Proefschrift Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam.

L'économie mixte : un instrument de l'action local / The mixed economy : an instrument of local action

Cette thèse analyse l’origine des disparités en matière de politiques de transport et d’organisation de l’activité économique au Gabon. Depuis toujours, les infrastructures de transport sont considérées comme l’un des déterminants de la localisation des firmes dans une perspective de développement. Aussi, le poids de l’économie géographique dans la théorie économique contemporaine éclaire parfaitement ce débat. Elle tend à apporter une description de l’interaction des différentes sources d’agglomération et de l’influence des infrastructures de transport. Sur la base du modèle de Krugman (1991), les analyses d’économie géographique démontrent que l’intégration économique et le développement des infrastructures de transport tendent à renforcer l’importance des grandes métropoles et à intensifier les processus de polarisation des activités économiques. Notre recherche consiste à démontrer qu’au-delà de l’économie géographique, des politiques de transport mieux élaborées sont indispensables à un développement économique plus intégré du Gabon. / This thesis analyzes the origin of disparities in terms of policies and the economic activities in Gabon. Infrastructures have always been regarded as one of the decisive factors in the location of firms. The influence of economic geography within the contemporary economic theory perfectly clarifies the debate. It tends to provide a description of the interaction of different location sources and the influence of transport infrastructures. Therefore, it emphasizes the study of decisive factors for firms' location. Our research aims to explain the location of activities and the concentration of firms in a region and / or a country. Based on the model of Krugman (1991), analysis of economic geography shows that economic integration and the development of transport infrastructures tend to strengthen the importance of mega cities and intensify the polarization of economic activities. The hypothesis is to examine beyond geographic economy, how transport infrastructure policies are necessary for a real development in Gabon.

Abstact 1 - Over the past few years, mobile broadband technologies and speeds have greatly increased in the European Union, reaching an ever larger share of broadband consumers. These changes have implications for broadband market competition. In the past, mobile services offered slow but mobile internet whereas fixed services offered faster but fixed internet. Fixed and mobile broad-band were therefore obviously complementary services. While mobile broadband speeds have significantly increased over the latest years, fixed broadband is remaining rather a fixed technol-ogy. Consequently, if mobile broadband becomes fast enough considering some consumers’ needs, we believe that the same consumers will choose to use only the mobile broadband tech-nology (who by itself offers high-speed and mobility) instead of both fixed and mobile broad-band technologies. As a result, we may observe an increasing trend towards fixed to mobile substitution. Our study investigates empirically this trend. More specifically, it analyzes the im-pact of mobile broadband technology evolution - through 4G adoption - on fixed to mobile sub-stitution in the 28 European countries from 2009 until 2015. The few studies examining this sub-ject show that fixed to mobile substitution exists although none of these studies analyze the evo-lution of this substitution. The results confirm a significant existence of a fixed to mobile substi-tution in the EU, and show that this substitution is more than doubled when a country adopts 4G. The growing competitive pressure from mobile operators also provides fixed operators with incentives to acquire – or merge with – mobile operators. This fact should be a concern for policy makers as it could have harmful consequences for competition and investment on the broad-band market. / Abstract 2 - Whereas open science – i.e. publishing articles in scientific journals – had been largely studied on the academic side, there is still a need to explore the subject on the industry side. This study spe-cifically analyzes the role of academic institutions in firms’ scientific publications and uses a novel approach to explore the subject. Publications issued from collaborations with academic institutions are indeed differentiated from other publications. The first type of publications is considered as an indicator of firms’ collaborative activities with academic institutions whereas the second type of publications is considered as the result of firms’ strategies and/or firms’ capa-bilities to publish. This study provides evidence that industry publications are a valuable signal to attract academic partners. In addition, this study provides evidence that potential academic partners are more willing to team up with firms’ researchers who have proven their ability to achieve high-quality research/publications without the help of academic partners. Finally, the study provides evidence that past successful collaborations with academic partners lead the firm to reiterate such collaborations in the short term (2 years max.). / Abstract 3 - The objective of this study is twofold. First, it provides further knowledge on the subject of prof-itability of industry science/publications as it is not clear yet whether industry sci-ence/publications are profitable to firms. Second, it considers the central role of academic part-ners in the profitability of firms’ scientific publications as previous empirical studies do not con-sider such role. To investigate the subject, we perform several regressions with firms profits as dependent variable. The results provide evidence that the publication of scientific articles is not a profitable activity in itself (as it was demonstrated in two previous studies). Collaborations with academic institutions are the real basis of profitable results; the production of scientific publica-tions is only one of the consequences of these collaborations. This study also shows that not all collaborations are profitable, only collaborations in high-tech sectors that lead to high-quality publications lead to larger profits. Indeed, in their quest for survival and profitability, companies competing in high-tech sectors often need the help of academic partners to exploit scientific knowledge. On average, a rise of about 7% in successful collaborations (leading to high-quality publications) raises the profit of high-tech firms by about 1%. - / Abstract 4 - This chapter analyzes the factors influencing the quality of the output of I-A collaborations ap-proximated by the quality of the I-A co-publications. More specifically it analyzes two subjects that are typically complicated to study empirically because of a lack of available data: (1) it compares US and EU I-A partnerships and (2) it discusses if and how internet is a useful tool in I-A collaborations. The results empirically confirm that EU universities are less efficient partners than US universities when collaborating with the private sector. This study also demonstrates a much larger gap between EU and US academic partners in high-tech sectors. Finally, the results provide evidence that broadband is a useful tool for international I-A collaborations although broadband is less important in the success of I-A international collaborations in high-tech sectors compared to lower-tech sectors. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The main idea of this thesis is to study three different issues, economic, political, or financial, related to three different public infrastructure sectors, transport, water and sewerage, and electricity, by using three different methodological approaches. In the first chapter, I make creative use of a non-parametric technique traditionally used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of similar firms, data envelopment analysis, to identify the most likely objective, economic vs. political, behind a specific policy. In the second chapter I empirically investigate the effects of the increasing private financial ownership of the water and sewerage utilities in England and Wales on key outcome variables such as leverage levels and consumer bills. Finally, in the third chapter, I evaluate an equity-aimed policy introduced in the electricity sector in Spain in 2009 by measuring the effect of its introduction on the probability of a household of being energy poor.Chapter One – Unbundling political and economic rationality: a non-parametric approach tested on transport infrastructure in SpainThis paper suggests a simple quantitative method to assess the extent to which public investment decisions are dominated by political or economic motivations. The true motivation can be identified by modeling each policy goal as the focus of the optimization anchoring a data envelopment analysis of the efficiency of the observed implementation. In other words, we rank performance based on how far observed behavior is under each possible goal, and the goal for which the distance is smaller reveals the specific motivation of the investment or any policy decision for that matter. Traditionally, data envelopment analysis is used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of firms having a similar productive structure. In this case, each firm corresponds to a different policy year, the policy being the determinant of the investment made.The approach is tested on Spain’s land transport infrastructure policy since it is argued by many observers to be driven more by political than economic concerns, resulting in a mismatch between capacity investment and traffic demand. History has shown that when the source of financing has been private, the network has been developed in areas with high demand, i.e. the Northern and Mediterranean corridors. When the source has been public, the network has been developed following a radial pattern, converging from a to Madrid. The method clearly shows that public investments in land transport infrastructure have generally been more consistent with a political objective – the centralization of economic power – than with an economic objective – maximizing mobility –.Chapter Two – On the effects of the private financial ownership of regulated utilities: lessons from the UK water sectorThis paper analyzes the quantitative impact of the growing role of non-traditional financial actors in the financing structure and consumer pricing of regulated private utilities. The focus is on the water sector in England and Wales, where the effect of the firms’ corporate financing and ownership strategies on key outcome variables may have been underestimated. The sector was privatized in 1989, year in which the 10 regional monopolies became 10 water and sewerage companies, listed and publicly traded on UK Stock Exchanges. Since then, six of the ten have been de-listed, bought-out by private equity – investment and infrastructure funds. I make use of this variation in ownership to measure the effect on leverage levels and consumer bills.I develop a theoretical framework allowing me to derive two hypotheses: first, the buyout of a company increases its leverage level, and second, the buyout of a company increases the consumer bill through higher leverage levels. The empirical analysis is based on two sequential steps: a staggered difference-in-differences estimation shows that private equity buyouts increase the leverage levels of water utilities. An instrumental variable and two-stage least squares estimation then show that these higher leverage levels increase the average consumer bills of bought-out utilities more than if they had not been bought-out. The estimated impact of the private equity buyouts in the sector in England and Wales on the annual average consumer bill ranges from 13.5 to 32.6 GBP, for a sample average bill of about 427 GBP.Chapter Three – Understanding the effectiveness of the electricity social rate in reducing energy poverty in SpainThis paper analyzes the causal impact of the introduction of a social subsidy, the bono social de electricidad, in Spain's electricity market in 2009. The measure was introduced following the surge in energy poverty, increasing particularly after the financial crisis. Using data from the family budget survey from 2006 to 2017, we evaluate the social policy in its fight against energy poverty.We proceed in two steps. First, we use a difference-in-differences approach to measure such a causal impact and to analyze how the introduction of the measure directly affected eligible households. We find that the introduction of the subsidy has reduced the likelihood of energy poverty for the eligible households. Therefore, the bono social de electricidad has reached its equity objective of increasing affordability of electricity. The second step aims at understanding how specifically the introduction of the subsidy affects consumers. We find that, in reaction to lower effective prices, households do not increase their consumption of electricity, resulting in lower total electricity expenditure. We are therefore able to show that this policy did not induce a change in the consumption behavior and that the increased affordability entirely resulted in a decrease of expenditure in electricity / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse étudie la question de la place qu'occupe l'Etat dans les pays de l'ancien bloc socialiste, et ce à l'aube de la troisième décennie des réformes. En retenant l'exemple polonais pour apprécier concrètement ce que l'on peut déjà pressentir comme des nouvelles responsabilités de l'Etat, nous avons choisi d'analyser l'efficacité de l'action publique sous trois perspectives, chacune d'entre elles correspondant à un chapitre. Dans quelle mesure l'Etat entraine-t-il une redéfinition de la régulation d'activités économique ? Quel rôle joue-t-il dans la fourniture des biens publics ? Comment s'y prend-t-il pour achever les réformes sociales ? La nouvelle configuration économique et sociale amplifie certains dysfonctionnements inhérents au système transitoire tout en introduisant de nouvelles distorsions, comme l'illustre pertinemment le secteur public en Pologne. Cette thèse analyse certains aspects des interactions entre deux sphères, publique et privée, à la lumière des changements profonds qui accompagnent la nouvelle donne.

Proefschrift Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1990. / Summary in Dutch. Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-177).

Mon programme de recherche se développe autour de deux axes : 1/ l’analyse de la demande de transport des voyageurs et de ses impacts environnementaux pour permettre la définition et l’évaluation des politiques de transport durable, et 2/ une analyse des méthodes et des outils économétriques, notamment ceux définis et développés par Ragnar Frisch. Ces deux champs semblent si disjoints que l’on pourrait croire à une schizophrénie développée suite à un basculement de parcours institutionnel de l’histoire de l’économétrie à l’économie des transports. Or, ces deux champs correspondent à deux recherches qui me permettent l’une et l’autre de répondre aux questions suivantes : en premier lieu la compréhension des phénomènes économiques à partir d’une démarche 'observer-analyser-modéliser-prévoir' et, en second lieu, l’identification de la place du raisonnement et du calcul économique dans la définition et la conduite des politiques macroéconomiques et des politiques de transport. Ces deux questions constituent un pont entre ces deux champs scientifiques, qui se nourrissent l’un l’autre : le regard historique et épistémologique permet de mieux saisir la portée, les enjeux et les limites des méthodes et des outils mobilisés dans mes recherches appliquées au champ de l’économie des transports. Réciproquement, la conduite de recherches en économie appliquée souligne et montre la complexité des opérations de mesure, d’analyse et de modélisation tant au niveau heuristique qu’au niveau de la nature et du rôle de 'l’expert' dans le processus d’aide à la décision politique décrit par Desrosières, (2001) en montre les enjeux et les limites : hypothèses sur le champ de validité (géographique, temporel, niveau micro/méso/macro, etc.) de la procédure de mesure, ajustement des procédures de mesure face au manque de données, nécessité d’une approche multi-disciplinaire pour rendre compte de la complexité des déterminants de la mobilité et des leviers d’action potentiels destinés à promouvoir une mobilité plus 'durable' et donc plus équitable. Ces deux questions, qui animent mes recherches en histoire de la pensée économique et en économie des transports, relèvent aussi d’une interrogation plus large sur la 'modernité' telle qu’elle a été décrite et analysée par Bruno Latour (1997).

Le résumé en français n'a pas été communiqué par l'auteur. / This dissertation consists of four essays on health and demographic economics. In the first chapter, I explore the implementation of the theory of equality of opportunity (EOp) developed by Roemer (1998) to health in a joint work with Guillem Lopez and Frederic Udina. A common impediment to the achievement of EOp applications with given resources constraints is that it is unlikely that public policies can fully compensate for existing unfair inequalities. This scenario is particularly relevant in the case of health policy, where public spending coexists with a large private spending component. We argue that if social justice is not attainable, social deliberation should not only focus on choosing the circumstances that ought to be compensated but also reflect on which groups suffering unfair inequalities should be prioritized. The second chapter examines the impact of income-related reporting heterogeneity on the measurement of health inequality. While most studies of health inequality rely on self-reported measures of health, recent research has studied the possibility that part of the existing differences in self-reported health could be due to systematic differences in reporting across socioeconomic groups. The concern is that part of the existing inequalities may not be founded on differences in the “true” health status of individuals. In particular, some studies have concluded that reliance on self-reported health might have resulted in an overstatement on the degree of health inequality of some countries. I study the income-related reporting heterogeneity hypothesis in the 2006 wave of the Catalan Survey of Health and I find that the main contributor to health inequality is the disproportionate concentration of the prevalence of reported conditions in lower income groups. The third chapter, joint with Hippolyte d'Albis and Loesse Jacques Esso, studies the trends in mortality convergence across developed countries from 1960 to 2008. While the epidemiological transition has provided a theory behind the expectation of convergence in mortality patterns, our results reject the convergence hypothesis for a sample of industrialized countries. We study the disparities across the mortality distributions of the countries and our sample and find no evidence of convergence towards a common mortality distribution.The fourth and final chapter of this dissertation examines the relationship between unemployment and fertility. I offer a possible explanation for the apparent contradiction between the empirical work that finds a negative relationship between unemployment and fertility and the theoretical work that emphasizes the lower opportunity cost of childbearing while unemployed. I reconcile these perspectives by distinguishing two forms of unemployment. The first form is structural unemployment while the second is cyclical unemployment, a less permanent component of unemployment that is linked to the economic cycle. I study both effects over the life cycle using cohort data on a panel of developed countries. I find that while structural unemployment has an unambiguous negative effect on fertility, reactions to cyclical unemployment depend on the age at which it is experienced.