Lundi 13 novembre 2017

GSIE | 13:00-14:00
Room S3 MSE, 106-112 Bd de l’Hôpital, 75013 Paris
COTTERLAZ Pierre (Sciences Po) : The Percolation of Knowledge across Space
GUILLOUZOUNIC LE CORFF Arthur (Sciences Po)
Résumé

This paper provides an explanation for the persistent spatial frictions in knowledge diffusion. We argue that the underlying spatially-clustered network of innovators contributes to generating the effect attributed to distance on international knowledge flows. First, we present evidence that knowledge disseminates within a network of firms by delving into their citation behaviour. We find that firms are more likely to cite patents known by their contacts than comparable patents unknown by their contacts. We then incorporate this finding into a dynamic network formation model. The theoretical predictions hold remarkably well in the data : innovator sizes are Pareto distributed, and an increasing relationship exists between the size of an innovator and the distance at which it cites. Combining these two features is sufficient to generate a negative distance elasticity of knowledge flows.

Régulation et environnement | 12:00-14:00
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
DEMENTIEV Andrei (National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow)) : Contracting out public services to asymmetric partnerships
Résumé

The paper studies an organisational structure of contracting out public utilities to an asymmetric partnership between the local authorities and a vertically integrated firm. Being fiscally constrained and politically motivated the government delegates pricing decision in the downstream market to a partnership while the upstream market for essential input is not regulated directly. The accompanying regulatory instrument, namely the net budget transfer, is valued at the social cost of public funds and can be set ex post making the firm’s participation constraint non-binding. A negative budget transfer effectively extracts the firm’s rent in the non-regulated upstream market and depends on the corporate structure of the partnership. We build a formal model that predicts that local authorities with relatively high share in the partnership should decrease the net transfer when the profit margin in the downstream market falls. The empirical support for this finding is found in the panel data for 25 suburban passenger companies in Russia in 2011-2015. The effect of the share structure on the relationship between the compensation ratio and farebox ratio is captured by the interaction variable highlighting the nonlinear effect. The failure to fully compensate operational losses in the transportation market is interpreted as a system of pseudo-franchising contracts in the Russian suburban railway transport that, to some extent, reflects political preferences of the local authorities in the country.

Roy | 17:00-18:30
Salle R1-13, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
KREMER Ilan (Warwick) : Raising Capital from Heterogeneous Investors
Résumé

A firm raises capital from heterogeneous investors to fund a project. The project is implemented only if the total capital raised exceeds an initially unknown threshold, and the firm offers payments depending on project implementation. We study the firm’s optimal self-financing scheme that maximizes its payoff subject to all investors participating being the unique equilibrium outcome. The optimal scheme features full collateral : if the project is not implemented, each investor is refunded her capital. Under implementation, however, net returns differ across investors. If the distribution of the investment threshold is log-concave, the firm offers higher returns to larger investors. Moreover, higher dispersion in investor size raises the firm’s payoff.

Mardi 14 novembre 2017

Soutenance de thèse | 10:00-11:30
MAYOL Alexandre
Essais sur les déterminants et l’efficacité de la tarification des services publics : une application aux évolutions du secteur de l’eau potable en France.
Directeur de thèse : STRAPOLI Carine

Economie appliquée | 12:30-13:30
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LOPEZ FORERO Margarita : International Sourcing and Employment in Times of Financial Crisis : The case of France
Co-authors : BRICONGUE Jean-Charles and CORICELLI Fabrizio

PSI PSE | 17:00-18:00
ROQUEBERT Quitterie (PSE) : Decentralization of long-term care policies in France : do departmental policy variations affect the professional home care utilization by the disabled elderly ?

Mercredi 15 novembre 2017

Histoire économique | 12:30-14:00
Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
LEMERCIER Claire (CNRS) : Studying apprenticeship in 18th- and 19th-century Paris. Mixing the qualitative and the quantitative
Co-authors : CROWSTON Clare (University of Illinois)

Jeudi 16 novembre 2017

Comportement | 11:00-12:00
Salle R2-21, campus Jourdan - 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
BRANDTS JORDI (Barcelona Graduate School of Economics ) : Centralized vs. Decentralized Management : An Experimental Study

Résumé

We study the tradeoffs between centralized and decentralized management using a new experimental game, the decentralization game. This game models an organization with two divisions and one central manager. Each division must choose or be assigned a product type. Both divisions benefit from coordinating their product types, but each prefers to coordinate on products that are close to its local tastes. The central manager aims to maximize the sum of division payoffs. Which product type achieves this goal varies with taste shocks that are known to the divisions but not the central manager. Under centralization, the central manager assigns products to divisions after receiving the divisions’ messages about the state of the world (i.e., the taste shock) ; under decentralization, the divisions choose their own products. Contrary to the theory, overall performance is higher under centralization than under decentralization. Communication between divisions and suggestions from central managers modestly improves performance under decentralization. Nonetheless, centralization remains the best-performing organizational form.

TOM | 12:30-13:30
Salle R2-20, campus Jourdan, 48 bd Jourdan - 75014 Paris
MOULIN Hervé (University of Glasgow ) : Fair Mixture of Public Outcomes
joint with AZIZ H. and BOGOMOLNAIA A.
Résumé

We revisit probabilistic voting under dichotomous preferences where, as on Facebook, agents report that they like/dislike every outcome. We focus on two often conflicting normative concerns. Minorities should not be crushed by the opposing majority ; and the size of the support for a given outcome should increase its weight : numbers matter. The Unanimous Fair Shares property adresses both concerns by giving to any group of like-minded agents an influence proportional to its size. Individual Fair Shares weakens UFS by only guaranteeing to each agent a 1/n-th influence on the outcome (where n is the total number of agents). Given that we cannot combine Efficiency, Incentive Compatibility (Strate- gyproofness) and Unanimous, or even Individual, Fair Shares, we propose second best mechanisms achieving two of these three design goals. The Conditional Utilitarian rule, a simple variant of the classic random dictator, is Strategyproof and guarantees Unanimous Fair Shares. It is much easier to compute and more efficient than the familiar Random Priority rule. In numerical simulations its inefficiency is consistently low. The efficient Egalitarian rule guarantees Individual Fair Shares and is Excludable Strategyproof : this weakens Strategyproofness by ensuring that an agent is excluded from consuming those public outcomes she reportedly dislikes. But numbers do not matter : the rule treats a unanimous group of agents exactly as if it contains a single agent. The efficient Nash rule (maximizing the product of utilities) offers much stronger welfare guarantees than both above, in particular it achieves core stability if any group of agents can enforce any outcome with a probability proportional to its size. But the rule fails even the excludable form of Strategyproofness. We also uncover several challenging open questions

Texte intégral [pdf]

Travail et économie publique | 12:30-13:45
Salle R1-09, Campus Jourdan, 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MAGNAC Thierry (Toulouse School of Economics) : A Pigouvian Approach to Congestion in Matching Markets

Macroéconomie | 15:45-17:00
Salle R2-21, Campus Jourdan, 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris
OIKONOMOU Rigas (UC Louvain)

Vendredi 17 novembre 2017

Soutenance de thèse | 14:30-16:00
TEYSSIER Geoffrey
Inequality of opportunity : measurement and impact on economic growth.
Directeur de thèse : PONCET Sandra

Casual Friday | 12:45-13:45
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
STEIN Mattea (PSE)  : Re-forming links : Effects of a randomized training on business network changes among small enterprises in Uganda

Séance 1 - Cycle "Evaluation d’impact des politiques publiques" | 13:30-17:00
Amphithéâtre, Campus Jourdan, 48 bd Jourdan, 75014 Paris

Résumé

Cette première séance qui se déroulera à l’École d’Économie de Paris (48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris) sera consacrée à la démarche d’évaluation et au choix des méthodes.
· Qu’est-ce qu’une bonne démarche d’évaluation d’impact ?
· À quoi servent les évaluations d’impact ?
· Peut-on tout évaluer ? 
· Comment mieux associer les parties prenantes ?
· Quelles sont les conditions de réussite des évaluations d’impact ?
· Est-il possible de réaliser des évaluations d’impact plus modestes, plus rapides et moins coûteuses ? Et si oui, comment ?
Ces questions seront débattues et illustrées dans le cas de l’évaluation de la réduction de la taille des classes et de son effet sur la réussite des élèves.