Empirical Welfare Analysis - When Preferences Matter

E-print/Working paper (2013)

Fleurbaey and Maniquet have proposed the criteria of conditional equality and of egalitarian equivalence to assess the equity among individuals in an ordinal setting. Empirical applications are rare and ... [more ▼]

Fleurbaey and Maniquet have proposed the criteria of conditional equality and of egalitarian equivalence to assess the equity among individuals in an ordinal setting. Empirical applications are rare and only partially consistent with their framework. We propose a new empirical approach that relies on individual preferences, is consistent with the ordinal criteria and enables to compare them with the cardinal criteria. We estimate a utility function that incorporates individual heterogeneous preferences, obtain ordinal measures of well-being and apply conditional equality and egalitarian equivalence. We then propose two cardinal measures of well-being, that are comparable with the ordinal model, to compute Roemer’s and Van de gaer’s criteria. Finally we compare the characteristics of the worst-off displayed by each criterion. We apply this model to a sample of US micro data and obtain that about 18% of the worst-off are not common to all criteria. [less ▲]

Trade integration and trade imbalances in the European Union: a network perspective

E-print/Working paper (2013)

We study the ever more integrated and ever more unbalanced trade relationships between European countries. To better capture the complexity of economic networks, we propose two global measures that assess ... [more ▼]

We study the ever more integrated and ever more unbalanced trade relationships between European countries. To better capture the complexity of economic networks, we propose two global measures that assess the trade integration and the trade imbalances of the European countries. These measures are the network (or indirect) counterparts to traditional (or direct) measures such as the trade-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and trade deficit-to-GDP ratios. Our indirect tools account for the European inter-country trade structure and follow (i) a decomposition of the global trade flow into elementary flows that highlight the long-range dependencies between exporting and importing economies and (ii) the commute-time distance for trade integration,which measures the impact of a perturbation in the economy of a country on another country, possibly through intermediate partners by domino effect. Our application addresses the impact of the launch of the Euro. We find that the indirect imbalance measures better identify the countries ultimately bearing deficits and surpluses, by neutralizing the impact of trade transit countries, such as the Netherlands. Among others, we find that ultimate surpluses of Germany are quite concentrated in only three partners. We also show that for some countries, the direct and indirect measures of trade integration diverge, thereby revealing that these countries (e.g. Greece and Portugal) trade to a smaller extent with countries considered as central in the European Union network. [less ▲]

Empirical Essays on Commodity Prices

Doctoral thesis (2012)

Real Exchanges Rates in Commodity Producing Countries: A Reappraisal

in Journal of International Money & Finance (2012), 31(6), 1482-1502

Commodities Inventory Effect

Poster (2012)