I am an economist at the World Bank.
I obtained my PhD in Economics from Sciences Po under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Marc Robin.
I am a labor and macro economist with research interests in firm dynamics and labor economics.
You can download my CV from here.
The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
“Intra-Firm Hierarchies and Gender Gaps” (2022), with Aseem Patel and Joanne Tan - Click here - Published version. Labour Economics
We study how changes in female representation at the top of a firm’s organisation affect gender-specific outcomes across hierarchies within firms. We start by developing a theoretical model of a hierarchical firms, where gender representation in top organisational layers can affect gender-specific hiring and promotion probabilities at lower layers. We then exploit a recent French reform that imposed gender representation quotas in the boards of directors and test the model’s predictions in the data. Our empirical results show that the reform was successful in reducing gender wage and representation gaps at the upper layers of the firm, but not at lower firm layers. A Panel VAR analysis confirms that the trickle-down effect of this policy was limited and suggests that interventions targeting the managerial layer, rather than the board, might have a more generalised effect across the firm.
“Friendship Networks and Political Opinions: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians” (2024), with Yann Algan, Quoc-Anh Do, and Yves Zenou. Click here [SSRN]. R&R at American Economic Review
We study how social interaction and friendship shape students’ political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, the cradle of top French politicians. Quasi-random assignments of students into the same short-term integration groups before their scholar curriculum reduce political opinion gap, and increase friendship formation. Using the pairwise indicator of same- group membership as instrumental variable for friendship, we find that friendship causes a reduction of differences in opinions by 40% of the standard deviation of opinion gap. The evidence is consistent with a homophily-enforced mechanism, by which friendship causes initially politically-similar students to join political associations together, which reinforces their political similarity, without exercising an effect on initially politically-dissimilar pairs. Friendship affects opinion gaps by reducing divergence, therefore polarization and extremism, without forcing individuals’ views to converge. Network characteristics also matter to the friendship effect.
“Aggregate Uncertainty and the Micro-Dynamics of Firms” (2021). Click here [SSRN]
Using firm level micro-data, I find evidence that firms with lower growth prospects are more sensitive to aggregate shocks. I interpret these findings using a model of demand accumulation and endogenous entry and exit decisions, which I then estimate on French data. The resulting cyclical dynamics of firms provide an explanation for the observed counter-cyclical dispersion in firms' growth rates. They suggest that cyclical dispersion is the result of a pre-existing and persistent characteristic of the firm and caution against its use as a proxy for time-varying uncertainty. The estimated negative correlation between a firm's sensitivity to aggregate shocks and its expected future growth rate is shown to have important consequences for the cyclical characteristics of entering and exiting firms. The quantitative model suggests that this compositional effect is sizeable and equivalent to around 10.5% of the drop in aggregate employment between 2008 and 2009.
“Income Tax Progressivity as a Stabilizer of Labor Income Risk” (2020), with Julien Pascal - Click here.
In this article we use Italian administrative data to study the role that a progressive income tax can play in redistributing cyclical risk from low to high wage workers and reduce the volatility of aggregate employment. We do this by developing and estimating a frictional model of the labor market with heterogeneous workers, aggregate shocks and a non-linear tax schedule. Our results show that eliminating income tax progressivity in Italy while maintaining the tax revenue fixed would come at the expense of the majority of workers. The current system of marginal tax rates is effective at reallocating cyclical income risk from low to high wage workers and reduces aggregate employment volatility by 18.5% compared to a counter-factual flat rate system.