Migrants' Home Town Associations and Local Development in Mali

We explore the impact of migrants' Home Town Associations (HTAs) on the provision of public goods in Mali. We combine an original dataset on all the HTAs created by Malian migrants in France from 1981 with census data on public goods in all Malian villages since 1976, and we run double‐difference estimations to compare villages with and without an HTA, before and after the creation of the HTAs. We find robust evidence that the provision of schools, health centers, and, to a lesser extent, water amenities has increased significantly faster in villages targeted by an HTA between 1987 and 2009 than in control villages.     

Functional food,uncertainty and consumers’ choices: A lab experiment with enriched yoghurts for lowering cholesterol

A lab experiment was conducted in France to evaluate the impact of health information on consumers’ choices for functional food. Successive messages revealing benefits and uncertainties of consuming yoghurts with added plant sterols for reducing cholesterol were delivered. Results show a significant and positive influence of the message linked to the cholesterol reduction on willingness to pay, even for participants without cholesterol. However participants expressed little interest in information about potential risks and scientific uncertainties, since their impacts on willingness to pay are not always statistically significant. An econometric estimation shows a significant link between the change in willingness to pay and the perception by participants regarding the scientific validity linked to the sterols.     

Cost-effectiveness of telaprevir in combination with pegylated interferon alpha and ribavirin in treatment-experienced chronic hepatitis C genotype 1 patients

Background:

Telaprevir (TVR,T) and boceprevir (BOC,B) are direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) used for the treatment of chronic genotype 1 hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. This analysis evaluated the cost-effectiveness of TVR combined with pegylated interferon (Peg-IFN) alfa-2a plus ribavirin (RBV) compared with Peg-IFN alfa-2a and RBV (PR) alone or BOC plus Peg-IFN alfa-2b and RBV in treatment-experienced patients.

Methods:

A Markov cohort model of chronic genotype 1 HCV disease progression reflected the pathway of experienced patients retreated with DAA therapy. The population was stratified by previous response to treatment (i.e., previous relapsers, partial responders, and null responders). Sustained virologic response (SVR) rates were derived from a mixed-treatment comparison that included results from separate Phase III trials of TVR and BOC. Incremental cost per life year (LY) gained and quality-adjusted-life-year (QALY) gained were computed at lifetime, adopting the NHS perspective. Costs and health outcomes were discounted at 3.5%. Uncertainty was assessed using deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. Sub-group analyses were carried out by interleukin (IL)-28B genotype.

Results:

Higher costs and improved outcomes were associated with T/PR relative to PR alone for all experienced patients (ICER of £6079). T/PR was cost-effective for each sub-group population with high SVR advantage in relapsers (ICER of £2658 vs £7593 and £20,875 for partial and null responders). T/PR remained cost-effective regardless of IL-28B sub-type. Compared to B/PR, T/PR prolonged QALYs by 0.57 and reduced lifetime costs by £13,960 for relapsers. For partial responders T/PR was less costly but less efficacious than B/PR, equating to an ICER of £128,117 per QALY gained.

Limitations:

No head-to-head trial provides direct evidence of better efficacy of T/PR vs B/PR.

Conclusion:

T/PR is cost-effective compared with PR alone in experienced patients regardless of treatment history and IL-28B genotype. Compared to B/PR, T/PR is always cost-saving but only more effective in relapsers.     

Expanding Workers’ ‘Moral Space’: A Liberal Critique of Corporate Capitalism

This paper assesses employees’ moral agency within corporate capitalism from a politically liberal standpoint. While political liberalism has spelt out its key institutional implications at state level, it has neglected moral agency at work, assuming that a rights-based state that secures freedom of contract, free choice of occupation and a free labour market within a fair context would protect it sufficiently. Yet two features of corporate capitalism constrain employees’ moral agency: the relation of authority that forms part of the work contract and organisations’ fragmented decision-making processes. Both seem at odds with the liberal ideal of allowing people to live by their own conception of the good. Consequently, this paper examines whether political liberalism should recommend greater safeguards for protecting workers’ moral agency. It proposes a criterion for assessing corporate capitalism: the ‘moral space’ defined as the socially shaped opportunities for action that can be enacted or endorsed from a comprehensive perspective. It argues that liberals should favour arrangements that widen workers’ moral space and suggests institutional designs that may achieve this while remaining within liberal boundaries.     

Trade unions vs. statistical discrimination: Theory and application to post-apartheid South Africa

A simple model of statistical discrimination is analyzed, which captures some stylized facts of the South African labor market. It shows that this type of discrimination disappears when the wage rates are determined by efficient bargaining between a representative firm and a union, with endogenous membership. This may explain why the wage gap between Black and White workers in post-apartheid South Africa is smaller among unionized workers than among non-unionized ones.     

Health information and substitution between fish: Lessons from laboratory and field experiments

This paper compares results from a lab experiment and a field experiment conducted in France to evaluate the impact of health information on fish consumption. In both experiments, health information concerns a benefit (omega 3) and a risk (methylmercury). While the lab experiment focuses on two species, namely canned tuna and canned sardines, the field experiment offers a complete measure of the information impact on the choice of various species by consumers. Results from both experiments showed a significant preference change against canned tuna. In the lab experiment, the preference change was reflected by a decrease in WTP, while in the field experiment the preference change was reflected by a decrease in consumption. In the field experiment, among all fish consumed, only the decrease in consumption of canned tuna was statistically significant. A model calibrated to represent the demand for canned tuna allows for a comparison between the two experiments. It shows that the lab experiment suggests a smaller decrease in canned tuna demand compared to the field experiment.     

Coordination Costs and the Geography of Production

In a model à la Venables of 1996 Venables, A. J. (1996) Equilibrium locations of vertically linked industries, International Economic review, 37, 341–359. doi: 10.2307/2527327[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], we distinguish two kinds of intermediate goods: complex goods that entail endogenous coordination costs, and simple goods that do not. Coordination costs depend on geographical distance and the number of intermediate goods used in the production process. In the final stage of integration, there are two possible spatial configurations: (1) a symmetric configuration and (2) a partial core–periphery equilibrium, comprised of a core region that produces the final and complex intermediate goods, and a periphery that produces simple intermediate goods. We discuss some policy implications of this multiple-equilibria outcome.

Les coûts de coordination et la géographie de la production     

Rock around the clock: An agent-based model of low- and high-frequency trading

We build an agent-based model to study how the interplay between low- and high-frequency trading affects asset price dynamics. Our main goal is to investigate whether high-frequency trading exacerbates market volatility and generates flash crashes. In the model, low-frequency agents adopt trading rules based on chronological time and can switch between fundamentalist and chartist strategies. By contrast, high-frequency traders activation is event-driven and depends on price fluctuations. High-frequency traders use directional strategies to exploit market information produced by low-frequency traders. Monte-Carlo simulations reveal that the model replicates the main stylized facts of financial markets. Furthermore, we find that the presence of high-frequency traders increases market volatility and plays a fundamental role in the generation of flash crashes. The emergence of flash crashes is explained by two salient characteristics of high-frequency traders, i.e., their ability to i. generate high bid-ask spreads and ii. synchronize on the sell side of the limit order book. Finally, we find that higher rates of order cancellation by high-frequency traders increase the incidence of flash crashes but reduce their duration.     

Gender and Competition between Economic or Non‐economic Labor and Schooling: Evidence from EPAM Mali

Abstract: We use the Understanding Children's Work (UCW) definition of child labor and data from the Mali Permanent Household Survey to highlight the gender difference in the competition between economic or non‐economic labor and schooling. A quadri‐variate Probit estimation allows to account for the interdependency between school and various kinds of labor: household chores (HHC), market‐oriented (MO) activities and non‐market‐oriented (NMO) activities. Empirical results provide interesting findings, including differential gender socialization according to the gender of the offspring, gender bias in repartition of tasks and time, and competition between labor activities and schooling.