Séminaires de recherche

Mercredi | 2015-03-04
salle B103, 12h-14h

Fadi KHALIL

L’article sera bientôt disponible.

Mardi | 2015-02-17
Sully 5, 16h30-18h

Jean-Charles BRICONGNE – Irène GRIALOU

 » Does the profile of chief economists in charge of forecasting in public and private institutions matter for the quality of their forecasting? Different arguments may be invoked in favor or against this argument: chief economists do not always influence directly forecasting, and it may be rather due to the quality of the staff, but on the other hand, the staff may be chosen, reorganized and influenced by the chief economist, whose final opinion should be decisive.Forecasting is indeed a technical matter which requires skills, but opportunism may also play a role, by considering other institutions’ forecasts, and this is not always easy to take into account in a profile.We thus use an agnostic approach, starting from the principle that if a characteristic leads to better or worse forecasting quality, then characteristics matter and a profile for  » good » forecasters may emerge.Among the main stylized facts, we find that the horizon of the forecasting and the variable forecasted matter: performance is not the same whatever the horizon of the indicator. We also find that, for the chief economists, former experience matters, among others former experience in the public sector (especially for French civil servants as regards budget balance forecasts). Lastly, when using the concept developed in Tetlock (2005), we find that  » hedgehogs » rather over perform compared to  » foxes » and that this characteristic may occult other explanatory variables. »

Mercredi | 2015-02-11
salle B103, 12h-14h

Leonardo Eric CALCAGNO

The aim of this paper is to lay the foundations of a prospective analysis that will draw perspectives on Argentina’s Pay-As-You-Go pension system. After a brief description of the country’s pension system, this paper develops a dynamic microsimulation model and calibrates it with a household-level quarterly survey data, the EPH. The calibration is done both on a micro level (by modelling individual transition probabilities between labour-market states) and on a macro level (by trying to reproduce the gross occupation of the working age population by age, gender and education as observed in the 2003-2014 period). In the end, we have obtained a model that makes a realistic projection of the labour career of each individual in our survey up to the year 2040. Once our retrospective simulations are complete, we will be able to reconstitute their labour career, an information that is currently unavailable. With this, we will be able to compute the total amount of contributive years each individual has validated once he reaches retirement age in the 2014 – 2040 period. This would lay the basic framework for future projections on Argentina’s pension system’s mid to long-term sustainability.

Mardi | 2015-02-10
Sully 5, 16h-17h20

Vicard VINCENT

This paper provides direct evidence of profit shifting to low tax jurisdictions by multinational companies through transfer prices. Using detailed firm level export and import data by destination and product for France, I show that the price wedge between arm’s length trade and related party trade varies systematically with the differential in corporate tax rate between France and the partner country. Profit shifting through transfer prices is estimated to have reduced the French corporate tax base by 8 bn USD in 2008, and its extent is growing over 2000s in France. Though significant, the manipulation of transfer prices on trade in goods accounts for a limited share only of the estimated total profit shifting by multinational companies.

Mercredi | 2015-02-04
salle B103, 12h-14h

Nabila BOUKEF JLASSI

Le contrôle des capitaux internationaux représente une des solutions réglementaires permettant de pallier au risque d’instabilité financière. Cela est d’autant plus important que les mouvements de capitaux internationaux continuent à affluer vers les pays en développement, augmentant ainsi les risques nés d’une telle politique de libéralisation financière externe. Le présent papier se propose d’étudier l’efficacité du contrôle des capitaux à assurer la stabilité financière dans les pays en développement.

Mardi | 2015-02-03
Sully 5, 16h-17h20

Christophe LAVIALLE

Le papier revient sur le débat autour du concept de chômage involontaire, et de son acceptabilité au sein de la science économique. Il montre que ce débat, tel qu’il a été recensé par De Vroey, et qui oppose fondamentalement Keynes et Lucas, renvoie à une série de questions épistémologiques sur le fonctionnement du langage de la science économique, et sa capacité à véhiculer de la connaissance. Ces questions relèvent, en amont de l’ancrage du langage dans le « réel » (de la manière dont le « réel » se révèle au scientifique), puis des limites éventuelles que le langage formel impose à notre intelligence du monde. Nous montrons alors que le discours canonique se fait orthodoxie lorsque, au nom de la primauté du langage, il revendique de ne pas faire place à des éléments dont l’intuition suggère qu’ils sont des éléments importants de la réalité des économies contemporaines, et qui apparaissent évidents dans le langage de l’homme ordinaire. Il semble finalement que les deux postures épistémologiques auxquelles ce débat renvoie, peuvent être arbitrées en prenant en compte la question centrale, en aval du langage, de la performativité du discours de la science économique et de l’efficacité pratique des politiques publiques que ses énoncés inspirent.

Mardi | 2015-01-27
Sully 5, 16h-17h20

Christine FAUVELLE-AYMAR

This paper proposes an analysis of the impact of immigration on the situation of native workers in the labour market of South countries with an empirical study devoted to the analysis of the South African labour market.The paper first presents the methodology and the main results of the empirical literature on the impact of immigration on labour market. This question has been largely examined in the context of migration to North countries but it has, up to now, been subject of relatively little research, in the emerging economic literature on South-South migration. The particular characteristics of labour market of South countries lead to question the applicability of these analyses to the context of South-South migration. The paper discusses this issue andexposes the main elements that need to be taken into account when studying the impact of immigration in South countries.Then, an empirical application to the South African labour market is proposed. The particularity of the South African context is presented, in particular concerning its labour market but also as regards immigration. Then a econometric analysis, based on the methodology of Borjas (2003) is developped. The main result of this empirical analysis is that immigration exercises a negative impact on the level of employment of native workers in South Africa. The analysis shows also that immigration can led native workers to be more involved in informal activities.

Mardi | 2015-01-20
Sully 5 – 16h-17h20

Rudiger AHREND – Emily FARCHY – Ioannis KAPLANIS – Alexander C. LEMBCKE

This paper estimates agglomeration benefits across five OECD countries, and represents the first empirical analysis of how metropolitan governance structures might affect city productivity. The comparability of results in a multi-country setting is supported through the use of a new internationally harmonised definition of cities based on economic linkages rather than administrative boundaries. In line with the literature, the analysis confirms that city productivity tends to increase with city size but finds that cities with fragmented governance structures tend to have lower levels of productivity. This effect is mitigated by the existence of a metropolitan governance body.

Mercredi | 2015-01-14
salle B103, 12h-14h

Ismaël ISSIFOU

Empirical evidence suggests that economic downturn is a key driver of the improvement in governance quality. This paper uses the commodity exports price growth rate, the net barter terms of trade and the exports growth rate to identify the effect of economic upturnon various aspects of governance. We find that positive economic shocks induce better governance. Moreover, our results suggest that governance quality depends on the type of shocks that prevail in the economy.

Mardi | 2015-01-13
Sully 5, 16h-17h20

Patrick GAGLIARDINI – Elisa OSSOLA – Olivier SCAILLET

We build a simple diagnostic criterion for approximate factor structure in large cross-sectional equity datasets. Given a model for asset returns with observable factors, the criterion checks whether the error terms are weakly cross-sectionally correlated or share at least one unobservable common factor. It only requires computing the largest eigenvalue of the empirical cross-sectional covariance matrix of the residuals of a large unbalanced panel. The panel data model accomodates both time-invariant and time-varying factor structures. We develop the theory for large cross-section and time-series dimensions. No restriction is imposed on the relation between both dimensions. The empirical analysis runs on returns for about ten thousands US stocks from July 1964 to December 2012. Among several multi-factor models proposed in the literature, we cannot select a model with zero factors in the errors.