Nada HAZEM

Impact of Environmental Stringency on Developing Countries’ Participation in Global Value Chains

Young Researcher Seminar – May 16, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

Abstract: The heightened pace of environmental degradation has stimulated global efforts to alleviate the impact of human activities on environmental quality. A significant number of developing countries have been taking steps to tackle environmental challenges and advance sustainability. Although the degree of commitment and the nature of initiatives differ among these countries, there is an increasing acknowledgment of the importance of environmental protection that is being reflected in their domestic policies.  This paper examines the impact of environmental stringency on countries’ participation in global value chains (GVCs), with a focus on developing economies. Drawing on data from the UNCTAD-Eora Global Value Chain (GVC) database and the Ecolex database, this paper studies the effect of environmental regulations on both forward (domestic value added embodied in exports of third countries) and backward (foreign value added embodied in own country’s exports) GVC linkages. Findings suggest that environmental regulations have a positive effect on both the forward and the backward components of GVC participation. This effect varies across countries of different income levels. The effect on forward linkages is lower for developing countries, particularly for the lower middle- and low-income countries, compared to the developed ones. Whereas, the impact on backward linkages is notably lower for low-income countries. The observed positive effect on GVC participation persists after conducting a robustness check and employing an IV approach to control for endogeneity.

 

Hugo LAPEYRONIE

Integrating the Deforestation Footprint of Mining in Global Supply Chains

Young Researcher Seminar – April 18, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

Abstract: Due to the energy transition, global demand for minerals is set to grow rapidly in the coming years. To comply with the Paris Agreement, the International Energy Agency forecasts a 6-fold increase in demand for several minerals deemed « critical » to the energy transition. The location of the mines producing these minerals is coming under increasing scrutiny due to the social and environmental consequences of mining. In particular, the impact of mining on deforestation has gained attention due to the recent adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and global efforts to limit imported deforestation. This article aims to quantify and attribute responsibility for deforestation associated with the exploitation of mineral resources at a global scale. The initial phase of this study involves estimating global forest loss attributed to over 7000 industrial mines worldwide spanning from 2000 to 2020, leveraging data from the Global Forest Watch dataset. This information is then used to create an environmental extension for GLORIA, a Multi-Regional Input-Output database (MRIO) that consists of 120 sectors and 164 countries. This new environmental extension, which directly exploits the spatial location of industrial mines, improves the accuracy of the assessment of the deforestation footprint of mining compared with what is already available in similar MRIO datasets. In particular, these results help to dissociate responsibility between mineral-producing and mineral-consuming countries and underline the need to better integrate the mining industry into policies aimed at reducing imported deforestation.

 

Marina HESHAM

Domestic Violence and children’s health: micro-level evidence in Egypt

Young Researcher Seminar – April 4, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

Abstract: Worldwide, Domestic Violence (DV) is the most prevalent form of Violence against Women (VAW); one in three women reports being a victim of DV. While it’s known in the literature that DV has various impacts on its victims, the intergenerational dimension is often neglected. The objective of this paper is to assess the potential effects of the different forms of DV on children’s health as witnessing DV represents an adverse childhood experience. We focus on Egypt, a country in which the mother is the key caregiver. Therefore, children of DV victims are expected to have development and growth delays compared to their peers. To that end, we use the latest available data of the Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of 2014. To address the possible selection bias, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) is used. The results show that DV decreases children’s birth weight while it increases their morbidity. Besides, it has a negative effect on their nutritional status. We highlight as well that DV’s effects differ by children’s age whilst they are quite similar for both sexes. 

Callum BRINDLEY

NCD behavioural risk factors among the world’s bottom billion living in extreme poverty

Young Researcher Seminar – March 21, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

Objectives: Evidence is sparse on the prevalence of noncommunicable disease (NCD) behavioural risk factors such as physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, alcohol consumption and smoking among the ‘bottom billion’ of the world’s population living in extreme poverty, which limits efforts to efficiently target prevention programmes and meet the SDG target of a one third reduction in premature non-communicable disease mortality by 2030.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of nationally representative household surveys from 78 LMICs between 2000 and 2019 that represent 85% of people living in extreme poverty globally. We identify those living in extreme poverty by ordering individuals by their socioeconomic status proxied by a continuous household wealth index or self-reported household income, then applied the World Bank’s estimates of the proportion of each country’s population living in extreme poverty (<$2.15 per day) We pooled individual data using both sample and population weights, and calculated the proportion of those living in extreme poverty who at higher risk of an NCD due to one or more behavioural risk factors according to WHO guidelines. Specifically, low physical activity; an unhealthy diet low in fruit and vegetables; harmful consumption of alcohol; or smoking tobacco.
Results: Individuals living in extreme poverty are less likely to smoke or be physically inactive but more likely to have an unhealthy diet and consume harmful amounts of alcohol compared to more wealthier individuals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). By sex, men living in extreme poverty have considerably higher prevalence of smoking and drinking than women, and lower prevalence of being overweight and low physical activity. With country’s economic development (GDP per capita), there is positive gradient for BMI, overweight and low physical activity while no clear relationship for smoking, alcohol consumption or unhealthy diet.
Discussion: NCD prevention strategies should ensure they reach the poorest sections of the population because NCD behavioural risk factors are prevalent across the full socioeconomic spectrum, including those living in extreme poverty, within countries at all levels of economic development.

Stephen JACKSON

Artisanal Mining and Deforestation: Evidence from Northwestern Liberia

Young Researcher Seminar – March 14, 2024 – 11:30-12:30 – Room S/2, MSE

Liberia’s forests span 6.69 million hectares, making up over two-thirds of the country’s land area (equivalent to twice the size of Belgium). The country is home to almost 50% of the remaining intact Upper Guinean forest, a global biodiversity hotspot. Artisanal Small-scale Mining (ASM) is widespread in Northwestern Liberia and the forest clearing required represents a significant environmental threat. Small-scale extractive activities also draw labour away from agriculture which relies predominantly on slash-and-burn practices. Despite this ambiguity, the counteracting direct and indirect forest cover loss associated with ASM has not yet received adequate attention. This paper uses information on artisanal mines and the towns they belong to estimate deforestation in the years following the opening of a mine. Findings point to increased deforestation around artisanal mining sites. On the flip side, mining towns witness a drop in deforestation rates almost immediately after the first mine begins operating. On the one hand, these results are consistent with a phenomenon of population swells around newly opened mines driving forest cover loss in the immediate vicinity of mines. On the other, they suggest that mining as an alternative livelihood may well attenuate deforestation.

Reading group with Pol COSENTINO & Maxence CASTIELLO

Dealing with zeros. | Recommended reading: Logs with zeros? Some problems and solutions by Chen & Roth (2024)

Reading Group in Econometrics – March 7, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

When studying an outcome Y that is weakly positive but can equal zero (e.g., earnings), researchers frequently estimate an average treatment effect (ATE) for a “log-like” transformation that behaves like log (Y) for large Y but is defined at zero (e.g., log (1 + Y), arcsinh(Y)). We argue that ATEs for log-like transformations should not be interpreted as approximating percentage effects, since unlike a percentage, they depend on the units of the outcome. In fact, we show that if the treatment affects the extensive margin, one can obtain a treatment effect of any magnitude simply by rescaling the units of Y before taking the log-like transformation. This arbitrary unit dependence arises because an individual-level percentage effect is not well-defined for individuals whose outcome changes from zero to nonzero when receiving treatment, and the units of the outcome implicitly determine how much weight the ATE for a log-like transformation places on the extensive margin. We further establish a trilemma: when the outcome can equal zero, there is no treatment effect parameter that is an average of individual-level treatment effects, unit invariant, and point identified. We discuss several alternative approaches that may be sensible in settings with an intensive and extensive margin, including (i) expressing the ATE in levels as a percentage (e.g., using Poisson regression), (ii) explicitly calibrating the value placed on the intensive and extensive margins, and (iii) estimating separate effects for the two margins (e.g., using Lee bounds). We illustrate these approaches in three empirical applications.

Link to the paper here.

Cem ÖZGÜZEL

Shift to Remote Work, Productivity, and Well-being

Senior Researcher Seminar – February 15, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

How does a permanent shift to remote work affect firm-level outcomes? Leveraging administrative panel data spanning the years 2017 to 2022 from a large call center where employees transitioned to permanent remote work in response to the pandemic, we find a significant increase in call center agents’ productivity following the adoption of remote work. This productivity gain is driven by reduced time spent on individual calls, decreased administrative tasks, and fewer breaks taken by employees. Importantly, our findings demonstrate that these productivity gains do not compromise call quality, as shown by the absence of negative effects on various call quality measures. Furthermore, high productivity in the traditional office setting carries over to remote work environments. To provide a comprehensive understanding, we supplement our analysis with survey data collected from call center agents, which sheds light on the underlying mechanisms of our results.

Thomas RENAULT

Collaboratively adding context to potentially misleading posts reduces the sharing of fake news on social media

Senior Researcher Seminar – February 1, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

We built a novel database of 290,000 tweets from the Twitter Community Notes program to analyze the causal influence of appending contextual information to potentially misleading posts on the virality of tweets. Using a difference-in-difference design, we find that adding context below a tweet decreases the number of retweets post-treatment by around 50%. We find a similar effect, albeit smaller, when focusing on the number of replies or the number of quotes. The relative impact is substantial, but the overall effect on tweet virality is contingent upon the timing of the contextual information’s publication. We find a reduction in the total number of retweets of misleading posts of around 20%. Our results indicate that while crowdsourced fact-checking is effective, its current pace may be insufficient to counteract the dissemination of misleading information on social media.

Anne Laure DELATTE

Book Presentation: « L’état droit dans le mur, rebâtir l’action publique »

Senior Researcher Seminar – January 18, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

Militants écologistes, Gilets jaunes, féministes, ONG… beaucoup cherchent aujourd’hui des solutions en dehors de l’État plutôt que dans l’action publique. Comment en est-on arrivé là ? L’État-providence a-t-il cédé la place à un État au service du marché ?

Anne-Laure Delatte est partie à la recherche de données sur l’action publique en France depuis l’après-guerre. En les croisant et les mettant en perspective, elle éclaire avec brio soixante-dix ans d’histoire économique. Elle aborde de manière originale comment les politiques publiques ont été réparties entre les citoyens et les entreprises. Complémentaire aux travaux sur la justice fiscale et les inégalités du capital, cette approche permet de comprendre les conséquences d’une telle distribution de l’argent public sur notre régime de croissance et explique son insoutenabilité. 

En pratiquant l’économie comme une science sociale, l’autrice analyse la méfiance des citoyens face à un État incapable d’œuvrer pour un régime respectueux de notre planète et inadapté aux changements qui s’opèrent sous nos yeux. Surtout, elle propose des moyens de rebâtir l’action publique dès à présent pour affronter la crise la plus existentielle de notre histoire.

Gunther CAPELLE-BLANCARD

The Social Media Divide: Gender Differences among Economists on Twitter

Senior Researcher Seminar – January 11, 2024 – 12:15-01:15 – Room S/2, MSE

How do economists use, behave, and interact on social media? To explore this question, we compile a dataset of 65,000 economists worldwide, including Twitter account information for over 8,500 of them. Our study focuses on identifying the economists active on Twitter, with a particular emphasis on gender differences in participation, activity, popularity, and interactions. We find that female economists are, on average, less active on Twitter, exhibiting notable spatial differences. Additionally, they tweet less frequently, especially during evenings and weekends. However, conditional upon their level of activity, they receive as many likes as their male counterparts and more mentions. This latter finding is primarily driven by women mentioning other women more frequently, while men mention both women and men equally.