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International audience; There is evidence that competing firms outsource R&D to the same independent for-profit laboratory. We draw on this stylized fact to construct a model where two firms in the same industry offer transfer payments in exchange for user-specific R&D services from a common laboratory. Inter-firm and within-laboratory externalities affect the intensity of competition among delegating firms on the intermediate market for technology. Whether competition is relatively soft or tight is reflected by each firm's monetary offers to the laboratory. These offers determine the R&D outcomes, the laboratory's capacity to earn benefits, the profits for the delegating firms, as well as social welfare. We identify the situations in which the laboratory finds it profitable to deliver services to only one firm, or to both of them. In the latter case we compare the delegated R&D game to two other ones where firms conduct in-house R&D, either cooperatively or non-cooperatively. The delegated R&D game Pareto dominates the other two games, and the laboratory earns positive benefits, if and only if R&D services are complementary inside the laboratory, but only limitedly so, and inter-firm spillovers are sufficiently low. The firms' privately-profitable decision to delegate R&D, when the laboratory participates, always benefits consumers.

The African Development Bank allocates its concessional resources through a procedure which is mainly based on the quality of the beneficiary countries' economic policy and governance. This allocation procedure relies mainly on the Performance-Based Allocation formula which can be criticized on two grounds. Firstly, the weight on economic policy and governance is viewed as being excessive. Secondly, it lacks transparency and consistency. We consider how to amend that formula so as to take into account certain common characteristics of many African countries. The main proposal is to augment the formula by an economic vulnerability criterion. The numerical simulations show that the introduction of the United Nations economic vulnerability index in the formula gives rise to allocations which not only account for post conflict situations but also inherent fragility. We also consider a lower population weight in order to address the problem of country size. This change helps avoid inconsistencies arising from the application of country allocation ceilings in the various stages of the computation. Finally, a few proposals concerning the African Development Fund's support to regional integration are explored.

The financial and economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 has taken its toll on the South African economy. The economy contracted for the first time since 1998, and entered recession during the fourth quarter of 2008. The GDP contraction was soon transmitted to the labor market. Between the second quarters of 2008 and 2009, employment fell by 3.8 percent. However, not all individuals were hit with the same intensity. Using labor force survey data unique in the African context, we find that human capital provided a buffer against the shock. After controlling for observable characteristics, education and experience showed the potential to entirely offset the effect of the recession on the likelihood of employment. This has important policy implications, as it strengthens the case for strategic investments in human capital, and helps identifying the unskilled as those with the highest need for social safety net interventions during the recession.

This paper develops a two-sector, general equilibrium, overlapping generations model to study necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of private tutoring, when education is publicly provided. Young agents have heterogeneous endowments of human capital, which they can augment through mandatory public education, and elective private tutoring. Old agents work in the production sector and/or supply education services. In this model, the selection of teachers by the government induces a rat race which acts as a catalyst of private tutoring. Cette analyse développe un modèle dynamique bi-sectoriel de générations imbriquées afin d'étudier les conditions nécessaires et suffisantes pour l'existence du tutorat privé, lorsque l'éducation publique est conjointement offerte. Les agents jeunes ont des dotations hétérogènes de capital humain, qu'ils peuvent accroître par l'éducation publique obligatoire et par le tutorat privé libre. Les agents vieux travaillent dans le secteur de la production et/ou offrent des services d'éducation. Dans ce modèle, le mode de sélection des enseignants par le gouvernement prend la forme d'un tournoi qui agit comme catalyseur du tutorat privé.

This paper develops a model where two agents in different sectors face uncorrelated income risks and mutually self-insure. We discuss how the rent arising from risk pooling modifies the wage distribution in the sector where the employer behaves as a monopsonist.

This paper studies the informational content of elective teams in a dynamic principal/multiple-agents framework with adverse selection. Two agents with different employment histories are paid their conditional expected marginal product. They observe their types (good or bad), and choose between working together or separately. We characterize the distributions on agents' types, nature and wages such that teams are formed exclusively by good-type agents, with and without side payments. As employment records matter when idiosyncratic contributions are difficult to isolate, a good-type agent prefers not to jeopardize his reputation by teaming up with a bad-type agent. Cet article étudie le contenu informationel des équipes facultatives, dans le cadre d'un modèle dynamique de principal-agent avec sélection adverse. Deux agents ayant des historiques d'emploi différents reçoivent leur produit marginal espéré conditionnel. Ils observent leurs types (bon ou mauvais) et doivent décider s'ils veulent travailler ensemble ou séparément. Nous caractérisons la distribution sur les types, les chocs de la nature et les salaires pour lesquelles des équipes sont formées exclusivement par deux agents de bon type, avec ou sans paiements latéraux. Parce que les dossiers d'emploi sont valorisés lorsque les contributions individuelles sont difficiles à évaluer, un agent de bon type refuse de mettre en péril sa réputation en formant une équipe avec un agent de mauvais type.