Skill Supply and Biased technical change

Cet article contribue au débat sur le progrès technique biaisé en analysant la dynamique de l'offre de travail qualifié et l'inégalité salariale dans un modèle de croissance endogène avec progrès technique biaisé en faveur des capacités. En raison d'un effet de découragement, l'augmentation des inégalités intra groupes réduit l'incitaiton à s'éduquer pour ceux qui ont des capacités ordinaires. Ce méchanisme induit une relation non montone entre le taux de croisance de l'économie et l'offre de travail qualifié, phénomène qui s'est manifesté dans certains grands pays de l'OCDE au cours des années 1970 et 1980.

Entrepreneurship turnover and endogenous returns to ability

This paper proposes a model of entrepreneurial turnover highlighting a non-monotone relationship between technological change and ability-biased sorting into entrepreneurial types. Entrepreneurial decisions are examined in a two-stage model under uncertainty in which entrepreneurs decide to abandon a project and start a new venture depending on technological change and on ability. We show that technological change affects the quality distribution of entrepreneurship by increasing the ex-ante number of entrepreneurs undertaking the most efficient projects and decreasing the post-entry number of entrepreneurs of low-quality firms who choose to continue their initial business. A higher rate of technological change is therefore likely to induce a cleansing effect on entrepreneurial activity and to alter the market perception of business creation.Entrepreneur entry and exit; Technological change; Selection; Stigma

SRI analysis and asset management : independent or convergent ? : A field study on the French market

This article analyzes how the actual and expected future activities of French Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) analysts may reveal a convergence process between SRI decisions and traditional financial investment decisions, that is a form of "mainstreaming" of SRI processes, by asking the SRI analysts themselves how their work has evolved and how they perceive their positioning in the asset management sector. We present the results of a field survey on the composition and activities of French SRI analysts' teams of large institutional investors and asset managers in France in 2009. We show that the convergence towards the mainstream financial analysts seems to be clearly engaged. However, the SRI domain is still emerging and remains very fragmented leading to a wide heterogeneity of practices and positioning in the respective organizations. This is interpreted as a clear sign of a transition phase.Field survey ; French Asset Management industry ; Mainstreaming ; Socially Responsible Investments (SRI)

Why will the Kuznets Curve always reverse ?

In this paper, we develop a model of innovation-based growth to address the issue of skill-biased technical change over the long run. We show that innovations fluctuate endogenously from skilled to unskilled sectors, thereby generating periods of increasing and decreasing wage inequality. This could contribute to explain that technological progress exerts a non monotonic pressure on wage inequality over the long run.cycles; innovatio; driven growth; Kuznets curve; wage inequality

Human Capital Accumulation and the Transition from Specialization to Multi-tasking

Cet article fournit des fondements théoriques à l'augmentation simultanée de la polyvalence, le capital humain et l'usage de l'informatique dans de nombreux pays de l'OCDE dans les années 1990. les liens entre organisation du travail, technologie et capital humain sont modélisés en établissant les conditions sous lesquelles les firmes allouent le temps de travail des travailleurs entre plusieurs tâches productives. Le changment organisationnel est ensuite analysé dans une perspective dynamique comme la transition de la spécialsiation à la polyvalence en mettant l'accent sur ses déterminants technologiques et éducatifs.

SRI Analysis and Asset Management: Independent or Convergent? A Field Study on the French Market

This article analyzes how the actual and expected future activities of French Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) analysts may reveal a convergence process between SRI decisions and traditional financial investment decisions, that is a form of “mainstreaming” of SRI processes, by asking the SRI analysts themselves how their work has evolved and how they perceive their positioning in the asset management sector. We present the results of a field survey on the composition and activities of French SRI analysts’ teams of large institutional investors and asset managers in France in 2009. We show that the convergence towards the mainstream financial analysts seems to be clearly engaged. However, the SRI domain is still emerging and remains very fragmented leading to a wide heterogeneity of practices and positioning in the respective organizations. This is interpreted as a clear sign of a transition phase.Field survey; French Asset; Management industry; Mainstreaming; Socially Responsible Investments (SRI)

Incentives for Accuracy in Analyst Research

This paper proposes a model to analyze the dynamic relations between incentive contracts and analysts' effort in providing accurate research when both ethical and reputational concerns matter. First, we show that reputation picks up ability and thus serves as a sorting device: when analysts have a relatively low reputation for providing research quality (below a threshold level) banks find it more profitable to offer a mix of monetary and non monetary (ethic based) incentives and rely on the analyst's work ethic in ordre to provide research quality. Alternatively, when analysts have a high reputation, full financial (performance based) incentives contracts offer a substantial reward for their contribution to the firm's profits. Second, we find that the design of compensation contracts, in the presence of reputational concerns and work ethic, may lead to incentive problems: full financial incentives contracts may exacerbate conflicts of interest by giving analysts extrinsic rewards on reporting, thereby inducing them to prefer high short term benefits to the detriment of long term research and coverage effort. On the contrary, a mix of monetary and non monetary rewards based on the analyst's work ethic may allow them to resist pressures from conflicts of interest and induces a high research effort thus enhancing long-run reputation.Motivation, Reputation, Reporting, Investment analysts.

Why the Kuznets Curve will always Reverse ?

In this paper, we develop a model of innovation-based growth to address the issue of skill-biased technical change over the long run. We show that innovations fluctuate endogenously from skill-intensive to unskilled-intensive sectors, thereby generating periods of increasing and decreasing wage inequality. This could contribute to explain that technological progress exerts a non monotonic pressure on wage inequality over the long run.J31; O31; O41

New Organizational Forms, Learning and Incentive-Based Inequality

This paper analyses the influence of organisational change on the widening of earnings inequality, depending on the nature of employers' policy with respect to both how to deal with moral hazard problems and how to manage the access to skills. In a linear agency model which explains organisational change from an incentive perspective, we show that new job design is inequality increasing. However, the extent of inequality depends on the principal's strategy for managing the access to the higher skills required by organisational change: selective hiring vs. in-house training. Training reveals to be another incentive device added to monetary schemes or delegation. By comparison with\ the selective hiring strategy, training entails a lower average wage and a lower expected wage gap between- and within- skill groups.incentives; job design; learning; organisational innovation; principal-agent relationship

Skill Supply and Biased technical change

International audienceThis article contributes to the debate on skill-biased technical change by studying the dynamics of skill supply and wage inequality in an endogenous growth model with ability-biased technical progress. Due to a discouragement effect, rising within groups inequality reduces incentives to become educated for ordinary-ability workers. This mechanism generates a non-monotonic relationship between the growth rate and skill supply driving wage inequality upward during periods of accelerating technical change. This theoretical explanation is consistent with the apparent negative relationship between the relative skill supply and premium in the 1970s and 1980s in major OECD countries.Cet article contribue au débat sur le progrès technique biaisé en analysant la dynamique de l'offre de travail qualifié et l'inégalité salariale dans un modèle de croissance endogène avec progrès technique biaisé en faveur des capacités. En raison d'un effet de découragement, l'augmentation des inégalités intra groupes réduit l'incitaiton à s'éduquer pour ceux qui ont des capacités ordinaires. Ce méchanisme induit une relation non montone entre le taux de croisance de l'économie et l'offre de travail qualifié, phénomène qui s'est manifesté dans certains grands pays de l'OCDE au cours des années 1970 et 1980