CHIAPPORI Pierre Andre

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We show that even in the absence of data on individual decisions, the distribution of individual attitudes towards risk can be identified from the aggregate conditions that characterize equilibrium on markets for risky assets. Taking parimutuel horse races as a textbook model of contingent markets, we allow for heterogeneous bettors with very general risk preferences, including non-expected utility. Under a standard single-crossing condition on preferences, we identify the distribution of preferences among the population of bettors and we derive testable implications. We estimate the model on data from U.S. races. Specifications based on expected utility fit the data very poorly. Our results stress the crucial importance of nonlinear probability weighting. They also suggest that several dimensions of heterogeneity may be at work.

Over the past few decades, matching models, which use mathematical frameworks to analyze allocation mechanisms for heterogeneous products and individuals, have attracted renewed attention in both theoretical and applied economics. These models have been used in many contexts, from labor markets to organ donations, but recent work has tended to focus on "nontransferable" cases rather than matching models with transfers. In this important book, Pierre-André Chiappori fills a gap in the literature by presenting a clear and elegant overview of matching with transfers and provides a set of tools that enable the analysis of matching patterns in equilibrium, as well as a series of extensions. He then applies these tools to the field of family economics and shows how analysis of matching patterns and of the incentives thus generated can contribute to our understanding of long-term economic trends, including inequality and the demand for higher education.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the interactions between economic agents operating in the retail insurance market. On the one hand, policyholders wishing to cover themselves against a risk of loss must explore the market in order to subscribe to a contract in line with their perception of the risk. On the other hand, insurers compete in a regulated market, imposing on them a certain level of capital in order to guarantee their solvency in a context of uncertainty about the risks underwritten. On the other hand, intermediaries offer their services in order to facilitate the interaction between consumers, who are averse to risk, and firms, which take risks. It is therefore in this context that we analyze the behavior of insurance actors from different perspectives. Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis are the result of laboratory experiments, carried out using a web interface designed specifically for these studies. The results in Chapter 3 are based on a theoretical model and numerical simulations. Chapter 1 focuses on the relationship between honesty and honesty beliefs of economic agents. Using data collected in the laboratory, we show how uncertainty and the feeling of being in more or less advantageous conditions impact both the level of honesty and the belief in honesty towards others. In general, consumers overestimate the honesty of intermediaries. Thus, this result justifies their presence in the insurance market. On the other hand, we also show that the financial incentives offered to intermediaries distort honesty beliefs. The lower the incentive level, the more dishonest behavior is anticipated by consumers. In Chapter 2, we highlight the dilemma faced by the consumer in a market with multiple distribution channels. Should he explore by himself and choose among a large set of contracts or delegate part of his decision to an intermediary plus or minus search costs, we show that obfuscation related to a large amount of information and beliefs in the honesty of intermediaries are the main determinants of search and purchase decisions. We also show that obfuscation and intermediaries' attitudes are sources of inefficiency in decision making, in particular with respect to the characteristics of the insurance contracts purchased by consumers. In this sense, the identification of a focus effect supports the importance of the price level in decision making to the detriment of the risk environment and the level of coverage. The introduction of search costs in the exploration process, as well as the heterogeneity of honesty beliefs, justify the multi-channel distribution strategies adopted by insurers. An analysis of a repeated non-cooperative game is presented in Chapter 3 of this thesis where losses and consumer behavior are stochastic and insurers compete on price. In order to incorporate the regulators' constraints, we determine Nash equilibria under solvency constraints. We also analyze the sensitivity of equilibrium premiums to the parameters of the game, in particular when firms do not benefit from the same comparative advantages (i.e. reputation leading to different levels of customer retention, insurers' seniority leading to different capital stocks).

This thesis deals with the formation of couples in the marriage market, and proposes as a guideline to focus on the issue of inequalities, both inter- and intra-household. The first chapter examines the role of marital preferences in the rise of income inequality between households. Edoardo Ciscato and I use US data to measure the impact of changing marital preferences on inter-household income inequality. Using structural methods, we show that if marital preferences had not changed since 1971, the Gini coefficient today would be 6% lower. In Chapter 2, I introduce the idea of bringing together the literature on matching models and that on collective models. For this purpose, Alfred Galichon, Scott Kominers and I have worked on a matching model with imperfectly transferable utility. We prove the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium in this framework. In addition, we construct two algorithms for determining the equilibrium. We show how the model can be estimated by maximum likelihood and propose an illustration. In the last chapter, I focus on resource sharing within couples. The idea is that collective models are inseparable from the marriage market, in the sense that the sharing of bargaining power is endogenous to the determination of an equilibrium in the marriage market. I discuss in depth the connection between collective models and matching models. In particular, I characterize the classes of collective models that can be integrated with the imperfectly transferable utility (ITU) matching model developed earlier. I propose a general method to estimate these models. Finally, I propose to illustrate my results on data extracted from the US PSID, and to estimate a model with private consumption, leisure and domestic work.

This thesis focuses on the interdependence between residential and occupational location choices. Issues such as the decision-making process, job accessibility, geographic distribution of jobs, and collective decision making of spouses, among others, are analyzed by developing discrete choice models. In this framework, we study location choices from two complementary perspectives. (1) First, we study the interdependence between the two location choices without considering the decision process within households. We develop a three-level nested logit model for residential and occupational location choices and study the effect of individual-specific attractiveness and accessibility measures (log-sums). The results of the first chapter show that the accessibility specific to each individual is a determining factor in the choice of residential location and that its effect differs along the life cycle of households. The attractiveness of job types is a better indicator of the choice of occupational location than the number of jobs. The evolution of measures of job attractiveness and accessibility is analyzed in the second chapter. (2) Second, we study the interdependence of residential and occupational location within the household. This thesis contributes to the collective models literature by developing a choice model with intra-household bargaining processes à la Chiappori, to describe the residential location choice of dual-working households. The final chapter develops and estimates a two-stage structural model to disentangle bargaining power and spousal time values. The results show that the couple's nationalities, their level of education, as well as the age difference between the spouses play a crucial role in determining bargaining power.

"The family is a complex decision unit in which partners with potentially different objectives make consumption, work, and fertility decisions. Couples marry and divorce partly based on their ability to coordinate these activities, which in turn depends on how well they are matched. This book provides a comprehensive, modern, and self-contained account of the research in the growing area of family economics. The first half of the book develops several alternative models of family decision making. Particular attention is paid to the collective model and its testable implications. The second half discusses household formation and dissolution and who marries whom. Matching models with and without frictions are analyzed and the important role of within-family transfers is explained. The implications for marriage, divorce, and fertility are discussed. The book is intended for graduate students in economics and for researchers in other fields interested in the economic approach to the family.

This thesis studies family formation, family organization, and parenting systems. The first two chapters deal with spousal choice and resource sharing within the couple. I first model how individuals meet and decide whether or not to pair up based on their education, income, and physical appearance. I use U.S. data where I observe who is married to whom and for how long, allowing me to identify individuals' preferences. The second chapter analyzes the effects of marriage on certain economic trends such as income inequality or labor supply. In this chapter, people in a couple share their income and choose together the best organization for working and performing domestic tasks and raising children. Using British data, I identify the income transfers that exist between men and women and show that these transfers increase the work of married men and decrease the work of married women. The last two chapters study the efficiency of the French college and in particular the practice of repeating grades. The third chapter uses decomposition methods to assess the extent to which the decline in French students' PISA scores can be attributed to changes in student characteristics or to changes in the returns to education. Finally, the last chapter focuses specifically on repetition and uses panel data on French middle school students to assess the impact of repetition on their scores.

This thesis is devoted to the study of decision-making within couples and the analysis of educational choices by gender. To date, economic models offer a better understanding of these decisions, but fail to explain gender differences in their entirety. Indeed, traditional economic variables do not fully represent the allocation of time between partners, and human capital models fail to explain why girls choose lower paying educational paths. The first chapter of this thesis will then seek to better understand the determinants of "who gets what" in the couple, in terms of monetary resources and time. Then a second chapter will look at the production sphere of the household, by confronting the efficiency hypothesis to the time allocation choices in couples. It turns out that this hypothesis seems to be challenged at the level of the household production process. But how can we then represent behavior? It might be judicious to try to represent a second-order optimum, integrating social constraints or representations, and more particularly gender stereotypes or differentiated beliefs in society regarding the skills of men and women. The third chapter thus analyses the impact on educational choices of different beliefs about the skills of girls and boys in science and humanities. The final chapter examines the impact of gender stereotypes, this time concerning men's and women's skills in producing household goods.

Construction insurance in France is governed by the modified law of January 4, 1978 (the Spinetta law), which institutes a double insurance obligation against the decennial risk: the damage insurance [do] of the building owners and the decennial liability [rd] of the builders. This paper presents a theoretical framework of this system based on models of insurance a la mossin. A set of contracts between insurers is demonstrated. It shows that the bid of a single insurer dominates the bids of two separate insurers because of its << coordination >> value, and not because of cross-subsidies between contracts. The study then turns to the allocation of liability, which includes three aspects in construction: - coverage for the failure of a builder during the course of construction. This risk would justify the prohibition of the deductible in C insurance in the case of a ten-year risk. On the other hand, it would appear desirable to make the client pay a deductible in the event of the bankruptcy of the builder. - the distribution of responsibilities between builders. This question depends on the insurable mass of each participant and the cost of expertise of the responsibilities. In some cases, it is advisable to have recourse to the expertise in a random way. The offer of separate insurers may dominate that of a single insurer because the latter has a weaker commitment power. In the absence of commitment problems, the separate insurers' offer is always dominated (sometimes strictly) by that of the single insurer. The latter benefits from the value of coordination when information is symmetrical and uses cross-subsidies when there is moral hazard. - the distribution of responsibilities between victims and manufacturers. The exemption from liability regime dominates the strict liability regime in a context of antiselection. This result may remain, even in a context of moral hazard, when markets for non-decreasing claims are possible.

This paper studies the dynamics of competition in contracts with incomplete information and learning. In the first part, we show that it is beneficial not to impose the transmission of information on claims and past contract choices of policyholders when they change companies. We show that it is desirable to create information asymmetries in an insurance market. Equilibrium contracts are not necessarily actuarial, and contract menus can appear despite the initial information symmetry. The second part shows that credit and insurance contracts are complementary and establishes the robustness of the previous results. It is also shown that long-term contracts have a value beyond that of the commitment, and that the inability to commit to not renegotiating contracts is beneficial. The third part is a contribution to the study of wage formation. It shows the non-robustness of the result of downward real wage rigidity: if performance is not perfectly observable from the outside or if employers commit themselves via their reputation or implement transfers between different cohorts of employees, then real wages are downwardly flexible. This result corroborates empirical studies and shows that these should not lead to the rejection of the presence of commitment in labor contracts. It also leads to positive profits under the assumption of perfect competition.

This paper studies the properties of competitive equilibria and second-order allocations in production economies with multiple goods and moral hazard. The analysis focuses on competitive situations where the number of agents in each market is large and information is asymmetrically distributed among agents. We characterize the set of equilibrium allocations, and establish the welfare properties of competitive equilibria under alternative assumptions about the verifiability of trade. Equilibrium allocations are defined by the sets of individual rationality conditions and non-arbitrage conditions. In equilibrium, economic agents maximize their objective functions and exploit all arbitrage opportunities in each market. We show that an equilibrium without arbitrage opportunities always exists, and that non-arbitrage prices can be different from market clearing prices. In this case, rationing phenomena occur at equilibrium. We fully characterize the set of contracts traded in markets with asymmetric information, and clarify the role of contract lotteries and contracts with commitments on future period trades. Finally, we show that the first welfare theorem does not hold in the presence of moral hazard, and characterize the transfer policies that allow for second-best allocations.

Part 1: the exclusivity of contracts. Ch. 1: the role of risk aversion in the rothschild and stiglitz model (1976). We take the rs model, but individuals no longer necessarily behave in the same way with respect to risk. Unusual equilibrium configurations appear: positive profits in equilibrium. multiplicity of equilibria. random insurance. Ch. 2: what information asymmetry? Insurers think they know the risks better than the insureds. We model this idea. To simplify, the reversal of the informational advantage produces an inversion of the equilibrium properties linking coverage to accident probability. Part 2: the absence of contract exclusivity. Ch. 3 : multiple risks and information asymmetry. The specialization of insurers leads to imperfect competition between them. Notions of complementarity and substitutability characterize the different types of equilibria. We analyze the properties of the utility functions that cause them. Ch. 4: Compulsory insurance and anti-selection intensity. Two particularities of life insurance justify a specific modeling: no exclusivity of contracts. the pension is a forced life annuity. Its variations modify the intensity of antiselection. The optimal response to intense antiselection in the private markets may be a decrease in mandatory coverage.

This thesis explores from a theoretical and empirical point of view the contributions of the logic of information accumulation to career analysis. We adopt the hypothesis, common to several models of contract theory, that employees' competences are only imperfectly known by both employers and employees at the time of recruitment, the information necessary for the evaluation of these competences being collected progressively as the employees' performance is observed. The thesis highlights the implications of this representation of the work relationship on the dynamics of wages and the trade-offs that may arise from the progressive nature of the discovery of competences when deciding on a promotion. It proposes an empirical confrontation of the harris and holmstrom model based on the central hypothesis of the thesis, using a sample of 1508 executives in a large French public company.