Publications
Efficiency analyses have been widely used in the literature to rank countries regarding their health system performances. However, little place has been given to the environmental aspect: two countries with the same characteristics could experience completely different healthcare system outcomes just because they do not face the same environmental quality situation, which is a major determinant of the health of inhabitants.
Introduction: We estimated the health and economic impacts of chronic exposure to air pollution for the Swiss part of the Greater Geneva area from 2016 to 2018.Materials and methods: We extracted from fine-scale modelled concentration maps for two pollutant indicators, particulate matter PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide. Then, we performed a quantitative health impact assessment of the health burden attributable to anthropogenic-origin air pollution, and estimated the benefits of compliance with the federal Ordinance on Air Pollution Control (OAPC) limit values. Finally, we computed the economic impacts of these health effects. Results: Exposure to fine particles of anthropogenic origin was responsible for 7.5% of annual mortality (280 deaths or 5,900 life years lost), for 14 lung cancers and for 68 strokes annually in the Canton of Geneva. Compliance with the OAPC limit value of 10 µg/m3 as an annual average would reduce annual mortality by 1.5% (62 deaths avoided or 1,300 life years gained). Exposure to anthropogenic-origin NO2 was associated with 5.3% of annual deaths (approximately 200 deaths per year). The estimated total negative economic impacts of anthropogenic-origin fine particles were at least CHF2017 1.3 billion per year, whereas compliance with the OAPC limit values would result in annual economic benefits of at least CHF2017 290 million. Conclusion: We confirmed that air quality remains a health issue on which stakeholder mobilisation is vital. Action plans should tackle emissions from freight and personal mobility, heating, industry and agriculture, while seeking to improve knowledge on health risks from air pollution exposure.
In this paper, we investigate the determinants of equity shares purchased by Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). Based on the literature of cross-border acquisitions and entry mode choice theory, we shed light on the real drivers of these state-owned funds when they buy small or large stakes in cross-border target firms. Using an original dataset of SWF acquisitions over the period 2000–2015, a Two-Part Fractional Regression Model is estimated to account for both the fractional nature of the dependent variable as well as the separation between the decision to invest and that concerning the share of equity invested. We find that the decision to invest and the decision on the share of equity to be acquired are two distinct processes. We also find that SWFs take the investment decision in cross-border target firms by trying to reduce transaction costs and information asymmetry according to the cross-border acquisition theory, and also by taking the legal and institutional environment of the host country into consideration. However, the fact that they do not hesitate to take large shares or to acquire targeted firms that are considered to be strategic and located in politically unstable countries suggests that their motives may go beyond financial consideration.
We provide a unified framework with demand for housing over the life cycle and financial frictions to analyze the existence and macroeconomic effects of rational housing bubbles. We distinguish a housing price bubble, defined as the difference between the housing market price and its fundamental value, from a housing demand bubble, which corresponds to a situation where a pure speculative housing demand exists. In an overlapping generation exchange economy, we show that no housing price bubble occurs. However, a housing demand bubble may occur, generating a boom in housing prices and a drop in the interest rate, when households face a binding borrowing constraint. The multiplicity of steady states and endogenous fluctuations can occur when credit market imperfections are moderate. These fluctuations involve transitions between equilibria with and without a housing demand bubble that generate large fluctuations in housing prices consistent with observed patterns. We finally extend the basic framework to a production economy and we show that a housing demand bubble increases housing prices, which can still be characterized by large fluctuations.
The massive shift towards teleworking during the COVID pandemic relatively deteriorated working conditions of people occupying positions that could not be teleworked because they were more exposed to the risk of infection. Exploiting French data, we analyse the differential changes in sorting across occupations of immigrants and natives during years preceding the pandemic. Immigrants sorted relatively more into occupations intensive in non-routine manual tasks. These occupations cannot be teleworked. We find an increase in immigrants' sorting into occupations intensive in non-routine interactive and analytical tasks. However, in contrast with natives, immigrants were moving away from occupations intensively using new technologies.
Integration of immigrants into their host society is at the core of the public debate in most OECD countries. Im-migrant integration includes two distinct dimensions: cultural and economic integration. This paper investigates the interplay between these two processes and presents three main results. First, it documents that immigrants from more culturally distant countries earn lower wages when they enter the German labor market. Second, it highlights that these wage differences progressively diminish over years spent in Germany and even disappear in some cases. For instance, the wage gap associated with a one standard deviation difference in religious and genetic distance disappears after 15 to 20 years. Finally, the paper provides evidence that immigrants who ex-perience a greater increase in cultural assimilation experience more wage growth as well. Taken together, these results suggest that the cultural assimilation process can benefit the economic integration of immigrants.
We address the question of the measurement of health achievement and inequality in the context of variables exhibiting an inverted-U relation with health and well-being. The chosen approach is to measure separately achievement and inequality in the health increasing range of the variable, from a lower survival bound a to an optimum value m, and in the health decreasing range from m to an upper survival bound b. Because in the health decreasing range, the equally distributed equivalent value associated with a distribution is decreasing in progressive transfers, the paper introduces appropriate relative and absolute achievement and inequality indices to be used for variables exhibiting a negative association with well-being. We then discuss questions pertaining to consistent measurement across health attainments and shortfalls, as well as the ordering of distributions exhibiting an inverted-U relation with well-being. An illustration of the methodology is provided using a group of five Arab countries.
Young citizens vote at relatively low rates, which contributes to political parties de-prioritizing youth preferences. We analyze the effects of low-cost online interventions in encouraging young Moroccans to cast an informed vote in the 2021 elections. These interventions aim to reduce participation costs by providing information about the registration process and by highlighting the election’s stakes and the distance between respondents’ preferences and party platforms. Contrary to preregistered expectations, the interventions did not increase average turnout, yet exploratory analysis shows that the interventions designed to increase benefits did increase the turnout intention of uncertain baseline voters. Moreover, information about parties’ platforms increased support for the party closest to the respondents’ preferences, leading to better-informed voting. Results are consistent with motivated reasoning, which is surprising in a context with weak party institutionalization.
This paper empirically examines which factors have influenced numerical compliance with fiscal rules in Latin American and Caribbean countries over the period 2000 to 2020. We use logistic regression models to associate three groups of specific factors with a greater or lesser probability of compliance with the rule: the macroeconomic and political environment of the countries and the design features of the enforced rules. We find that only changes in the macroeconomic and political context affect the probability of compliance with the enforced rules. In contrast, the institutional design of the fiscal rules does not seem to play an essential role in the compliance outcome. This result suggests that adjustments in this direction are not decisive for rule compliance.
We investigate whether and how an individual giving decision is affected in risky environments in which the recipient’s wealth is random. We demonstrate that, under risk neutrality, the donation of dictators with a purely ex post view of fairness should, in general, be affected by the riskiness of the recipient’s payoff, while dictators with a purely ex ante view should not be. Furthermore, we observe that some influential inequality aversion preferences functions yield opposite predictions when we consider ex post view of fairness. Hence, we report on dictator games laboratory experiments in which the recipient’s wealth is exposed to an actuarially neutral and additive background risk. Our experimental data show no statistically significant impact of the recipient’s risk exposure on dictators’ giving decisions. This result appears robust to both the experimental design (within subjects or between subjects) and the origin of the recipient’s risk exposure (chosen by the recipient or imposed on the recipient). Although we cannot sharply validate or invalidate alternative fairness theories, the whole pattern of our experimental data can be simply explained by assuming ex ante view of fairness and risk neutrality.
