Publications
TIP curves are cumulative poverty gap curves used for representing the three different aspects of poverty: incidence, intensity and inequality. The paper provides Bayesian inference for TIP curves, linking their expression to a parametric representation of the income distribution using a mixture of log-normal densities. We treat specifically the question of zero-inflated income data and survey weights, which are two important issues in survey analysis. The advantage of the Bayesian approach is that it takes into account all the information contained in the sample and that it provides small sample credible intervals and tests for TIP dominance. We apply our methodology to evaluate the evolution of child poverty in Germany after 2002, providing thus an update the portrait of child poverty in Germany given in Corak et al. (Rev. Income Wealth 54(4), 547–571, 2008).
This paper presents an asymptotically optimal time interval selection criterion for the long-run correlation block estimator (Bartlett kernel estimator) based on the Newey–West and Andrews–Monahan approaches. An alignment criterion that enhances finite-sample performance is also proposed. The procedure offers an optimal alternative to the customary practice in finance and economics of heuristically or arbitrarily choosing time intervals or lags in correlation studies. A Monte Carlo experiment using parameters derived from Dow Jones returns data confirms that the procedure can be MSE-superior to alternatives such as aggregation over arbitrary time intervals, parametric VAR, and Newey–West covariance matrix estimation with automatic lag selection.
We present a model showing the evolution of an organization of agents who discuss democratically about good practices. This model feeds on a field work we did for about twelve years in France where we followed NPOs, called AMAPs, and observed their construction through time at the regional and national level. Most of the hypothesis we make here are either based on the literature on opinion diffusion or on the results of our field work. By defining dynamics where agents influence each other, make collective decision at the group level, and decide to stay in or leave their respective groups, we analyse the effect of different forms of vertical communication that is meant to spread good practices within the organization. Our main indicators of the good functioning of the democratic dynamics are stability and representativeness. We show that if communication about norms is well designed, it has a positive impact on both stability and representativeness. Interestingly the effect of communication increases with the number of dimensions discussed in the groups. Communication about norms is thus a valuable tool to use in groups that wish to improve their democratic practices without jeopardizing stability.
Purpose:
Using a representative survey of young persons having left full-time education in France in 1998 and interviewed in 2001 and 2005, the purpose of this paper is to examine the process of their integration into normal employment (a stable job with a standard employment contract) and the extent to which job matches are inefficient in the sense that the pay in a job is below an individual's potential earnings. The latter are determined principally by diploma level and educational specialisation, although other forms of training and labour market experience are relevant.
Design/methodology/approach:
A stochastic earnings frontier approach is used in order to examine workers' ability to capture their full potential earnings in labour markets where there is inefficient job matching (due to the lack of information, discrimination, over-education or the process of integration).
Findings:
The results suggest that young workers manage to obtain on average about 82 per cent of their potential earnings three years after leaving full-time education and earnings inefficiency had disappeared four years later. The results are robust to the treatment of selectivity arising from the exclusion of the unemployed in the estimation of the frontier.
Originality/value:
The stochastic earnings frontier is a useful and appropriate tool for modelling the process of labour market integration of certain groups (young persons, migrants and the long-term unemployed) where over-education due to inefficient initial job matches occurs. Over time this situation tends to be rectified as job mobility leads to improved matching and less inefficiency.
In this article, we unpack Baumol’s (J Polit Econ 98(5):893–921, 1990) theory of entrepreneurship’s outcomes (productive, unproductive, and destructive) in a framework of failing institutions, considering that entrepreneurship is instead first characterized by two non-mutually exclusive types of behavior (conforming versus evasive). We hypothesize that the evasive activity (firm-level corruption) is undertaken as a second-best response to poor institutional quality, supporting the conforming activity. Using instrumental variable panel regression in the context of Indonesia, we evidence the mediating effect of bribing on the relation between local institutional quality and new business density, thus unveiling the real effect of institutional quality on entrepreneurship.
We study optimal contracts in a regulator–agent setting with joint production, altruistic and selfish agents, limited liability, and uneasy outcome measurement. Such a setting represents sectors of activities such as education and healthcare provision. The agents and the regulator jointly produce an outcome for which they all care to some extent that is varying from agent to agent. Some agents, the altruistic ones, care more than the regulator does while others, the selfish agents, care less. Moral hazard is present due to both the agent's effort and the joint outcome that are not contractible. Adverse selection is present too since the regulator cannot a priori distinguish between altruistic and selfish agents. Contracts consist of a simple transfer from the regulator to the agents together with the regulator's input in the joint production. We show that, under the conditions of our setting and when we face both moral hazard and adverse selection, the regulator maximizes welfare with a menu of contracts, which specify higher transfers for the altruistic agents and higher regulator's inputs for the selfish agents.
The citizen candidate models of democracy assume that politicians have their own preferences that are not fully revealed at the time of elections. We study the optimal delegation problem which arises between the median voter (the writer of the constitution) and the (future) incumbent politician under the assumption that not only the state of the world but also the politician's type (preferred policy) are the policy-maker's private information. We show that it is optimal to tie the hands of the politician by imposing both a policy floor and a policy cap and delegating him/her the policy choice only in between the cap and the floor. The delegation interval is shown to be the smaller the greater is the uncertainty about the politician's type. These results are also applicable to settings outside the specific problem that our model addresses.
Lorsqu'en 1871 Carl Menger (1840-1921) publie ses Principes d'économie politique – en quête d'une voie alternative au libre-échangisme britannique et au socialisme historique allemand –, il offre l'un des grands livres pivots dans l'histoire de la pensée, à la hauteur de La Richesse des nations (Smith), de la Théorie générale (Keynes) ou du Capital (Marx). En effet, aux côtés de Walras et de Jevons (mais bien différemment d'eux), il inaugure une économie théorique pure et engage la " révolution marginaliste " qui constitue le moment fondateur du courant dominant (et contesté) de la science économique contemporaine.
Menger pose en même temps la pierre fondatrice de l'" école autrichienne " (Böhm-Bawerk, Schumpeter, Mises, Hayek) dont la méthodologie et la philosophie individualistes imprègnent et font débat dans l'ensemble des sciences humaines et sociales.
Or cette œuvre majeure n'était accessible ni en français ni avec les fort nombreux ajouts manuscrits que Menger apporta, jusqu'en 1910, en vue d'une nouvelle édition amplement augmentée. Vingt années durant, Gilles Campagnolo a collecté et traduit ces manuscrits dispersés à l'étranger après la mort de Menger. Son édition critique, unique au monde, est la première à restituer cette œuvre classique au plus près du nouveau texte voulu par son auteur.
Le texte de Menger est précédé d'un historique des éditions et suivi d'un appareil critique complet. Dans la présentation éclairante qui ouvre ce volume, G. Campagnolo donne les clés pour comprendre l'œuvre de Menger et la resituer dans son contexte historique et intellectuel.
This paper explores the main differences between the Shapley values of a set of taxa introduced by Haake et al. (J Math Biol 56:479–497, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-007-0126-2) and Fuchs and Jin (J Math Biol 71:1133–1147, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-014-0853-0), the latter having been found identical to the Fair Proportion index (Redding and Mooers in Conserv Biol 20:1670–1678, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00555.x). In line with Shapley (in: Kuhn, Tucker (eds) Contributions to to the theory of games, volume II, annals of mathematics studies 28, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1953), we identify the cooperative game basis for each of these two classes of phylogenetic games and use them (i) to construct simple formulas for these two Shapley values and (ii) to compare these different approaches. Using the set of weights of a phylogenetic tree as a parameter space, we then discuss the conditions under which these two values coincide and, if they are not the same, revisit Hartmann’s (J Math Biol 67:1163–1170, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-012-0585-y) convergence result. An example illustrates our main argument. Finally, we compare the species ranking induced by these two values. Considering the Kendall and the Spearman rank correlation coefficient, simulations show that these rankings are strongly correlated. These results are consistent with Wicke and Fischer (J Theor Biol 430:207–214, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.07.010), who reach similar conclusions with a different simulation method.
Basic sanitation facilities are still lacking in large parts of the developing world, engendering serious environmental health risks. Interventions commonly deliver in-kind or cash subsidies to promote private toilet ownership. In this paper, we assess an intervention that provides information and behavioral incentives to encourage villagers in rural Mali to build and use basic latrines. Using an experimental research design and carefully measured indicators of use, we find a sizeable impact from this intervention: latrine ownership and use almost doubled in intervention villages, and open defecation (OD) was reduced by half. Our results partially attribute these effects to increased knowledge about cheap and locally available sanitation solutions. They are also associated with shifts in social norms governing sanitation. Taken together, our findings, unlike previous evidence from other contexts, suggest that a progressive approach that starts with ending OD and targets whole communities at a time can help meet the United Nations’ 2015 Sustainable Development Goal of ending OD.
