Job Market Paper


Selected for the 2023 EALE job market Tour


Abstract: Do college expansion policies promote local economic development? This paper exploits a massive construction policy of new colleges in France over the 1990s to assess the causal effect of higher education establishments. I start by studying their impact on education, firm dynamics, employment and wages at the city level. Leveraging the staggered implementation of the policy in an event-study design, I find a persistent rise in the level of education of the local workforce. Firm creation subsequently increases by 10% on average across all major industries. The rise in (i) tradable and (ii) skill-intensive industries indicates that the supply of educated workers played a major role in increasing firm entry. Incumbent firms experienced lower growth and a higher exit rate following the policy, suggesting displacement effects. Overall, the positive effects dominate, resulting in increased economic activity in treated cities. Employment stays constant but is subject to large composition effects: it increases for young skilled workers but decreases for older workers. In addition, province-level analysis suggests that new colleges had non-negative spillover effects on surrounding areas. Finally, I complement city-level results with findings on the long-run individual effects. Relying on differences between cohorts induced by the timing of the policy, I find that cohorts directly exposed to new colleges became more educated, more likely to be employed and hold more skilled positions.




Publications


With Francis Kramarz and Thomas Delemotte

Quantitative Economics (2022) -- Part of the Global Repository of Income Dynamics Project


Abstract: This paper provides new stylized facts about labor earnings inequality and dynamics in France for the period 1991-2016. Using Linked Employer-Employee Data, we show that (i) Labor inequality in France is low compared to other developed countries and has been decreasing until the financial crisis of 2009 and increasing since then. (ii) Women experienced high earnings growth, in particular at the bottom of the distribution, in contrast to the stability observed for men. Both result from a decrease in labor costs at the minimum wage and an increase in the hourly minimum in the aftermath of the 35h workweek policy. (iii) Top earnings (top 5 and 1\%) grew moderately while very top earnings (top 0.1 and 0.01\%) experienced a much higher growth. (iv) Inequality between and within cohorts follow the same U-shaped pattern as global inequality: it decreased before 2009 and then increased until 2016. (v) Individual earnings mobility is stable between 1991 and 2016, and very low at the top of the distribution. (vi) The distribution of earnings growth is negatively skewed, leptokurtic, and varies with age. Then, studying earnings dispersion both within and between territories, we document strong differences across cities as well as between urban and rural areas, even after controlling for observable characteristics. We also observe a continuous decrease in earnings inequality between territories. However, a larger inflation in rural territories mitigates this convergence. Finally, we document a strong reduction in inequality within rural and remote territories, again driven by changes at the bottom of the wage distribution.




Work in Progress


With David Sraer and David Thesmar


Abstract: Since 1967, French firms with more than 100 employees have been mandated to distribute a share of their profits to workers. In 1991, the threshold was reduced from 100 to 50 employees. We exploit this regulatory change to evaluate the effects of mandated profit-sharing on workers' and firms’ outcomes. We first show significant pre-reform bunching at the 100 employee threshold, which quickly disappears in the years following the reform. We use a bunching estimator to quantify the reduction in labor demand induced by the policy. Exploiting an intent-to-treat, difference-in-differences strategy, we show that mandatory profit-sharing leads to a significant increase in workers' total compensation that matches a decrease in shareholders' profits. Leveraging employer-employee data, we estimate a precise zero incidence on base wage for all employees but managers and engineers. At the firm-level, we find little evidence of avoidance strategies (e.g. increased leverage or substitution between capital and labor) after the reform. Finally, we find a small, non-significant impact of mandated profit-sharing on labor productivity.


  • Walls or Bridges? Immigration, Far-Right Voting and Public Policies in France

With Marco Tabellini and Clémence Tricaud


  • Does Workweek Reduction Narrow the Gender Gap? Evidence from France

With Pauline Carry, Claire Montialoux, Alexandra Roulet and Nina Roussille