Common Good Institutions, Identity in the Workplace, and Value Dynamics

The theory of social choice stresses that the general interest determined through the aggregation of individual preferences implies interpersonal utility comparisons and hence necessarily a notion of common good beyond individual preferences. The pursuit of the common good falls to all services of the state and drives their individual decisions. Economic model of identity in the workplace predicts that outsider public sector workers may internalize the common good value to minimize cognitive dissonance. To test this hypothesis, I study the dynamics of preferences for workers in public versus private sector jobs. For identification, I use panel data and exploit within-individual variations, alleviating endogeneity concern related to selection into occupation. Further addressing the dynamic self-selection concern, I find that, for any given public sector, switching into the public sector increases by 15% the likelihood of exhibiting the common good value while having a negative effect on left-wing ideology and public trust. By contrast, switching into the private sector crowds out common good value. Examining causal mechanisms, I show that the public sector effect is most pronounced for workers facing higher dissonance costs. Furthermore, I find that workers adopting the common good value in the workplace adopt a general behavior consistent with active participation in the public realm, pointing to value internalization. Overall, this paper highlights how investing in factual public sector’s common good pursuit narrative can have broader and rapid implications for the prevalence of common good value in the society

Local Public-Services Provision under Public Private Partnershps : Contractual Design and Contracting Parties Incentives

This paper studies the incentives of the private provider, but also of the public authority, under various contractual forms of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). A critical aspect of any PPP contract is the allocation of demand risk between the public authority and the private provider. I show that contracts in which the private provider bears demand risk motivate more the public authority from responding to customer needs. This is due to the fact that consumers are empowered when the private provider bears demand risk, i.e. they have the possibility to oust the private provider in case of non-satisfaction with the service provision, which provides procuring authorities with more credibility in side-trading and then more incentives to be responsive. However, contracts in which the private provider does not bear demand risk motivate more the private provider from investing in cost-reducing efforts. I highlight then a tradeoff in the allocation of demand risk between productive and allocative efficiency. The striking policy implication of this paper would be that the current trend towards a greater resort to contracts where private providers bear little or no demand risk may not be optimal. I apply these results to understanding three famous case studies

Are Public Private Partnerships that Rigid ? And Why ? : Evidence from Toll Road Concession Contracts

Transport concession contracts are commonly said to be standardized and too rigid. They would not allow public authorities to adapt them to evolving context and circumstances. This paper aims at challenging this view and, more particularly, the view that contractual rigidity for transport concessions is exogenous. Using a transaction cost framework, we disentangle between three main determinants of contractual rigidity: traffic uncertainty; connivance between contracting parties; quality of the institutional environment. Using an original database of toll road concession contracts, we observe a great variety of provisions for toll adjustment. We find that these exogenous determinants significantly influence contractual choices

Cultural Biases in Public Service Delivery : Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Approach

What determines the share of public employment, at a given size of the State, in countries of similar levels of economic development? While the theoretical and empirical literature on this issue has mostly considered technical dimensions (efficiency and political considerations), this paper emphasizes the role of culture and quantifies it. We build a representative database for contracting choices of municipalities in Switzerland and exploit the discontinuity at the Swiss language border at identical actual set of policies and institutions to analyze the causal effect of culture on the choice of how public services are provided. We find that French-speaking border municipalities are 50% less likely to contract with the private sector than their German-speaking adjacent municipalities. Technical dimensions are much smaller by comparison. This result points out that culture is a source of a potential bias that distorts the optimal choice for public service delivery. Systematic differences in the level of confidence in public administration and private companies potentially explain this discrepancy in private sector participation in public services provision

Selecting a global optimization method to estimate the oceanic particle cycling rate constants

The objective is to select an inverse method to estimate the parameters of a dynamical model of the oceanic particle cycling from in situ data. Estimating the parameters of a dynamical model is a nonlinear inverse problem, even in the case of linear dynamics. Generally, biogeochemical models are characterized by complex nonlinear dynamics and by a high sensitivity to their parameters. This makes the parameter estimation problem strongly nonlinear. We show that an approach based on a linearization around an a priori solution and on a gradient descent method is not appropriate given the complexity of the related cost functions and our poor a priori knowledge of the parameters. Global Optimization Algorithms (GOAs) appear as better candidates. We present a comparison of a deterministic (TRUST), and two stochastic (simulated annealing and genetic algorithm) GOAs. From an exact model integration, a synthetic data set is generated which mimics the space-time sampling of a reference campaign. Simulated optimizations of two to the eight model parameters are performed. The parameter realistic ranges of values are the only available a priori information. The results and the behavior of the GOAs are analyzed in details. The three GOAs can recover at least two parameters. However, the gradient requirement of deterministic methods proves a serious drawback. Moreover, the complexity of the TRUST makes the estimation of more than two parameters hardly conceivable. The genetic algorithm quickly converges toward the eight parameter solution, whereas the simulated annealing is trapped by a local minimum. Generally, the genetic algorithm is less computationally expensive, swifter to converge, and has more robust procedural parameters than the simulated annealing

Political accountability, incentives, and Contractual design of public private partnerships

Service adaptations, when there is changing demand or problems regarding the service provision, constitute a major issue in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). So far, studies have explained the ex post adaptation problems by the distorted incentives for the private public-service provider to invest in adaptation efforts. However, as any PPP is between a public authority and a private public-service provider (no market price), public authorities have also an important role to play in the adaptation of the private public-service provision over time. This paper studies how the contractual design of PPPs affects accountability and incentives for contractually unanticipated service adaptations. More specifically, we observe worldwide two main different contracting out procedures: the concession contract and the availability contract. The main difference between these two contractual practices concerns the demand risk, which is borne by private providers in the first case and by public authorities in the second case. This paper shows that there are two main effects of the contractual design on accountability. (1) Concession contracts, compared to availability contracts, motivate more public authorities from investigating and responding to public demands. This is due to the fact that under a concession contract consumers are empowered, i.e. have the possibility to oust the private provider, which provides public authorities with more credibility in side-trading. (2) Concession contracts can give greater adaptation effort incentives to private providers than availability contracts, since, if private providers bear the demand risk, they can receive private gains from implementing the adaptation. The striking policy implication of this paper is then that the trend towards a greater resort to contracts where private providers bear little or no demand risk may not be optimal in terms of allocative efficiency

Recherches écologiques dans la savane de lamto (cote-d’ivoire) : étude quantitative préliminaire des micro arthropodes du sol

Un échantillonnage quantitatif préliminaire des Micro arthro podes du sol a été effectué pendant quatre mois à l’aide d’une sonde pédologique en savane brûlée et en savane non brûlée. Les extractions ont été faites au moyen d’appareils de Berlèse- Tullgren. Cette étude montre que la densité des Micro arthropodes est faible dans le sol, plus importante dans les touffes de Graminées. Les Acariens plus abondants dans les couches superficielles de sol (0-5 cm) et en profondeur (40-60 cm) que dans les strates inter médiaires dominent le peuplement. La faune est pauvre en Ori batida, les Actinedida étant numériquement le groupe le plus important des Acariens. Les Collemboles viennent au second rang, suivis des Myriapodes et des Diploures. Les données présentées permettent des comparaisons avec divers résultats obtenus en Europe, en Amérique du Sud et en Afrique. Le but des travaux en cours est de compléter l’étude descrip tive des synusies, de rechercher des corrélations avec les facteurs physiques et chimiques du milieu, de comparer les peuplements de savane brûlée et de savane non brûlée, et enfin d’aborder l’étude fonctionnelle des populations du point de vue de la consom mation de matière végétale morte.A preliminary, quantitative study of soil micro-arthropod populations was made during a four-month period in burnt and unburnt savanna areas at Lamto in the Ivory Coast. Soil samples were taken to a depth of 80 cm using a core borer, and extraction undertaken using a dry funnel method. Densities were low in soil, higher under grass clumps. Ave rage densities of Acarina, numerically the dominant micro arthropod group (comprising 74 % of total), were 34,000/m2 and 20,000/m2 in burnt and unburnt areas respectively. Acarina were more abundant in the 0-5 cm and 40-60 cm soil horizons than in intermediate horizons. Within the Acarina, Actinedida were numerically the most important group, while Oribatida were poorly represented. After the Acarina, Collembola were the most important soil micro-arthropod group, followed by Myriapoda and Diplura

Alès Catherine, Yanomami. L’ire et le désir

L’ouvrage de Catherine Alès se distingue par son érudition et l’aisance avec laquelle y sont abordées les théories relatives à l’organisation sociale et la parenté. Il s’agit ici de violence, de guerre et d’organisation sociale, thèmes choisis par l’auteur pour éclairer les types de relation entre les Yanomami. Les chapitres de ce livre, à l’exception du dixième et dernier, sont des rééditions de textes parus entre 1984 et 2003. L’ensemble montre à quel point l’auteur a su accumuler les donné..

Political accountability, incentives, and Contractual design of public private partnerships

Service adaptations, when there is changing demand or problems regarding the service provision, constitute a major issue in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). So far, studies have explained the ex post adaptation problems by the distorted incentives for the private public-service provider to invest in adaptation efforts. However, as any PPP is between a public authority and a private public-service provider (no market price), public authorities have also an important role to play in the adaptation of the private public-service provision over time. This paper studies how the contractual design of PPPs affects accountability and incentives for contractually unanticipated service adaptations. More specifically, we observe worldwide two main different contracting out procedures: the concession contract and the availability contract. The main difference between these two contractual practices concerns the demand risk, which is borne by private providers in the first case and by public authorities in the second case. This paper shows that there are two main effects of the contractual design on accountability. (1) Concession contracts, compared to availability contracts, motivate more public authorities from investigating and responding to public demands. This is due to the fact that under a concession contract consumers are empowered, i.e. have the possibility to oust the private provider, which provides public authorities with more credibility in side-trading. (2) Concession contracts can give greater adaptation effort incentives to private providers than availability contracts, since, if private providers bear the demand risk, they can receive private gains from implementing the adaptation. The striking policy implication of this paper is then that the trend towards a greater resort to contracts where private providers bear little or no demand risk may not be optimal in terms of allocative efficiency