Cette thèse présente trois chapitres sur l'analyse microéconométrique. Dans le premier chapitre, nous étudions l'impact de la discrimination à l'encontre des personnes handicapées sur l'efficacité des politiques publiques (subventions salariales) qui favorisent leur emploi. En effet, au cours des dernières décennies, de nombreux pays ont adopté des politiques importantes pour réduire les inégalités sur le marché du travail entre les personnes vivant avec et sans incapacités avec très peu de succès. Nous sommes convaincus que la présence d'une discrimination importante à l'encontre des personnes avec incapacités peut expliquer l'inefficacité de ces politiques. Pour ce faire, nous développons d'abord un modèle de recherche d'emploi avec appariement et négociation qui tient compte des décisions de participation en présence de discrimination basée sur les goûts des employeurs. Ce modèle nous permet de séparer et d'estimer l'effet de la discrimination de l'effet de la différence de productivité. Nous estimons le modèle en utilisant les données de l'Enquête sur la Dynamique du Travail et du Revenu (EDTR) au Canada. Nos estimations suggèrent que la discrimination de l'employeur est le principal facteur expliquant les inégalités sur le marché du travail entre les personnes handicapées et non handicapées. Nos estimations montrent que 57% des employeurs ont des préjugés envers l'embauche des hommes avec incapacités et 62% pour les femmes avec incapacités. Nous avons ensuite simulé un contrefactuel pour estimer l'impact d'une politique de subvention salariale sur les taux d'emploi en utilisant les paramètres estimés du modèle. Nous constatons que l'effet de la subvention est très faible en présence ou en l'absence de discrimination, et que la subvention compense légèrement l'effet de la discrimination sur l'écart entre les personnes handicapées et non handicapées sur le marché du travail. Cela illustre la mesure dans laquelle les efforts doivent être réorientés afin de réaliser une efficacité significative de nos politiques, étant donné que nous ne trouvons aucune différence de productivité qui puisse expliquer l'écart entre les deux groupes. Le deuxième chapitre analyse l'effet de la flexibilité de l'emploi sur l'absentéisme. En utilisant les données canadiennes de l'Enquête sur la dynamique du travail et du revenu (EDTR), nous exploitons une variante de la méthode des variables instrumentales adaptée aux modèles non linéaires proposée par Terza et al. (2008), qui est la " Two Stage Residual Inclusion " (2SRI), pour analyser l'effet du travail depuis la maison (avoir un certain nombre d'heures de travail depuis la maison) sur le nombre de semaines d'absence du travail dans une année. Nous montrons que les travailleurs ayant une flexibilité de l'emploi (travaillant partiellement ou totalement depuis la maison) sont moins souvent absents pour des raisons de maladie ou d'obligation familiales que ceux qui n'ont pas de flexibilité de l'emploi après contrôle de l'endogénéité. Nos résultats montrent également des effets d'interaction assez significatifs, notamment pour les personnes handicapées. Ceci suggère qu'une politique favorisant la flexibilité de l'emploi permettrait à ces personnes de gérer leur état de santé, de rester sur le marché du travail, et donc de continuer à travailler. Les femmes sont également beaucoup plus sensibles à la possibilité de travailler depuis la maison. Dans le troisième chapitre, nous évaluons l'impact du programme Contrat d'intégration au Travail (CIT) sur le taux d'emploi des personnes ayant des contraintes sévères à l'emploi. Ce programme a été implanté au Québec en avril 2001. Pour ce faire, nous estimons l'effet de la mesure par la méthode de la différence-de-différences tout en introduisant des paramètres d'erreur de classification qui capte les faux-positif et faux-négatif du statut d'emploi. En effet, comme nous n'observons pas directement le statut d'emploi de l'individu dans les données, nous le construisons à partir des entrées, sorties et durées dans les programmes d'aide et de solidarité sociale, ce qui est sujette à des erreurs de classification lorsqu'un chômeur est identifié à tord comme employé ou qu'un employé est identifié à tord comme chômeur. Nous utilisons des données administratives du Ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité Sociale (MTESS) du Québec. Nos résultats montrent que rien ne prouve que la mesure CIT, à travers sa composante subvention salariale, a eu un impact positif sur l'emploi des personnes ayant des contraintes sévères à l'emploi, quel que soit le groupe de contrôle utilisé. De plus, les estimations des probabilités d'erreur de classification sont significativement différentes de zéro et vont de 10 à 17 % pour α₀ (chômeur est classé à tort comme employé) et de 3 à 16 % pour α₁ (employé est classé à tort comme chômeur) en utilisant les personnes sans contraintes comme groupe de contrôle. En revanche, si le groupe de contrôle est constitué d'individus soumis à des contraintes d'emploi temporaires, les estimations de ces paramètres sont approximativement doublées. Nous avons testé la robustesse de ces estimations en introduisant délibérément un faux positif de 5%. Le résultat montre que nos estimations sont robustes puisque cela augmente le faux positif d'environ 5%, laissant le faux négatif inchangé. / This thesis presents three chapters on microeconometric analysis. In the first chapter, we study the impact of discrimination against people with disabilities on the effectiveness of public policies (wage subsidies) that promote their employment. Indeed, over the past decades, many countries have adopted significant policies to reduce labour market inequalities between people with and without disabilities with very little success. We believe that the presence of significant discrimination against people with disabilities may explain the ineffectiveness of these policies. To do so, we first develop a job search model with matching and bargaining that accounts for participation decisions in the presence of employer's tastes based discrimination against people with disabilities. This model allows us to separate and estimate the effect of discrimination from the effect of productivity difference. We estimate the model using data from the Survey of Labour and Employment Dynamics (SLID) in Canada. Our estimates suggest that employer discrimination is the main factor explaining labour market inequalities between people with and without disabilities. Our estimates show that 57% of employers are prejudiced toward hiring men with disabilities and 62% toward hiring women with disabilities. We then simulated a counterfactual to estimate the impact of a wage subsidy policy on employment rates using the estimated model parameters. We find that the effect of the subsidy is very small in the presence or absence of discrimination, but that the subsidy slightly compensates for the effect of discrimination on the gap between people with and without disabilities in the labour market. This illustrates the extent to which efforts need to be redirected in order to achieve meaningful policy effectiveness, as we find no difference in productivity that can explain the gap between the two groups. The second chapter analyzes the effect of employment flexibility on absenteeism. Using Canadian data from the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID), we exploit a variant of the instrumental variables method adapted to non-linear models proposed by Terza et al. (2008), which is the "Two Stage Residual Inclusion" (2SRI), to analyze the effect of working at home (having a certain number of hours of work at home) on the number of workweeks absence in a year. We show that workers with job flexibility (working partially or fully from home) are absent less often than those without job flexibility after controlling for endogeneity. Our results also show fairly significant interaction effects, especially for people with disabilities. This suggests that a policy favouring employment flexibility would allow these individuals to manage their health status, remain in the labour market, and thus continue working. Women are also much more sensitive to the possibility of working from home. In the third chapter, we evaluate the impact of the Employment Integration Contract (EIC) program on the employment rate of people with severe employment constraints. This program was implemented in the province of Quebec in April 2001. To do so, we estimate a probit model using the difference-in-differences method whilst introducing false-positive and false-negative misclassification parameters of employment status. Indeed, as we do not directly observe the employment status of the individual, we construct it from the entries, exits and duration on the social assistance and social solidarity programs, which is subject to misclassification when an unemployed person is classified as an employee or an employee is classified as unemployed. We use administrative data from the Ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité Sociale (MTESS) of Québec. Our results show that there is no evidence that the EIC measure, through its wage subsidy component, had a positive impact on the employment of people with severe employment constraints, regardless of the control group used. Moreover, the estimates of the misclassification probabilities are significantly different from zero and range from 10 to 17 percent for α₀ (unemployed is misclassified as employed) and from 3 to 16 percent for α₁ (employed is misclassified as unemployed) using those without constraints as the comparison group. In contrast, if the comparison group consists of individuals with temporary employment constraints, the estimates of these parameters are approximately doubled. We tested the robustness of these estimates by deliberately introducing a false positive of 5%. The result shows that our estimates are robust since this increases the false positive by about 5 percent, leaving the false negative unchanged.

Dans cette thèse, j’explore les facteurs qui minent les chances de vie des enfants dans les pays en développement, avec un accent particulier sur les pays d’Afrique sub-saharienne. Cette thèse est composée de 3 essais. Les deux premiers (chapitres 1 et 2) se concentrent sur le mariage précoce des jeunes filles, tandis que le troisième et dernier essai (chapitre 3) met l’accent sur la pauvreté des enfants, spécifiquement à la question de la concordance/discordance entre mesures monétaires et multidimensionnels de ce phénomène. Le mariage précoce est pratiqué dans toutes les régions du monde, mais c’est en Afrique subsaharienne que le phénomène est prédominant, 8 des 10 pays avec les prévalences de mariage précoce les plus élevés sont sur le continent. En 2010, 34% (environ 67 millions) de jeunes femmes âgées de 20 à 24 à l’échelle mondiale ont été marié avant leur dix-huitième anniversaire et environ 12% ont été marié avant l’âge de 15 ans. L’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la population (FNUAP) estime que si cette tendance continue, 142 millions de filles seront mariées avant 18 ans dans la prochaine décennie (UNFPA, 2012). Dans les pays où cette pratique est prédominante, il reflète les normes basées sur le genre qui façonnent la vie des adolescentes, contraignant leur choix et capacités de vie en limitant leur accès à l’éducation, leur mobilité ainsi que leur autonomisation au sein du ménage en particulier sur les décisions sexualité et de fertilité. La lutte contre le mariage des enfants en Afrique subsaharienne et ailleurs peut avoir des retombées positives importantes pour la réalisation de l’Agenda 2030 des Nations Unies pour le développement durable. La littérature existante sur le mariage précoce des filles met en évidence le rôle conjoint joué par les facteurs de l’offre—à savoir, pourquoi les parents marient leurs filles mineures—et les facteurs de la demande — à savoir, pourquoi les hommes entrent en relations conjugales avec des adolescentes — comme déterminants de la prévalence de cette pratique dans les pays en développement. Pour que cette évidence empirique soit convertible en action efficace, il est primordial d’avoir une évaluation quantitative de ces deux facteurs de demande et d’offre dans l’explication de ces taux de prévalence élevés. Le premier essai de ma thèse vise à combler cette lacune en mesurant l’importance quantitative de la valeur intrinsèque que les hommes attachent à avoir des épouses adolescentes dans le cadre du Niger. Le deuxième essai fait suite au premier, en développant un modèle de demande de mariage précoce avec une application empirique au Nigeria, pour comprendre pourquoi une grande partie des hommes dans les pays en développement se marient à des jeunes filles mineures. Le troisième essai explore théoriquement et empiriquement les causes de la discordance observée entre la pauvreté monétaire et multidimensionnelle des enfants. Comme les deux premiers essais, il est empiriquement fondé sur les expériences des pays d’Afrique subsaharienne, avec une application à la Tanzanie. Cet essai relie théoriquement les dimensions du bien-être des enfants, tel que la nutrition et la scolarisation, aux caractéristiques socioéconomiques des parents, tel que le revenu et l’éducation parentale. Le modèle prédit que l’éducation des parents influe sur le niveau de discordance entre la pauvreté monétaire et multidimensionnelle des enfants. Ce résultat théorique est testé empiriquement en utilisant les données de la Tanzanie. Les résultats montrent que l’éducation des parents agit négativement sur la probabilité qu’un enfant non-pauvre monétairement souffre de privations de base, et agit positivement sur la probabilité qu’un enfant pauvre monétairement ne souffre pas de privations de base. Dans l’ensemble, ces trois essais contribuent à faire progresser notre connaissance des facteurs qui contraignent les chances de vie des enfants en Afrique subsaharienne. En particulier, ma thèse suggère que les interventions politiques qui ne tiennent pas compte de la résistance locale à la mise en oeuvre des programmes de prévention du mariage précoce des filles peuvent être confrontés à des rendements incertains (Essai 1 et 2). Il met également en évidence un autre canal par lequel l’éducation des parents peut jouer un rôle important dans l’amélioration des chances de vie des enfants dans les pays en développement (Essai 3). / In this thesis, I investigate factors that undermine children’s life chances in developing countries, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries . Three essays comprise this thesis. The first two (Chapters 1 and 2) focus on the life chances of adolescent girls in relation to the issue of child marriage, while the third essay (Chapter 3) focuses on child poverty, in relation to the issue of concordance/discordance between monetary and multidimensional measures of this phenomenon. Child marriage is found in almost all regions of the world, but SSA gets the brunt of it, as it is home to 8 of the 10 countries worldwide reporting the highest prevalence rates of this phenomenon. In 2010, 34% (about 67 million) of young women aged 20-24 globally were married before their eighteenth birthday and about 12% were married by age 15. The United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that if present trends continue, 142 million girls will be married before age 18 in the next decade (UNFPA, 2012). Child marriage has been shown to hamper developing countries girls’ life chances both directly and indirectly (UNFPA, 2012). Where it exists as a mass phenomenon, it reflects gendered norms that shape adolescent girls’ lives through constrained choices and capabilities relative to boys, including a higher care work burden for girls, restricted access to education, limited mobility; limited authority in the family for wives ( particularly over sexuality and fertility decisions). Combating child marriage in SSA and elsewhere may thus yield significant positive spillovers for the achievement of the 2030 United Nation’s Agenda for Sustainable Development. The existing child marriage literature highlights the joint role played by supply-side factors — i.e., why parents marry off their underage daughters— and demand-side factors— i.e., why men enter into marital relationships with underage girls— in driving the prevalence rates of child marriage in the developing world. To turn this empirical finding into effective policy action, however, a quantitative assessment of the relative strength of both demandside and supply-side factors in explaining these high prevalence rates is of paramount importance. The first essay of my thesis aims to fill this knowledge gap by measuring the quantitative importance of the intrinsic value Niger’s men attach to having child brides. The second essay follows up on the first, by developing a demand-side model of child marriage with empirical application to Nigeria, to explain why a large proportion of men in developing countries marry underage girls. The third essay explores both theoretically and empirically the causes of the observed mismatch between monetary and multidimensional child poverty. Like the first two essays, it is empirically grounded in the experiences of SSA countries, with a practical application to Tanzania. This essay theoretically links child outcomes, such as nutritional status and schooling achievements to parental and household characteristics including household income and parental education. The model used to formalize this link predicts that parental education influences the level of the mismatch between monetary and multidimensional child poverty. Empirical evidence drawn from Tanzania NPS data is consistent with this prediction. In particular, results show that parental education is a negative predictor of the probability that a monetarily non-poor child suffers some basic deprivations, and a positive predictor of the likelihood that a monetarily poor child suffers no basic deprivations. Overall, these three essays contribute to advancing our knowledge of factors that constraint children’s life chances in SSA. In particular, my thesis suggests that policy interventions that ignores the extent and causes of local resistance to the implementation of child marriage prevention programs may face uncertain results (Essay 1 and Essay 2). It also highlights another channel through which parental education can play an important role in the improvement of children’s life chances in developing countries (Essay 3).

Fondée sur deux analyses empiriques et sur un travail de modélisation théorique, cette thèse traite de la problématique du vieillissement de la population, en France, en termes de dépenses de biens et services de santé, et en termes de prise en charge des personnes âgées dépendantes. Dans un premier chapitre, une méthode de microsimulation dynamique est mise au point afin d'évaluer l'évolution des dépenses de médicaments remboursables (en médecine de ville) sous l'effet du vieillissement de la population et de l'évolution de l'état de santé chronique des personnes âgées. Un deuxième chapitre s'intéresse aux tenants d'une possible réforme de l'Allocation Personnalisée d'Autonomie (APA), qui viserait à récupérer sur la succession une partie des fonds versés aux personnes dépendantes. Nous développons un modèle théorique de transfert intergénérationnel en individualisant les décisions des deux membres d'une famille, un parent dépendant et un enfant aidant informel potentiel. Enfin, dans une dernière partie, nous évaluons empiriquement les facteurs modifiant la demande d'aide à domicile des bénéficiaires de l'APA, en nous concentrant, afin d'anticiper sur de possibles réformes de l'aide publique, sur l'évaluation des effets-prix dans la demande d'aide formelle. / This thesis addresses, using an elaborated theoretical model and two empirical applications, issues related to population ageing and health care expenditures as per the French context. In the first chapter, a method of dynamic microsimulation is developed to assess the evolution of outpatient reimbursable drugs expenditures as a result of the ageing population and the evolution of health status of chronically ill elderly people. The second chapter focuses on the ins and outs of a possible reform of the Personal Allowance for Autonomy (APA), which would seek to recover a portion of the funds paid to disabled elderly on the inheritance of their heirs. A theoretical model of intergenerational transfers is developed to study the individual decisions of a two-member family - a disabled parent and a child who can play the role of informal care giver. The final section presents an empirical evaluation of the factors affecting the demand of APA's recipients for home care. This work examines the price effects in the demand for formal care in order to anticipate possible reforms of public allowance.

L’hypothèse à l’origine de ce travail est que les remises en question récentes du concept de capital humain sont inextricablement liées aux conditions dans lesquelles cette théorie a émergé. En conséquence, remonter aux origines de la révolution du capital humain permet d’apporter un éclairage nouveau sur les problèmes de définition et de mesure que le conceptrencontre aujourd’hui. Dans une perspective d’histoire de la pensée économique, nous nous proposons d’analyser les ondements conceptuels du cadre théorique du capital humain qui a émergé à la fin des années 1950 sous l’impulsion de trois auteurs : Gary Becker, Jacob Mincer et Théodore Schultz. Au début des années 1950, Schultz utilise le concept de capitalhumain pour expliquer le résidu de croissance. Le programme de recherche qu’il lance s’inscrit ainsi dans le corpus des théories de la croissance. Schultz parvient immédiatement à faire la preuve de la pertinence de ce facteur de production oublié. Au même moment, c’est-à-dire au milieu des années 1950, Mincer travaille lui aussi sur le concept de capital humain, mais comme déterminant de la distribution des revenus individuels. Quant à Becker, ce n’est qu’à la fin des années 1950 qu’il s’intéressera au capital humain : il propose d’analyser les choix individuels de formation au moyen de la théorie du choix rationnel et d’étudier le taux de rendement privé de l’investissement dans l’éducation. Le modèle microéconomique élaboré par Becker sera immédiatement utilisé par Mincer et va s’imposer aux dépens de l’approche macroéconomique de Schultz. / The hypothesis underlying this work is that the recent criticism faced by human capital concept are inextricably linked to the emerging conditions of the theory. Getting to the roots of the human capital revolution gives a new perspective on both theoretical and measurement issues. Using the history of economic thought perspective, we analyse the conceptual foundations of the human capital theory developed by Gary Becker, Jacob Mincer and Theodore Schultz in the late fifties. In 1950, Schultz used the concept of human capital in order to explain growth residual. His research program is embodied in the corpus ofgrowth theory. Schultz promptly succeeds to show the importance of this forgotten factor. Simultaneously, Mincer works on the same concept considering it as the main determinant of the personal income distribution. Few years later, Becker tried to understand the individual choice of training using the rational choice theory, and study the private rate of return of investment in education. His model, immediately adopted by Mincer, will establish itself as the standard model, vanishing the macroeconomic approach of Schultz.

La présente thèse propose une étude théorique et empirique des déterminants de la tarification des services publics et de leurs conditions d’efficacité. La prise en compte des enjeux environnementaux et sociaux, le déploiement des réseaux intelligents et la contrainte forte de maîtrise des coûts ont conduit à la mise en œuvre de nouvelles pratiques en matière tarifaire et organisationnelle dans les services publics. Cette thèse propose trois essais consacrés à l’impact de ces nouvelles pratiques dans l’eau potable en France. Dans un premier temps, nous analysons le passage d’un tarif affine à un tarif progressif sur le comportement des consommateurs d’eau potable, à partir d’une expérience naturelle menée à Dunkerque. Un premier résultat indique que la demande a baissé avec ce nouveau tarif, tout en créant des distorsions. Un deuxième résultat indique que la réaction des consommateurs au signal-prix a été ambivalente. Ces travaux suggèrent de repenser le design tarifaire et l’accompagnement des consommateurs dans leurs choix pour limiter les biais cognitifs. Dans un deuxième temps, nous analysons comment l’organisation politique locale (en France, le niveau de la commune, du syndicat de communes ou de l’intercommunalité) et le mode de gestion (public ou privé) peuvent influencer la performance du service public. L’incidence de ces configurations organisationnelles sur les coûts n’a jamais été étudiée simultanément par la littérature. Nous proposons un modèle théorique, validé par une étude empirique à partir d’un panel des services d’eau français, qui met en évidence l’impact de ces différentes configurations organisationnelles sur le prix. / The present thesis proposes a theoretical and empirical study of the determinants of the pricing of public services and their conditions of effectiveness. Taking into account environmental and social issues, the deployment of smart grids and the strong constraint on cost control have led to the implementation of new pricing and organizational practices in public services. This thesis proposes three essays devoted to the impact of these new practices in drinking water in France. First, we analyze the transition from an affine tariff to a progressive tariff on the behavior of consumers of drinking water, starting from a natural experiment conducted in Dunkerque. A first result indicates that demand has decreased with this new tariff, while creating distortions. A second result indicates that the consumer reaction to the price signal has been ambivalent. This work suggests to rethink the tariff design and the accompaniment of the consumers in their choices to limit the cognitive biases. In a second step, we analyze how the local political organization (in France, the level of the single municipality, the union of communes (Syndicats) or super-municipality (communauté de communes) and the management mode (public or private) can influence the performance of the public service. The impact of these organizational configurations on costs has never been studied simultaneously by the literature. We first propose a theoretical model to analyze them together. Then, from a panel of French water services, we observe empirically that these different organizational combinations have an impact on the price.

This dissertation comprises four chapters, which mainly deal with female's participation in household decision-making, a very important aspect of female's bargaining power within the household and closely linked to female's empowerment. The first three chapters, which all deal with female's participation in household decision-making, are two sides of the same coin, in that while the first one delves into the determinants of female's participation in household decision-making, the second and third chapters deal with its beneficial consequences. The fourth chapter is linked with Chapter 1. As a matter of fact, the data used in Chapter 1 has been collected in Rural Burundi, in the framework of the FNRS/FRFC-funded project “Microfinance Services, Intra-household Behavior and Welfare in Developing Countries: A Longitudinal and Experimental Approach”, which funded my PhD scholarship. In 2012, the project funded data collection in Rural Burundi. In respect to the experimental component of the project, these are baseline data. The 2012 household survey targeted a sample of rural households that have been interviewed in 1998 and 2007. This is where the longitudinal design of the project comes into play. Independently from the experimental research, the longitudinal nature of the data, that is to say three waves of data (1998, 2007 and 2012), had the advantage of allowing panel analysis of interesting and relevant issues in development, including for example the long-term welfare effects of shocks at either individual or household levels.In Chapter 1, entitled “The Power of The Family: kinship and Intra-household Decision-making in Rural Burundi” and co-authored with Bram De Rock and Philip Verwimp, we delve into the determinants of female's participation in household decision-making, by laying a particular emphasis on the role of female's kinship. We show that in rural Burundi the characteristics of the female's kinship are highly correlated with her decision-making power. First, a female whose own immediate family is at least as rich as her husband's counterpart enjoys a greater say over children- and asset-related decision-making. Second, the size, relative wealth and proximity of the extended family also matter. Third, kinship characteristics prove to be more important than (standard) individual and household characteristics. Finally, we also show that the female's say over asset-related decision-making is positively associated with males' education, more than with female's education per se. All these correlation patterns can inform policies aiming at empowering women or targeting children through women's empowerment.In Chapter 2, entitled “The Returns of I Do: Multifaceted Female Decision-making and Agricultural Yields in Tanzania?”, I use the third round of the Tanzanian National Panel Survey to investigate the effect of multifaceted female's empowerment in agriculture on agricultural yields. The classic approach in the empirical literature on gender gap in agriculture includes the gender of the plot's owner/manager as the covariate of interest and interprets the associated coefficient estimate as the gender gap in agricultural productivity. Unlike this classic approach in the analysis of productivity differentials, my approach lays emphasis on the overlapping and interaction effects of manifold aspects of female's empowerment in agriculture, including female plot's ownership, female plot's management and female output's control. I find significant productivity gaps, which the classic empirical approach does not bring out in the same context. As compared to plots (solely) owned, managed and controlled by male, (i) plots merely owned by female and (ii) those owned & managed (but not controlled) by female are less productive, but those owned, managed & controlled by female are not. Furthermore, the latter are the more productive among plots at least owned by female. All these productivity gaps are predominantly explained by the structural effect, that is differences in productivity returns to observable production factors. Our findings are robust along a number of dimensions and suggest that female's management and control rights are of prime importance. Therefore, female plot's owners should be entitled the rights to manage their plot and, subsequently and most importantly, the rights to control the (agricultural) output of their work, for their productivity to be enhanced and the gender gap in agriculture to be closed. In Chapter 3, entitled “Say On Income and Children's Outcomes: Evidence from Nigeria”, I delve into the effect of female bargaining power on child education and labor outcomes in Nigeria. Female bargaining power is proxied by “female say on labor income”, rather than by her income per se. This is motivated by the fact the female labor force participation might be low in some contexts, while control over income is by all means what matters the most. The empirical methodology accounts for a number of empirical issues, including endogeneity and sample selection issues of female say on labor income, the multi-equation and mixed process features of the child outcomes, as well as the fact that hours of work are left-censored. My findings are consistent with the overall idea that female say on income leads to better child outcomes, rather than female income earning per se. Nevertheless, the type of income under female control, child gender and child outcome matter. Chapter 4, entitled “Violence Exposure and Welfare Over Time: Evidence From The Burundi Civil War” and co-authored with Marion Mercier and Philip Verwimp, investigates the relationship between exposure to conflict and poverty dynamics over time. We use a three-wave panel data from Burundi, which tracked individuals and reported local-level violence exposure in 1998, 2007 and 2012. Firstly, the data reveal that headcount poverty has not changed since 1998 while we observe multiple transitions into and out of poverty. Moreover, households exposed to the war exhibit a lower level of welfare than non-exposed households, with the difference between the two groups predicted to remain significant at least until 2017, i.e. twelve years after the conflict termination. The correlation between violence exposure and deprivation over time is confirmed in a household-level panel setting. Secondly, our empirical investigation shows how violence exposure over different time spans interacts with households' subsequent welfare. Our analysis of the determinants of households' likelihood to switch poverty status (i.e. to fall into poverty or escape poverty) combined with quintile regressions suggest that, (i) exposure during the first phase of the conflict has affected the entire distribution, and (ii) exposure during the second phase of the conflict has mostly affected the upper tail of the distribution: initially non-poor households have a higher propensity to fall into poverty while initially poor households see their propensity to pull through only slightly decrease with recent exposure to violence. Although not directly testable with the data at hand, these results are consistent with the changing nature of violence in the course of the Burundi civil war, from relatively more labor-destructive to relatively more capital-destructive. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The Thesis is composed by three complementary research investigations on the economic and policy aspects of EU corporate R&D.Collectively, the work first reviews the theoretical and empirical literature of corporate R&D intensity decomposition; it then investigates the EU R&D intensity and its decomposition elements comparatively with most closed competitors and with emerging economies over the period 2005-2013. Finally, it inspects further some key aspects that can be associated to the EU R&D intensity gap: sectoral dynamics and the resulting sectoral and technological specialisations as well as the drivers for R&D investment growth across sectors and firms' age groups of top R&D investing firms over time. These studies also address the possible policy implications that derive from their outcomes.The investigations rely on literature as well as on company data, mainly from nine editions (2006-2014) of the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. For analytical purposes they use literature review, meta-analysis, descriptive statistics, R&D intensity decomposition computational approach, Manhattan distance and Technological Revealed Comparative Advantage metrics, and a multinominal logit regression model. The results of these three research works are novel in several aspects. It indicates that literature results on R&D intensity decomposition differ because of data and methodological heterogeneities, and that the structural cause is the main determinant of EU R&D intensity gap if sector compositions of the countries are considered. It inspects how the use of different data sources and analytical methods impact differently on R&D intensity decomposition results, and what the analytical and policy implications are.The empirical research results of this Thesis confirm the structural nature of the EU R&D intensity gap. In the last decade the gap between the EU and the USA has widened, whereas the EU gap with Japan has remained relatively stable. In contrast, the emerging countries' R&D intensity gap compared to the EU has remained relatively stable, while companies from emerging economies are considerably reducing such gap. Besides, as novel contribution to the state of the art of the literature, this Thesis uncovers the differences between EU and US by inspecting which sectors, countries and firms are more accountable for the aggregate R&D intensity performance of these two economies, and it finds a high heterogeneity of firms' R&D intensity within sectors. Furthermore, it shows that there is a bigger population of both larger and smaller US top R&D firms which invest more strongly in R&D than competitors, and that the global R&D investment is concentrated in a few firms, countries and industries. Finally, the research founds a slightly higher EU R&D shift over sectors compared to the US, but not strongly enough towards high-tech sectors. Also, the EU has an even broader technological specialisation than its already broad industrial R&D sector specialisation, while the USA leads by number of technological fields belonging mostly to the industrial R&D sectors of its specialisation. Furthermore, the EU has been better able than the USA and Japan to maintain its world share of R&D investment even during the years of economic and financial crisis. Lastly, the study also indicates that firms make a complementary use of capital expenditures and R&D intensity for their R&D investment growth strategies and it reveals that there are differences in their use between firms' age classes across sectors. Overall, the main results of the Thesis suggest that to reach a more positive R&D dynamics and boost its competitiveness, the EU should adapt its industrial structure and increase the weight of high R&D intensive sectors. A focus on creating the conditions for firm creation and growth in new-emerging innovative sectors is advised together with favouring the exploitation of the full capacity of EU leading - but mature - sectors to also absorb high-technology from other sectors. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished