Séminaires de recherche

Mardi | 2019-03-19
Salle des thèses 16h – 17h20

Mariana ROJAS-BREU – Aleksander BERENTSEN – Christopher WALLER

We construct a search model where sellers post prices and produce goods of unknown quality. A match between a buyer and a seller reveals the quality of the seller. We look at the pricing decisions of the sellers in this environment. We then introduce a rating system whereby buyers reveal the seller’s type by giving them a “star” if they are a high quality seller. We show that new sellers charge a low price to attract buyers and if they receive a star they post a high price. Furthermore, high quality sellers sell with a higher probability than new sellers. We show that welfare is higher with a ratings system. Using data on Airbnb rentals to compare the pricing decisions of Superhosts (elite rentals) to non-Superhosts we show that Superhosts: 1) charge higher prices, 2) have a higher occupancy rate and 3) higher revenue than non-Super hosts.

Mardi | 2019-03-19
Salle des Thèses 16h – 17h20

Mariana ROJAS-BREU

We construct a search model where sellers post prices and produce goods of unknown quality. A match between a buyer and a seller reveals the quality of the seller. We look at the pricing decisions of the sellers in this environment. We then introduce a rating system whereby buyers reveal the seller’s type by giving them a “star” if they are a high quality seller. We show that new sellers charge a low price to attract buyers and if they receive a star they post a high price. Furthermore, high quality sellers sell with a higher probability than new sellers. We show that welfare is higher with a ratings system. Using data on Airbnb rentals to compare the pricing decisions of Superhosts (elite rentals) to non-Superhosts we show that Superhosts: 1) charge higher prices, 2) have a higher occupancy rate and 3) higher revenue than non-Super hosts.

Mardi | 2019-03-12
Salle des Thèses 16h – 17h20

Ismaël ISSIFOU

This study provides regression estimates of the determinants of asylum admission policies in host countries using a bilateral panel data covering 201 origin and 113 destination countries from 2000 to 2017. We show that, beyond geographical and cultural proximity, approval policies (procedures and acceptance) are influenced by political factors such as political polarization and electoral periods in OECD countries, while they are not in low and middle-income countries. We also find, although to a lesser extent, that economic health and sound fiscal positions matter. Heterogeneity in approval policies across host countries, not resulting from the sole merit of asylum claims, calls into question asylum policies restricting the choice of host countries in which asylum seekers may apply for asylum

Mardi | 2019-03-05
Salle des thèses 16h – 17h20

Cyriac GUILLAUMIN – Salem Boubakri – Alexandre SILANINE

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the relationship between the real commodity price volatilities and the real effective exchange rate (REER) of commodity-exporting countries, taking into account the transmission channel of financial market integration. To this end, we consider a sample of 42 commodity-exporting countries subdivided into 4 panels: food and beverages, energy, metals, and raw materials. Our results highlight that the relationship between real commodity price volatility and REER is non-linear and depends on the degree of financialization of the commodity market. Specifically, when a country is poorly integrated financially, the volatility of the real commodity price has a strong and negative impact on the variation in REER. However, for periods when a country is better integrated financially, we observe a decrease in the impact of real commodity price volatility on REER, especially for the two panels of food and beverages as well as energy. Our findings also highlight the growth of financialization of commodities post-2000, particularly in the case of the energy sector.

Mardi | 2019-02-26
Salle des thèses 16h30 – 18h00

Marcel-Cristian VOIA

Health status is a key determinant of health care utilization. However, many measures of health status, including precise personalized physiologically based illness severity scores, are imperfect markers of health ability. This complicates many analysis of health care utilization and leaves open questions as to the attributable role of health status. We suggest a method for uncovering the underlying health ability of a child at the time of admission to the pediatric intensive care unit, which consequently provides different results in an analysis of specialized pediatric health care utilization. To do so, we first refine an economic model of pediatric critical care utilization to explicitly account for a child’s underlying health ability. Our theoretical model coincides empirically with the accelerated life regression, a risk adjustment specification common to both clinical health and quality analysis. We extend the accelerated life model using a novel empirical strategy that utilizes the trauma status of a pediatric intensive care unit patient as an instrumental variable. Our results, reported as confidence sets revealing both data and identification uncertainty, suggest that once underlying health ability is accounted for, variations in health utilization attributable to health status change with a clinically and economically relevant magnitude. Furthermore we find that results are sensitive to the choice of health status measures or categorization, which has implications for most types of common risk adjustment. Our theoretical and empirical results also suggest that the clinical uncertainty surrounding underlying health ability is a possible contributor to geographic variation in health utilization.

Mardi | 2019-02-07
Salle des thèses 16h – 17h20

Florent BRESSON – Gaston YALONETZKY

In contrast to reported improvements in world inequality, we document the decline of the world middle class between 2002 and 2012, as interpreted by the bipolarization approach. Using a balanced panel of countries representing more than 80% of the world’s population, we find that reduced inequality within the world’s bottom 50% is the main driver of higher relative bipolarization; while that inequality reduction among the bottom 50% together with a widening gap in mean income between the world’s top and bottom halves help explain the observed rise in absolute bipolarization. The crucial role of Chinese and Indian economic progresses is also underlined.

Mardi | 2019-02-05
Salle des thèses 16h – 17h20

Antonia LOPEZ-VILLAVICENCIO – Marc POURROY

This paper estimates the effects of different forms of inflation targeting (IT) in the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT). To this end, we first estimate the ERPT for a large sample of countries using state-space models. We then consider the adoption of an inflation targeting framework by a country as a treatment to find suitable counterfactuals to the actual targeters. By controlling forself-selection bias and endogeneity of the monetary policy regime, we confirm that the ERPT tends to be lower for countries adopting explicit IT. However, we uncover that more ancient regimes, adopting a band inflation target and keeping inflation close to the target outperform other IT regimes. We also show that IT is effective even with relatively high inflation target or low independence of the central bank.

Mercredi | 2019-01-31
Salle B103 – 12h00

Alin ANDRIES

his paper investigates the effects of national culture on systemic risk, using a comprehensive dataset, covering 75% of the total assets of the ?Global Bank? sample for the period 2000-2016. We measure cultural differences using country-level indices for individualism, power distance, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance developed by Hofstede (2001). Because these indicators have dual information , for a better identification we account for their potential nonlinear effects they have on the systemic risk measures. Additionally, as the two risk measures are channeling the risks in different ways, one form the banking sector to the system (CoVaR) and the other from the system to the banking sector (MES), we propose to see what is the role of the cultural indices on the full transmission mechanism of risk in a country by looking at a joint risk model. Moreover, as the risk measures are highly skewed, we also analyze the impact of cultural values on the systemic risk measures from a quantile perspective. As expected, nonlinerar effects of the cultural values on the risk measures are identified and are stable accross model specifications, showing that these cultural traits may increase their impact with the increase in systemic risks. An interesting finding is that at risks associated with banking crises the impacts of these cultural variables may change significantly their course. In general, the analysis indicates that societies characterized by individualism, high power distance and masculinity increase the individual contribution to the systemic risk. Another interesting fact is that societies characterized by masculinity will have a higher contribution to the risk of financial system, but the exposure will be lower.

Mardi | 2019-01-22
Salle des thèses 16h – 17h20

Graciela KUECHLE – Luise ROHLAND

Entrepreneurs may differentiate their ventures and attract investments by advertising that their firm produces positive externalities for society. Such signaling of entrepreneurs’ trustworthiness may be a prevalent practice in these “impact investment’’ opportunities. This paper investigates theoretically this possible signaling and it studies the interplay of altruistic, fiscal, and reputational motives in a laboratory experiment. In the experiment, entrepreneurs choose between a conventional investment opportunity or an impact investment opportunity involving a spillover. For the latter, the size of the spillover is to be set by the entrepreneurs. Investors may transfer funds to the entrepreneur, who may then invest some, all or none of this money onto the opportunity, and then decide whether or not to transfer some of the funds back. The results are that both theoretically and empirically the choice alone of an impact project does not increase investors’ transfers to impact investments but a higher spillover does as long as the spillover is not too high. Entrepreneurs who announce higher rates of spillovers return more funds to investors, making a high spillover a valid signal of trustworthiness, and they also pay “out-of-pocket” the spillover by sending the same amount back as the entrepreneurs who chose purely financial project. In the presence of tax, entrepreneurs internalize that a too high spillover could scare away investors. The mechanisms behind investors believing that socially-oriented entrepreneurs will be more trustworthy is that the mere project type is insufficient and information about the effective societal impact is necessary; making that quantitative information visible allows investors to differentiate between investment opportunities.

Mercredi | 2019-01-10
Salle B103 – 12h00

Raphaël DANINO-PERRAUD

Les minerais critiques dans la chaîne de valeur de l’industrie de défense, de la mine à l’alliage.