Publications
This study examines a specific class of common-pool resources whereby rivalry is not characterized by competition for the resource stock. Artesian aquifers are a typical example of such resources since the stock never depletes, even when part of the resource is extracted. We first propose a dynamic model to account for the relevant features of such aquifers such as the water pressure and well yield and characterize the corresponding dynamics. We then compare the social optimum with the private exploitation of an open-access aquifer. The comparison of these two equilibria highlights the existence of a new source of inefficiency. In the long run, this so-called pressure externality results in an additional number of wells for the same water consumption, thereby raising costs. Finally, we characterize a specific stock-dependent tax to neutralize the pressure externality.
Akin to other developing countries, Algeria has witnessed an increasing role of the private health sector in the past two decades. Our study sheds light on the public–private overlap and the phenomenon of physician dual practice in the provision of health care services using the particular case of cesarean deliveries in Algeria. Existing studies have reported that, compared to the public sector, delivering in a private health facility increases the risk of enduring a cesarean section. While confirming this result for the case of Algeria, our study also reveals the existence of public–private differentials in the effect of medical variables on the probability of cesarean delivery. After controlling for selection in both sectors, we show that cesarean deliveries in the private sector tend to be less medically justified compared with those taking place in the public sector, thus, potentially leading to maternal and neonatal health problems. As elsewhere, the contribution of the private health sector to the unmet need for health care in Algeria hinges on an appropriate legal framework that better coordinates the activities of the two sectors and reinforces their complementarity.
In this paper, we study the international and sectoral diversification potential in real estate portfolios. Building on a unique dataset of direct real estate markets covering 16 OECD countries over the period 1999–2018, we introduce a statistical test to compare country-level and sector-level diversification potential. This new diversification test provides investors and analysts with a valuable tool as it delivers both estimates and robust significance levels. The empirical findings for real estate investments broadly reveal that international diversification dominates sectoral diversification.
In a competitive business environment, dishonesty can pay. Self-interested executives and managers can have incentive to shade the truth for personal gain. In response, the business community has considered how to commit these executives and managers to a higher ethical standard. The MBA Oath and the Dutch Bankers Oath are examples of such a commitment device. The question we test herein is whether the oath can be used as an effective form of ethics management for future executives/managers—who for our experiment we recruited from a leading French business school—by actually improving their honesty. Using a classic Sender-Receiver strategic game experiment, we reinforce professional identity by pre-selecting the group to which Receivers belong. This allows us to determine whether taking the oath deters lying among future managers. Our results suggest “yes and no.” We observe that these future executives/managers who took a solemn honesty oath as a Sender were (a) significantly more likely to tell the truth when the lie was detrimental to the Receiver, but (b) were not more likely to tell the truth when the lie was mutually beneficial to both the Sender and Receiver. A joint product of our design is our ability to measure in-group bias in lying behavior in our population of subjects (comparing behavior of subjects in the same and different business schools). The experiment provides clear evidence of a lack of such bias.
City size distributions are not strictly Pareto, but upper tails are rather Pareto like (i.e. tails are regularly varying). We examine the properties of the tail exponent estimator obtained from ordinary least squares (OLS) rank size regressions (Zipf regressions for short), the most popular empirical strategy among urban economists. The estimator is then biased towards Zipf’s law in the leading class of distributions. The Pareto quantile–quantile plot is shown to offer a simple diagnostic device to detect such distortions and should be used in conjunction with the regression residuals to select the anchor point of the OLS regression in a data-dependent manner. Applying these updated methods to some well-known data sets for the largest cities, Zipf’s law is now rejected in several cases.
Bien que les canicules soient les événements climatiques extrêmes les plus importants en termes de mortalité, leurs impacts sont rarement considérés sous un angle économique. Cette méconnaissance, couplée à une perception du risque qui demeure faible, s’avère un frein à l’action en matière d’adaptation. Nous proposons une évaluation monétaire des impacts sanitaires des canicules en France métropolitaine entre 2015 et 2020.
Méthode –
Les indicateurs sanitaires suivis dans le cadre du Plan national canicule ont été utilisés pour appréhender les coûts des passages aux urgences et consultations SOS Médecins pour une sélection de causes liées à la chaleur. La mortalité en excès et la perte d’espérance de vie ont également été valorisées économiquement, ainsi que la perte de bien-être due aux restrictions d’activité. Une approche fondée sur le coût total de la maladie (coût direct, indirects et intangibles) et le consentement à payer a été utilisée.
Résultats –
Entre 2015 et 2020, les impacts sanitaires étudiés représentent au total, selon la méthode choisie, autour de 22 ou de 37 milliards €. La mortalité en excès est majoritaire (16 milliards € lorsqu’exprimée en années de vie perdues, ou 30 milliards € lorsqu’exprimée à partir des décès en excès) et la restriction d’activité est évaluée à environ 6 milliards €.
Conclusions –
Cette étude permet de mieux objectiver l’impact économique de ces événements climatiques extrêmes. Dans un contexte où les évolutions climatiques annoncent un accroissement des températures et des phénomènes de vagues de chaleur, pouvant conduire à une aggravation des impacts, ces résultats obtenus soulignent encore l’importance et l’urgence de mesures d’action permettant de renforcer l’adaptation aux canicules.
This paper investigates how large shocks on the Egyptian labor market following the 2011 uprising impacted youths’ time allocation. We estimate the effects of reported changes in the father’s working conditions on youths’ work participation and school enrollment in bivariate probit models, using the 2012 round of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey. Our contribution lies in exploring the association between mother’s empowerment and shock transmission. We find that reported positive changes reduce daughters’ participation in intensive domestic work but only when the mother has a high level of bargaining power. This suggests that a woman’s say in household decisions can affect the reallocation of resources following a change in the family income.
This paper studies the impact of migration and workers’ remittances on human capital and economic growth when young individuals face debt constraints to finance education. We consider an overlapping generations model à la de la Croix and Michel (2007). In this no-commitment setting, education is the engine of growth. Individuals may choose to default on their debt and be excluded from the asset market. We show that remittances tend to tighten the borrowing constraints for a given level of interest rate, but may enhance growth at the equilibrium. The model replicates both negative and positive impacts of migration and remittances on economic growth underlined by the empirical literature. We calibrate the model for 30 economies.
Une stratégie financière doit aboutir à la rencontre d’une offre avec une demande de fonds en spécifiant les conditions spécifiques de cet échange et on doit naturellement s’attendre à ce que les temps de crise voient émerger des stratégies spécifiques. Pour apprécier la pertinence de ces stratégies nous rappelons les principes du financement des activités économiques en soulignant l’importance de la qualité de l’information des décideurs. Dans un deuxième temps nous nous penchons sur le rôle que l’État peut jouer en matière de financement (sections 2 et 3). Afin de correctement comparer les différentes stratégies de financement il est essentiel de prendre en compte les bénéfices mais aussi les coûts – directs mais, plus important encore, indirects – de ces stratégies (section 4). La prise en compte de tous ces paramètres conduit au plus grand scepticisme à l’égard des stratégies qui ont eu les préférences de nombreux États depuis le début de la crise de 2020.
Elite-biased democracies are those democracies in which former political incumbents and their allies coordinate to impose part of the autocratic institutional rules in the new political regime. We document that this type of democratic transition is much more prevalent than the emergence of pure (popular) democracies in which the majority decides the new institutional rules. We then develop a theoretical model explaining how an elite-biased democracy may arise in an initially autocratic country. To this end, we extend the benchmark political transition model of Acemoglu and Robinson (2005) along two essential directions. First, population is split into majority versus minority groups under the initial autocratic regime. Second, the minority is an insider as it benefits from a more favourable redistribution by the autocrat. We derive conditions under which elite-biased democracies emerge and characterise them, in particular with respect to pure democracies.
