Publications des chercheurs de PSE

In this article we assess income inequality across French and British colonial empires between 1920 and 1960. For the first time, income tax tabulations are exploited to assess the case studies of French Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, and Vietnam, which we compare to British colonies and dominions. As measured by top income shares, inequality was high in colonies. It fell after WWII, but stabilized at much higher levels than in mainland France or the United Kingdom in the 1950s. European settlers or expatriates comprised the bulk of top income earners, and only a minority of autochthons could compete in terms of income, particularly in Africa. Top income shares were no higher in settlement colonies, not only because those territories were wealthier but also because the average European settler was less rich than the average European expatriate. Inequality between Europeans in colonies was similar to (or even below) that of the metropoles. In settlement colonies, the post-WWII fall in income inequality can be explained by a fall in inequality between Europeans, mirroring that of the metropoles, and does not imply that the European/autochthon income gap was reduced.

This paper proposes a new method to infer gender preferences from birth spacing. We apply it to Africa, where the least is known about gender preferences. We show that son preference is strong and increasing in North Africa. By contrast, most Sub-Saharan African countries display a preference for variety or no preference at all. Further analysis concludes that traditional family systems predict well the nature of gender preferences, while religion does not. Last, the magnitude of preferences is stronger for wealthier and more educated women.

In this paper, using an original survey, we analyze the distributional impact of international migration across two regions of Algeria. A semi-parametric descriptive analysis is complemented with a parametric model. Remittances do not significantly change the Gini coefficient in nearly any of the counterfactual scenarios. However, migration reduced poverty by 40 percent, with different effects across regions for extreme poverty. Foreign transfers, especially foreign pensions, have a strong positive impact on very poor families in one region. Poor families in the other region suffer from a “double loss”: their migrants do not provide local income and they do not send much money home.

This paper documents cyclical patterns of government expenditures in Sub-Saharan Africa since 1970 and explains variation between countries and over time. Controlling for endogeneity and applying dynamic generalised method of moment (GMM) techniques, it finds that government expenditures are slightly more procyclical in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other developing countries and some evidence that procyclicality in Africa has declined in recent years after a period of high procyclicality during the 1980s and 1990s. We find suggestive evidence that greater fiscal space, proxied by lower external debt, and better access to concessional financing, proxied by larger aid flows, contributed to diminishing procyclicality in the region. We do not find, however, any evidence that political institutions affect fiscal procyclicality in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This article provides a detailed analysis of the trade-related aspects of economic partnership agreement (EPA) negotiations for the six Africa-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) negotiation groups including ECOWAS, CEMAC+, COMESA, SADC, CARIFORUM and Pacific. We use a partial equilibrium model–focusing on the demand side–at the HS6 level (covering 5,113 HS6 products). Two lists of sensitive products are constructed: focusing on the agricultural sectors and tariff revenue preservation. For the European Union (EU), EPAs must translate into 90% fully liberalised bilateral trade to be World Trade Organisation compatible. We use this criterion to simulate EPAs for each negotiating regional block. ACP exports to the EU are forecast to be 10% higher with EPAs, than under the generalised system of preference 'Everything But Arms' option. ACP countries, especially African ones, are forecast to lose an average of 71% of tariff revenues on EU imports in the long run. Imports from other regions of the world will continue to provide tariff revenues. Thus, if we compute tariff revenue losses on total ACP imports, losses are only 25% on average over the long run and as low as 19% if the product lists are optimised. The final impact depends on the importance of tariffs in government revenue and on potential compensatory effects. However, this long-term and less visible effect will depend mainly on the capacity of each ACP country to reorganise its fiscal base.

This article provides a very detailed analysis of the trade-related aspects of Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations. We use a partial equilibrium model – focusing on the demand side – at the HS6 level (covering 5,113 HS6 products). Two lists of sensitive products are constructed, focusing on the agricultural sectors, and tariff revenue preservation. For the European Union, EPAs must translate into 90 percent fully liberalized bilateral trade to be World Trade Organization (WTO) compatible,. We use this criterion to simulate EPAs for each negotiating regional block. ACP exports to the EU are forecast to be 10 percent higher with EPAs, than under the GSP/EBA option. ACP countries are forecast to lose an average of 70 percent of tariff revenues on EU imports in the long run, while imports from other regions of the world will continue to provide tariff revenues. Thus, if we compute tariff revenue losses on total ACP imports, losses are only 26 percent on average over the long run and as low as 19 percent of the product lists are optimized. The final impact depends on the importance of tariffs in government revenue and on potential compensatory effects. However, this long term and less visible effect will depend mainly on the capacity of each ACP country to reorganize its fiscal base.

L'objet de cette étude est de dresser un bilan des performances économiques et sociales du Sénégal durant la première période de la présidence Wade (2001 à 2006). Plus particulièrement, on s'interroge sur l'efficacité de la stratégie de croissance accélérée (SCA) ‐ fortement défendue par les autorités sénégalaises‐ à lutter contre la pauvreté. Après un diagnostic sur les fondements de la croissance macro‐économique au Sénégal, cette étude examine les évolutions de l'emploi et de plusieurs indicateurs sociaux de développement. Nous montrons tout d'abord que les performances de croissance ont été bien en deçà des objectifs fixés par la SCA. Malgré la volonté des autorités à promouvoir l'investissement privé, les changements structurels des fondements de la croissance macroéconomique souhaités ne sont pas observés et la croissance reste fortement tributaire des fonds publics et, partant, de l'aide internationale, comme durant la période post‐dévaluation (1994‐2001). Ensuite, l'étude montre que les secteurs cibles de la SCA ne participent qu'assez marginalement à la création d'emplois de ces dernières années. Par contre, en matière de développement social (mesuré par les raccordements à l'eau, l'électricité et la scolarisation des enfants), on note des augmentations assez importantes des niveaux moyens à l'échelle nationale. Ces progrès sont à mettre au compte des politiques de développement social soutenues par le document stratégique de lutte contre la pauvreté (DSRP). Cependant, les améliorations des indicateurs sociaux des ménages pauvres comme des classes moyennes, notamment en milieu rural, bien que réelles ne permettent pas une réduction significative du dualisme ville/campagne.

Using a 2006 household survey in Mali, we compare current poverty rates and inequality levels with counterfactual ones in the absence of migration and remittances. With proper hypotheses on migrants and a selection model, we are able to impute a counterfactual income for households currently receiving remittances. We show that remittances reduce poverty rates by 5% to 11% and the Gini coefficient by about 5%. Households in the bottom quintiles are more dependent on remittances, which are less substitutable by additional workforce.

The body of literature on purely democratic countries can sometimes fail to explain the behavior of government in semi-democratic African countries. Empirical and theoretical political economic papers find that public funds target ruling party supporters and swing districts. Our results, however, suggest that the opposite was true of Ghana. We observe that pro-government districts received less public investment when the NDC was in power. We posit that this _nding is partially driven by the government's will to curry favor with opposition politicians. Indeed, in addition to pursuing its electoral objectives, the government of an emerging democracy may fear political instability and keep the lid on potential unrest by bargaining with opposition leaders. Our analysis also shows that, when controlling for votes and other covariates (including wealth, urbanization and density), public goods allocation is not driven by ethnic group targeting either.

This paper contributes to the heated debate on the link between climate and civil war. We exploit a large dataset of a drought index commonly used in hydrology, the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). The PDSI is based on a hydrological model and is a cumulative measure that takes account of past climatic variables. Our analysis takes account of country fixed effects, removal of the most influential observations, use of alternative sample periods and changes to the battle-death threshold. Overall, results show a robust link between drought and civil war in Sub-Saharan African states after independence.

We study the impact of transportation infrastructure on agriculture and development in colonial Ghana. Two railway lines were built between 1901 and 1923 to connect the coast to mining areas and the large hinterland city of Kumasi. This unintendedly opened vast expanses of tropical forest to cocoa cultivation, allowing Ghana to become the world's largest producer. This attracted migrants to producing areas and the economic surplus drove urbanization. Using data at a very fine spatial level, we find a strong effect of railroad connectivity on cocoa production due to reduced transportation costs. We then show that the economic boom in cocoa-producing areas was associated with demographic growth and urbanization. We _nd no spurious effect from lines that were not built yet, and lines that were planned but never built. We show that our results are robust to considering nearest neighbor estimators. Lastly, railway construction has durably transformed the economic geography of Ghana, as railway districts are more developed today, despite thirty years of marked decline in rail transportation.

This paper estimates the long run impact of a large income shock, by exploiting the regional variation of the 1987-1989 locust invasion in Mali. Using exhaustive Population Census data, we construct birth cohorts of individuals and compare those born and living in the years and villages affected by locust plagues with other cohorts. We find a clear and strong impact on educational outcomes of children living in rural areas but no impact at all on children living in urban areas. School enrollment of children born or aged less than seven years old at the time of shock is found to be impacted. Children born in 1988-1989, the main years of invasion, are those whose school enrollment has been the most affected by the plague. The negative impact on school enrollment of boys is higher than for girls, but on the other hand, girls attending school and living in rural areas have a lower level of school attainment than boys. Controlling for the potentially selective migration behavior of individuals, differences in educational amenities do not dampen our results. Our results are also robust to different variations of the cut-off cohort.