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This article analyses the effectiveness of hiring credits. Using comprehensive administrative data, we show that the French hiring credit, implemented during the Great Recession, had significant positive employment effects and no effects on wages. Relying on the quasi-experimental variation in labour cost triggered by the hiring credit, we estimate a structural search and matching model. Simulations of counterfactual policies show that the effectiveness of the hiring credit relied to a large extent on three features: it was non-anticipated, temporary and targeted at jobs with rigid wages. We estimate that the cost per job created by permanent hiring credits, either countercyclical or time-invariant, in an environment with flexible wages would have been much higher.

Internet is a very attractive technology for experiments implementation, both in order to reach more diverse and larger samples and as a field of economic research in its own right. This paper reports on an experiment performed both online and in the laboratory, designed so as to strengthen the internal validity of decisions elicited over the Internet. We use the same subject pool, the same monetary stakes and the same decision interface, and randomly assign two group of subjects between the Internet and a traditional University laboratory to compare behavior in a set of social preferences games. This comparison concludes in favor of the reliability of behaviors elicited through the Internet. Our behavioral results contradict the predictions of social distance theory, as we find that subjects allocated to the Internet treatment behave as if they were more altruistic, more trusting, more trustworthy and less risk averse than laboratory subjects. Those findings have practical importance for the growing community of researchers interested in using the Internet as a vehicle for social experiments and bear interesting methodological lessons for social scientists interested in using experiments to research the Internet as a field., L'internet constitue un terrain très attractif d'un point de vue expérimentale, à la fois comme moyen d'obtenir des échantillons plus larges et plus diversifiés, et comme champ de recherche à part entière en raison de son rôle croissant dans la sphère économique. Cet article traite d'une expérience réalisée à la fois par internet et en laboratoire, conçue pour renforcer la validité interne des décisions observées en ligne. Les deux traitements présentent la même base d'échantillonnage, les mêmes schémas de rémunération, et la même interface de décision. Nous avons cherché à comparer les comportements dans un ensemble de jeux de préférence sociale, les participants étant répartis de manière aléatoire entre jeu en ligne et jeu en laboratoire. Cette comparaison tend à confirmer la fiabilité des décisions observées en ligne. Nos résultats sont également contraires aux prédictions de la théorie de la distance sociale : les participants alloués au traitement par internet ont tendance à être plus altruistes, plus confiants et plus dignes de confiance, et enfin moins risquophobes que les joueurs en laboratoire.

This paper contributes to the debate on front-of-pack nutritional labels. Because of their dissimilar formats, Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) and Traffic Light (TL) may trigger different responses among consumers. While GDA is comprehensive and cognitively demanding, information is coarser and more salient in TL. We implement an incentivized laboratory experiment to assess the relative performance of GDA and TL labelling schemes in assisting consumers to build a healthy daily diet. Participants must compose a daily diet, choosing from a finite set of products, and are paid a fixed cash amount only if the diet satisfies pre-determined nutritional goals. Goals correspond to the guideline daily amount values for different nutritional attributes, whose number varies from 1 (kcal) to 7 (kcal, fat, sugar, salt, fibre, vitamin C and calcium). Three different labels, GDA, TL and a combined GDATL are provided. Results show that GDA performs better than TL when subjects do not face time constraints. When time is limited however, TL and GDA have identical efficacy with 4 nutritional goals, and TL even outperforms GDA with 7 nutritional goals.

When one’s treatment status affects the outcomes of others, experimental data are not sufficient to identify a treatment causal impact. In order to account for peer effects in program response, we use a social network model. We estimate and validate the model on experimental data collected for the evaluation of a scholarship program in Colombia. By design, randomization is at the student-level. Friendship data reveals that treated and untreated students interact together. Besides providing evidence of peer effects in schooling, we find that ignoring peer effects would have led us to overstate the program actual impact.

International audience; Nous tenons à remercier François Allisson et Nicolas Brisset pour leur commentaire stimulant sur nos travaux. Dans leur article, ces derniers reviennent sur les expérimentations de nouveaux modes de scrutin menées par notre équipe de recherche lors du premier tour des élections présidentielles d’avril 2007 et d’avril 2012. Les deux auteurs questionnent avec justesse l’une de nos conclusions selon laquelle les votes plurinominaux testés à ces occasions (le vote par approbation, le vote par note) incitent effectivement les votants à exprimer plus pleinement leurs préférences électorales : le dilemme entre vote sincère et vote utile, engendré par la mécanique du scrutin uninominal à deux tours, n’aurait plus lieu d’être grâce à ces modes de scrutin alternatifs.

International audience; This paper is based on a randomised social experiment conducted in order to understand the low take-up rate of a Complementary health-insurance voucher program for the poorest in France (the Aide Complémentaire Santé: ACS). We explore two of the main hypotheses put forward to explain low enrolment: a lack of information about the program and a voucher amount considered to be too low. A sample of eligible individuals living in an urban area in Northern France were randomly split into three groups: a control group who benefited from the standard level of financial aid; a group benefiting from an increase in the value of the voucher; and a third group benefiting from the same increase along with an invitation to an information meeting regarding ACS. We show that the voucher increase has a small but statistically significant effect on ACS take-up. The invitation to the meeting appears to cancel out the positive effect of the voucher increase. Using an instrumental variable model to control for potential selection bias, we find ambiguous evidence of the meeting attendance on ACS take-up. This study confirms the difficulties that are faced in increasing the health insurancecoverage of poor populations via subsidy programs.

The purpose of this study is to assess the degree of employment discrimination against young people in the Ile-de-France region according to their place of residence by considering several spatial scales in order to measure the effect of the reputation of the administrative department or county (specifically Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis), the town or municipality, and of the local neighborhood. The evaluation is carried out using experimental testing-type data that we developed following a protocol that allows us to examine the specific effects associated with each of these three spatial scales on access to employment, as well as their combined effects. We are interested in discrimination regarding two specific occupations within the restaurant/catering industry, namely waiters and cooks, and we consider the impact of two levels of qualification. For each of these profiles, we constructed six fictional candidacies consisting of young men who were similar with the exception of the testing feature which differentiates them, namely their place of residence. Between October 2011 and February 2012, we studied 2,988 candidacies that were submitted in response to 498 job offers posted in the Ile-de-France region. This study consists of a statistical and econometric analysis of the responses that we obtained to these applications.

L’objet de cette étude est de mesurer la discrimination à l’embauche à l’encontre des jeunes en Ile-de-France en raison du lieu de résidence en considérant plusieurs échelles spatiales de façon à distinguer l’effet de la réputation du département (Paris et la Seine-Saint-Denis), celui de la localité et celui du quartier. L’évaluation est réalisée sur données expérimentales auto-construites de testing selon un protocole permettant d’examiner les effets propres à chacune de ces trois échelles sur l’accès à l’emploi ainsi que leurs effets cumulés. On s’intéresse aux discriminations pour deux professions en tension du secteur de la restauration pour laquelle les discriminations devraient a priori être réduites, les serveurs et les cuisiniers, pour deux niveaux de qualification (CAP ou Baccalauréat professionnel). Pour chacun de ces profils, nous avons construit 6 candidatures fictives de jeunes hommes, similaires en tous points à l’exception de la caractéristique testée : le lieu de résidence. Entre octobre 2011 et février 2012, nous avons envoyé 2988 candidatures en réponse à 498 offres d’emploi localisées en Ile-de-France. L’étude consiste en une exploitation statistique et économétrique des réponses à ces envois.

Under evaluative voting, the voter freely grades each candidate on a numerical scale, with the winning candidate being determined by the sum of the grades they receive. This paper compares evaluative voting with the two-round system, reporting on an experiment which used various evaluation scales, conducted during the first round of the 2012 French presidential election. Invitations to participate in the study were extended to around 5,000 voters in three cities, and the experiment attracted 2,340 participants. Basing our argument on the ranks, relative scores, and grade profiles of candidates, we show that the two-round system favors “exclusive” candidates, that is candidates who elicit strong feelings, while evaluative rules favor “inclusive” candidates, that is candidates who attract the support of a large span of the electorate. These differences are explained by two complementary reasons: the opportunity for the voter to support several candidates under evaluative voting rules, and the specific pattern of strategic voting under the official, two-round voting rule.

In a laboratory experiment, we study consumer responses to 7 Nutrition ‘Front of Pack’ Logos. In addition to the Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) logo, the six other logos vary according to three criteria: (i) Granularity (What object do we rate? Product vs. Nutrient), (ii) Reference Set (How do we distinguish between products? All Products vs. Product Family), and (iii) Policy Range (Do we include bad ratings? Green vs. Green and Red). 364 subjects, all parents accustomed to shopping, were asked to fill their shopping cart for their family for the next couple of days in an e-shopping environment. To do so, they could choose among 273 products grouped into 35 product families. They were then given the opportunity to revise their shopping cart after one of the seven logos had been exhaustively applied to all 273 products. The nutritional quality of a cart was assessed according to its salt, free sugar and saturated fatty acids content. We found that all of the seven logos significantly improved the nutritional quality of the shopping carts. On average, rating the product rather than the nutrient was more efficient. Informing on both healthy and unhealthy products was also more efficient on average but had significant toxic effects. The GDA logo lies at the median of our logo chart list. Unlike free sugar and saturated fatty acids, salt appears to be a particular case, as our logos proved to be insufficient for reducing its consumption.

The security of natural gas supply is an important issue for all EU countries due to the regionâ€Ââ„¢s heavy dependence on imported supply sources and in light of energy demand for gas that is continuously increasing. Discussions have emphasised strategies for securing the supply at the macro level, e.g. diversification in supply sources, increase in storage capacity, etc. By contrast, consumersâ€Ââ„¢ demand for the reliability of gas supply is rarely investigated. Hence this study was conducted to examine the economic implications associated with the security of gas supply directly to domestic consumers. Based on the choice experiment approach, household surveys were conducted in France, Italy and the UK. The results confirmed that the degree of the economic impact of a disruption of gas supply to domestic consumers was a function of the duration of a supply disruption and the season in which a supply cut would take place, as well as other preferences of consumers. The willingness to pay to secure per unit of gas consumption, or alternatively the costs of gas unsupplied, was estimated at between €2.65/cubic metre and €41.48/cubic metre across three different European countries.

2011-05; Objective: To compare the impact of food price policies on the nutritional quality of food baskets chosen by low-income and medium-income women. Methods: Experimental economics was used to simulate a fruit and vegetable price subsidy (FV policy) and a mixed policy subsidizing healthy products and taxing unhealthy ones(NP policy)Low-income (n=95) and medium–income (n=33) women selected a daily food basket at current prices and then at policy prices. Energy density (ED) and the mean adequacy ratio (MAR) were used as nutritional quality indicators. Results: At baseline, low-income women selected less healthy baskets than medium–income ones (less fruit and vegetables, more unhealthy products,higher ED, lower MAR). Both policies improved nutritional quality (fruit and vegetable quantities increased, ED decreased,the MAR increased), but the magnitude of the improvement was often lower among low income women. For instance, their ED decreased by 5.3% with the FV policy and by 7.3% with the NP policy, whereas decreases of 13.2% and 12.6% respectively were recorded for the medium–income group.

Ethnicization of struggles for local power in Bolivia. The conquest of the rural area in Nothern Potosí Evo Morales’s electoral victories have confirmed the power of the Bolivian rural movement, but it still stays divided. In the Andes, the Aylus indigene organization fight against the rural union organization for the control of the rural world. This dualism is based on different historical processes structured from the 1953’ s agrarian reform. Then it grows with the elaboration of identity discourses and the constructing of a “ symbolic boundary” between the two organizations, whose purpose is the conquest of the politic power and the gestion of development projects. Both of them weaving its own networks with non-governmental organizations and political groups, it creates tensions with Evo Morales’ government between “ politic” and “ organic”. Based on the Northern Potosi’s example, this work allows the decrypting of actual political and identitary processes Bolivia is going through. Indeed, the country is now in a deep change process in wich the social organizations are the main characters but fight each other defining this process., Si les victoires électorales d’Evo Morales ont confirmé la force du mouvement rural bolivien, celui-ci n’en reste pas moins divisé. Dans les Andes, l’organisation indigène des ayllus affronte l’organisation paysanne syndicale pour le contrôle du monde rural. Ce dualisme organisationnel repose, dans un premier temps, sur des processus historiques différents, structurés à partir de la réforme agraire de 1953. Il s’amplifie par la suite dans l’élaboration de discours identitaires et la construction d’une «frontière symbolique » entre les deux organisations, dont la finalité est la conquête du pouvoir politique et la gestion des projets de développement. Chacune d’elle tisse dès lors ses propres réseaux avec les organisations non gouvernementales et les partis politiques, non sans créer des tensions avec le gouvernement d’Evo Morales entre le «politique » et l’ «organique » . A partir de l’exemple de la région du Nord Potosí, ce travail permet ainsi de décrypter les processus politiques et identitaires actuels que traverse la Bolivie. Le pays est en effet entré dans un profond «processus de changement » dans lequel les organisations sociales sont moteur et s’affrontent dans la définition de ce changement., Le Gouill Claude. L’ethnicisation des luttes pour le pouvoir local en Bolivie. La conquête du monde rural dans le Nord Potosí. In: Revue d’études en Agriculture et Environnement, Vol. 92, N°4, 2011. Le monde rural en politique. Le cas des protestations paysannes en Bolivie. pp. 363-387.

In this paper we propose a new method in experimental economics, designed to evaluate the effectiveness of public policy incentives aimed at altering consumer behaviors. We apply this method to wide-ranging policies on food prices, which use subsidies to increase the consumption of healthy products and taxes to reduce that of unhealthy ones. Our protocol allows for observation of an individual’s daily food consumption before and after the policy. We examine two separate policies: the one subsidizes fruit and vegetables, while the other one combines taxes and subsidies. We measure their nutritional and economic impacts on the choices of low-income French consumers, compared to a reference group. Both policies have a positive effect on the nutritional quality of food choices of the two groups but initial gaps widen, especially with the subsidies. In the low-income group this can be explained by an initially unfavorable pattern and by weaker price elasticities. The redistributive effects are therefore doubly regressive. Moreover, the individual price elasticities, that the experimental approach enables us to measure, show widely diverse behaviors. They are counter-effective for close to 40% of our sample of poor women.

This paper compares the social norms of distributive transfers within village communities in the north and south of Vietnam by analyzing household survey and experimental data. The results of household data analysis show private transfers flow from high-income households to low-income households in the south where social safety net is limited. In contrast, private transfers do not correlate with pre-transfer income in the north where public transfers are more widespread. In addition, public transfers crowd out private transfers in the north. We conducted trust game in both regions and found consistent results. People in the south are more altruistic toward the poor: they send more to the poor without expecting higher repayment. This pattern is consistent with the idea that private norms of redistribution from rich to poor are active in the south but are crowded out in the north, possibly by communist public institutions, although we observe a strong overall positive effect of communism on reciprocity in the north.

http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/Items/WorkingPapers/Download/DLWP.php?wp=WP_CSI_013.pdf; Essai sur le potentiel de la notion d'expérimentation pour le renouveau du répertoire de la sociologie politique.

The experiment of approval voting and evaluation voting (2,1,0) conducted in parallel with the first round of the French presidential elections in 2007 is intended to study the influence of voting methods upon the expression of individual preferences in votes. The comparison between gross results of tested methods and official vote's opens promising leads of research., L'expérimentation du vote par approbation et du vote par note (2, 1, 0), menée lors du premier tour des élections présidentielles de 2007, vise à étudier l'influence du mode de scrutin sur l'expression des préférences individuelles dans les suffrages. La comparaison des résultats bruts des procédures testées et du vote officiel ouvre des pistes de recherche prometteuses.

Provides some theoretical developments on the topic of the performativity of economics., Propose quelques développements théoriques sur le thème de la performativité des sciences économiques.