Identification in Separable Matching with Observed Transfers

Imposing a separability assumption on the joint surplus in transferable utility matching models has proved very useful in empirical work. Yet when only “who matches whom” is observed, the distributions of unobserved heterogeneity cannot be identified separately. This note derives the distribution of equiilibrium transfers and shows that if the distribution of transfers within cells is observed, the distribution of heterogeneity can often be recovered, separability can be tested, and complementarities in surplus inferred

From Aggregate Betting Data to Individual Risk Preferences

As a textbook model of contingent markets, horse races are an attractive environment to study the attitudes towards risk of bettors. We innovate on the literature by explicitly considering heterogeneous bettors and allowing for very general risk preferences, including non-expected utility. We build on a standard single-crossing condition on preferences to derive testable implications; and we show how parimutuel data allow us to uniquely identify the distribution of preferences among the population of bettors. We then estimate the model on data from US races. Within the expected utility class, the most usual specfications (CARA and CRRA) fit the data very badly. Our results show evidence for both heterogeneity and nonlinear probability weighting

Cupid’s Invisible Hand: Social Surplus and Identification in Matching Models

We investigate a model of one-to-one matching with transferable utility when some of the characteristics of the players are unobservable to the analyst. We allow for a wide class of distributions of unobserved heterogeneity, subject only to a separability assumption that generalizes Choo and Siow (2006). We first show that the stable matching maximizes a social gain function that trades off exploiting complementarities in observable characteristic sand matching on unobserved characteristics. We use this result to derive simple closed-form formulæ that identify the joint surplus in every possible match and the equilibrium utilities of all participants, given any known distribution of unobserved heterogeneity. If transfers are observed, then the pre-transfer utilities of both partners are also identified. We discuss computational issues and provide an algorithm that is extremely efficient in important instances. Finally, we present two estimators of the joint surplus and we revisit Choo and Siow’s empirical application to illustrate the potential of our more general approach

Politiques publiques et espaces verts urbains

Le paysage est une construction politique, culturelle et économique des rapports qu'entretiennent les sociétés humaines à l'espace. L'approche économique permet d'éclairer certains mécanismes liés à l'évolution et l'organisation du paysage

Organisation de la filière paysage en milieu urbain

Le paysage est défini par la Convention européenne du paysage comme « une partie de territoire telle que perçue par les populations, dont le caractère résulte de l\u27action de facteurs naturels et/ou humains et de leurs interrelations ». C’est, à maints égards, une construction politique, culturelle et économique des rapports qu’entretiennent les sociétés humaines à l’espace.Quels sont les éléments qui fondent l’organisation sociale de l’espace ? Quels sont les mécanismes à l’origine de son évolution ? Qu’est-ce qui rassemble les individus, malgré la divergence de leurs intérêts ? L’approche économique du paysage s’est développée ces dernières années pour répondre à ces questions et à bien d’autres. Cet ouvrage collectif réunit les résultats récents de la recherche sur ce thèm

Does Fertility Respond to Financial Incentives?

There has been little empirical work evaluating the sensitivity of fertility to financial incentives at the household level. We put forward an identification strategy that relies on the fact that variation of wages induces variation in benefits and tax credits among "comparable" households. We implement this approach by estimating a discrete choice model of female participation and fertility, using individual data from the French Labor Force Survey and a fairly detailed representation of the French tax-benefit system. Our results suggest that financial incentives play a notable role in determining fertility decisions in France, both for the first and for the third child. As an example, an unconditional child benefit with a direct cost of 0.3% of GDP might raise total fertility by about 0.3 point