout en œuvre pour recueillir le témoignage de Thalia, le chat qui a passé 17 ans chez les Lemennicier.
Background:
The future burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) depends on numerous factors such as population ageing, evolution of societal trends, behavioural and physiological risk factors of individuals (e.g. smoking, alcohol use, obesity, physical inactivity, and hypertension). This study aims to assess the burden of NCDs in Europe by 2050 under alternative scenarios.
Methods:
This study combines qualitative and quantitative forecasting techniques to examine how population health in Europe may evolve from 2015 to 2050, taking into account future societal trends. Four scenarios were developed (one business-as-usual scenario, two response scenarios and one pessimistic scenario) and assessed against 'best' and 'worst'-case scenarios. This study provides quantitative estimates of both diseases and mortality outcomes, using a microsimulation model incorporating international survey data.
Findings:
Each scenario is associated with a different risk factor prevalence rate across Europe during the period 2015-2050. The prevalence and incidence of NCDs consistently increase during the analysed time period, mainly driven by population ageing. In more optimistic scenarios, diseases will appear in later ages, while in the pessimistic scenarios, NCDs will impair working-age people. Life expectancy is expected to grow in all scenarios, but with differences by up to 4 years across scenarios and population groups. Premature mortality from NCDs will be reduced in more optimistic scenarios but stagnate in the worst-case scenario.
Interpretation:
Population ageing will have a greater impact on the spread of NCDs by 2050 compared to risk factors. Nevertheless, risk factors, which are influenced by living environments, are an important factor for determining future life expectancy in Europe.
In this paper, we propose a new variance reduction method for quantile regressions with endogeneity problems, for alpha-mixing or m-dependent covariates and error terms. First, we derive the asymptotic distribution of two-stage quantile estimators based on the fitted-value approach under very general conditions. Second, we exhibit an inconsistency transmission property derived from the asymptotic representation of our estimator. Third, using a reformulation of the dependent variable, we improve the efficiency of the two-stage quantile estimators by exploiting a tradeoff between an inconsistency confined to the intercept estimator and a reduction of the variance of the slope estimator. Monte Carlo simulation results show the fine performance of our approach. In particular, by combining quantile regressions with first-stage trimmed least-squares estimators, we obtain more accurate slope estimates than 2SLS, 2SLAD and other estimators for a broad set of distributions. Finally, we apply our method to food demand equations in Egypt.
This study investigates the differences between zombie firms and non-zombie firms in corporate social responsibility activities such as reporting, disclosure and fulfillment. Using Chinese listing company data collected from 2009 to 2016, we apply a three stage model with a double Heckman correction to deal with potential self-selection/endogeneity bias and to measure the differences consistently. We found that zombie firms are less willing to release standalone corporate social responsibility reports than non-zombie firms. Among companies that release standalone corporate social responsibility reports, the corporate social responsibility disclosure of zombie firms is at least not worse than non-zombie firms, but the corporate social responsibility fulfillment is significantly lower. We conclude from this gap between disclosure and fulfillment to the hypocritical behavior of zombie firms, due to the absence of control in corporate social responsibility. We suggest that government should enhance supervision over zombie firms’ corporate social responsibility activities and subsidies towards them in order to lower their economic damage. Supplementary analyses provide some clues concerning the heterogeneity of inconsistence in term of external support characteristics, ownership and censorship which require further studies.
We study the dynamics of risk-sharing cooperatives among heterogeneous agents. Based of their knowledge on their risk exposure and the performance of the cooperatives, agents choose whether or not to remain in the risk-sharing agreement. We highlight the key role of other-regarding preference (altruism and inequality aversion) in stabilizing less segregated (and smaller) cooperatives. Limited knowledge and learning of own risk exposure also contributes to reducing segregation, the two effects (of learning and other-regarding preferences) being complementary. Our findings shed light on the mechanisms behind risk-sharing agreements between agents heterogeneous in their risk exposure.
Two traditional theorems of welfare economics posit a trade-off between a government redistribution targets and efficiency. We propose a third ‘claim’ of welfare economics, stating that in closed economies the actual efficiency costs associated with redistribution are small. We then examine the claim in the current phase of ‘hyper-globalization’. On the one hand, a race-to-the-bottom in taxation restricts the capacity to tax high-earners and the associated brain drain may affect a country’s long-run growth. On the other hand, demand for social insurance should be particularly high in an open economy, especially with advancing digitalization. Xenophobic sentiments may, however, offset this demand. We also discuss the impact of globalization on wage equalization and productive efficiency. We conclude against the idea that the welfare state is intrinsically unable to carry out its redistributive function in an era of globalization. However, its strategies and tools of intervention must be rethought.
