CAHUC Pierre

This dissertation focuses on school-to-work transitions and related labor market policies, particularly for troubled youth. Based on field experiments conducted in France in 2018 and 2019, it includes three chapters that add new empirical evidence to the economic literature.The first chapter provides new evidence on the strong job insertion of apprentices. It shows that the success of apprenticeship does not rely, in the French context, on better access to employment for those who do not remain in their training company. The expansion of apprenticeship thus has very limited effects on youth unemployment if it is not accompanied by an increase in retention in the training company.The second chapter contributes to a better understanding of employers' preferences regarding the profiles of young school dropouts. It shows that dropouts who have been inactive for more than two years are much less likely to be recalled for employment than high school graduates. Subsidized employment and job training increase dropouts' chances, but their chances still remain low. Only the combination of these two policies allows dropouts to catch up with those who did not drop out of school, reducing the negative signals associated with dropping out of school and length of time out of the labor force.The third chapter presents a field experiment to analyze the effectiveness of SMS messages sent to direct youth who are neither in employment nor in training to public support structures. All SMS messages were individualized and included specific information about these structures. The results indicate that the texts did not have a significant effect on the likelihood of referring to these facilities. These results show that texting this population is not an effective strategy to direct them more easily to a public assistance solution.The main argument of this thesis, therefore, is to bridge the gaps between schools and businesses so that a significant proportion of youth can avoid a non-employment situation as their first experience in the labor market.

In France, two years after school completion and getting the same diploma, the employment rate of apprentices is about 15 percentage points higher than that of vocational students. Despite this difference, this paper shows that there is almost no difference between the probability of getting a callback from employers for unemployed youth formerly either apprentices or vocational students. This result indicates that the higher employment rate of apprentices does not rely, in the French context, on better job access of those who do not remain in their training firms. The estimation of a job search and matching model shows that the expansion of apprenticeship has very limited effects on youth unemployment if this is not accompanied by an increase in the retention of apprentices in their training firm.

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This thesis explores the impact of information on job search behavior and demand for vocational training.The first chapter evaluates the impact of the Bob Emploi website, which aims to deliver information to job seekers about the labor market. The results indicate that there is no impact on job seekers' search effort and geographic and sectoral scope of the search. However, job seekers who use Bob Emploi mobilize their personal network and public employment services more. Finally, there is no effect on well-being and return to employment.The second chapter examines the role of information on entering job training. Results indicate that receiving an email with a message emphasizing post-training return-to-work opportunities more than doubles the likelihood that job seekers will call the training center again. However, callback rates are low in absolute terms (less than 1%) and there is no impact on training enrollment. Our results suggest that the impact detected on calls is due more to the increase in importance placed on training information than to the updating of job seekers' beliefs.Finally, the third chapter also studies the demand for vocational training, but takes into account behavioral constraints. Distinguishing between "external" (world) and "internal" (self) beliefs, the results show that jobseekers are financially constrained from joining a training program, and that they underestimate the proportion of available training that is funded. Internal barriers related to self-efficacy, inter-temporal preferences, self-esteem, and organizational skills are mentioned equally by jobseekers indicating internal barriers to enrolling in training. Based on this diagnosis, the last part is devoted to the design of a randomized controlled trial, with interventions based on the transmission of information via online courses, and interactive sessions by groups of job seekers. These courses aim to target external beliefs, internal beliefs, or both simultaneously.

This thesis assesses the combined effects of cultural values and labor market frictions on individuals' educational choices and unemployment behavior. The first chapter proposes an explanation for social reproduction. I use an overlapping generations model where parents transmit more or less job-friendly values and the child chooses his or her education and seeks a job. The transmission occurs under imperfect information about one's child's academic abilities. In privileged families, parents do not doubt the success of their offspring, and transmit a strong pro-employment value. This mechanism increases social immobility. The second chapter shows how to compute UI in a case where endogenous preferences are represented by an optimal choice of work self-esteem that can be complementary to or substitutable for the wage. By neglecting the endogenous and state-specific nature of self-esteem, a sufficient-statistics approach may wrongly call for an expansion of UI. The third chapter analyzes the relationship between work ethic and the decision to collect unemployment benefits with a job search model in which parents transmit work self-esteem. Increasing unemployment benefits or lowering the cost of claiming increases the probability of receiving benefits, while lowering the cost of job search decreases unemployment and participation rates via an increase in work ethic (for a lower unemployment risk), resulting in a stigma of unemployment.

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This paper shows that the reforms which expanded short-time work in France after the great 2008-2009 recession were largely to the benefit of large firms which are recurrent short-time work users. We argue that this expansion of short-time work is an inefficient way to provide insurance to workers, as it entails cross-subsidies which reduce aggregate production. An efficient policy should provide unemployment insurance benefits funded by experience rated employers’ contributions instead of short-time work benefits. We find that short-time work entails significant production losses compared to an unemployment insurance scheme with experience rating.

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My thesis studies how the design of unemployment insurance can affect the behavior of job seekers and employers. In my first thesis chapter, we evaluate the impact of taxing very short-term contracts. Unédic introduced an increase in employer contributions to unemployment insurance in 2013. In order to limit insecurity and segmentation in the labor market, several European countries have also decided to tax fixed-term contracts. In order to analyze this problem, we have developed a model explaining the employer's choice between fixed-term and open-ended contracts, as well as the duration of fixed-term contracts. The structural estimation of the model then allows us to study the effects of taxing contracts shorter than 30 days. We find two opposing effects. On the one hand, employers prefer to create 30-day contracts rather than contracts just under 30 days. On the other hand, the tax reduces the duration of all contracts further away from the 30-day threshold. This latter phenomenon has a significant impact on the average duration of contracts, as very short contracts are created in large numbers. In particular, our results show that taxing short contracts increases unemployment and reduces the welfare of the unemployed. In the second chapter, I study the design of the regime for intermittent workers in the entertainment industry. In particular, I measure the effect of the eligibility threshold on the labor supply of intermittents. Between 2003 and 2016, intermittents had to work 507 hours over the last 10 months to be eligible for unemployment benefits. This 507-hour threshold induces strategic behavior that can be costly for unemployment insurance. For intermittent workers just below 507 hours, a slight increase in the number of hours worked implies a 60% increase in their income from unemployment benefits. I show that individuals optimize by positioning themselves just above the threshold creating an observable jump in the distribution studied and a hole below the threshold. I develop a frictionless model a la Kleven and Waseem (2013). I find a structural elasticity between 0.26 and 0.28. Finally, I determine the impact of this strategic behavior on the unemployment insurance deficit. The induced cost is non-negligible since it represents 27% of the annual deficit. In the third chapter, I examine whether individuals understand the link between the social contributions they pay and their future benefits. If individuals understand this link, social contributions will be less of a tax, thus limiting their disincentive effects on labor supply. To analyze this problem, I explore the discontinuity created by the reference period in the eligibility rules for unemployment insurance. Intuitively, when an individual registers for unemployment insurance, only the hours included in the reference period will be used to determine his or her right to compensation. If individuals are aware of the contribution-allowance link, they have a strong incentive to work more hours during the reference period. To illustrate this point, I study the behavior of intermittent workers in the entertainment industry. Since 2016, intermittents have had to work 507 hours over a reference period of the last 12 months to be eligible for unemployment benefits. This rule implies that one year after they enter the labor market, the reference period will shift excluding some hours of work in the calculation of eligibility. I show that in order to avoid this, a large number of intermittent workers reach the 507 hours required for eligibility one year after entering the labor market, creating an observable jump in the distribution studied. I develop a dynamic frictionless model explaining the choice of the date of eligibility for unemployment insurance and find a structural elasticity of 0.52.

Partial activity, better known as partial unemployment, allows companies faced with temporary and exceptional circumstances to receive subsidies to reduce the number of hours worked by their employees by paying for the hours lost. Partial unemployment has both beneficial and adverse effects. During the Great Recession of 2008-2009, partial activity has been the subject of renewed interest in the fight against unemployment, particularly in France where it has undergone successive reforms. This note shows that the partial activity reforms carried out after the recession mainly benefited large companies that use it on a recurrent basis to cope with seasonal fluctuations in activity. This expansion of partial activity is inefficient, as it subsidizes periods of inactivity, which reduces total output. In this context, it would be desirable to introduce a bonus-malus system, in which companies would finance partial activity via a tax proportional to their contribution to the cost of this measure, the payment of which would be spread over several years.

Short-time work programs were revived by the Great Recession. To understand their operating mechanisms, we first provide a model showing that short-time work may save jobs in firms hit by strong negative revenue shocks, but not in less severely-hit firms, where hours worked are reduced, without saving jobs. The cost of saving jobs is low because short-time work targets those at risk of being destroyed. Using extremely detailed data on the administration of the program covering the universe of French establishments, we devise a causal identification strategy based on the geography of the program that demonstrates that short-time work saved jobs in firms faced with large drops in their revenues during the Great Recession, in particular when highly levered, but only in these firms. The measured cost per saved job is shown to be very low relative to that of other employment policies.

Chapter 1 examines the role of home culture on how young men and women differ in their choices to delay leaving the parental home. I show that in cultures characterized by traditional gender role values, young men have more incentives than young women to stay at home. When women from these cultures move to a more gender-role liberal society, they leave home sooner and seek husbands from a different culture. In the second chapter, we show, based on CV testing, that young people with low qualifications are less likely to be recalled by private sector employers if they are North African than if they are French. However, the origin of the candidates has no effect on the recall rate in the public sector, even though recruiters in both sectors have similar discriminatory preferences. Our model shows that the absence of discrimination at the invitation for an interview in the public sector is compatible, in this context, with a higher discrimination at the hiring stage. Chapter 3 also uses CV testing to study the effects of work experience for high school dropouts four years after leaving school. In the absence of certification training, the recall rate is not higher for those who have had work experience, subsidized or not, in the market or non-market sector than for those who remain unemployed. Moreover, certification training improves recall rates only when the local unemployment rate is low.

This thesis examines the themes of matching, inequality and the impact of technological change on the labor market. In particular, it addresses questions about matching between employees and firms and how this influences inequality in the labor market, both within the entire population, as well as between demographic and skill groups. It also examines how technological change affects the labor market conditions faced by workers and firms. These issues are addressed over three chapters. The first chapter, entitled "Multidimensional Heterogeneity and Matching in a Frictional Labor Market - An Application to Polarization" discusses the matching of workers to firms along multidimensional characteristics and quantifies the impact of technological change on the matching, wage, and employment patterns of different demographic groups. I construct a directed search model with multidimensional heterogeneity and estimate the model on U.S. data. I find that production complementarities between cognitive and interpersonal skills and tasks have increased, compared to those between manual skills and tasks. This shift in production technology explains much of the wage and job polarization in the United States. Moreover, although it does not control for gender differences, the model can explain a substantial fraction of the narrowing of gender gaps in wages and jobs. Co-authored with Nicolo Dalvit and Aseem Patel, the second chapter, "Intra-firm Hierarchies and Gender Disparity," examines the ranking of women in hierarchies within firms. It uses French administrative data and examines the impact of wage and employment gaps across hierarchies over time. In addition, by exploiting a corporate board quota policy in France, it assesses the impact of increased female leadership on wages and employment outcomes within firms. We find that hierarchies matter in gender wage and employment gaps. Gender wage and employment gaps increase with each level of corporate hierarchy, although these gaps narrow more over time at higher levels. Moreover, improving female leadership has different impacts across hierarchies. While a higher proportion of female board members reduces the gender pay gap at the top of the hierarchy, it does not have such an impact at the bottom. Instead, it increases the proportion of women in the lower levels working part-time, at the expense of full-time employment. The opposite is true for women in the upper levels. The third chapter, "Labor Shortages and Labor Market Adjustments: An Island Theory," co-authored with Riccardo Zago, discusses the impact of labor shortages and whether they lead to wage and salary adjustments. Using unique data on vacancies reported by firms to be difficult to fill, we document the impact of shortages across regions, industries, and occupational groups. We find that shortages lead only to wage and employment adjustments in non-routine occupations, but not in routine occupations. We show how the secular decline in routine occupations, caused by technological change, can explain the persistence of shortages in this sector and its inability to adjust.

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This digital edition was made from a physical medium, sometimes old, kept in the legal deposit of the National Library of France, in accordance with Law No. 2012-287 of March 1, 2012 on the exploitation of unavailable Books of the twentieth century. In all developed countries, collective bargaining has an essential influence on wages. Until recently, economic theory, trapped in the assumption of perfect competition, neglected this fundamental feature of contemporary economies. However, since the beginning of the 1980s, a great deal of work has been devoted to analyzing negotiations and their economic consequences. This book presents a critical review of this work and proposes a set of original analyses that aim to fill some of the gaps in wage bargaining theory. In particular, it shows that the theory of wage bargaining can contribute to the elaboration of the microeconomic foundations of a Keynesian macroeconomy, thanks to the use of the theory of non-cooperative games.

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At the start of the XXI century, characterized by the rise of new forms of employment and of skills requirements, many countries need to adapt their labor market institutions to accompany technological changes and globalization. In this context, unemployment insurance is an essential tool to foster and smooth career paths. Its core components comprise unemployment benefits paid to full-time unemployed workers, monitoring, and counseling. But it is clear that they are not sufficient to cover all risks properly. To deal with this issue, part-time unemployment insurance, short-time work and wage insurance have been tried, at different scales, in several countries over the last decades. This paper surveys the evaluations of these schemes and draws lessons from their results for future research and for labor market institutions.

Short-time work makes it possible for companies faced with temporary and exceptional circumstances to receive subsidies to reduce the number of hours worked by their employees by remunerating the time off. Short-time work has both beneficial and detrimental effects. During the Great Recession of 2008-2009, there was renewed interest in short-time work as part of the fight against unemployment, particularly in France, where it underwent successive reforms. This policy brief shows that the short-time work reforms carried out after the recession have mainly benefited large firms using them on a regular basis to cope with seasonal fluctuations in business activity. This expansion of short-time work is inefficient because it subsidizes periods of inactivity, thus reducing total output. In this context, it would be desirable to introduce a bonus-malus system by which companies would fund short-time work via a tax paid over several years and that is proportional to their contribution to the cost of the scheme.

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The first chapter reviews the literature on partial activity and introduces the three research questions developed in this thesis, namely the local diffusion of the use of partial activity in France over the period 2003-2014, the effect of partial activity on employment in France during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, and the effect of the 2012-2013 reforms of partial activity and the recurrent use of this device on aggregate output in France. In the second chapter, we highlight the local diffusion of the use of partial activity in France over the period 2003-2014. To do so, we evaluate the effect of the geographical proximity of establishments that have already resorted to partial activity in the past on the use of partial activity by an establishment for the first time over the period 2003-2014. Indeed, we argue that the information available to establishments about the scheme and its procedure, particularly through neighboring establishments, is a key determinant of partial activity use. Our stylized facts reveal that the use of partial activity is geographically concentrated and that this concentration has a dynamic character. We use a spatial concentration index (based on inter-establishment distances) as a measure of the local diffusion of partial activity information and take into account the other characteristics of establishments in order to distinguish the effect of this transmission of information from other determinants of the use of the system and thus highlight its impact on the use of partial activity by an establishment for the first time. Our results show the importance of the local diffusion of information on partial activity, that this diffusion decreases in the first few kilometers and that this information is transmitted both within a given sector and between sectors.In the third chapter, we evaluate the effect of partial activity on employment in France during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. We develop a theoretical model according to which the effect of partial activity varies according to the financial situation of firms. For firms facing a strong decrease in turnover, partial activity allows to safeguard employment, while for firms with a moderate decrease in turnover, partial activity leads to a decrease in hours worked without preserving employment. These contrasting theoretical effects are confirmed by our empirical results, which show that partial activity reduced the number of jobs destroyed only in the case of a significant reduction in turnover, but had no significant effect on employment for the other firms, which account for around 40% of partial activity users. These windfall effects, although considerable in relation to the partial activity scheme, remain negligible compared to other measures such as wage and hiring subsidies. Moreover, partial activity has not contributed to keeping alive companies in structural difficulties. Partial activity was therefore an effective means of safeguarding employment in France during the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

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This paper analyzes the effectiveness of hiring credits. Using comprehensive administrative data, we show that the French hiring credit, implemented during the Great Recession, had significant positive employment effects and no effects on wages. Relying on the quasi-experimental variation in labor cost triggered by the hiring credit, we estimate a structural search and matching model. Simulations of counterfactual policies show that the effectiveness of the hiring credit relied to a large extent on three features: it was nonanticipated, temporary and targeted at jobs with rigid wages. We estimate that the cost per job created by permanent hiring credits, either countercyclical or time-invariant, in an environment with flexible wages would have been much higher.

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of hiring credits. Using comprehensive administrative data, we show that the French hiring credit, implemented during the Great Recession, had significant positive employment effects and no effects on wages. Relying on the quasi-experimental variation in labor cost triggered by the hiring credit, we estimate a structural search and matching model. Simulations of counterfactual policies show that the effectiveness of the hiring credit relied to a large extent on three features: it was nonanticipated, temporary and targeted at jobs with rigid wages. We estimate that the cost per job created by permanent hiring credits, either countercyclical or time-invariant, in an environment with flexible wages would have been much higher.

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"French youth is cut in two, some get by and others don't. Why is this so? This divide is the result of an elitist social system where school and the job market serve as sorting machines. The result: the weakest are relentlessly eliminated. Left out, they tend to desert the ballot box and deny the foundations of democracy. This severe diagnosis established by the authors in the two previous editions of "La machine à trier" is unfortunately the same: the situation of French youth has still not improved. This new, completely updated edition confirms the persistent difficulties of youth, refutes the idea of a common destiny for a generation and proposes a radical revision of our elitist integration model. [Source: 4th cover].

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In the first chapter I show that when minorities work with managers who are more biased against their type, they perform significantly worse on a range of performance indicators. In contrast, they are more productive when working with unbiased managers. This is an empirical fact that reveals a self-fulfilling prophecy that biased managers make minorities less productive and this generates statistical discrimination in company hiring policy. The second chapter I explore how changing the value of a job vacancy by offering free recruiting services to companies affects its job supply. By offering free recruitment services it greatly increases the number of job offers posted on Pôle emploi and generates an increase in permanent job creation. This suggests that active labor market policies targeting the recruitment process of companies can have a substantial added value on the labor market. In the last chapter, it is shown that the Charlie Hebdo attacks caused a net reduction in the job search efforts of minorities compared to the majority. Employers are also reducing their search efforts for minorities, but only for permanent jobs. This decrease is partially offset by an increase in job search efforts by Pôle emploi counselors after the shock, but only in regions where latent discrimination, as measured by the share of local votes for the National Front, is relatively low.

In this thesis, I examine the effect of uncertainty on consumption behavior in life cycle models. Although it has been recognized since the 1980s that uncertainty can substantially alter the predictions of life cycle models, some of the mechanisms involved are still poorly understood. In Chapter 1, I study the consequences of the presence of uncertainty on consumption growth, and I show that they challenge the existing belief that consumption follows a random walk in standard life cycle models. Indeed, uncertainty leads prudent households (i.e. those with convex marginal utility) to reallocate part of their present consumption to the future, which is uncertain, and thus to choose a level of present consumption lower than their expected future consumption. This implies that variables other than present consumption improve the prediction of future consumption, as they predict the precautionary difference between present and future consumption. In chapter 2, I consider the impact of uncertainty on the level of consumption of households, how it varies with their income and wealth, and thus how their consumption responds to income shocks. Since the presence of uncertainty induces households to allocate a larger share of their resources to future periods, they save more in the present period. I highlight the fact that this additional saving, called precautionary saving, varies in a decreasing and concave manner with the transitory share of income and with wealth, but in an increasing and convex manner with the permanent share of income. In chapter 3, I draw the consequences of these results for the empirical measurement of the response of consumption to income shocks. I build on the results of Chapters 1 and 2 to show that, in standard life-cycle models, consumption growth is negatively correlated with the realizations of past transitory shocks, due to precautionary behavior. Such a correlation would induce a bias in a frequently used method for estimating the response of consumption to transitory income shocks, developed by Blundell, Pistaferri and Preston (2008). Indeed, their method would attribute to present transitory shocks the changes in consumption explained by past shocks, thus predicting a too small response to transitory shocks. I generalize this method to take into account the possible influence of past shocks on consumption growth. With this more flexible estimator, I obtain that the response of consumption to transitory shocks is statistically significant and that its magnitude is consistent with the literature on the response of consumption to transitory tax cuts.

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"France is caught in a vicious circle with considerable economic and social costs. For more than twenty years, surveys conducted in all developed countries have shown that here, more than anywhere else, people distrust their fellow citizens, the public authorities and the market. This distrust goes hand in hand with a more frequent lack of civic-mindedness, and yet distrust and lack of civic-mindedness, far from being immutable cultural traits, are fueled by the corporatism and statism of the French social model. In turn, the lack of trust among the French hinders their ability to cooperate, which leads the state to regulate everything and to empty social dialogue of its content. By comparing the relationship between economic performance and social attitudes in some thirty countries from the early 1950s to the present, Yann Algan and Pierre Cahuc show how this lack of confidence significantly reduces employment, growth and, above all, the French people's ability to be happy." [Source: 4th cover].

We show the existence of a twin peaks relation between trust and the size of the welfare state that stems from two opposing forces. Uncivic people support large welfare states because they expect to benefit from them without bearing their costs. But civic individuals support generous benefits and high taxes only when they are surrounded by trustworthy individuals. We provide empirical evidence for these behaviors and this twin peaks relation in the OECD countries.

In this thesis, I analyze the role of institutions in two areas of study: the labor market and the housing market. In Chapter 1 (with Elisa Guglielminetti), I present a randomized search model to explain the selection of new hires between short and long term contracts. Mining an Italian database, we find that the probability of obtaining a permanent contract increases with a stronger match between the worker's education and occupation. In Chapter 2, I explore the effect of liberalizing fixed-term contracts and find a negative effect on new permanent jobs. The results validate the simulations of the first chapter and confirm the role of match quality in firms' hiring choices. Chapter 3 (with Robert Gary-Bobo), studies the distribution of housing and real estate wealth between generations and, by finding an imbalance in favor of the oldest, identifies taxation instruments to correct it.

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The back cover states: "Miracle cures such as lower taxes, increased public spending, a halt to immigration, a 32-hour work week, the reindustrialization of territories, or the taxation of financial transactions are supposed to cure us of all our ills without cost. These untruths, repeated over and over again by the media, have a name: economic negationism. At the origin of strategic choices, it impoverishes us and results in millions of unemployed. Nowadays, one cannot assert everything and its opposite, because economics has become an experimental science based on a rigorous analysis of facts. This unknown revolution produces knowledge that often clashes with the beliefs and interests of big business, trade unionists, intellectuals and politicians. They do everything to sow doubt, even about the most established truths. The purpose of this book is to expose economic negationism. To stop wasting our time with debates that have already been decided and not to let ourselves be fooled by impostures and demagogy".

Revised and updated by the authors, this book sheds new light on how the labor market works, how to think about unemployment, and the policies to combat it. No, unemployment is not an inevitability linked to globalization and financial capitalism. No, a good salary is not always the enemy of employment. No, legislation on layoffs does not protect employment. No, training is not the remedy for all the ills of the unemployed. This is what the most recent research conducted in France and in many other countries has taught us. We have not "tried everything" to fight unemployment. Far from it. This book tracks down the enemies of employment and tells us how to bring them down. When it was first published in 2004, under the title Le Chômage, fatalité ou nécessité, the book received unanimous critical acclaim and was awarded the Prix Mutations et Travail, the Prix Européen du Livre d'Economie, the Manpower Prize for Human Resources Books in 2005, and the Zerilli-Marimo Prize of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 2006.

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The back cover states: "Revised and updated by the authors, this book sheds new light on the functioning of the labor market, on how to think about unemployment and on the policies to combat it. No, unemployment is not an inevitability linked to globalization and financial capitalism. No, a good salary is not always the enemy of employment. No, legislation on layoffs does not protect employment. No, training is not the remedy for all the ills of the unemployed. This is what the most recent research conducted in France and in many other countries has taught us. We have not "tried everything" to fight unemployment. Far from it. This book tracks down the enemies of employment and tells us how to bring them down".

This survey highlights the key results of the empirical literature concerning the costs of flexibility enhancing reforms in product and labour markets. The documented costs include reduced employment, loss of government revenue, undesirable distributional consequences and political instability. The literature suggests that: i) once implemented, product and labour market reforms affect prices and quantities quite rapidly. ii) there are no major differences between the overall effects in the short and long run. iii) the costs of reforms are very much related to interactions with other policies and institutions. and iv) the costs of reforms change over the business cycle.

Apprenticeship greatly increases the professional integration of young people with low qualifications. On the other hand, its effectiveness is practically nil for the most highly qualified. In spite of this, work-study programs are developing mainly in higher education, to the detriment of the lowest levels of qualification. Far from allowing apprenticeship to play a role as a social elevator, its expansion in higher education reproduces and even accentuates inequalities. Public support must therefore be concentrated where it is effective and equitable, i.e. in the second cycle of secondary education. This is an essential objective in France, where 120,000 young people leave the school system each year with, at best, the brevet des collèges. To achieve this, it is necessary to change the financing of work-study programs and the governance of vocational education. This is what this book demonstrates.

This thesis proposes to analyze the effects of ruptures in occupational trajectories on the health status of individuals in Europe. We consider two breaks in the career path: one at the beginning of the career -- entry into the labor market in a deteriorated economy -- and the other at the end of the career -- the transition to retirement. Between these two critical periods, we are specifically interested in the impact on health of a break, this time anticipated: the fear of losing one's job. Our empirical analyses combine data from European and British surveys. In order to overcome the endogeneity problems inherent in any empirical analysis of the link between health and career trajectory, we apply exogenous shocks to the careers of individuals. We thus use a natural experiment (the 1973 oil crisis) and the institutional characteristics as defined in the legislation of each European country (legal retirement ages, degrees of employment protection, compulsory schooling rules). Our project aims to identify a causal link between the professional activity of individuals and their obesity category through the use of specific econometric techniques taking into account endogeneity and the use of data from the GAZEL cohort (which has been following 20,000 volunteers employed at EDF-GDF since 1989).

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This landmark textbook published by The MIT Press combines depth and breadth of coverage with recent, cutting-edge work in all the major areas of modern labor economics. Its command of the literature and its coverage of the latest theoretical, methodological, and empirical developments make it also a valuable resource for practicing labor economists. This second edition has been substantially updated and augmented. It devotes more space to the analysis of public policy and the levers available to policy makers, with new chapters on such topics as discrimination, globalization, income redistribution, employment protection, and the minimum wage or labor market programs for the unemployed. Theories are explained on the basis of the simplest possible models, which are in turn related to empirical results. Mathematical appendixes provide a toolkit for understanding the models. The book incorporates examples drawn from many countries, and it presents empirical methods using contributions that have proved to be milestones in labor economics. The data and codes of these research publications, as well as numerous tables and figures (with corresponding data and do files) describing the functioning of labor markets, are all available on this website along with slides that can be used as course aids. For each chapter, we provide 3 sets of slides (with pdf, tex files and figures). A «basic» set, that can be used to teach the basics of the chapter to undergraduate students. an «advanced» set, with more advanced material for graduate students. and a «complete» set that you can use to elaborate your own courses. There are also slides provided by users of Labor Economics. (Publisher's abstract).

There is a French paradox: private happiness and public unhappiness. While the French say they are relatively satisfied with their private lives and with family and community solidarity, they express a great deal of mistrust towards the rest of society. They regularly declare themselves more pessimistic about their collective destiny and their taste for living together than citizens of other developed countries. How can such pessimism be explained in a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world? Recent research in the social sciences, economics and medicine on the causes of well-being provides a convincing and well-founded answer: well-being depends above all on the quality of social relations. However, the French suffer from a profound lack of cooperation and reciprocity. They distrust others, but also their institutions, justice, parliament, trade unions, or even companies, competition and the market, much more often than citizens of most other developed countries. They also say they suffer from conflictual and hierarchical relationships, whether at school, in their companies, or in their relationship with public institutions. This mistrust has a considerable economic and human cost (.).

This survey reviews the recent research on trust, institutions and growth. It discusses the various measures of trust and documents the substantial heterogeneity of trust across space and time. The conceptual mechanisms and the methods employed to identify the causal impact of trust on economic performance are reviewed. We document the mechanisms of interactions between trust and economic development in the realms of finance, innovation, the organization of firms, the labor market and the product market. The last part reviews recent progress to identify how institutions and policies can affect trust and well-being.

This survey reviews the recent research on trust, institutions, and economic development. It discusses the various measures of trust and documents the substantial heterogeneity of trust across space and time. The conceptual mechanisms that explain the influence of trust on economic performance and the methods employed to identify the causal impact of trust on economic performance are reviewed. We document the mechanisms of interactions between trust and economic development in the realms of finance, innovation, the organization of firms, the labor market, and the product market. The last part reviews recent progress to identify how institutions and policies can affect trust.

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The back cover states: "The purpose of unemployment insurance is to provide the best possible compensation for episodes of unemployment while limiting their duration. Far from fulfilling this mission, the French system operates a large-scale redistribution between sectors of activity and salary levels. Its limited effectiveness encourages job instability and contributes to maintaining high unemployment. Yet, there is considerable room for manoeuvre to limit these transfers and the optimisation behaviour they encourage. The system must be refocused on individual incentives to remain in employment and return to work, and its management must be made more coherent through better coordination between insurance and support for job seekers.

This paper presents a short overview of dynamic models of labor markets with transaction costs. It shows that these models have deeply renewed the understanding of job search, job flows, job creations and destructions, unemployment and wage formation. It argues that this renewal provides a very useful toolkit for analyzing important economic policy issues such as the optimal level of unemployment benefits, the funding of unemployment insurance and the impact of employment protection legislation.

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The purpose of unemployment insurance is to compensate unemployment episodes as well as possible while limiting their duration. Far from fulfilling this mission, the French system operates a large-scale redistribution between sectors of activity and salary levels. Its limited effectiveness encourages job instability and contributes to maintaining high unemployment. Yet, there is considerable room for manoeuvre to limit these transfers and the optimisation behaviour they encourage. The system must be refocused on individual incentives to remain in employment and to return to work, and its management must be made more coherent through better coordination between insurance and support for job seekers. (Editor's summary).

We show the existence of a twin peaks relation between trust and the size of the welfare state that stems from two opposing forces. Uncivic people support large welfare states because they expect to benefit from them without bearing their costs. But civic individuals support generous benefits and high taxes only when they are surrounded by trustworthy individuals. We provide empirical evidence for these behaviors and this twin peaks relation in the OECD countries.

French youth is cut in two, some make it, others don't. This divide is the result of an elitist social system where school and the labor market serve as sorting machines. In the end, the weakest are relentlessly eliminated, while being practically excluded from social assistance until the age of 25. Left out, they tend to desert the ballot box and deny the foundations of democracy. It is urgent to attack the roots of the problem: school failure and the insurmountable obstacles that the job market puts in front of those who do not have a diploma. We must also break down the barriers of our political system so that young people can find their place in it. But in the meantime, we can't leave so many young people on the sidelines. There are ways to give them a second chance without being lax. If we continue to do nothing, the risk of a deflagration of the republican pact will grow day by day. (Editor's summary).

Does monopsony on the labor market in itself justify the implementation of a minimum wage when it would not be used in a competitive economy? This issue is studied in a model of optimal taxation. We adopt a definition most favorable to the minimum wage: the minimum wage is useful whenever it can replace a non negligible part of the tax schedule. The minimum wage is useful to correct the inefficiencies associated with the monopsony when there is a single skill. But the minimum wage is not useful any more when there are a continuum of skills.

The 4th cover states: "French youth is split in two, some make it, others don't. This split is the result of an elitist social system where school and the job market serve as sorting machines. This divide is the result of an elitist social system where school and the job market serve as sorting machines. In the end, the weakest are relentlessly eliminated, while being practically excluded from social assistance until the age of 25. Left out, they tend to desert the ballot box and deny the foundations of democracy. It is urgent to attack the roots of the problem: school failure and the insurmountable obstacles that the job market puts in front of those who do not have a diploma. We must also break down the barriers of our political system so that young people can find their place in it. But in the meantime, we can't leave so many young people on the sidelines. There are ways to give them a second chance without being lax. If we continue to do nothing, the risk of the republican pact exploding will increase day by day".

In cross-country data, teaching practices (such as copying from the board versus working on projects together) are related to various dimensions of social capital. In micro-data from three datasets, teaching practices are also strongly correlated with student beliefs about cooperation across schools within countries. To address omitted variable and reverse causality concerns, we show that, within schools, teaching practices also have an independent and sizeable effect on student beliefs. The evidence supports the idea that progressive education promotes the formation of social capital.

This article surveys recent research on the relationship between trust and growth. It documents the strong international and interregional heterogeneity of trust. The theoretical mechanisms that explain the influence of trust on economic performance and the empirical methods used to identify the causal impact of trust on economic performance are reviewed.

"Hierarchy, inequality and mistrust" is the real motto of French society, according to the authors. Excessively hierarchical, elitist, conflictual, the organization of society undermines social relations, confidence in the future and growth. However, the decline is not inevitable. They evoke certain reforms carried out abroad, offering other paths.

No summary available.

France and Germany are two polar cases in the European debate about rising youth unemployment. Similar to what can be observed in Southern European countries, a “lost generation” may arise in France. In stark contrast, youth unemployment has been on continuous decline in Germany for many years, hardly affected by the Great Recession. This paper analyzes the diametrically opposed developments in the two countries to derive policy lessons. As the fundamental differences in youth unemployment primarily result from structural differences in labor policy and in the (vocational) education system, short-term oriented policies do not address the core of the problems. Ultimately, the youth unemployment disease in France and in other European countries has to be cured with structural reforms.

No summary available.

In the first two chapters, we estimate the impact of two labor market policies in the French context: * anonymous applications: information, such as name, gender, age, nationality and address, is erased from resumes sent to employers (first chapter). Anonymous applications limit differential treatments based on gender and counter homophily. * Unemployment Insurance generosity: job losers receive benefits to prevent revenue loss and to subsidize job search (second chapter). We show that an increase of 8 months in potential benefit duration does not affect match quality, while it slows down unemployment exits to jobs. We devote special attention to identify causal impacts and thus rely on experimental or quasi experimental evidence to perform our empirical evaluation exercises. Namely, we compare treated and control groups which are ex ante statistically identical. However, we discuss two potential caveats of microeconometric evaluations in the context of Job Search Assistance evaluation, one "practical" in the third chapter and one "theoretical" in the fourth chapter: * ex post comparability of control and treated groups when sample attrition can be different among experimental groups (third chapter). * uncontrolled contamination between control and treated group through market interaction (fourth chapter).

This thesis aims to contribute to the debate on discrimination, focusing primarily on France and second generation immigrants. Competition allows us to identify certain forms of discrimination and may explain its persistence. The first chapter proposes a review of the literature developing the research on the links between competition and discrimination. The following chapters are the author's contributions to this field of economics. Competition is approached from two different angles. The first one deals with the impact of competition on the labor market on discrimination. Using a model of spatial competition, the chapter shows that non-discriminating firms benefit from the presence of discriminating firms. The second angle concerns competition on the goods market. The retail sector allows us to study its impact on the different facets of employment. The fourth chapter uses an experiment to evaluate the impact of competition in this sector on discrimination in hiring. Testing shows that competition has no significant impact on hiring. The fifth chapter uses negative competition shocks in the sector to study its effect on rent sharing among employees. It shows discrimination against women in wages. Finally, the third chapter links these two approaches, comparing the public and private sectors. The wage differentials are significant when the focus is on their nationality of origin and show some similarity between the two sectors.

This thesis studies the performance of the labor market in an economy that is likely to have several equilibria, and the implications of such a configuration for economic policy. It consists of four essays, each dealing with a specific aspect of this problem. First, the econometric analysis of time series of unemployment rates in some OECD countries, allowing in particular the identification of regime changes and their characteristics, provides significant evidence in support of the hypothesis of a multiplicity of equilibria. Second, we study the effects of the introduction of a mandatory minimum wage and of an increase in the minimum wage in a static model of imperfect competition with wage bargaining at the firm level, the labor input being heterogeneous. If the increase in the minimum wage is unfavorable to employment, the introduction of a minimum wage in the presence of a multiplicity of equilibria allows the elimination of the Pareto-inferior equilibrium. Third, we also study the implications of the existence of multiple equilibria for economic policies, due to the alteration of the dynamic properties of the economy, through the complete analysis of a dynamic model of imperfect competition with individual wage bargaining and matching frictions in the labor market. Finally, we show through the experimental tool to what extent the introduction of a so-called solar task variable can be a source of coordination failure and inefficiency in an economy with two Pareto-ordered equilibria.

This thesis has three main contributions. The first one focuses on the compensation of CEOs of CAC40 companies and uses a competitive model to explain the empirically observed differences. The effect of a possible cap on CEO compensation on "equilibrium" is studied. The results show that it is necessary, in order to reproduce the adequate dispersion of French CEOs' incomes, to consider a more dispersed distribution of talent than in the United States. On the other hand, a cap will only have a positive impact for the representative shareholder if it is set at a high level. The second contribution focuses on the recent development of "golden parachutes". The influence of taxation and of the legal environment are studied through a corporate finance model. The increase in CEO turnover and the use of severance payments are explained as the result of legislative changes aimed at improving corporate governance. This chapter makes the link between the quality of corporate governance and the optimal taxation of such severance payments. The third contribution concerns the forms that DMP contracts can take. The model developed allows for the increased competition in the executive market and in the goods market, as well as the priority given by firms to shareholder value. These developments combined have encouraged the use of more flexible contracts and the widespread practice of benchmarking.

This thesis contains three essays in microeconometrics and applied labor economics. In the first two essays, we estimate dynamic models of schooling choices and employment contract outcomes of the French population. The first essay focuses on the comparison between second-generation immigrants from Africa and their French-natives counterparts. We show that the gap in higher education attainments between those two sub-populations is mainly explained by parents' background and that schooling investment is the main determinant of the gap in permanent employment. The second essay investigates the role played by educational attainments on the employment contract transitions in the early career. We find that a first fixed term contract has a positive impact on the probability of employment in a permanent contract, except for a limited set of the population endowed with particular schooling attainments and unobserved characteristics. Globally, schooling attainments account for around one third of the variance in the probability of permanent employment. The third essay is devoted to the analysis of intra-firm promotions of American executives. We estimate a dynamic model of promotions, in which we disentangle the spurious and the causal impacts of the speed of past advancement. We find that the principal determinant of promotions is unobserved heterogeneity and that the speed of past advancement in the firm's hierarchy (fast tracks) does not have a causal impact on promotions. Functional area has a high explanatory power in promotion outcomes.

This thesis proposes to study the empirical relevance of inter-job mobility in the analysis of labor markets in Europe and the United States along three axes. The first is the respective roles of the voluntary and constrained components of inter-job mobility in the distribution of workers along the wage scale. The study of these mechanisms also allows for a cross-country comparison based on the intensity and nature of individual mobility, revealing that the countries with the highest mobility rates are also those where voluntary transitions are the least frequent. The second line of research focuses on the evolution of the components of inter-job mobility according to the phases of the economic cycle, and on the role of these components in the matching on the labor market. Both voluntary and constrained mobility exhibit pro-cyclical behavior, and taking them into account has an influence on the estimation of the matching process between labor supply and demand. Finally, this thesis concludes with a more microeconomic analysis aiming at exploiting the transitions between jobs in order to study the preferences of workers on the different characteristics of jobs, in particular the non-monetary components (type or conditions of work, job security, etc. . . .). This latter study identifies strong individual preferences for amenities such as type of work or job security, but also reveals important constraints on individual mobility.

This thesis proposes both a micro and macroeconomic evaluation of training programs for the unemployed in France. It begins with a review of the literature that highlights the heterogeneity of the effects of training according to the audience, the content of the training courses, and the outcome variables considered. Chapter 3 then describes the French institutional system, whose complexity is a factor of selectivity in the process that leads job seekers to training. Chapter 4 then evaluates the impact of training on individual data by applying the propensity score matching method to data from the Fichier National des Assedic (FNA). The results indicate that the effect of training on the unemployment rate of trained individuals is strongly negative in the months following the start of the program, but then becomes slightly positive. Chapter 5 extends the analysis by estimating, using a duration model, the effect of training on the transition rates from unemployment to employment and from employment to unemployment. This approach controls for selectivity due to unobservable factors. It appears that training tends on average to increase the duration of the unemployment episode, but that it also tends to increase the duration of the job recovered. These effects are also sensitive to the duration of the training courses: longer training courses lead to longer unemployment durations, but also to longer employment durations. Finally, chapter 6 attempts to measure the equilibrium effects of an extension of training programs, using a model calibrated à la Mortensen and Pissarides [1994]. The calibration of the model exploits the results of the evaluation conducted in chapter 5, and in particular the fact that training reduces the probability of destruction of jobs occupied by previously trained individuals. In this framework, the simulations show that training, by improving the profit prospects of firms, can encourage them to open more jobs, which benefits all the unemployed, trained or not.

The thesis project was born out of the observation of the facts, undecided about the direction of causality between public employment and unemployment rates. Macroeconomic data indicate that within OECD countries, public employment and unemployment have evolved in parallel over time. Estimating more than complete crowding out, the literature has favored a public employment-unemployment causality. The first part of the thesis shows that taking into account the specificities of public and private negotiations in the analysis enriches the reflection on crowding out and on the means to mitigate it. In chapter 1, the modeling of the specificities of the public labor market allows us to study the competition between sectors to attract workers and the possibility of decentralizing the social optimum. Within the framework of a wage bargaining model, and using panel data estimation, chapter 2 shows that centralizing wage bargaining corrects for fiscal extemalities in the financing of public employment. The second part gives meaning to the unemployment-public employment causality by placing the analysis at the heart of the transitory dynamics of the labor market. In chapter 3, within the framework of a dynamic matching model, the modeling of private job creation and destruction flows counters the traditional wage pressure result and accounts for the asymmetric behavior of job flows in response to an increase in public employment. Outside the steady state, public employment reduces unemployment. In chapter 4, a structural vector auto-regression model allows us to empirically illustrate our results.

In this thesis we study the impact of relationship networks on labor market efficiency and wage inequality. We consider, in a first part, the choice of agents between different search methods. We highlight the substitution effects between methods, which are possible and original sources of inefficiency. In this context, the impact of certain economic policies may be unexpected. On the one hand, sufficiently generous unemployment benefits can improve market efficiency by coordinating firms and workers on the most efficient methods. On the other hand, a policy aiming at increasing the "social capital" of the most disadvantaged populations may induce a substitution between methods, leading to an increase in the unemployment rate and a decrease in workers' welfare. In a second part, we study the effect of networks on wage inequalities. We first show that, even in a setting where all agents have the same productivity, networks can induce significant wage inequalities. Indeed, the wage received by a worker depends on the employment rate of his or her network, which defines his or her external opportunities. Since employment rates differ endogenously between networks, the latter generate wage dispersion in equilibrium. Finally, we propose a structural model of job search, taking into account the possible effect of networks on match quality. We estimate this model on French data and reject the idea that networks would allow more productive matches.

Women are paid less than men, for all observable characteristics. However, the extent of wage discrimination appears to be lower in France than in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Two factors can potentially explain the relative weakness of wage discrimination in France. First, it may be the result of a corrective effect of the unions. Research on Anglo-Saxon data suggests a moderate effect of unions on wage discrimination. The main reason put forward is the under-representation of women in influential positions in unions. Our estimates on French data suggest that the presence of union representatives in firms does not reduce wage discrimination, since it induces an equivalent increase in male and female wages, given observable characteristics. Secondly, the relative weakness of wage discrimination may be accompanied by significant discrimination in hiring. Indeed, in the presence of restrictive legislation, discrimination may shift to components where it is less easily detected. The results of the controlled experiment we conducted in the French financial sector in 2002 suggest the existence of discrimination in hiring conditional on women's family situation. It would appear that women's relative access to positions of responsibility is more affected by their probability of maternity than by their family responsibilities per se.

Europe's pharmaceutical industry is currently in a complex position. Despite community regulations that have helped bring this market closer to the operating conditions of a single market, medicines continue to circulate in markets with fundamentally different structural characteristics and modes of regulation. In this context, one of the main problems in the completion of the single market for medicines is the level and setting of prices. Based on this observation, we analyze price differentials in the European Union and the diversity of their pricing methods in order to answer two complementary questions: what is the appropriate theoretical framework to explain the differences in drug prices between the different European countries? The first part of the thesis is theoretical and based on the analysis of the discriminating monopoly, as this is the one that has been used in the United States to explain and justify drug price differentials. A critical analysis of the American literature on this subject allows us to show that this theory is not adapted to the explanation of drug price formation in Europe. Hence the need to find a suitable analytical framework, i.e. one that takes into account the institutional characteristics of European markets. We do this in the second part, which is positive and aims to analyze the reality of the interaction of actors in the formation of drug prices in Europe. It is supported by data from the pharmaceutical industry on the impact of regulation on firms' marketing strategies. We finally show that prices in Europe are subject to contradictory forces of diversity and harmonization and that price differentials are narrowing under the action of convergence, which we have qualified as strategic.

The main purpose of unemployment insurance systems is to protect workers against fluctuations in their income due to involuntary unemployment. The first unemployment insurance schemes emerged in various European countries through trade unions. For example, Switzerland was the first country to have a trade union program addressing unemployment insurance in 1789. In 1911, the United Kingdom had the first compulsory system. All major industrialized countries adopted mandatory UI programs in the following decades. These are now an important component of existing social security systems. Although unemployment insurance is present in all developed countries, it is remarkably absent in most developing countries. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, several less developed countries have adopted unemployment insurance schemes. For example, over the past decade, most Central and Eastern European countries have introduced unemployment compensation schemes in response to the deterioration of their labor markets following the profound structural transformation of their economies. There is also a trend toward the adoption of unemployment insurance in Latin American countries to protect workers from the growing risk of unemployment associated with macroeconomic contingencies. Despite this trend, unemployment compensation programs are still lacking in most developing countries.

The central objective of the thesis is to contribute to the analysis of the mechanisms linking income distribution and growth. The four parts of the thesis reflect the research strategy of first understanding the relationship between growth and inequality in standard models of growth, and then introducing models with successive modifications to agents' preferences. The modifications include the introduction of non-homothetic preferences and the inclusion of goods that are not assigned by market laws and that affect agents' preferences. All models developed in the thesis are based on endogenous growth theories based on learning by doing and externalities in human capital accumulation.

The modulation of employer contributions to unemployment insurance or experience-rating is an original feature of the American unemployment benefit system. Recommended by the OECD, and proposed on several occasions as an additional tool to fight unemployment, this system remains absent in most OECD countries where unemployment benefits are financed by payroll taxes and government contributions. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the effects of the introduction of a system of modulation of employer contributions to unemployment insurance, adapted from the American experience-rating system, on a European type of labor market and in the light of the institutional and legislative specificities inherent to these markets. The scope of the study is restricted to the specific dimension of experience-rating relating to employment protection. This research is carried out within a unified theoretical framework, that of equilibrium models of the labor market, and is composed of six chapters. The results of our analyses suggest that modulation of employer contributions is likely to increase labor market performance in continental Europe.

Since January 2003, part of the employment protection legislation, which was put in place in France in the aftermath of the Second World War in order to guarantee the respect of the right to work, is in abeyance and will have to be modified by July 2005. The thesis is an empirical contribution to the debate on this reform and focuses on one of the pillars of this debate, the cleavage between fixed-term and open-ended contracts. Two main aspects are examined. On the one hand, it is a question of evaluating the costs associated with job protection, i.e. the hiring and firing costs borne by companies. Second, because fixed-term contracts can be used both to select the workforce and to adjust the productive workforce to the business cycle, we study the impact of employment protection on the long-term career prospects of fixed-term workers.

The objective of this thesis is to compare the behavioral models of the various actors in the labor market with individual data from firms and employees. More precisely, a new light on the structural determinants of employment is shed by estimating at the microeconomic level models of labor supply and demand. In the first part, the rent-sharing mechanism of firms is confirmed by estimating wage equations (chapter I and II), but it turns out to be small. The second part of the thesis studies the substitution mechanisms between factors of production. Chapter III first shows that an increase in the user cost of capital strongly degrades the profitability of firms and the scale of production. A more detailed analysis is conducted by disaggregating the labor factor into two categories of qualification (chapter IV). It confirms that skilled labor is relatively less substitutable for capital than low-skilled labor. Finally, the introduction of working hours would show that the hourly efficiency of employees would be little affected by a variation in hours worked (chapter V). The estimates of the various structural parameters will ultimately be used to calibrate a model of the labor market (chapter VII). The model, which is original compared to pre-existing disaggregated models (chapter VI), is an extension of the matching model, in the case where employees are heterogeneous from the point of view of qualification and can acquire specific human capital. The simulations show that shocks affecting the production function or the labor reallocation process could have a significant impact on the progression of structural unemployment, of a magnitude comparable to a possible shift in the wage curve.

In the context of the debate on the future of pension systems, this thesis proposes to study more specifically the interactions between pension systems, education and growth. It is structured in five chapters, preceded by an introduction that presents the specific characteristics of pension systems around the world, the main theories of social security and the problematic. The first chapter presents the overlapping generations model that will be used throughout the thesis. Two types of pension schemes are studied: flat-rate and earnings-related. The important result of this chapter is that the first type of system has no impact on economic growth. Conversely, by encouraging young workers to invest more in their education, the second has a positive impact on economic growth. A positive correlation between growth and the size of the pension system is then observed. In Chapter 2, in order to validate the education premium mechanism as an explanation for this last correlation, we consider two extensions that involve the length of contribution in the calculation of pension rights. In both cases, we show that the education premium mechanism still explains the correlation between growth and the pension system. In chapter 3, we study the conditions under which the proportional pension system, although socially optimal, is politically sustainable in a democracy. We then show that, for this to be the case, the government must guarantee a part of the acquired rights, or at least that individuals believe in this guarantee. In Chapter 4, we study the capacity of a pension system to reduce inequalities. Although characterized by a progressive pension entitlement formula, it is possible to demonstrate, as in reality, a pension system that does not redistribute from the rich to the poor. Nevertheless, the latter, through its positive impact on growth, reduces inequalities. Finally, in chapter 5, we show that, alongside the pay-as-you-go system, which promotes growth, it would be socially desirable to introduce a funded system to stimulate savings.

In this thesis, we examine the main reforms undertaken during the 1990s in order to improve the economic efficiency of unemployment benefit systems. Thus, first, the effects of a reduction in the general level of unemployment compensation are analyzed by taking into account the savings behavior of workers. An analysis of the consequences in terms of dynamic adjustment then made it possible to reject the results of the literature, according to which it would be desirable, in order to improve social welfare, to reduce the level of unemployment compensation. An instrument widely used in all OECD countries, eligibility requirements, was also carefully analyzed. The aim was to clarify the impact of changes in the duration of unemployment benefits, as well as in the qualifying period for benefits. These eligibility conditions introduce a certain heterogeneity among the unemployed, whose behavior will depend on their status with respect to the benefit system. The effects of a change in eligibility criteria on unemployment therefore appear indeterminate and weak. However, in terms of welfare, the public decision-maker may have to make choices according to his social objectives: to favour aggregate social welfare or to favour the fate of the most disadvantaged individuals on the labour market. Finally, the third theme addressed in the thesis is the conversion of unemployment benefits into subsidies for firms. This measure, which seems to be favorable to the hiring of the most disadvantaged unemployed in the labor market, such as the long-term unemployed, may have its effectiveness reduced if wages increase with the subsidy to employers.

Unemployment appears to be a scourge that stigmatizes certain segments of the working population, with the risk of unemployment varying from one to two, or even more, between the most productive individuals who, due to lack of training or experience, are less productive. This thesis examines the causes of this particular feature and the remedies that can be applied, along three main lines: what relationships can be identified between aggregate unemployment rates, the structure of the labor force that must be held "responsible" for the poor performance of certain countries in terms of unemployment? The particular acuteness of the unemployment problem that is manifested with respect to the least qualified workers testifies to a certain specificity of the problem of underemployment that affects this category of labor force. What might be the main causes of this problem? Among the causes that can be thought of, what is the share of responsibility attributable to each of them? Finally, can we evaluate the policies implemented so far in some OECD countries, notably in France, to curb unemployment? And, more generally, what measures can be recommended in this direction?

This paper analyzes the consequences of structural adjustment policies on human capital investment using the theoretical support of endogenous growth models. In the first two parts we review the theory of human capital and structural adjustment policies, and their empirical effects on human capital accumulation. In the third part we develop three original models: the first two study the evolution of the demand for education and the third studies the supply of education. In a one-country model with overlapping generations and a segmented labor market, we show that reducing public social spending during structural adjustment can lead to both a reduction in the demand for education and a reduction in long-term growth. In a two-country model, where education, tax and wage policies differ and labor is internationally mobile, we show that steps can under certain conditions induce a brain drain and a decline in long-run growth. In a supply-side model, where we include foreign aid for education, we show that governments should favor education spending over infrastructure spending. Moreover, when we consider two modes of aid redistribution (individual or collective), we show that the best choice is conditional on the national public education effort.

In the current context of the development of part-time work, the clear desire to engage in part-time work raises questions on the part of managers about the quality of the link between the employee and the company that employs him. The problematic of this research lies in the analysis of the influence of part-time work on organizational commitment. The conceptual development traces the state of knowledge on the context of the development of part-time work, the comparison of attitudes and behaviors of part-timers and full-timers, the change in attitudes and behaviors following a work time arrangement, the work-out relationship and the effects of organizational support policies on organizational commitment. The experimental empirical research of the before-and-after type (119 employees) proposes an analysis of the motivation and involvement profiles before the switch to part-time work and of the changes that occurred over the period, as well as numerous relationships of the variables of attitude change. On the one hand, this study offers a two-period validation of scales never before used in France. The main methodological contribution is the use of a method of synthetic measurement of change, as well as a confirmatory factorial analysis procedure of change. On the other hand, this research contributes to a better knowledge of the motivations towards part-time work, of their follow-up and of their effects on organizational commitment. It assesses the mechanisms and process of change in involvement by analyzing numerous relationships of attitudinal change variables.

Collective bargaining plays a dominant role in most OECD countries. This thesis focuses on wage bargaining and its influence on the functioning of the labor market. These topics have been the subject of much research, but the originality of this thesis lies in the following three points: first, the study of the dynamic structure of wage bargaining and the possibilities of renegotiation, second, the consideration of information asymmetries and strikes, and third, the analysis of the consequences of wage bargaining within intertemporal general equilibrium models. This thesis is composed of three parts. The first part is devoted to a microeconomic analysis of labor negotiations and conflicts, the second to an empirical study of wages and strikes, and finally, the third part is devoted to studying some macroeconomic consequences of wage negotiations. The usual modelizations of wage negotiations, based on the use of the Nash criterion (1950), do not allow us to account for renegotiations and strikes. The objective of the first part is to explore the tools of strategic analysis that can fill these two gaps. The second part proposes an empirical evaluation of the theories exposed in the first part, on the one hand by constructing and testing a wage equation corresponding to an extension of the wage bargaining model of the first chapter, and on the other hand by identifying the main empirical determinants of strikes. The third part proposes to analyze some macroeconomic consequences of wage negotiations through two intertemporal general equilibrium models.