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This paper investigates the long-term implications of climate change on global migration and inequality. Accounting for the effects of changing temperatures, sea levels, and the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, we model the impact of climate change on productivity and utility in a dynamic general equilibrium framework. By endogenizing people’s migration decisions across millions of $5 \times 5$ km spatial cells, our approach sheds light on the magnitude and dyadic, education-specific structure of human migration induced by global warming. We find that climate change strongly intensifies global inequality and poverty, reinforces urbanization, and boosts migration from low- to high-latitude areas. Median projections suggest that climate change will induce a voluntary and a forced permanent relocation of 62 million working-age individuals over the course of the 21st century. Overall, under current international migration laws and policies, only a small fraction of people suffering from the negative effects of climate change manages to move beyond their homelands. We conclude that it is unlikely that climate shocks will induce massive international flows of migrants, except under combined extremely pessimistic climate scenarios and highly permissive migration policies. In contrast, poverty resulting from climate change is a real threat to all of us.

Medieval universities are one of the most original creations of Western civilization. Students were educated by a plurality of masters, and scholars came from all parts of Europe. In this paper, we build an original database of thousands of scholars from university sources, and map the academic market in the medieval and early modern periods. Using a random utility model, we show that scholars tend to agglomerate in the best universities, and that this phenomenon is more pronounced within the upper tail of the talent distribution (positive sorting). The quality of scholars is measured by their publications. Agglomeration and sorting patterns testify to a functioning academic market, made possible by political fragmentation and the use of a common language (Latin). Using counterfactual simulations, we show that market forces shaped the geographic distribution of upper-tail human capital across Europe, and contributed to bolstering European universities at the dawn of the Humanistic and Scientific Revolutions.

International audience; This paper is concerned with the historical roots of gender equality. It proposes and empirically assesses a new determinant of gender equality: gender-specific outside options in the marriage market. In particular, enlarging women's options besides marriage-even if only temporarily-increases their bargaining power with respect to men, leading to a persistent improvement in gender equality. We illustrate this mechanism focusing on Belgium, and relate gender-equality levels in the 19th century to the presence of medieval, female-only communities called beguinages that allowed women to remain single amidst a society that traditionally advocated marriage. Combining geo-referenced data on beguinal communities with 19th-century census data, we document that the presence of beguinages contributed to decrease the gender gap in literacy. The reduction is sizeable, amounting to a 12.3% drop in gender educational inequality. Further evidence of the beguinal legacy is provided leveraging alternative indicators of female agency.

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.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2021.03.007

International audience; Contrary to popular perception, empirical evidence suggests that immigrants do not necessarily commit more crimes than natives, in spite of having lower legitimate earning opportunities. To make sense of this, we propose a novel theoretical framework based on a predator/prey model of crime, where endogenous migration decisions and career choices (between licit and illicit activities) are jointly determined. In this setting, we show that the involvement of migrants in crime crucially depends on self-selection into migration, as well as on productivity and institutional quality in the host economy. In particular, immigrants may display a lower crime rate than natives even if they are less productive on the honest labor market – and this result can still hold if career choices are revised after migration. We also find that stricter immigration policies could induce an adverse selection of migrants, and eventually attract more foreign-born criminals. Finally, a dynamic extension of our model can account for the higher crime rates of second-generation immigrants, and highlights the critical role of immigration and assimilation for the long-run evolution of crime and institutions in host countries.

International audience; Since the start of the oil counter-shock in June 2014, Algeria has experienced unprecedented twin deficits. The excessive monetisation of the public deficit coupled with other deep anomalies in the economy of this country acutely calls for reconsideration of its monetary policy. To this end a prior study of the long-run stability of money demand is needed. We estimate the demand for money for monetary aggregates M1 and M2, and cash in Algeria over the period 1979–2019, and study its long-run stability. We show that the transaction motive is significant for all three aggregates, especially for the demand for cash, reflecting the weight of informal economy “practices”. The elasticity of the scale variable is very close to unity for M2 and M1, and even equal to unity for cash demand (1.006). The elasticity of inflation is also significant for all three aggregates, although its level is higher in the case of cash demand (−6.474). Despite the persistence of certain financial repression mechanisms, interest rate elasticity is significant for all three aggregates, but higher for M1 and cash. The same observation is made for elasticity of the exchange rate, reflecting the effect of monetary substitution, especially for M1 and cash. Finally, our study concludes that the demand for money in terms of M1 remains stable, the same observation being confirmed for the M2 aggregate. However, the demand for fiat currency proves not to be stable. The consequences for the optimal design of monetary policy in Algeria are clearly stated.

International audience; We study the joint determination of optimal investment and optimal depollution in a spatiotemporal framework where pollution is transboundary. Pollution is controlled at a global level. The regulator internalizes that: (i) production generates pollution, which is bad for the wellbeing of population, and that (ii) pollution flows across space driven by a diffusion process. We solve analytically for the optimal investment and depollution spatiotemporal paths and characterize the optimal long-term spatial distribution when relevant. We finally explore numerically the variety of optimal spatial distributions obtained using a core/periphery model where the core differs from the periphery either in terms of input productivity, depollution efficiency, environmental awareness or self-cleaning capacity of nature. We also compare the distributions with and without diffusion. Key aspects in the optimal policy of the regulator are the role of aversion to inequality, notably leading to smoothing consumption across locations, and the control of diffusive pollution adding another smoothing engine.

Objective We assess the existence of unfair inequalities in health and death using the normative framework of inequality of opportunities, from birth to middle age in Great Britain. Methods We use data from the 1958 National Child Development Study, which provides a unique opportunity to observe individual health from birth to the age of 54, including the occurrence of mortality. We measure health status combining self-assessed health and mortality. We compare and statistically test the differences between the cumulative distribution functions of health status at each age according to one childhood circumstance beyond people’s control: the father’s occupation. Results At all ages, individuals born to a ‘professional’, ‘senior manager or technician’ father report a better health status and have a lower mortality rate than individuals born to ‘skilled’, ‘partly skilled’ or ‘unskilled’ manual workers and individuals without a father at birth. The gap in the probability to report good health between individuals born into high social backgrounds compared with low, increases from 12 percentage points at age 23 to 26 at age 54. Health gaps are even more marked in health states at the bottom of the health distribution when mortality is combined with self-assessed health. Conclusions There is increasing inequality of opportunities in health over the lifespan in Great Britain. The tag of social background intensifies as individuals get older. Finally, there is added analytical value to combining mortality with self-assessed health when measuring health inequalities.

The occurrence of some revolutionary episodes seems initially puzzling. For example, before the 'Arab Spring', macroeconomic conditions were improving, the political leaders had been in power for a long time, and the autocrats had shown an apparent interest in the welfare of their population by investing in human capital. We argue that such a paradox can be solved by considering that high education levels are incompatible with the features characterising strong neopatrimonial states. We develop this intuition in a simple theoretical model and we test our prediction in a sequential empirical study of regime changes and regime breakdowns in a large panel of countries. We indeed find that a regime change is more likely in countries combining high neopatrimonialism and high education levels. Moreover, when a regime change happens under these circumstances, a revolution is the most likely type of regime breakdown. These results help to understand the 'Arab Spring' but are not specific to the Arab world.

International audience; In this paper, we revisit the theory of spatial externalities. In particular, we depart in several respects from the important literature studying the fundamental pollution free riding problem uncovered in the associated empirical works. First, instead of assuming ad hoc pollution diffusion schemes across space, we consider a realistic spatiotemporal law of motion for air and water pollution (diffusion and advection). Second, we tackle spatiotemporal non-cooperative (and cooperative) differential games. Precisely, we consider a circle partitioned into several states where a local authority decides autonomously about its investment, production and depollution strategies over time knowing that investment/production generates pollution, and pollution is transboundary. The time horizon is infinite. Third, we allow for a rich set of geographic heterogeneities across states while the literature assumes identical states. We solve analytically the induced non-cooperative differential game under decentralization and fully characterize the resulting long-term spatial distributions. We further provide with full exploration of the free riding problem, reflected in the so-called border effects. In particular, net pollution flows diffuse at an increasing rate as we approach the borders, with strong asymmetries under advection, and structural breaks show up at the borders. We also build a formal case in which a larger number of states goes with the exacerbation of pollution externalities. Finally, we explore how geographic discrepancies affect the shape of the border effects.

We provide an analysis of institutional dynamics under uncertainty by means of a stochastic differential game of lobbying with two players (conservatives vs liberals) and three main ingredients. The first one is uncertainty inherent in the institutional process itself. The second considers resource windfalls volatility impact on economic and institutional outcomes. Last but not least, the resource windfall level matters in the relative bargaining power of the players. We compute a unique closed-loop equilibrium with linear feedbacks. We show that the legislative state converges to an invariant distribution. Even more importantly, we demonstrate that the most likely asymptotic legislative state is favorable to the liberals. However, the more volatile resource windfalls, the less liberal is the most likely asymptotic state. Finally, we assess the latter prediction on a database covering 91 countries over the period 1973-2005. We focus on financial liberalization policies. We find that as the resources revenues volatility increases, the financial liberalization index goes down. We also find that this property remains robust across different specifications and sample distinctions.

We use a multilevel approach to investigate whether a general and robust relationship between weather shocks and (internal and international) migration intentions can be uncovered in Western African countries. We combine individual survey data with measures of localized weather shocks for 13 countries over the 2008–2016 period. A meta-analysis on results from about 51,000 regressions is conducted to identify the specification of weather anomalies that maximizes the goodness of fit of our empirical model. We then use this best specification to document heterogeneous mobility responses to weather shocks. We find that variability in Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index/rainfall is associated with changing intentions to move locally or internationally in a few countries only. However, the significance, sign and magnitude of the effect are far from being robust and consistent across countries. These differences might be due to imperfections in the data or to differences in long-term climate conditions and adaptation capabilities. They may also suggest that credit constraints are internalized differently in different settings, or that moving internally is not a relevant option as weather conditions are spatially correlated while moving abroad is an option of last resort. Although our multilevel approach allows us to connect migration intentions with the timing and spatial dimension of weather shocks, identifying a common specification that governs weather-driven mobility decisions is a very difficult, if not impossible, task, even for countries belonging to the same region. Our findings also call for extreme caution before generalizing results from specific case studies.

We develop a theory of institutional transition from dictatorship to minority dominant-based regimes. We depart from the standard political transition framework à la Acemoglu-Robinson in four essential ways: (i) population is heterogeneous, there is a minority/majority split, heterogeneity being generic, simply reflecting subgroup size; (ii) there is no median voter in the post-dictatorship period, political and economic competition is favorable to the minority (fiscal particularism); (iii) (windfall) resources are introduced, and (iv) we distinguish between labor income and resources, and labor supply is endogenous. We first document empirically fiscal particularism, its connection with resource endowment, and the impact of both on revolutionary bursts. Second, we construct a full-fledged model incorporating the four characteristics outlined above. We show, among others, that polarization is a sufficient condition for revolutions, while resource rents are not: they do matter though when polarization is low. In agreement with our empirical facts, countries engaging in revolutions tend to be slightly less resource-rich than other countries. We also outline the interplay between resource rents, polarization and labor market conditions at the dawn of institutional change. Our theory is appropriate to understand the institutional dynamics in highly homogeneous resource-rich countries, which after post-independence autocratic regimes, turn to be dominated by minorities, Algeria being the paradigmatic case.

International audience; Une littérature récente en histoire économique4 s’attache à comprendre les avancées et les progrès de la société occidentale sur une longue période en analysant la façon dont la connaissance est créée et diffusée à travers les institutions qui en sont dépositaires. Derrière ces institutions, formelles, telles les universités et les sociétés savantes, ou informelles, telles la République des Lettres5, se trouvent des hommes qui, par leur activité intellectuelle, ont créé, compilé, discuté, transmis les progrès du savoir6. Cette littérature s’appuie sur la notion de capital humain, développée par Gary Becker7, qui comprend l’ensemble des connaissances et compétences détenues par un individu, et étudie son impact et à son évolution dans le temps. La transmission du savoir est au cœur des universités, dont le rôle dans la diffusion du progrès reste sujet à controverse. Alors que les universités médiévales constituent l’une des créations les plus innovantes de la société occidentale, et sont créditées de nombreuses influences positives8, elles sont souvent considérées comme endormies et sclérosées lors de la période moderne9. Leurs difficultés à s’ouvrir aux nouveaux domaines en expansion10, voire leur opposition à la modernité, sont souvent citées comme cause de leur déclin. Nous étudions dans ce travail le corps professoral de l’ancienne université d’Aix, créée en 1409, dans un terreau déjà fertile pour l’enseignement supérieur (école cathédrale, école de grammaire), et abolie en 1793 par la Convention. L’université d’Aix est, typiquement, vue habituellement11 comme une université aux débuts difficiles, avec un développement certain à la fin du XVIe siècle, mais caractérisée par un manque d’éclat général et un faible nombre d’étudiants. Les livres sur l’histoire d’Aix ou de la Provence lui accordent d’ailleurs peu de place12. Cette vision mitigée repose sur la taille de la population étudiante, sur une estimation, subjective, de l’originalité de la production scientifique, ou encore sur le manque de diversité de sa population étudiante13. Construire une base de données sur le corps professoral de l’université d’Aix permet de reconsidérer cette question sous un angle nouveau.

This paper explores the interplay between population and environmental quality. After reviewing the existing literature, we set up a theoretical framework suitable to analyze two major endogenous forces of demographic change - fertility and life expectancy - and their dynamic interaction with human capital and environmental conditions. We thus revisit and encompass in a unified model some key results of the literature, and gain new insight on the consequences of policy intervention on environmental dynamics and economic development. In particular, we highlight (i) the possible perverse effects of pollution control, (ii) a demographic explanation of the environmental Kuznets curve, (iii) the opportunity of relying on educational subsidies to alleviate the pressure on natural resources, and (iv) the existence of poverty traps related to human capital and environmental quality.

International audience; The distinction between effort and other factors, such as family background, matters for correcting policies and normative reasons when we appeal to inequality of opportunity. We take advantage of a purposefully designed survey on secondary schools in rural Bangladesh to offer a comprehensive view of the importance of overall effort when measuring inequalities of opportunity in education. The analysis comprises decomposition exercises of the predicted variance of student performance in mathematics and English by source (effort, circumstances, etc.) and subgroup (within- and between-schools) based on parametric estimates of educational production functions. Pupils’ effort, preferences, and talents contribute between 31% and 40% of the total predicted variances in performance scores. The contribution of overall effort falls by 10% when the correlation between effort and circumstances is taken into account. These findings are robust to the choice of estimation strategy (i.e. combined within- and between-schools variation models versus multilevel random-effect models). All in all, these results advocate that social determinism in education can be mitigated by individual effort at school.

International audience; The concept of energy return (EROEI ratio) is widely used in energy science to describe the interactions between energy and the economic system but it is largely ignored in macroeconomics. In order to contribute to bridging a gap between these fields of research, we incorporate these metrics into an endogenous growth model with two sectors (energy and final goods) and use this model to analyze the macroeconomic implications of a transition to lower EROEI resources. An approach in terms of net energy allows us (1) to explicitly link the EROEI to macroeconomic variables, (2) to show how it is related to the growth rate of GDP and (3) to obtain a closed-form solution for its long-run value at a general equilibrium level. There is furthermore a tight and decreasing long-run relationship between the EROEI value and the share of investment that must be allocated to the energy sector. Hence, a transition to lower EROEI resources intensifies the rival use of capital in the energy and non-energy sectors and leads to major economic changes, both in the inter-sectoral capital allocation and in the allocation of final output between consumption and investment. We show that a protracted economic contraction may occur before the completion of the transition to renewable energy. We analyze how (1) the magnitude of this contraction and (2) the possibility of an ulterior recovery depend on the initial stock of non-renewables, the potentials of technical progress in the energy and non-energy sectors and the substitutability between capital and energy.

International audience; A growing literature highlights the role played by gender differences in preferences in the persistence of gender inequality, making it crucial to investigate the dynamics of the gender gap in preferences. To that end, we propose a two-sex cultural evolution model in which individuals may be either family-oriented or market-oriented. Preferences evolve jointly within the populations of males and females, and the dynamics of gender differences in preferences is shaped by the outcome of the household decision-making process. In particular, the long-run persistence of gender differences in preferences depends on the home production technology, the degree of patriarchy, or the level of the gender wage gap. We also show that, when the intra-household bargaining power or the gender wage gap are endogenous, the appearance and persistence of gender differences in preferences are crucially affected by initial conditions.

International audience; We build a model of conflict in which two groups contest a resource and must decide on the optimal allocation of labor between fighting and productive activities. In this setting, a diaspora emanating from one of the two groups can get actively involved in conflict by transferring financial resources to its origin country. We find that the diaspora influences the war outcome and, above a certain size, contributes to the escalation of violence. Given the characteristics of the conflict equilibrium, the two groups of residents prefer to negotiate a peaceful settlement if there exists a sharing rule that makes both of them better off than war. We then identify the characteristics of the economy such that the diaspora acts as a peace-wrecking force or triggers a transition towards peace. Finally, we develop two extensions of the model, respectively, accounting for endogenous migration and the possibility of migration from both groups. Overall, our theory can help us make sense of several features of the interaction between real-world diasporas and conflict.

In this article, we study the impact of a French enterprise zone program—the ‘Zones Franches Urbaines’ (ZFUs) policy—on establishment location decisions and on labor market outcomes. Our main identification strategy, which combines spatial and time differencing, shows that conditional on locating in a municipality that hosts a ZFU, the policy has a positive and sizable impact on the probability to locate in the ZFU part rather than in the non-ZFU part of municipalities. However, the impact is highly heterogeneous across zones, industries and firms. We also show that this positive effect is entirely due to within-municipality diversion effects. Regarding labor market outcomes, the policy has a positive effect on employment, especially for low-wage workers. As for wages, the effect is null for low-wage workers, and negative for high-wage ones.

International audience; We consider the relationship between cultural dynamics, urban segregation and inequality. To this end, we develop a model of neighbourhood formation and cultural transmission. The tension between culture preservation and socioeconomic integration drives the pattern of segregation in the city. We study the dynamics of culture and urban configurations. In the long run, the city may end-up segregated or integrated depending on cultural distance and the initial cultural composition of the population. We also show that segregation fosters the influence of family background on economic fate. Finally, segregation has ambiguous effects for long-run efficiency.

The Renancourt district, located to the west of the town of Amiens, has been known in archaeological literature since the beginning of the 20th century through work carried out by V. Commont in the ‘ancienne briqueterie Devalois’. Until recently, this open-air site was one of the rare early Upper Palaeolithic records for the whole loess region in the north of France. From the 1990s onwards, and particularly from 2010, the discovery of several sites as part of rescue archaeological operations enhanced the record and improved our knowledge of this period. In 2011, a new concentration of remains, discovered right beside the first excavations undertaken by V. Commont, was brought to light during archaeological assessments linked to a development project. Annual programmed excavations have been conducted since 2014 at this site, now called Amiens-Renancourt 1. The archaeological occupation, located at a depth of 4 m, is in a tundra gley. The loess sequence is about 8 m thick and corresponds mainly to the Upper Weichselian Pleniglacial. The first taphonomic observations point to a layer of remains covered rapidly by loess sedimentation. Six radiocarbon dates are now available and place the occupation between 22000 and 23000 BP, i. e. around 27000 cal. BP. The excavated surface currently extends over 41 m2. The abundant lithic and bone objects are organized into different concentrations, some of which attain several hundred remains per square metre. The bone remains are relatively well conserved and the dominant species in the faunal spectrum is horse. The lithic industry is in high-quality flint, available immediately beside the site. It is characterized by the production of large blades, sometimes over 20 cm long, obtained with a soft organic hammer, for manufacturing common tools but also several microliths (Gravette points). Separate bladelet production is used for the production of microliths, made up of backed bladelets with abrupt retouch, and several microgravettes. Alongside these remains, several exceptional female statuettes in chalk were discovered with some ornamental elements. A first description of these objects is presented in this article. The whole or fragmented statuettes are of varied dimensions. They show the same stylistic characteristics, that is, overstated feminine attributes, often with full breasts and sometimes buttocks projected towards the rear. They are in fairly tender chalk and are often fragmented but are nonetheless conducive to the legible interpretation of manufacturing marks. Considering the material used, the reconstruction of the chaîne opératoire of these figurines could easily include experimental tests and provide interpretative hypotheses for the fragmentation of these objects. Two types of personal ornaments were also discovered on the site : perforated roundels in chalk, some of which are grooved around the edge, and internal silicified Turritella fossils which probably come from Lutetian outcrops from the Aisne or Marne valley, located about 100 km south-east of the site. Continued research at the ‘ high resolution’ site of Amiens-Renancourt 1 will contribute to enhancing our knowledge of the settlement and socio-economic model of groups of hunters in the north of France before the second Weichselian glacial maximum. Previous chrono-cultural attributions pointed to a Final Gravettian age for this site, but current work indicates a Late-Final Gravettian age, which now requires further clarification., Le quartier de Renancourt, situé à l’ouest de la ville d’Amiens, est connu dans la littérature archéologique depuis le début du XXe siècle par les travaux de V. Commont menés dans «l’ancienne briqueterie Devalois» . Jusqu’à une date récente, ce gisement de plein air est resté l’un des rares témoignages du Paléolithique supérieur ancien pour l’ensemble de la région loessique du Nord de la France. À partir des années 1990 et plus particulièrement dès 2010, la découverte de plusieurs gisements dans le cadre de l’archéologie préventive a permis de mieux documenter et d’enrichir notre connaissance de cette période. En 2011, une nouvelle concentration de vestiges, découverte à proximité immédiate des premières fouilles de V. Commont a été mise au jour lors d’un diagnostic archéologique lié à un projet d’aménagement. Ce gisement, désormais appelé Amiens-Renancourt 1, fait l’objet depuis 2014 de campagnes de fouilles programmées annuelles. L’occupation archéologique, située à 4 m de profondeur, est incluse dans un gley de toundra. L’ensemble de la séquence loessique, d’une puissance d’environ 8 m, correspond en grande partie au Pléniglaciaire supérieur weichselien. Les premières observations taphonomiques témoignent d’une nappe de vestiges rapidement recouverte par la sédimentation loessique. Six datations 14C sont maintenant disponibles et placent l’occupation entre 22000 et 23000 BP, soit aux alentours de 27000 ans cal. BP. La surface fouillée couvre actuellement 41 m2. Le mobilier lithique et osseux, particulièrement riche, s’organise en différentes concentrations dont certaines peuvent atteindre plusieurs centaines de vestiges au mètre carré. Les restes osseux sont assez bien conservés et parmi le spectre faunique, le cheval apparaît comme l’espèce dominante. L’industrie lithique est réalisée dans un silex d’excellente qualité, disponible aux abords immédiats du site. Elle est caractérisée par une production de grandes lames, dépassant parfois les 20 cm, obtenues au percuteur organique tendre, pour la fabrication de l’outillage commun mais également de quelques armatures (pointes de la Gravette). Une production lamellaire autonome est dévolue à la fabrication des armatures composées de fragments de pièces à dos à retouche abrupte et de quelques microgravettes. À ces vestiges s’ajoute la découverte exceptionnelle de plusieurs statuettes féminines en craie et d’éléments de parure qui font l’objet d’une première description dans le cadre de cet article. Les statuettes, entières ou fragmentées, sont de dimensions variées. Elles partagent les mêmes particularités stylistiques, à savoir des caractères féminins exagérément prononcés avec une poitrine souvent opulente et des fesses parfois projetées vers l’arrière. Réalisées dans une craie assez tendre, l’état de conservation souvent fragmentaire de ces représentations humaines autorise cependant une bonne lecture des stigmates de fabrication. Compte tenu du matériau utilisé, la reconstitution de la chaîne opératoire de fabrication de ces statuettes pourra aisément inclure la réalisation de tests expérimentaux et apporter des hypothèses d’interprétation quant à la fragmentation de ces objets mobiliers. Le site a également livré des parures sous forme de rondelles en craie percées et parfois rainurées sur leur pourtour. Plusieurs moules internes silicifiés de Turritelles peuvent également être rapprochés de cette catégorie des parures. Ils proviennent probablement des affleurements lutétiens de la vallée de l’Aisne ou de la Marne, situés à environ 100 km au sud-est du gisement. La poursuite des recherches sur un gisement bien conservé comme celui d’Amiens-Renancourt 1 contribuera à une meilleure connaissance du peuplement et du modèle socio-économique des groupes de chasseurs qui ont occupé le Nord de la France avant le second maximum de froid du Weichselien. Préalablement rapportée au Gravettien final, l’attribution chronoculturelle s’oriente aujourd’hui davantage vers un faciès du Gravettien récent ou récent-final, qui reste à mieux définir., Paris Clément, Deneuve Émeline, Fagnart Jean-Pierre, Coudret Paule, Antoine Pierre, Peschaux Caroline, Lacarrière Jessica, Coutard Sylvie, Moine Olivier, Guérin Gilles. Premières observations sur le gisement gravettien à statuettes féminines d’Amiens-Renancourt 1 (Somme). In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française, tome 114, n°3, 2017. pp. 423-444.

International audience; We study whether restrictions concerning the mode of implantation of multinational firms (MNCs) are desirable for a developing country in terms of its technology acquisition strategy. More precisely, we aim at determining under which conditions domestic equity ownership constraints imposed on MNCs turn out to be beneficial for a country aiming at narrowing its technology gap with the world frontier while facing a limited supply of skilled labor resources. We base ourselves on an extension of the " variety model " of technology-driven growth, and are able to demonstrate that the desirable regulation depends non-monotonically on the overall available amount of skilled human capital. We further find that a positive shock on the pace of technological progress at the world frontier increases the scope of conditions under which ownership constraints become desirable.

International audience; This paper quantifies the effect of global migration on the welfare of non-migrant OECD citizens. We develop an integrated, multi-country model that accounts for the interactions between the labor market, fiscal, and market size effects of migration, as well as for trade relations between countries. The model is calibrated to match the economic and demographic characteristics of the 34 OECD countries and the rest of the world, as well as trade flows between them in the year 2010. We show that recent migration flows have been beneficial for 69% of the non-migrant OECD population, and for 83% of non-migrant citizens of the 22 richest OECD countries. Winners are mainly residing in traditional immigration countries; their gains are substantial and are essentially due to the entry of immigrants from non-OECD countries. Although labor market and fiscal effects are non-negligible in some countries, the greatest source of gain comes from the market size effect, i.e. the change in the variety of goods available to consumers.

Clusters have already been extensively shown to favor firm-level economic performance (productivity, exports, innovation etc.). However, little is known about the capacity of firms in clusters to resist economic shocks. In this paper, we analyze whether firms that agglomerate in clusters and firms that have been selected to benefit from the « competitiveness cluster » industrial policy, implemented in France in 2005, have performed better on export markets during the recent economic turmoil. We show that, on average, both agglomeration and the cluster policy are associated with a higher survival probability of firms on export markets, and conditioning on survival, a higher growth rate of their exports. However, these effects are not stronger during the 2008-2009 crisis; if anything, the opposite is true. We then show that this weaker resilience of competitiveness cluster firms is probably due to the fact that firms in clusters are more dependent on the fate of the « leader », i.e. the largest exporter in the cluster.

International audience; We introduce the concept of product complexity in an endogenous growth model with renewable energy and expanding product variety à la Grossman and Helpman (1991). We describe the complexity of a product as an increasing function of the variety of inputs it consists of. Considering that energy is necessary to all human activities (including research), we highlight what type of long run growth path is possible according to (a) the potential of energy efficiency gains in the various human activities and (b) the effect of the product complexity on the energy intensiveness of its production process. In a finite world, a neoclassical growth path where economic growth can be both quantitative and non-quantitative (i.e. takes the form of an increase in the quantity of produced goods and in the product variety) is only possible if the potential of energy efficiency gains is unbounded in all human activities. If the energy intensiveness of the final production is bounded from below by a strictly positive constant, quantitative growth is not possible in the long run but non-quantitative growth may persist if (i) the impact of product complexity on the energy intensiveness of production is null or weak enough and (ii) the energy intensiveness of research activities tends to zero. If these conditions are not met, no form of long run growth is possible.

This paper investigates the relative price and relative wage effects of a higher productivity in the traded sector compared with the non traded sector in a two-sector open economy model with imperfect substitutability in hours worked across sectors. The Balassa- Samuelson [1964] model predicts that a rise in the sectoral productivity ratio by 1% raises the relative price of non tradables by 1% while leaving the non traded wage-traded wage ratio unchanged. Applying cointegration methods to a panel of fourteen OECD countries over the period 1970-2007, our estimates show that the relative price rises by only 0.78% and the relative wage falls by 0.27%. While our first set of empirical findings cast doubt on the quantitative predictions of the Balassa-Samuelson model, our second set of evidence highlights the role of imperfect labor mobility: the relative price responds more to a productivity differential between tradables and non tradables while the reaction of the relative wage is more muted in countries with higher intersectoral reallocation of labor. We show that the ability of the two-sector model to account for our evidence quantitatively relies upon two ingredients: i) imperfect mobility of labor across sectors, and ii) physical capital accumulation. Finally, our numerical results reveal that the model predicts the relative price response fairly well, and to a lesser extent the relative wage response.

International audience; Measuring the effects of taxation on FDI in developing countries requires consideration of the tax sparing provision. This provision signed between developed and developing countries protects host country fiscal incentives for FDI. This paper estimates the impact of tax sparing provisions on Japanese outbound FDI between 1989 and 2000. We find evidence that the tax sparing provision influences positively the location of Japanese FDI, even after having taken into account reversal causality.

This paper characterizes optimal non-linear income taxation in an economy with a continuum of unobservable productivity levels and endogenous involuntary unemployment due to frictions in the labour markets. Redistributive taxation distorts labour demand and wages. Compared to their efficient values, gross wages, unemployment, and participation are lower. Average tax rates are increasing. Marginal tax rates are positive, even at the top. Finally, numerical simulations suggest that redistribution is much more important in our setting than in a comparable Mirrlees-type setting. Copyright 2006, Wiley-Blackwell.

International audience; La récente bataille sociale autour du CPE (Contrat première embauche) aurait-elle conforté les nombreux commentateurs de la vie politique française toujours prêts à dénoncer l’inertie de l’hexagone en matière de réforme? A cette inertie décriée, les thuriféraires de la flexibilité opposent les vertus du « modèle britannique » ayant enfin vaincu le chômage. Dans cette représentation où la comparaison internationale tient de l’image d’Epinal, les choses sont ainsi posées : d’un côté, un univer...

OS; International audience; Contract theory qualifies legal origins theory by focusing on codified default rules, which ease the conclusion of enforceable contracts. We have selected 10 economically important codified contract types containing default rules and 8 countries particularly relevant as mother countries of legal origins, financial centers or newly industrialized economies (France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK and the US). We exclude countries having received their laws as colonial “transplants” and countries in legal transformation. The economic impact of default rules is detectable by econometric analysis based on panel data inference over prolonged periods (1870-2008). Codified default rules favor economic performance, the higher their number the better. The results are controlled for time and country fixed effects, confirmed by counterfactual simulations and robust. We also test whether the presence of all ten contract types can compensate the absence of financial center advantage, and find that they do so in the civil law mother countries and the two newly industrialized countries of our sample. The Swiss case shows that the cumulation of default rule advantage and financial center advantage results in superior economic performance. While qualifying legal origins theory, our results strongly confirm institutional economics in its core of contract theory.

International audience

This article investigates whether income support for low-paid part-time workers in Belgium increases the transition from unemployment to non-subsidised, ‘regular’ employment. Our analysis uses a sample of long-term unemployed young women. Observing their labour market histories from 1998 to 2001, we implement the ‘timing of events’ method to identify the treatment effect. Our results suggest that participation in the policy has a significantly positive effect on the transition to regular employment. Participation reduced the survivor rate in unemployment by 27% points 1 year after the start of the programme. The time spent in the programme did not affect the transition to regular employment.

International audience; This paper describes the relationship between political leaders' migration experience and the evolution of democracy during their leadership. We build up an original database on the personal background of 932 politicians who were at the head of the executive power in a developing country over the 1960–2004 period. These data reveal the existence of a positive correlation between the fact that leaders studied abroad and the change in the score of democracy in their country during their tenure, for leaders who reach power in initially autocratic settings. This correlation notably appears to be driven by leaders who studied in high-income OECD countries. The main finding, confirmed by various robustness tests, adds up to the recent literature on the effects of the characteristics of political leaders. It also suggests a new channel through which migration may shape development and politics in the sending countries — namely, the political elites.

The Balassa-Samuelson model (BS hereafter) has achieved workhorse status in the analysis of trends observed in industrialized countries regarding the relative price of nontradables (Balassa [1964] and Samuelson [1964]). The model delivers two important testable implications. First, the relative price of nontradables is strictly proportional to the productivity differential between traded and non traded goods sectors. In other words, an increase by 1% in relative productivity raises the relative price by 1%. Second, the relative price being totally fixed by supply-side considerations, government spending shocks leave it unchanged in the long run. This paper empirically revisits the relationship between the relative price of nontradables and exogenous shocks to productivity and government spending. Our empirical evidence, by confirming earlier studies, casts doubt on the BS model's predictions. We find that a rise in the cross-sectoral productivity differential by 1% raises the relative price of nontradables by only 0.70%, providing little support for the proportionality hypothesis implied by the BS model (see Canzoneri et al. [1999] and Kakkar [2003]). Importantly, we also report an increase in the relative price by around 1% in response to a positive government spending shock equal to 1% of output, in line with evidence documented by De Gregorio et al. [1994b] and Balvers and Bergstrand [2002] among others. We propose an explanation for these observed effects based on variations in the composition of demand for nontradables which provide an incentive for firms to change markups.

International audience; Depuis les années 1980, plusieurs pays (Royaume-Uni, États-Unis, France) ont mis en place des zones franches (" enterprise zones ") pour réduire les inégalités entre quartiers au sein des villes. Cet article examine la politique des Zones Franches Urbaines (ZFU), initiée en France en 1996. L'analyse montre que le dispositif français a en grande partie eu les résultats escomptés en attirant des entreprises dans les zones ciblées qui bénéficient d'exonérations fiscales. Néanmoins cet effet est largement dû à des (re)localisations opportunistes de petites entreprises au sein des villes considérées, sans grand impact sur l'emploi des résidents.

Even in countries where there is a male-biased sex ratio, it is still possible for the marriage market to be balanced if men marry younger women and population is growing. We define a missing Brides Index to reflect the intensity of the possible imbalance at steady state, taking into account the endogeneity of population growth. Taking international data on ages at marriage, fertility rate, and sex ratio at birth, we rank countries according to the Missing Brides Index., Même dans les pays où le sex-ratio est biaisé en faveur des hommes, il est possible que le marché du mariage soit équilibré si les hommes se marient avec des femmes plus jeunes et si la population croit. Nous définissons un indicateur des épouses manquantes pour mesurer l'intensité d'un éventuel déséquilibre à long terme, en tenant compte de son effet sur la croissance de la population. En utilisant les données internationales sur les âges au mariage, sur les taux de fertilité et les sex-ratios à la naissance, nous classons les pays en fonction de notre indicateur.

Nous introduisons le concept d'empreinte carbone dans un mod èle o ffre globale et demande globale avec formation imparfaitement concurrentielle des prix et salaires et en examinons les propriétés de l' équilibre en présence d'une politique climatique. Nous étudions deux instruments possibles de cette politique, une taxe carbone ou un quota de permis de pollution. Nous montrons qu' a court terme la politique climatique (ou son durcissement) constitue à la fois un choc d'off re globale négatif et un choc de demande globale positif. Elle provoque donc des effets inflationnistes mais a un impact ambigu sur l'activité économique, l'emploi et le chômage. Ce n'est que dans une économie avec des rigidités nominales de salaire suffisantes que la politique climatique stimulera -sous certaines conditions- l'activité à court terme. Dans tous les cas de figure, elle p èsera négativement sur les salaires réels. Nous étudions encore les interactions entre la politique climatique et les politiques macro économiques traditionnelles de demande (stimulus budgetaire ou moné taire) et d'off re (baisse des cotisations sociales). Les eff ets multiplicateurs de ces politiques sont influencés par l'existence d'une politique climatique et diff èrent selon l'instrument choisi (taxe ou permis). Nous montrons les conditions sous lesquelles une réforme combinant durcissement de la politique climatique et baisse des cotisations sociales sur le travail peut engendrer un double dividende (réduction de l'empreinte carbone, baisse du chômage), sans p pénaliser les salaires r réels des travailleurs. Une telle politique a toutefois des e ffets incertains sur le solde des fi nances publiques.

Among possible lifestyles, the DINKs (“double income no kids”) are couples choosing to be childless, while the DEWKs (“dually employed with kids”) are couples with children. We develop a theory of marriage and parenthood decisions, where we distinguish the choice to have children from the choice of the number of children. The deep parameters of the model are identified from the 1990 US Census. The quantitative model allows us to measure voluntary and involuntary childlessness from the data, and to understand (1) why single women are more likely to be childless than married women but, when mothers, their fertility is close to that of married mothers; (2) why childlessness exhibits a U-shaped relationship with education for both single and married women; and (3) why there is a hump-shaped relationship between marriage rates and education levels. We show how family patterns have been shaped over time by the rise in education levels and wage inequality, and by the shrinking gender wage gap.

International audience; We characterize optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are endogenous. Average tax rates are increasing at the optimum. This shifts wages below their laissez faire value and distorts labor demand upwards. The marginal tax rate is positive at the top of the skill distribution even when the latter is bounded. These results are analytically shown under a Maximin objective when the elasticity of participation is decreasing in the skill level and are numerically confirmed under a more general objective. Under the Maximin, above approximately 20,000 per year, our model recommends higher marginal tax rates than a comparable competitive setting. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

We develop a general equilibrium vintage capital model with energy-saving technological progress and an explicit energy sector to study the impact of investment subsidies on equilibrium investment and output. Energy and capital are assumed to be complementary in the production process. New machines are less energy-consuming and scrapping is endogenous. Two polar market structures are considered for the energy market: free entry and natural monopoly. First, it is shown that investment subsidies may induce a larger equilibrium investment into cleaner technologies either under free entry or natural monopoly. However, in the latter case, this happens if and only if the average cost is decreasing fast enough. Second, larger diffusion rates do not necessarily mean lower energy consumption at equilibrium, which may explain certain empirical observations.

In this paper we consider a simple model of horizontal differentiation and derive the closed form solutions for the level of the variables in the decentralized economy and in the social planner case. This enables us to analyze consumers’ welfare as a function of the parameter representing market power. We surprisingly find that, when the total labor force is greater than a certain level, the welfare function is an inverted-N shape in the decentralized economy and monotonically decreasing in the centralized economy. This suggests that there is another effect which interacts with market power: the degree of returns to specialization.

This paper analyzes empirically the effect of spatial agglomeration of activities on plant-level productivity, using French firm and plant-level data from 1996 to 2004. We exploit short-run variations of variables by making use of GMM estimation. This allows us to control for endogeneity biases that the estimation of agglomeration economies typically encounters. This means that our paper focuses on a subset of agglomeration economies, the short-run ones. Our results show that French plants benefit from localization economies, but we find very little - if any - evidence of urbanization economies. We also show that those localization benefits are relatively well internalized by firms in their location choice: we find very little difference between the geography that would maximize productivity gains in the short-run and the geography actually observed.

Migration is an important and yet neglected determinant of institutions. The paper documents the channels through which emigration affects home country institutions and considers dynamic-panel regressions for a large sample of developing countries. We find that emigration and human capital both increase democracy and economic freedom. This implies that unskilled (skilled) emigration has a positive (ambiguous) impact on institutional quality. Simulations show an impact of skilled emigration that is generally positive, significant for a few countries in the short run and for many countries in the long run once incentive effects of emigration on human capital formation are accounted for.

PurposeThis paper seeks to explore various types of quasi‐market governance in domiciliary elderly care with an interest in both the institutional variety of these governance arrangements and their assumable consequences, against the twofold background of the EU care policy agenda and the Nordic experience.Design/methodology/approachBased on evidence from four Western European countries, the paper examines how recent reforms have changed the provision of domiciliary care, including the shape of vertical and horizontal governance arrangements. Moreover, summarizing results of previous research and drawing on theoretical reflections rooted both in economics and sociology, the paper discusses the wider impact of these reforms.FindingsThe analysis points to country‐specific limitations of the quasi‐market approach regarding issues such as the work‐life balance of carers and the access to adequate services.Originality/valueBy combining different scientific approaches and exploring several institutional contexts, the paper offers new insights both in problems of quasi‐market governance and their cultural colouring.

We use a two-sector neoclassical open economy model with traded and non-traded goods to investigate both the aggregate and the sectoral effects of temporary fiscal shocks. One central finding is that both sectoral capital intensities and labor supply elasticity matter in determining the response of key economic variables. In particular, the model can produce a drop in investment and in the current account, in line with empirical evidence, only if the traded sector is more capital intensive than the non-traded sector, and labor is supplied elastically. Irrespective of sectoral capital intensities, a fiscal shock raises the relative size of the non-traded sector substantially in the short-run. Additionally, allowing for the markup to depend on the number of competitors, the two-sector model can produce the real exchange rate depreciation found in the data. Finally, markup variations triggered by firm entry modify substantially the response of the real wage and the sectoral composition of GDP in the short-run.

We use a neoclassical open economy model with traded and non traded goods to investigate the sectoral effects of three tax reforms: i) two revenue-neutral shifting the tax burden from labor to consumption taxes and ii) one labor tax restructuring keeping the marginal tax wedge constant. Regardless of its type, a tax reform crowds-in both consumption and investment and raises employment. Whereas tax reforms have a small impact on GDP, they exert substantial effects on sectoral outputs which move in opposite direction in the short-run. The sensitivity analysis reveals that raising the elasticity of labor supply or reducing the tradable content in consumption expenditure amplifies the heterogeneity in sectoral output responses. Finally, allowing for the markup to depend on the number of competitors, we find that a substantial share of sectoral output variations can be attributed to the change in the markup triggered by firm entry.

International audience; Due to the preponderance of the lithic remains and the high knowledge of the makers, the sites attribute to the transition between Younger Dryas and Preboreal in northern France were often interpreted as task specific location, dedicated to the production of some long flint blades. This specialization has however been recently questioned and, zooarchaeological analyses were needed in order to revalue the importance of the animal exploitation on the sites and, thus, test the other-representation of the lithic production activities within them. In this aim the Belloy-sur-Somme site, which provides one of the few faunal assemblages in association with lithic production, was recovered in a zooarcheological perspective. The different functions of the site were thus specified. If one sector of the site (Vallon) seems effectively used for the production of lithic supports, a second one sector (113-117) seems to have been dedicated to the acquisition and treatment of at least five horses.; Les occupations attribuées à la transition Dryas récent / Préboréal dans le nord de la France ont souvent été interprétées comme des sites d'atelier, fréquentés dans le but de produire de longues lames de silex, parce que les vestiges lithiques y sont prépondérants-voire exclusifs-et témoignent d'un savoir-faire exigeant. Cette spécialisation a toutefois été récemment remise en cause et il apparaissait nécessaire de revoir les quelques restes de faune attribués à cette période, afin de réévaluer la part des activités d'exploitation des ressources animales dans les gisements. C'est dans cette perspective que nous avons réexaminé le site de Belloy-sur-Somme, car il présente l'intérêt de livrer l'un des rares ensembles fauniques en association avec des témoins lithiques. Les différentes fonctions du gisement ont ainsi pu être précisées. Si un premier secteur du site (secteur du Vallon) semble effectivement orienté vers la production de supports lithiques, dans un second secteur (secteur 113-117), l'acquisition et le traitement d'au moins cinq chevaux ont été mis en évidence.

The development of clusters of economic activity is an important feature of industrial policy. Industry clusters have long fascinated economists and geographers alike, the most renowned being Silicon Valley which is seen by many as the blueprint for regional development, innovation, and growth. Several clusters have also developed across Europe, including SiliconFen in Cambridge and Minalogic in Grenoble, and in recent years cluster policies have become popular among policy makers as a useful tool for informing decisions on industrial, regional, and public policy. This book looks at the mechanisms at work behind cluster dynamics, the gains that can be expected from increased clustering, and the determinants of cluster policies. Focusing on France, it provides a theoretical and empirical study of clusters, their success and failures, and the policy lessons that can be applied to the wider international community. France is particularly interesting because there is a long tradition of strong government intervention regarding the location of economic activity, and cluster initiatives are relatively unified across the country. This book shows that, whilst gains from clusters do exist, some firms tend to cluster too much and that spatial agglomeration is only successful to a point, after which congestion effects can offset these gains. It questions the need and the feasibility of cluster policies aimed at interfering directly in the concentration process of firms, and thus looks beyond the general enthusiasm for clusters.