Si de nombreux efforts ont été déployés pour améliorer l’accès à l’éducation en Afrique subsaharienne, la proportion d’enfants qui interrompent leur scolarité avant la fin du cycle primaire reste encore très élevée. Pour tenter de répondre à ce défi majeur, cette thèse se propose d’examiner les déterminants de la demande d’éducation dans un environnement rural exposé à de nombreux risques. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse à la place essentielle, et pourtant peu étudiée, que tiennent les coûts d’opportunité du temps des enfants dans les choix éducatifs. Il s’avère dans ce cas nécessaire d’estimer la productivité du travail des enfants afin d’identifier les coûts susceptibles de compromettre leur scolarisation. Afin de mieux appréhender les choix en matière d’éducation, le deuxième chapitre dresse quant à lui une estimation des bénéfices de l’éducation dans un contexte agricole qui se distingue à la fois par un accès limité aux nouvelles technologies et par la prédominance d’exploitations familiales de petites tailles. Enfin, le troisième chapitre interroge les effets des chocs de productivité sur les décisions de scolarisation et sur les performances scolaires des enfants. Deux critères retiennent notre attention, l'âge auquel les enfants sont confrontés à ces chocs et leur intensité. Ce sujet nous semble d’autant plus pertinent que la fréquence de ces chocs ne cesse aujourd’hui d’augmenter. À travers ces trois chapitres centrés sur la Tanzanie rurale, cette thèse offre ainsi un aperçu du rôle des politiques publiques dans la protection et le développement de l’éducation. / Despite numerous investments that have been made to increase access to education in sub-Saharan Africa, a noteworthy share of children drop out of school prior to completing primary education. To address this issue, this thesis examines the factors that drive education decisions in a rural risky environment. The first chapter focuses on one of the core determinant of education investment that has been under-explored, the opportunity costs of education. To identify these costs that can significantly hinder education, we determine children's productivity on the farm and provide an estimate range of the value of one day of child labor. In order to better understand education decisions in rural sub-Saharan Africa, the second chapter assesses the different benefits of education in rural Tanzania, where family farm is the dominant structure in agriculture and where the technology level is low. Finally, the third chapter investigates whether productivity shocks are detrimental to educational achievement and children’s cognitive skills by considering two particular aspects, the age at which shocks occur, and the length of shocks. This subject is all the more relevant today when the number of productivity shocks is growing. Throughout these three chapters which focus on rural Tanzania, this thesis provides some insight into the role of public policies in protecting and promoting education.

Cette thèse se compose de quatre essais sur l’analyse de la production appliquée, avec un accent mis sur la technologie, la productivité et les coûts fixes. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'identifier les limites de la modélisation du comportement de producteurs, et de proposer certaines améliorations. Dans cette thèse, nous avons comparé les principales spécifications empiriques et les méthodes statistiques qui ont été utilisées dans l’analyse de la production, et souligné leurs implications pour l’estimation des paramètres technologiques. Nous avons étudié les causes et les remèdes au problème d’endogénéité. Cette thèse a également abordé un aspect important de la production : les coûts fixes. Ce travail a contribué à la définition et à la caractérisation des coûts fixes. Nous avons développé des stratégies d’estimation du coût fixe, et montré que le coût fixe a un impact significatif sur la politique de prix, les rendements d’échelle et les exportations. / This thesis consists of four essays on applied production analysis, with a focus on technology, productivity and fixed costs. The aim of this thesis is to identify some limitations of recent contributions to production behavior modeling, and to propose improvements. In this dissertation, I compared different empirical specifications and statistical methods which have often been used in production analysis, and pointed out their implications for estimating technology parameters. I studied the causes and cures of endogeneity problems in the context of production analysis. This thesis also addressed the important but neglected issue of fixed costs. This work defined and characterized the fixed cost, and developed empirical strategies to estimate the fixed cost using the standard production database. Empirical evidence suggests that the fixed cost is significant and has profound impacts on producer’s behavior in terms of price setting, returns to scale and exports.

Benchmarking is a technique used by Decision Making Units (DMUs) to enable continuous quality improvement. Benchmarking includes almost any activity that compares a DMU's performance with some standard. Benchmarking offers the possibility of optimizing the DMU's processes, services, outcomes and products through those comparisons. Quite often, benchmarking is understood to be an act of imitating or copying but in reality benchmarking proves to be a concept that helps in innovation rather than imitation. Though benchmarking is not new, it has become popular both as an analytical research instrument and a practical decision-support tool. To some, benchmarking is not a choice; it is a necessity. Indeed, the penalty for neglecting proper benchmarking is loss of competitive edge, which is the key to survival and profitability.Usually, benchmarking involves four distinct phases. Phase I: determine the set of comparison partners. There are three types of benchmarking procedure: internal benchmarking (i.e. the benchmark is chosen within the same organization), functional benchmarking (i.e. the benchmark is chosen regardless of which industry they are) and competitive benchmarking (i.e a competitor is used as the benchmark). Phase II: collect the data. Much information is already in the public domain (financial reports, newspaper reports, analysts' reports) but it is unlikely to provide all the information required for a successful benchmarking exercise. Phase III: analyze the collected information which results in the creation of a model and an identification of performance gaps. The model will have huge influence on the results. It is crucial to motivate all assumptions made in that phase. The model could be specific to the benchmarking exercise. Phase IV: the action phase. Analyzing the reasons for the performance differentials and use the findings to redefine goals, redesign processes, and change expectations regarding the evaluated DMU's own functions and activities.Amongst the models chosen in Phase III, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has received more and more attention in the benchmarking literature. The goal of such analysis is to evaluate the efficiency of a DMU by comparing its input-output performance to that of other DMUs operating in a similar technological environment. The increasing attention for DEA could be explained by two main reasons. On the one hand, DEA does not resort to any unverifiable parametric/functional specifications of the production technology but rather lets the data speak for themselves by reconstructing the production possibilities using the observed inputs and outputs and imposing some technology axioms (such as monotonicity, convexity, returns-to-scale). Consequently, DEA is nonparametric in nature. On the other hand, deviation from efficiency, which is measured as the distance to the reconstructed production possibilities, is very easily computed. Indeed, the computation of the efficiency measures merely requires solving simple linear programming problems.Recently, Cherchye et al (2008, 2013) argued that standard DEA models provide a black-box treatment of efficiency production behavior since they ignore the links between inputs and outputs, i.e. they implicitly assume that all the inputs produce all the outputs simultaneously. This assumption is not plausible in several applications (e.g. employees that are allocated to different productions processes, specific capital which is used to produce only one type of goods). These authors suggested a multi-output nonparametric efficiency measurement technique, based on a cost minimization condition, which uses available information on the allocation of inputs to outputs. The new methodology characterizes each output by its own production technology while accounting for interdependencies between the different output-specific technologies giving rise to scope economies. This methodology provides a more realistic modelling of the production process and has a bigger ability to detect inefficient behavior (i.e. has more discriminatory power) than standard DEA techniques.In this thesis, we extend the method suggested by Cherchye et al (2008, 2013) in several directions. Firstly, we incorporate bad outputs (in contrast to good outputs). This extension deals in a natural way with several limitations of existing DEA approaches to treat undesirable outputs. As demonstrated with our application to the electricity sector. Next, we extend the methodology to allow for output-specific returns-to-scale assumptions. This allows for a more flexible model that does not force the practitioners to choose the same returns-to-scale assumption for all the outputs (as it is the case for the standard DEA model). This simultaneous choice could be difficult to defend in several settings but it is surely the case when undesirable outputs are present in the production process, as demonstrated in our application. Next, we extend the methodology for multi-output producers by considering a dynamic context. We suggest a new productivity index which takes the form of a Malmquist Productivity Index. Finally, we also generalize the method of Cherchye et al (2008, 2013), based on a cost minimization condition, to a profit maximization condition. This establishes a novel DEA toolkit for profit efficiency assessments in situations with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. We apply this new model to the case of electricity plants. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In Chapter 1, which is co-authored with Rossella Calvi and Arthur Lewbel, we show that a local average treatment effect (LATE) can sometimes be identified and consistently estimated when treatment is mismeasured, or when treatment is estimated using a possibly misspecified structural model. Our associated estimator, which we call Mismeasurement Robust LATE (MR-LATE), is based on differencing two different mismeasures of treatment. In our empirical application, treatment is a measure of empowerment: whether a wife has control of substantial household resources. Due to measurement difficulties and sharing of goods within a household, this treatment cannot be directly observed without error, and so must be estimated. Our outcomes are health indicators of family members. We first estimate a structural model to obtain the otherwise unobserved treatment indicator. Then, using changes in inheritance laws in India as an instrument, we apply our new MR-LATE estimator. We find that women's empowerment substantially decreases their probability of being anemic or underweight, and increases children's likelihood of receiving vaccinations. We find no evidence of negative effects on men's health. Then, using changes in inheritance laws in India as an instrument, we apply our new MR-LATE estimator. We find that women's empowerment substantially decreases their probability of being anemic or underweight, and increases children's likelihood of receiving vaccinations.In Chapter 2, which is co-authored with Alexander Wolf, we take the Dunbar et al (2013) (DLP) model and explore its strength and weaknesses at recovering information regarding household sharing of resources. DLP develop a collective model of the household that allows to identify resource shares, that is, how total household resources are divided up among household members. We show why, especially when the data exhibit relatively flat Engel curves, the model is weakly identified and induces high variability and an implausible pattern in least squares estimates. We propose an estimation strategy nested in their framework that greatly reduces this practical impediment to recovery of individual resource shares. To achieve this, we follow a shrinkage method that incorporates additional (or out-of-sample) information on singles and relies on mild assumptions on preferences. We show the practical usefulness of this strategy through a series of Monte Carlo simulations and by applying it to Mexican data. The results show that our approach is robust, gives a plausible picture of the household decision process, and is particularly beneficial for the practitioner who wishes to apply the DLP framework.Finally, in Chapter 3, which is co-authored with Bram De Rock and Tom Potoms, we exploit the experimental set-up of a conditional cash transfers (CCT) program in Mexico to estimate a collective model of the household and to investigate how parents allocate household resources. This is important to understand because the success of policies aimed at fighting poverty depends crucially on how parents respond to monetary incentives. If parents allocate resources inefficiently (or non-cooperatively), the resulting level of well-being is likely to fall behind the socially efficient optimum. This is undesirable given the prevalence of CCT programs over the last two decades which have occupied a large percentage of governments' annual anti-poverty budgets. Although there is evidence that they have been beneficial, their effectiveness may still be limited. Our aim is to tackle this research question by estimating a theoretically-consistent demand system and by applying at best a powerful test of household efficiency developed by Bourguignon et al (2009). Contrary to previous results, we show that households make efficient decisions only at the beginning of the program, but fail to cooperate later on. In order to rationalize these results, we propose a simple model of household behaviour where decision makers may change their preferences as a result of a treatment that gives information about the importance of a public good. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation consists of three essays in which I study the political economy of trade agreements. Using detailed information from lobbying reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, I systematically explore the role played by both the winners and the losers of globalization. The first chapter focuses on the winners, large multinational firms lobbying in favor of the ratification of free trade agreements. The second chapter looks at these winners when they lose, studying the impact of the non-ratification of a trade agreement on their profits. The last chapter focuses on labor interests and trade unions, the losers of globlalization.The first chapter (joint with Paola Conconi and Mathieu Parenti) is focused on firms. We show that the political economy of free trade agreements (FTAs) is dominated by large firms engaged in international trade that support the ratification of these agreements. We develop a model of endogenous lobbying on FTAs by heterogeneous firms, which can explain why only large pro-FTA firms select into lobbying. The model also delivers predictions on the intensive margin of lobbying. In line with these predictions, we find that larger firms spend more supporting a given FTA, and individual firms spend more supporting FTAs that generate larger gains – i.e. larger improvements in access to foreign consumers and suppliers and smaller increases in domestic competition – and that are more likely to be opposed by politicians.The second chapter (joint with Moritz Hennicke) is an event study on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the subsequent shock to U.S. trade policy – the non-ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We provide empirical evidence that corporate lobbying on trade agreements matters for corporate profits. We find that stock prices of companies that lobbied in favor of the TPP underperformed following Trump’s election. On the intensive margin, we find a strong and positive relationship between the amount spent in lobbying and the cumulative losses of lobbying firms. Finally, by comparing the original TPP agreement with its newer version (CPTPP), without U.S. participation, we provide evidence that firms’ lobbying activity was related to having some specific provisions included in the agreement. In the third chapter, I focus on the role played by trade unions, studying both their lobbying expenditures and their campaign contributions to politicians. I first show that unions are the main opposing force to the ratification of FTAs, and that larger unions, operating in tradable sectors, are more likely to lobby against FTAs. I then study union’s PAC contributions to political parties. During the last three decades, more than 90% of unions’ PAC contributions were directed to Democratic candidates. This has drastically changed when the Republican party took a more protectionist stance under Trump. I find that unions that lobbied against the ratification of FTAs started contributing more to Republican congressmen, particularly those who have taken an anti-trade stance. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse s'intéresse aux fondements du comportement des usagers face à la congestion dans les transports publics. Elle se compose de trois essais distincts. Les deux premiers essais examinent l'adaptation des usagers au manque de ponctualité et à l'inconfort. Le troisième essai offre une analyse empirique de l'effet « foule ». Dans le premier chapitre, je présente un modèle de compétition bimodale entre une ligne de transport public sujette aux retards, et un mode alternatif. A l'équilibre du marché, le niveau de fiabilité choisi par la firme en charge des transports publics augmente avec le prix du mode alternatif via un effet « demande » évoquant l'effet Mohring. L'étude de la qualité de service optimale montre que souvent, la fiabilité des transports publics et donc leur fréquentation à l'équilibre sont inférieurs à ce qu'ils seraient à l'optimum social. Dans le second chapitre, afin d'étudier le coût de l'inconfort et ses implications quant au choix de l'heure de déplacement, je développe un modèle structurel dans lequel les usagers des transports public choisissent entre voyager dans un véhicule bondé et arriver à destination à l'heure désirée ou alors voyager plus tard ou plus tôt pour éviter la foule. J'établis la distribution des usagers parmi les véhicules à l'équilibre et à l'optimum social, et montre que l'optimum social peut être décentralisé par une tarification fine par véhicule. Les propriétés du modèle sont comparées avec celles du modèle du « bottleneck » et des modèles de congestion routière. Dans le troisième chapitre, j'analyse l'influence de la densité d'usagers sur la satisfaction liée au confort durant un déplacement en transport public. De plus, je décris l'anatomie de l'effet « foule » en testant différents aspects (odeur, bruit, position debout...) comme des causes d'inconfort lorsque la densité d'usagers augmente. J'identifie un net effet « foule » : en moyenne, un usager supplémentaire par mètre carré diminue de 1 la satisfaction liée au confort qui est mesurée sur une échelle de 0 à 10. Je ne trouve pas de corrélation entre temps de transport et l'effet « foule ». Cependant, cet effet augmente avec le revenu des usagers. Trois causes de désutilité liée à la foule sont identifiées : une plus grande probabilité de devoir voyager debout, un usage limité du temps, et des conditions de déplacement plus bruyantes. Ces désagréments sont plus importants chez les femmes et les usagers les plus aisés. / This dissertation addresses the foundations of user’s behavior with respect to the congestion in public transport. It is made of three distinct essays. The two first essays investigate how users get used to lack of punctuality and crowding. The third essay presents an empirical analysis of the crowding effect. In the first chapter, I consider the modeling of a bi-modal competitive network involving a public transport mode, which may be unreliable, and an alternative mode. The public transport reliability set by the public transport firm at the competitive equilibrium increases with the alternative mode fare, via a demand effect. This is reminiscent of the Mohring Effect. The study of the optimal service quality shows that often, public transport reliability and thereby patronage are lower at equilibrium compared to first-best social optimum. In the second chapter, to study the behavioral implications and costs of crowding, I develop a structural model in which public transport users face a choice between traveling in a crowded train and arriving when they want, and traveling earlier or later to avoid crowding but arriving at an inconvenient time. I derive the user equilibrium and socially optimal distribution of passengers across trains, show how the optimum can be decentralized using train-specific fares, and characterize the welfare gains from optimal pricing. Properties of the model are compared with those obtained from the bottleneck and flow congestion models of road traffic. In the third chapter, I investigate the influence of in-vehicle crowding on the comfort satisfaction experienced during a public transport journey. Moreover, I describe the anatomy of the crowding effect by testing various nuisance factors (Smell, Noise, Standing...) as channels through which crowding may decrease the comfort satisfaction. I find a clear crowding effect: on average, an extra-user per square meter decreases by one the expected 0 to 10 scale individual well-being. I do not find any empirical evidence of this effect being intensified by the travel time. However, the crowding effect increases with the income of users. I find three causes of crowding disutility: a higher probability to stand for all or part of the journey, a poorer use of the time during the journey, and noisier travel conditions. These features of discomfort matter more for women and wealthy individuals.

Ma thèse se compose de trois articles. Les deux premiers ont pour ambition d’apporter une contribution à la littérature de la microéconomie de la corruption. Le dernier article aborde le problème de la provision de biens publics depuis un angle inédit, qui pose le bien public comme un bien de confiance. Le premier article de ma thèse s’intitule «La corruption bureaucratique et la corruption politique ne sont pas l’endroit et l’envers d’une même pièce». Il s’agit non seulement d’offrir une revue de littérature à jour sur le thème de la microéconomie de la corruption, mais aussi de rappeler l’urgence d’établir une distinction claire entre les corruptions bureaucratique et politique dans la science économique. La ligne de démarcation entre ces deux phénomènes étant jusqu’à présent restée floue, les avancées réalisées dans la modélisation de la corruption bureaucratique - en recourant au modèle principal-agent - ont paradoxalement conduit à un vide de la littérature pour ce qui est de la formalisation de la corruption politique. Néanmoins, deux branches de l’économie politique se concentrent sur les rentes et les transferts monétaires associés à la corruption politique. Je défends l’idée que les rentes proposées dans les modèles d’agence politique s’apparentent davantage à des détournements de fonds publics qu’à de véritables pots de vin politiques. De plus, les transferts monétaires présentés dans la littérature de la représentation d’intérêts (lobbying) ne correspondent pas non plus exactement à la définition du pot de vin, ce qui ne manque pas d’alimenter la confusion entre lobbying et corruption politique. Dans le second article intitulé «Quand les politiciens prennent des décisions inefficaces. Un modèle d’agence commune appliqué à la corruption politique», je propose un modèle d’agence commune simple, dans lequel deux principaux (groupes d’intérêts) tentent d’influencer la décision d’un agent (politicien). La nouveauté théorique de ce modèle réside dans l’introduction d’un écart d’information entre les principaux: tandis que le premier groupe d’intérêts est toujours en mesure d’observer l’action posée par le politicien, le second doit faire confiance à un organe de surveillance imparfait pour faire la lumière sur le choix effectif de ce dernier. Dans ce contexte, le politicien a la possibilité d’opter pour une action inefficace, pour laquelle il accepte des transferts monétaires privés (pots de vin politiques) du groupe d’intérêt disposant de plus d’information. Mon principal résultat est que l’augmentation du degré de transparence (soit la réduction de l’écart d’information entre principaux) aboutit à faire monter les pots de vin attendus. Cela ne signifie pas pour autant qu’une transparence accrue soit une mauvaise politique. En fait, en augmentant la transparence, on améliore le bien-être attendu. L’article propose un second résultat ayant trait à l’inefficacité des salaires fixes des politiciens comme outil de lutte contre la corruption. «La provision de biens publics de confiance selon l’agence commune», le troisième et dernier article de ma thèse, montre que dans un modèle d’agence commune utilisant des biens publics de confiance, même le moindre degré d’asymétrie d’information est susceptible de conduire à l’inefficacité. Le bien public est une forme de bien de confiance, étant donné que chaque principal observe avec une certaine probabilité (au moins) un de ses attributs. Ainsi, les principaux ne sont pas nécessairement en mesure de distinguer un projet public d’un autre, et ils n’ont pas d’autre choix que de faire confiance à la parole de l’agent au moment de faire leurs contributions. Au-delà de l’inefficacité résultante, je décris le comportement des principaux vis-à-vis de leurs contributions. Le fait d’avoir accès à davantage d’information (soit le fait de pouvoir distinguer adéquatement plus souvent les projets publics les uns des autres) peut, au final, amener les principaux à contribuer moins. Enfin, je dérive la probabilité de choisir le projet inefficace. Et comme cette probabilité mesure le bien-être attendu, je conclus sur quelques considérations politiques liées à l’accès des principaux à l’information. / My thesis is composed of three articles. The first two articles aim to bring a contribution to the microeconomics of corruption literature. The last one deals with the problem of public good provision from a new perspective: the public good is also a credence good. The first paper of my thesis is called “Bureaucratic and political corruption, the same side of two different coins”. It is not only an up-to-date review of the microeconomics of corruption literature, but also a caveat that a clear distinction between political and bureaucratic corruption is direly needed in economics. Because the line separating bureaucratic and political corruption has been fuzzy, the success in modeling bureaucratic corruption - by employing the principal-agent framework - has paradoxically left a gap in the formalization of political corruption. Nevertheless, two branches of political economy focus on rents or monetary transfers associated with political corruption. I argue that the rents proposed by the political agency models resemble rather the embezzlement of public funds than actual political bribes. Moreover, the monetary transfers proposed by the lobbying literature don’t fully fit the definition of political bribes, generating confusion between lobbying and political corruption. In the second paper entitled “When politicians make inefficient decisions. A common agency model of political corruption” I present a simple common agency model in which two principals (interest groups) try to influence the decision of an agent (politician). The theoretical novelty of the model is the presence of an information gap between principals: while one interest group always observes the action implemented by the politician, the other has to rely on an imperfect court to investigate the politician’s actual choice. In this context the politician may choose an inefficient action by accepting private monetary transfers (political bribes) from the better informed interest group. My main result is that an increase in transparency (i.e. the information gap between principals diminishes) will rise the expected bribes. This doesn’t mean that increasing transparency is a bad policy. In fact, increasing transparency improves the expected welfare. A second result concerns the ineffectiveness of politicians’ flat salaries in fighting corruption. “The provision of credence public goods under common agency”, the third paper of my thesis, shows that in a common agency model featuring credence public goods even the smallest degree of information asymmetry may lead to an inefficient outcome. The public good is also a credence good as each principal observes only with some probability (at least) one of its attributes. Therefore, the principals may not distinguish a public project from another and they have to trust the agent’s word when making contributions. Besides this inefficiency result, I characterize the principals’ contributing behavior. Getting access to more information (telling the difference between the public projects more often) may, surprisingly, bring the principals to contribute less. Finally, I derive the probability of choosing the inefficient project. And since it measures the expected welfare, I reach some policy considerations regarding the principals’ access to information.

Une politique publique est dite régressive (progressive) si les individus à faible revenu supportent une proportion relativement plus (moins) grande de son coût d'application que les individus à haut revenu. Nous construisons un modèle microéconomique permettant de déterminer la régressivité ou la progressivité de politiques environnementales affectant le prix de l'énergie, le coût d'amélioration de l'efficacité énergétique, les normes réglementaires sur l'efficacité énergétique et/ou le revenu des consommateurs. Ce modèle prend en compte les faits que le service énergétique est généralement un bien essentiel et qu'une norme sur l'efficacité énergétique n'a pas d'impact sur les consommateurs pour qui elle n'est pas contraignante. Le modèle est appliqué à l'étude de cinq politiques environnementales, soit (i) une taxe unitaire sur l'énergie, (ii) une subvention unitaire à l'efficacité énergétique, (iii) une norme sur l’efficacité énergétique modélisée comme une taxe unitaire, comme dans Levinson (2016), ( iv) une norme sur l’efficacité énergétique modélisée comme une réglementation prescriptive et ( v) une subvention pour permettre aux consommateurs de se conformer à une nouvelle norme, que nous appelons subvention de mise aux normes. Pour fins de comparaison, toutes les politiques sont fiscalement neutres, en ce sens qu'elles n'affectent pas le solde budgétaire du gouvernement. Nous montrons que, bien qu'équivalentes au plan environnemental, une taxe sur l'énergie est régressive alors que la subvention à l’efficacité énergétique est progressive. Nous montrons également que le résultat principal de Levinson (2016) sur la plus grande régressivité d'une norme relativement à la taxe unitaire repose sur des définitions imprécises de régressivité et de norme. / A public policy is regressive (progressive) if low-income households bear a relatively greater (lower) proportion of its cost than high-income households. We build a microeconomic model to determine the regressivity or progressivity of environmental policies affecting the price of energy, the cost of improving energy efficiency, energy efficiency standards and / or the consumer's income. This model takes into account the fact that energy service is generally an essential good and that an energy efficiency standard has no impact on consumers for whom it is not binding. The model is applied to the study of of environmental policies: (i) a unit tax on energy, (ii) a unit subsidy to energy efficiency, (iii) an energy efficiency standard modeled as a unit tax, as in Levinson (2016), (iv) an energy efficiency standard modeled as a prescriptive regulation and (v) a subsidy that enables consumers to meet a new standard, which we call "grant to meet a standard". To allow comparisons, all policies are fiscally neutral since they do not affect the government's budget. We show that, although environmentally equivalent, an energy tax is regressive while the energy efficiency subsidy is progressive. We also show that Levinson's (2016) main result which suggests that a unit tax is more desirable than an energy efficiency standard relies on unclear deffinitions of regressivity and standard.

Tableau d’honneur de la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, 2010-2011 / Les modèles microéconométriques de choix discrets ont pour but d’expliquer le processus du choix individuel des consommateurs parmi un ensemble limité et exhaustive d’options mutuellement exclusives. Les modèles dits de choix hybrides sont une généralisation des modèles de choix discrets standard, où des modèles indépendants plus sophistiqués sont considérés simultanément. Dans cette thèse des techniques d’estimation simultanée sont analysées et appliquées pour un modèle de choix hybride qui, sous la forme d’un système complexe d’équations structurelles généralisées, intègre à la fois des choix discrets et des variables latentes en tant que facteurs explicatifs des processus décisionnels. Ce qui motive l’étude de ce genre de modèles est que pour comprendre le processus du choix il faut incorporer des attitudes, des perceptions et des attributs qualitatifs à l’intérieur de modèles décisionnels économiques conventionnels, tout en prenant ce qui dit la recherche en sciences cognitives ainsi qu’en psychologie sociale. Quoique l’estimation du système d’équations d’un modèle de choix hybride requière l’évaluation d’intégrales multidimensionnelles complexes, on résoudre empiriquement ce problème en applicant la méthode du maximum de vraisemblance simulée. Ensuite on dérive une procédure d’échantillonnage de Gibbs pour l’estimation simultanée bayésienne du modèle qui offre des estimateurs convergents et efficaces. Ceci devient une méthode plus avantageuse comparativement aux méthodes classiques dans un cadre analytique avec un grand nombre de variables latentes. En effet, en vertu de l’approche bayésienne il suffit de considérer des régressions ordinaires pour les variables latentes. Par ailleurs, dériver les intervalles de confiance bayésiennes pour les parts de marché ainsi que pour des dispositions à payer devient trivial. De par sa grande géneralité, le modèle de choix hybride est capable de s’adapter à des situations pratiques. En particulier, la réponse des consommateurs suite à l’innovation technologique est analysée. Par exemple, on étudie les préférences pro-environnementales dans un modèle économique des décisions d’achat de véhicules verts selon lequel les consommateurs soucieux de l’environnement sont prêts à payer davantage pour des véhicules à faibles émissions, en dépit des inconvénients potentiels. En outre, en utilisant un noyau probit et des indicateurs dichotomiques on montre que des connaissances préalables ainsi que des attitudes positives envers l’adoption de nouvelles technologies favorisent l’adoption de la téléphonie IP. / Microeconometric discrete choice models aim to explain the process of individual choice by consumers among a mutually exclusive, exhaustive and finite group of alternatives. Hybrid choice models are a generalization of standard discrete choice models where independent expanded models are considered simultaneously. In my dissertation I analyze, implement, and apply simultaneous estimation techniques for a hybrid choice model that, in the form of a complex generalized structural equation model, simultaneously integrates discrete choice and latent explanatory variables, such as attitudes and qualitative attributes. The motivation behind hybrid choice models is that the key to understanding choice comes through incorporating attitudinal and perceptual data to conventional economic models of decision making, taking elements from cognitive science and social psychology. The Bayesian Gibbs sampler I derive for simultaneous estimation of hybrid choice models offers a consistent and efficient estimator that outperforms frequentist full information simulated maximum likelihood. Whereas the frequentist estimator becomes fairly complex in situations with a large choice set of interdependent alternatives with a large number of latent variables, the inclusion of latent variables in the Bayesian approach translates into adding independent ordinary regressions. I also find that when using the Bayesian estimates it is easier to consider behavioral uncertainty; in fact, I show that forecasting and deriving confidence intervals for willingness to pay measures is straightforward. Finally, I confirm the capacity of hybrid choice modeling to adapt to practical situations. In particular, I analyze consumer response to innovation. For instance, I incorporate proenvironmental preferences toward low-emission vehicles into an economic model of purchase behavior where environmentally-conscious consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable solutions despite potential drawbacks. In addition, using a probit kernel and dichotomous effect indicators I show that knowledge as well as a positive attitude toward the adoption of new technologies favor the adoption of IP telephony.

Given the clear development of the educational mismatch phenomenon in our advanced economies, it seems interesting to investigate the effects of such phenomenon on the labour market. Based on available databases, this thesis gets into the research area of new working organizations and their effects on firm performance in a broader sense, by relying on a double stance. From the firm’s point of view, it analyses how educational mismatch impacts firm productivity (Chapter 2) and profitability (Chapter 3), according to different working environments. Chapter 2 provides first evidence on whether the direct relationship between educational mismatch and firm productivity varies across working environments, materialized as a socially responsible environment and a challenging environment. The results show that corporate social responsibility creates a working environment that fosters the positive impact of over-education on productivity, suggesting that socially responsible firms are more able than others to take advantage of the surplus knowledge of their over-educated workers. When investigating the role of a challenging environment, our results show that over-educated workers are more productive in firms that (i) require higher skills, (ii) rely on high-technological/knowledge processes, and (iii) operate in a more uncertain economic context, these three environments materializing a challenging situation. Chapter 3 reveals a profit-ability profile in the form of an inverted L with, at firm level, under-education being associated with a negative impact on profits, whereas higher levels of normal and over-education are associated with positive returns for firms. It also underlines caveats of relying on human capital hypothesis since increasing educational norms is associated with productivity gains that outpace hikes in labour costs, with the returns, in the case of Belgium, being captures by firms in the form of higher profits. Finally, it shows that in the particular context of high-tech industries, over-education could be a profitable strategy because hiring above educational norms leads to higher levels of profitability.From the workers’ point of view, this thesis analyses the wages impacts of educational mismatch by deepening and expanding the educational mismatch phenomenon to the skills mismatch phenomenon. Chapter 4 investigates the impact of educational and skills mismatches on workers’ wages by relying on three mismatch situations: (i) the apparent matching, where a worker is found to be properly educated but over-skilled; (ii) the apparent over-education, where a worker is found to be over-educated but properly skilled; and (iii) the genuine over-education, where a worker is found to be over-educated and over-skilled. Beside these considerations, this chapter also analyses whether the origin of the worker may influence the wage response to educational and skills mismatches. The results show that all specifications of over-education and over-skilling impact wages negatively, with the highest penalties for genuine over-education. When investigating differences between native and immigrant workers, the results suggest that immigrants suffer from a slightly higher pay penalty than natives. European immigrant and native workers thus do not seem to be that differently impacted by mismatches in terms of education and/or skills. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished