The Impact of Resident Status Regulations on Immigrants' Labor Supply: Evidence for France

Many OECD countries have changed the rules for immigrants in recent decades, generally making harder to enter and to stay. France is one example. This paper studies the immigrants' response to the 2004 reform of the immigration law, which made it harder for foreigners to obtain resident status. The strategy for identification exploits a discontinuity in exposure to the reform, determined by the time of entry. The first result is that the 2004 reform prompted a wave of departures among low-skilled, unemployed, unmarried men. This effect is observed among those with previous work experience in France and searching for work, indicating that the difficulty to find a job without resident status creates an incentive for outmigration. Second, the obtention of resident status lowers significantly but marginally the labor supply of women, consistently with an adjustment role of women's work, and with a small substitution effect of labor income with welfare benefits. Overall, these results suggest that restrictions on access to resident status prompted outmigration, but not among the population with the most elastic labor supply. Thus, the reform did not reach its main objectives: selection occurred, but not of those less willing to work; cutting access to benefits increased labor supply, but only marginally

Price discrimination in bribe payments: Evidence from informal cross-border trade in West Africa

International audienceWhat factors explain the persistence and pervasiveness of corruption in certain parts of the world? In West Africa, many day-to-day transactions require the payment of bribes. Quantitative evidence on these bribes and their determinants is scarce. This paper sheds light on the level and the frequency of bribe payments in informal coss-border trade. It examines how bribes depend on the trade regime and on market structure. We rely on data from a survey of traders in Benin to estimate the determinants of bribe payments. We exploit variations in the trade regime across Benin’s borders, as well as changes in trade restrictions over time and variations in route availability across space and time. We find that reductions in trade barriers help to lower bribes, but do not eliminate them, with bribes remaining frequent in liberalized trade regimes. These results suggest that collusive corruption – used to circumvent regulations and taxes – coexists with coercive corruption, where officials use their monopoly power to extract transfers from traders

Terms-of-Trade Impacts of Trade Agreements and the Choice of Trade Policy

This paper studies the impacts and determinants of trade policy. I use data on applied tariff protection of world countries over 2001-2007 to estimate sector-level trade elasticities. I then calibrate a structural gravity model of world trade. I compute the impacts of trade agreements which were implemented and of those which were not. I find that expected real income gains predict the signing of PTAs. Decomposing these gains shows that domestic mill price increases, reflecting market access gains, have a larger impact than the impact on the consumer price index. I also find that larger expected gains from multilateral liberalization reduce the probability to engage in preferential agreements

La politique économique dans la mondialisation

This thesis consists of four chapters that examine various aspects of economic policy in its relation to globalization and economic integration. The first chapter considers the question of the link between trade specialization and growth. The results identify a robust empirical ink between initial level of sophistication at province level and real GOP per capita growth in the case of China. The second chapter examines the relationship between the structure of the Chinese banking system and the structure of exports. The empirical study reveals the presence of credit constraints weighing on domestic private firms, which export relatively less in sectors more dependent on external financing. The third chapter examines the impact of immigration on labor markets in a setting with fragmented regional markets. It shows that in this framework, the spatial mobility of migrant workers contributes to increase the efficiency of labor markets, but immigration policy becomes more restrictive under certain conditions. The fourth chapter examines the determinants of preferential free trade agreements. It shows that the gains in market access are a stronger determinant of a country's probability of signing an agreement than the gains accruing to consumers in the form of lower pricesCette thèse comporte quatre chapitres qui examinent plusieurs aspects de la politique économique- dans son rapport à la mondialisation et à l'intégration économique. Le premier chapitre considère la question du lien entre spécialisation commerciale et croissance. Les résultats identifient un lien empirique robuste entre niveau initial de sophistication et croissance du PIB réel par tête dans le cas de la Chine. Le second chapitre étudie le lien entre la structure du système bancaire chinois et la structure des exportations L'étude empirique révèle la présence de contraintes de crédit pesant sur les firmes privées domestiques) qui exportent relativement moins dans les secteurs les plus dépendants de financements extérieurs. Le troisième chapitre étudie l'impact de l'immigration sur les marchés du travail dans un cadre de marchés régionaux fragmentés. Il montre que dans ce cadre, la mobilité spatiale des travailleurs immigrés contribue à augmenter l'efficacité des marchés du travail, mais que la politique d'immigration devient plus restrictive, sous certaines conditions. Le quatrième chapitre étudie les déterminants des accords préférentiels de libre-échange entre pays. Il montre que les gains en termes d'accès au marché sont un déterminant plus fort de la probabilité de signer un accord que ceux des consommateurs

The Impact of Naturalizations on Job Mobility and Wages: Evidence from France

This paper studies the impact of naturalization on the labor market outcomes of foreign-born workers in France. Using a large panel dataset of workers employed in France over 1993-2001, I find that naturalization is associated with a sharp increase in job mobility: immigrants tend to change occupations and employers, in the same year as they naturalize. Turning to wages, I find evidence that naturalization commands a wage premium, which is associated with employment mobility. For workers initially in low-skill occupations, the wage premium is conditional on occupational mobility. For those in middle- or high-skilled occupations, there is also evidence of a wage premium, mostly for foreign women; this premium is associated with moves to a different firm. These results suggest that foreign citizenship constrains workers mobility, and are consistent with the hypothesis of a mismatch of foreign workers to their jobs

Economic Integration in the EuroMed: Current Status and Review of Studies

This article draws a picture of the current status of the liberalization process in the Euro-Mediterranean region, and reviews existing studies of this process. Economic integration among the South-Med countries (SMCs) has started in the middle 1990s through intra-regional agreements (GAFTA, Agadir Agreement) and bilateral agreements with the EU. Econometric studies using gravity models generally found important trade creation effects for intra-regional trade, but smaller and asymmetric effects from EU-Med agreements, with an increase of export flows from the EU but no increase of flows in the other direction. Simulations with CGE models shows the main sources of gains (trade creation) and of losses (trade diversion, terms of trade) for SMCs. Studies also suggest that a dismantling of non-tariff barriers and of barriers in services trade could yield substantial gains for SMCs. A table with existing agreements and a picture of economic flows in the region can be found in the annex.REGIONAL INTEGRATION;EUROMED;GRAVITY MODEL;CGEM

Credit constraints, firm ownership and the structure of exports in China

International audienceWe investigate how the export performance in China is influenced by credit constraints. Using panel data from Chinese customs, we show that credit constraints affect the sectoral composition of exports. We confirm that credit constraints provide an advantage to foreign-owned firms and joint ventures over private domestic firms in sectors with higher levels of financial vulnerability. We show that these distortions have been lessened over the period in conjunction with the reduction of State control over the financial intermediation system

What Chinese Provinces Export Matter for Their Income and Export Performance

International audienceWe estimate the relationship between export sophistication and economic and export performance in China. We confirm Hausmann, Hwang and Rodrik (2007)'s prediction that regions that develop more sophisticated goods grasp greater gains from globalization and grow faster. We find that these gains are limited to export activities undertaken by domestic entities. Direct gains do not appear to derive from foreign entities typically engaged in processing trade even though they are the main contributors to the global upgrading of China's exports