Gender and Promotions: Evidence from Academic Economists in France*

The promotion system for French academic economists provides an interesting environment to examine the promotion gap between men and women. Promotions occur through national competitions for which we have information both on candidates and on those eligible to be candidates. Thus, we can examine the two stages of the process: application and success. Women are less likely to seek promotion, and this accounts for up to 76 percent of the promotion gap. Being a woman also reduces the probability of promotion conditional on applying, although the gender difference is not statistically significant. Our results highlight the importance of the decision to apply.     

Ethnic divisions and the effect of appropriative competition intensity on economic performance

This paper features a growth model with an appropriative contest and a common-pool investment game between politically organised rival ethnic factions. I determine how the long-run equilibrium coalition shapes incentives to invest, show the existence of a unique steady state, and investigate how the ease to capture rents affects economic performance. The use of numerical simulations concerning a global sample of countries demonstrates that contest intensity can sometimes be beneficial, despite wasteful grabbing behaviours, due to a mechanism related to the concentration of power. When rents become easier to capture, dominant groups have an incentive to expand their influence further. This adjustment can be beneficial as these groups contribute most to capital accumulation.     

Asia's ‘little divergence’ in the twentieth century: evidence from PPP-based direct estimates of GDP per capita, 1913–69

This article uses expenditure-based purchasing power parities (PPPs) to estimate GDP per capita in comparable prices for 12 Asian countries for six benchmark years during the period 1913–69. The article finds that in 1913 levels of real GDP per capita in several countries were comparable to those in Japan. GDP per capita in Japan and other Asian countries diverged during and after the First World War. The article questions whether Asia's ‘little divergence’ between Japan and other Asian countries dates back to the late eighteenth century. It draws attention to the different resource endowments of Japan, China, and India compared to other Asian countries, and their implications for the development trajectories of Asian countries. The article demonstrates that using historical PPP estimates yields estimates of GDP per capita that diverge from those based on retropolations of the single 1990 PPP-converted benchmark year. It concludes that historical estimates of PPPs are needed to confirm analyses of comparative economic performance based on available GDP per capita data.     

Analyzing credit risk transmission to the nonfinancial sector in Europe: A network approach

We use a factor model and elastic net shrinkage to model a high-dimensional network of European credit default swap (CDS) spreads. Our empirical approach allows us to assess the joint transmission of bank and sovereign risk to the nonfinancial corporate sector. Our findings identify a sectoral clustering in the CDS network, where financial institutions are in the center and nonfinancial entities as well as sovereigns are grouped around the financial center. The network has a geographical component reflected in different patterns of real-sector risk transmission across countries. Our framework also provides dynamic estimates of risk transmission, a useful tool for systemic risk monitoring.     

Partner‐diversity effects on alliance termination in the early stage of green alliance formation: Empirical evidence from carbon‐emission reduction projects in Latin America

Partner diversity is a key influencer in interorganizational alliances, and several empirical studies have shown that its outcomes are contingent on alliance‐specific factors. We extend this research as well as the growing literature on green alliances, in which partner diversity is uniquely high. Specifically, we examine partner‐diversity effects on alliance termination in the early stage of green alliance formation. We hypothesize that in this context, size disparity increases termination likelihood, whereas organizational variety and cultural separation have the opposite effect. To test our hypotheses, we use a sample of 366 alliance projects located in Latin America and submitted to the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism for evaluation, validation, and registration from 2004 to 2014. Our findings contribute to several research streams and provide practical guidance for successful formation of alliances focused on environmental protection.     

Product Unbundling in the Travel Industry: The Economics of Airline Bag Fees

This paper provides theory and evidence on airline bag fees, offering insights into a real‐world case of product unbundling. The theory predicts that an airline's fares should fall when it introduces a bag fee, but that the full‐trip price (the bag fee plus the new fare) could either rise or fall. The empirical evidence presented in the paper provides strong confirmation of the first prediction. The data also suggest that the average fare falls by less than the bag fee itself so that the full price of a trip rises for passengers who choose to check bags.     

Small businesses as a research subject: Some reflections on knowledge of small businesses and its effects on economic theory

Most economists agree in their view of small and medium-sized enterprises, or small businesses (SMEs), as a marginal scientific subject. They may go so far as to ignore them, either because they think these economic units do not lend themselves to conventional economic studies — studies which, for instance, take into account the sacred cow theory of economies of scale — or because they see them as being not really different from big businesses.However, at least a few economists have recognized, first, the many characteristics differentiating SMEs from big firms, and second, their increasing importance in terms of numbers and job creation within economies. Among these few, Schumpeter was one of the first to show the importance of entrepreneurs and SMEs as the main variable of change in an economy. Simon and Lucas also explained the difference between small and big firms through the differing abilities required by managers to run them. Penrose looked at the question from another point of view by highlighting the interstices taken up by SMEs to fulfil needs that cannot be fulfilled by bigger units. Critics of the theory of economies of scale showed that such economies may be offset by a number of diseconomies, thus justifying the efficiency of many SMEs. More recently, Mills and Schumann suggested that SMEs compensate for their lack of economies of scale by their production flexibility, particularly in today's turbulent economy.The limits of traditional economic theory are clearly demonstrated by the fact that it does not take account of all these theories, concepts and ideas. It thus neglects a number of important economic phenomena, including the persistence and current expansion of SMEs. Consideration of such phenomena may lead to the development of a new economic theory based on the concepts of instability and contingency, together with the behaviour of entrepreneurs and small firms, thus tending to contradict, in particular, the concept of equilibrium in conventional economic theory.A first version of this paper has been presented as invited speaker at the symposium of TETRA Group at Lyon, France, 30–31 May 1990. I thank the colleagues Fritz Rieger, Frances Solé Parrellada, Jacques Filion and the two referees for their very interesting suggestions on a preliminary second version.     

A unified approach to systemic risk measures via acceptance sets

We specify a general methodological framework for systemic risk measures via multidimensional acceptance sets and aggregation functions. Existing systemic risk measures can usually be interpreted as the minimal amount of cash needed to secure the system after aggregating individual risks. In contrast, our approach also includes systemic risk measures that can be interpreted as the minimal amount of cash that secures the aggregated system by allocating capital to the single institutions before aggregating the individual risks. An important feature of our approach is the possibility of allocating cash according to the future state of the system (scenario‐dependent allocation). We also provide conditions that ensure monotonicity, convexity, or quasi‐convexity of our systemic risk measures.