Portail HAL Paris School of Economics (PSE)
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How Climate Action Plans are modified by the energy crisis? A focus on residential heating in Bristol
No full textInternational audienceThe recent surge in European energy prices could substantially reduce the social cost of Climate Action Plans. This paper conducts an ex-ante Cost-Benefit Analysis of mitigation policies in residential heating and studies the extent to which rising energy prices modifies their cost-effectiveness. I use the city of Bristol (UK) as a case study and assess two options: (1) investing in district heating networks in central districts or (2) subsidizing energy efficiency retrofits for least efficient dwellings. Implementing either of the two policy options under high energy prices trends increase economic benefits to households by around £ 1 per pound invested, in present value, relative to a scenario with baseline energy prices trends. Besides, district heating networks become more cost-effective at mitigating carbon emissions than energy efficiency retrofits
Consumption Taxes and Corporate Income Taxes: Evidence from Place-Based VAT
No full textUsing a quasi-experimental setting, we document that corporations decrease declared profits and corporate income taxes in response to an increase in the VAT rate. In an attempt to raise tax revenue during the Greek economic crisis, a 16% VAT rate, which existed for historicopolitical reasons in Greek islands, was harmonised to the national 24% rate. We combine tax filings with Orbis and ICAP data that enable us to geolocate corporations and to construct comparable groups based on locations in or out of the preferential rate. Counteracting the reform’s intended effect, declared profits decreased by 28% and corporate income taxes by 34% on a permanent basis. Macroeconomic factors and a fall in reported revenue cannot fully explain this decrease. Pervasive tax evasion in the Greek islands, where corporations might have an opportunity to adjust profits, offers a plausible explanation of the magnitude of responses
Academic Publishing And Open Access: What Does Economics Teach Us?
No full textInternational audienceWe review the literature on the academic publishing sector with a particular focus on the questions raised by open access. Dwelling on insights from the literatures on two-sided markets and certification, we discuss the various options to promote open access as well as possible policies to regulate the publishing market
Pollution in a globalized world: Are debt transfers among countries a solution?
No full textInternational audienceWe analyze the effects of a debt relief, that is, a decrease in public debt of a low-income country financed by a high-income country, on environmental quality. Under perfect mobility of assets, the debt relief increases the overall capital stock, and environmental quality when public abatements are sufficiently efficient. Welfare in both countries can also improve. Under a weak mobility of assets, capital does no more increase in the richest country, but environmental quality can improve. This comes from a crowding-out effect of debt in the high-income country, which does no more take place when the mobility of assets is significant
Chronique d'un impôt sur l'héritage en perdition: Pourquoi et comment le sauver
No full textInternational audienceCet ouvrage montre que ces évolutions découlent d’un grand retournement idéologique après 1980, alimenté par le retour du patrimoine et sa diffusion dans les classes moyennes, ainsi que par le repli sur la famille en des temps de plus en plus individualistes et incertains. Désormais, concevoir les droits de succession comme un impôt de justice sociale, réducteur de l’inégalité des chances, ne suffit plus. Pour les sauver, il faut leur prêter une vocation complémentaire : ils pourraient constituer un mécanisme fiscal incitatif qui permette de financer à large échelle, par l’épargne abondante des seniors, les investissements d’avenir collectifs, productifs, écologiques et sociaux, dont nos sociétés ont tant besoin aujourd’hui
The Gender-Equality Paradox in Chess Holds Among Young Players: A Commentary on the Vishkin (2022) Study
No full textInternational audienceVishkin (2022) shows that female participation in chess is lower in more gender equal countries (the “gender-equality paradox”) but that this relation is driven by the mean age of the players in a country, which makes it more of an epiphenomenon than a real paradox. Relying on the same data on competitive chess players ( N = 768,480 from 91 countries) as well as on data on 15-year-old students ( N = 312,571 from 64 countries), we show that the gender-equality paradox for chess holds among young players. The paradox also remains on the whole population of chess players when controlling for the age of the players at the individual rather than at the country level or when controlling for age differences across countries. Therefore, there is a gender-equality paradox in chess that is not entirely driven by a generational shift mechanism as argued by Vishkin (2022), and previous explanations for the paradox cannot be dismissed
Gathering Evidence on the Quality of Institutions
No full textInternational audienceThe objective of this chapter is to collect insights from different sources and different people about institutional features that may slow down economic development in Tanzania or threaten its sustainability and inclusiveness. It essentially follows three approaches presented in three separate sections. First, by exploiting the numerous institutional indicators available in international databases, insights are collected about the quality of Tanzanian institutions in comparison with a set of relevant countries. Insights aim to identify those institutional features that may possibly differentiate Tanzania. Second, an original questionnaire survey is undertaken among various types of decision-makers operating in Tanzania. The survey asks them about their own perception of how institutions work there and how they affect development. Finally, the analysis is enriched by the summary of the main points that arose in a large set of open-ended interviews with top policymakers of the country about the same questions. The final section concludes
New Russian Economic History
No full textThis survey discusses recent developments in the growing literature on the Russian economic history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Using novel data and modern empirical methods, this research generates new insights and provides important lessons for development economics and political economy. We organize the discussion around four strands of this literature. First, we summarize and put in comparative perspective research on the long-term trends in economic development and living standards, which shows that throughout history Russia significantly underperformed advanced economies. We also compile reliable quantifications of the human cost of Stalin’s dictatorship. Second, we discuss new studies of imperial Russia that partially confirm Gerschenkron’s classic conjecture on the institutional explanation for Russia’s relatively low level of economic development and on the causes of the revolution. The third strand of the literature focuses on the Soviet period and explains its slowdown over time and the eventual collapse of the system by the command economy’s inability to provide incentives to individual agents. The fourth strand documents the long-term economic, social, and political consequences of large-scale historical experiments that took place during both the imperial and the Soviet periods. We conclude by discussing the lessons from these four strands of the literature and highlight open questions for future research
Minimum Wages and Contract Duration in Germany
No full textWe assess the effect of the introduction of a minimum wage policy of 8.50 EUR/hour in Germany in January 2015 on the probability of transitioning from fixed-term to open-ended contracts. Utilizing administrative data from social security records, we compare ex-ante affected (i.e., those earning below the minimum wage) workers against unaffected ones during the pre-implementation period, and find a significant decline in the probability that ex-ante affected workers employed under fixed-term contracts transition to open-ended contracts as the ending month of their fixed-term contract approaches January 2015, when the minimum wage policy was enforced. We interpret our empirical results through the lens of a job search model where firms use fixed-term contracts as a probation phase to learn about the matchspecific productivity with a given worker. In this model, firms sign open-ended contracts based on a productivity threshold rule. A sufficiently high minimum wage can push this threshold up, thus reducing the probability at which workers transition from fixed-term to open-ended contracts
Effects of development aid (grants and loans) on the economic dynamics of the recipient country
No full textInternational audienceThis paper investigates the nexus between foreign aid (in both forms: grant and loan), poverty trap, and economic development in a recipient country by using a Solow model with two new ingredients: a development loan and a fixed cost in the production process. The presence of this fixed cost generates a poverty trap. We show that foreign aid may help the country to escape from the poverty trap and converge to a stable steady state in the long run, but only if (i) the country's characteristics, such as saving rate, initial capital, governance quality, and productivity are good enough, (ii) the fixed cost is relatively low, and (iii) the loan rule is generous enough. We also show that our model with foreign aid has room for endogenous cycles, unlike the standard Solow model