Earthquakes and Mental Health

E-print/Working paper (2021)

Earthquakes may seriously deteriorate mental health by generating fear and stress as a result of economic and human losses. However, mental health has also been found to improve as a result of greater ... [more ▼]

Earthquakes may seriously deteriorate mental health by generating fear and stress as a result of economic and human losses. However, mental health has also been found to improve as a result of greater social cohesion in affected communities after the event. We examine the short-run effects of earthquakes on a wide set of mental health outcomes in Ecuador. To this end, we combine hospital admissions, death records, and survey data with precise measures of local seismic activity to exploit the plausibly random spatial and temporal nature of earthquake intensity. We find that damaging earthquakes decrease the propensity to be admitted, the number of days of hospitalisation for mental and behavioural disorders, and deaths due to suicide. Estimates from nationally-representative surveys provide suggestive evidence of increased life satisfaction, trust, and religious observance, and thus provide a possible explanation for the fall in admissions and suicides after an earthquake. [less ▲]

Impact of mining boom on the quality of public goods in Sub-Saharan Africa

E-print/Working paper (2021)

In this paper, we investigate the impact of public mining revenues on perception indicators of public goods quality in five mining countries that have recently experienced a boom in their government ... [more ▼]

In this paper, we investigate the impact of public mining revenues on perception indicators of public goods quality in five mining countries that have recently experienced a boom in their government revenues: Burkina Faso, Ghana, D.R. Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia. The effect of the tax revenue boom is identified using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy. Our estimations indicate that people living in mining regions as having a sense of structural disadvantage in terms of the provision of public goods; however, this perception is pro-cyclical in the presence of resource booms/busts. Our results hold even after taking account of the possible endogeneity of our measure of resource revenue. [less ▲]

Contribution fiscale des entreprises au Mali : étude sur données individuelles

in Mondes en Développement (2021), 195(3), 75-94

This paper analyzes the tax burden borne by a large number of Malian companies (3,474) representing the totality of the formal sector of this country. By exploiting individual firm data collected from ... [more ▼]

This paper analyzes the tax burden borne by a large number of Malian companies (3,474) representing the totality of the formal sector of this country. By exploiting individual firm data collected from financial statements and balance sheets, we highlight the determinants of effective tax rates, such as firms’ size, industry, location, and other corporate attributes. We show that larger firms do benefit from lower effective tax rates, and this result is robust to various proxies of size and is even reinforced for profit-making firms. [less ▲]

Profit taxation and royalties: evidence from gold mines in Sub-Saharan Africa

E-print/Working paper (2019)

In this paper, we analyze theoretically and empirically the effects of tax changes on firms’ profits in extractive industries. In the theoretical part, we assume a country that levies a profit tax and a ... [more ▼]

In this paper, we analyze theoretically and empirically the effects of tax changes on firms’ profits in extractive industries. In the theoretical part, we assume a country that levies a profit tax and a royalty on the profits of extractive firms to maximize its tax revenues. The mining companies may reduce their taxable income by cost manipulation. By analyzing the optimal choice of the government and of the firms, we first establish the optimal tax policy and then we investigate the impact of the optimal fiscal policy on firms’ profits. In the empirical part of the paper, we estimate the effect of the profit tax and royalty on the extracting firms’ profit in African countries during the period spanning from 2007 to 2018. We use the Mining Intelligence database to constitute a panel of annual individual data from a database of 363 gold mines located in 21 Sub-Saharan countries. We obtain an inverse relationship between the tax rate change of the two tax instruments and the profit of the firms. [less ▲]

The War of Rare Earth Elements: A Dynamic Game Approach

E-print/Working paper (2019)

Rare earth elements govern today’s high-tech world and are deemed to be essential for the attainment of sustainable development goals. Since the 1990s, these elements have been predominantly supplied by ... [more ▼]

Rare earth elements govern today’s high-tech world and are deemed to be essential for the attainment of sustainable development goals. Since the 1990s, these elements have been predominantly supplied by one single actor, China. However, due to the increasing global relevance of their availability, other countries are now encouraged to enter the market. The objective of this paper is to analyze the strategic interactions among (potential) suppliers. In particular, we are interested in (1) the optimal timing for a newcomer (e.g. the U.S.) to enter the market, (2) the incumbent’s (i.e. China’s) optimal behavior, and (3) the cost-efficiency of cooperative vs. competitive market relations. By setting up a continuous-time dynamic game model, we show that (1) the newcomer should postpone the production launch until its rare earth reserves coincide with those of the incumbent, (2) the incumbent should strive for a late market entry and therefore keep its monopolistic resource extraction at the lowest possible level, (3) compared to the payoffs under competition, cooperation leads to a Pareto improvement when started at an early stage. The findings of our model are particularly relevant for the rational strategic positioning of the two great powers, America and China. [less ▲]

The Impact of Unilateral Commitment on Transboundary Pollution

in Environmental Modeling & Assessment (2017)

To reach a common target of environmental quality, countries can choose to commit to a stream of pollution abatement right from the beginning of the game or decide upon abatement at each moment of time ... [more ▼]

To reach a common target of environmental quality, countries can choose to commit to a stream of pollution abatement right from the beginning of the game or decide upon abatement at each moment of time. Though most of the previous literature studies homogeneous strategies where no country or all countries commit to a (same) predefined policy, reality goes along a different way: some countries make more efforts than others to reduce pollutant emission. The main novelty of this paper resides in the introduction of this kind of heterogeneous strategic behavior currently observed among large pollution nations. We find that the pollution level can be lower under heterogeneous than under homogeneous strategies. A stringent environmental quality target will induce the committed player to produce an abatement effort that more than compensates the free-riding attitude of the non-committed player. [less ▲]

Réformes fiscales et du droit des affaires en Afrique subsaharienne. Quel impact sur la mobilisation des recettes fiscales ?

in Hiez, David; Menetrey, Séverine (Eds.) L'effectivité du droit économique dans l'espace OHADA (2016)

Hurricane Damage Risk Assessment in the Caribbean: An Analysis using Synthetic Hurricane Events and Nightlight Imagery

Scientific Conference (2014, July 13)

Pollution and child mortality: the case of tropospheric ozone in sub-Saharan Africa

Presentation (2014, May 13)

Carbon capture and storage and transboundary pollution: A differential game approach

in European Journal of Operational Research (2014)

We study the strategic behavior of two countries facing transboundary CO2 pollution under a differential game setting. In our model, the reduction of CO2 concentration occurs through the carbon capture ... [more ▼]

We study the strategic behavior of two countries facing transboundary CO2 pollution under a differential game setting. In our model, the reduction of CO2 concentration occurs through the carbon capture and storage process, rather than through the adoption of cleaner technologies. Furthermore, we first provide the explicit short-run dynamics for this dynamic game with symmetric open-loop and a special Markovian Nash strategy. Then, we compare these strategies at the games’ steady states and along some balanced growth paths. Our results show that if the initial level of CO2 is relatively high, state dependent emissions reductions can lead to higher overall environmental quality, hence, feedback strategy leads to less social waste. [less ▲]