Publications des chercheurs de PSE

Cette thèse comporte trois chapitres visant à analyser la mondialisation et les dynamiques d’innovation dans les économies d’Amérique latine. Le chapitre 1 L’ouverture chinoise et la désindustrialisation prématurée dans les pays d’Amérique latine : preuve empirique 1995-2006 donne un aperçu du dynamisme des échanges après l’ouverture chinoise en 2001, aux niveaux nationaux et sectoriels dans la région latino-américaine. Ce chapitre est écrit avec Lorenzo Cassi. Puis, le chapitre 2 s’intitule Stratégies d’innovation, innovation et productivité des entreprises : le cas du Chili en 2009-2016. Nous nous concentrons sur le dynamisme de l’innovation pour les entreprises manufacturières chiliennes et nous étudions plus spécifiquement le comportement des stratégies d’innovation au niveau des entreprises. Enfin, le chapitre 3 s’intitule Coopération en matière de R&D, innovation et performance des entreprises : le cas du Chili en 2009-1016. Nous nous intéressons à nouveau au dynamisme de l’innovation des entreprises manufacturières chiliennes, et plus particulièrement aux stratégies de coopération en matière de R&D. Les trois chapitres peuvent être lus indépendamment les uns des autres.

Drawing on a comprehensive compilation of quantile shares and inequality measures for 34 countries, including over 5,600 estimated Gini coefficients, we review the measurement of income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean over the last seven decades. We find that there is quite a bit of uncertainty regarding inequality levels for the same country/year combinations. Differences in inequality levels estimated from household surveys alone are present but they derive from differences in the construction of the welfare indicator, the unit of analysis, or the treatment of the data. With harmonized household surveys, the discrepancies are quite small. The range, however, expands significantly when to correct for undercoverage and underreporting especially at the top of the distribution inequality estimates come from some combination of surveys and administrative tax data. The range increases even further when survey-based income aggregates are scaled to achieve consistency not only with tax registries but with National Accounts. Since no single method to correct for underreporting at the top is fully convincing at present, we are left with (often wide) ranges, or bands, of inequality as our best summaries of inequality levels. Reassuringly, however, the dynamic patterns are generally robust across the bands. Although the evidence roughly until the 1970s is too fragmentary and difficult to compare, clearer patterns emerge for the last fifty years. The main feature is a broad inverted U curve, with inequality rising in most countries prior to and often during the 1990s, and falling during the early 21st century, at least until around 2015, when trends appear to diverge across countries. This pattern is broadly robust but features considerable variation in timing and magnitude depending on the country.

In this paper, we use tax and household survey data to assess the history of income distribution in Argentina since the beginning of the 20th century. Until the 1970s, the country experienced a fall in inequality in spite of lower income growth. Since then, inequality has generally increased possibly as a result of large-scale shocks such as macroeconomic crises and reform attempts, resulting in a convergence towards traditionally more unequal neighboring countries.

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programmes are important anti-poverty programmes. There is relatively little evidence, however, of ongoing effectiveness several years after they have begun. Such evidence is particularly relevant for policymakers because programme effects may become larger or smaller over time. We analyse whether children exposed since birth to a CCT in El Salvador have better schooling outcomes at initial school ages. The results demonstrate that exposure significantly increased school enrolment and attainment for five-year-olds in preschool. The pattern of impacts suggests continued programme exposure might be improving primary school readiness or shifting norms around child investment.