VALFORT Marie Anne

Ensuring that LGBTI people – i.e. lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender and intersex individuals – can live as who they are without being discriminated against or attacked is a concern worldwide. Discrimination against LGBTI people remains pervasive, while its cost is massive. It lowers investment in human capital due to bullying at school. It also reduces economic output by excluding LGBTI talents from the labour market and impairing their mental health, hence their productivity. This report provides a comprehensive overview of the extent to which laws in OECD countries ensure equal treatment of LGBTI people, and of the complementary policies that could help foster LGBTI inclusion. The report first identifies the legislative and regulatory frameworks in the areas of civil rights, protection against discrimination and violence, as well as health that are critical for the inclusion of sexual and gender minorities. The report then explores whether these laws are in force in OECD countries and examines the margin for further improvement. Finally, the report investigates the broader policy measures that should accompany LGBTI-inclusive laws in order to strengthen the inclusion of LGBTI people.

No summary available.

Are Muslims qua Muslims discriminated against in the French labour market? Identifying anti-Muslim hiring discrimination is challenging because it requires neutralising two confounding factors: geographic origin (the bulk of Muslim-majority countries are located outside of Europe and its offshoots) and religiosity (survey-based evidence reveals greater importance attached to God among Muslims than Christians). To address these challenges, this paper compares the callback rates of fictitious job applicants of Muslim and Christian affiliation who originate from the same country, Lebanon, and are identical in every respect save the religion they inherited. This paper also varies whether the job applicants are “religious”, i.e. whether they practise their religion in adulthood, through their membership in Scouting associations. The results reveal no discrimination against Muslims when they are not religious. However, Muslims lose ground when they are religious, unless they are outstanding. The gap further widens when religious Muslims are compared to religious Christians. While religiosity constitutes a penalty for Muslims, it works as a premium for Christians: their callback rate is boosted when they are religious. Consequently, religious Muslims must submit twice as many applications as religious Christians before being called back by the recruiters. A closer look at the data reveals that the “religiosity penalty” affects ordinary Muslim men and accounts for the full gap in callback rate between religious ordinary Muslim men (4.2%) and their Christian counterparts (10.9%). This finding is compatible with employers incurring a disutility when they interact with religious Muslim men, that wanes as the latter become outstanding and, hence, more likely to behave in a way that pleases employers. It is also compatible with religious ordinary Muslim men being linked to a risk of religious radicalism. A follow-up survey confirms that the signal used to convey religiosity is deemed relevant and correctly interpreted by employers.

There is still a long way to go before lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender individuals – commonly referred to as “LGBT people” (Box 1.1) – meet full-fledged legal acceptance. Same-sex sexual acts have become legal in all OECD countries where they were formerly criminalised, as have hormonal therapy or gender-reassignment surgery. Nevertheless, only half of OECD countries have legalised same-sex marriage throughout their national territory, and less than a third allow for a change of gender on official documents to match gender identity without forcing the transgender person to undergo sterilisation, sex-reassignment surgery, hormonal therapy or a psychiatric diagnosis. Steps backward have also been witnessed. Some OECD countries have introduced a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, and the very possibility of a person being legally recognised as transgender is questioned in some others.1 Overall, LGBT people are still stigmatised and exposed to various forms of discrimination, despite the fact that some LGBT individuals managed to make it to the top.

No summary available.

The causes, costs and measurement of discrimination in the workplace have been the subject of much research, and this groundbreaking book presents the results for a wide range of social groups: women, seniors, LGBT people, ethnic and religious minorities, and people discriminated against because of their physical appearance. Discrimination is omnipresent and creeps into every stage of the career path, from application to hiring, to loss of a job and chances of promotion. It even manifests itself in the education years, influencing skill acquisition as well as career choices. The causes, costs, and measurement of discrimination in the workplace are the subject of multiple research studies and experiments, the results of which this innovative book presents for a wide range of social groups: women, senior citizens, LGBT people, ethnic and religious minorities, and people discriminated against because of their physical appearance. This book is also the first to propose a series of measures which, well beyond a strictly punitive approach, show that discrimination in the workplace is not inevitable and can be fought.

Discrimination is a complex, multi-factor phenomenon. Evidence shows widespread discrimination on various grounds, including ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or beliefs, disability, being over 55 years old, or being a woman. Combating discrimination requires combining the strengths of a range of anti-discrimination policies while also addressing their weaknesses. In particular, policymakers should thoroughly address prejudice (taste-based discrimination), stereotypes (statistical discrimination), cognitive biases, and attention-based discrimination.

In the mid-1990s, Ugandan primary schools received only one-fifth of intended government capitation grants. A seminal study shows that a grassroots newspaper campaign substantially reduced grant capture and improved educational outcomes. We replicate these results, confirming that the campaign reduced corruption and increased enrolment. The latter outcome is only robust with an improved enrolment measure introduced in later work by the authors of the original study. We cannot, however, support the authors’ conclusion that lower capture enhanced learning. Finally, we show that the newspaper campaign allowed for a fairer allocation of teachers across schools, a result absent in the original papers.

Ubiquitous, discrimination creeps into every stage of the career path, from application to hiring to job loss to promotion opportunities. It even manifests itself in the education years, influencing skill acquisition as well as career choices. The causes, costs, and measurement of discrimination in the workplace are the subject of multiple research studies and experiments, the results of which this innovative book presents for a wide range of social groups: women, senior citizens, LGBT people, ethnic and religious minorities, and people discriminated against because of their physical appearance. This book is also the first to propose a series of measures which, well beyond a strictly punitive approach, show that discrimination in the workplace is not inevitable and can be fought. (Editor's summary).

Discrimination is pervasive, creeping into every stage of a career path, from application to hiring to loss of employment to opportunities for promotion. It even manifests itself in the education years, in?uencing skill acquisition as well as career choices. The causes, costs and measurement of discrimination in the workplace are the subject of numerous research studies and experiments, and this innovative book presents the results for a wide range of social groups: women, seniors, LGBT people, ethnic and religious minorities, and people discriminated against because of their physical appearance. This book is also the first to propose a series of measures which, well beyond a strictly punitive approach, show that discrimination in the workplace is not inevitable and can be fought.

No summary available.

This article is based on a CV testing of unprecedented scale conducted in metropolitan France before the 2015 attacks. The experimental protocol compares the call rates to a job interview of fictitious candidates of Lebanese origin whose applications are identical in all respects except for their supposed religion. The results reveal a strong discrimination on the basis of religion: Catholics are called by the recruiter after five applications, while six are necessary for Jews and ten for Muslims. Muslim men are the most discriminated against: the Catholic applicant has to submit five CVs and cover letters to get a job interview, compared to twenty for his Muslim counterpart, i.e. four times more. This discrimination seems to be explained in part by the association of Muslim men with a risk of transgressive religious behavior and insubordination in the workplace.

No summary available.

Amid mounting fears of violent Islamic extremism, many Europeans ask whether Muslim immigrants can integrate into historically Christian countries. In a groundbreaking ethnographic investigation of France's Muslim migrant population, Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-Heritage Societies explores this complex question. The authors conclude that both Muslim and non-Muslim French must share responsibility for the slow progress of Muslim integration. Claire Adida, David Laitin, and Marie-Anne Valfort found that in France, Muslims are widely perceived as threatening, based in large part on cultural differences between Muslim and rooted French that feed both rational and irrational Islamophobia. Relying on a unique methodology to isolate the religious component of discrimination, the authors identify a discriminatory equilibrium in which both Muslim immigrants and native French act negatively toward one another in a self-perpetuating, vicious circle. Disentangling the rational and irrational threads of Islamophobia is essential if Europe hopes to repair a social fabric that has frayed around the issue of Muslim immigration. Muslim immigrants must address their own responsibility for the failures of integration, and Europeans must acknowledge the anti-Islam sentiments at the root of their antagonism. The authors outline public policy solutions aimed at promoting religious diversity in fair-minded host societies.

Economic research on immigrant integration highlights the discrimination that Muslim immigrants from Muslim-majority countries face in Western labor markets. However, economists struggle to determine whether this is due to these immigrants' religion or simply their region of origin. Our objective is to isolate the religious effect from potential confounds in the context of Muslim integration in the United States. Relying on a unique survey conducted in metropolitan Detroit which allows us to hold the region of origin of the immigrant constant (Arab countries) while allowing for variation in religion (Christian versus Muslim), we investigate how Muslims qua Muslims integrate in the US relative to Christians. The data reveal that Muslim Arabs are more likely to experience disrespect, to report on media bias against them, and to fare less well in the labour market than do Arab American Christians. Moreover, the Muslim Arabs develop fewer social ties in their host country society and retain closer ties to their home country than do their Christian counterparts. Finally, the gaps in integration remain (and even widen) with the time these immigrants spend in the U.S.

Homophily—the tendency individuals have to associate with similar-others—is a powerful determinant of social networks. Yet research to date does not allow us to determine which dimension, e.g., ethnic, religious, gender, age, or class similarity, drives association. Tests demonstrating homophily are flawed by restricting the range of dimensions in the choice set. We introduce an experimental game in which we exogenously expose subjects to diverse partners to determine which dimension dominates. We find that in a socio-demographically diverse district of Paris, despite expectations of secularization, religious similarity significantly predicts homophily. Moreover, we provide tentative evidence that religious homophily is taste-based.

Replying on microeconomic data, we examine the impact of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) campaigns on the educational attainment of primary schoolchildren across 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Combining a difference-in-differences approach with an instrumental variables analysis, we exploit exogenous variation in pre-campaign malaria risk and exogenous variation in exposure to the timing and disbursements of the RBM campaign. In 13 of 14 countries, the RBM campaign substantially improved schooling attainment at an average cost of $ 13.19 per additional year, which is highly cost-effective as compared to standard educational interventions.

Relying on microeconomic data, we examine the impact of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) control campaigns on the educational attainment of primary school children in 14 Sub-Saharan African countries. Combining a difference-in-differences approach with an IV analysis, we exploit exogenous variation in pre-campaign malaria prevalence and exogenous variation in exposure to the timing and disbursements of the RBM campaign. In all 14 countries, the RBM campaign reveals itself as a particularly cost-effective strategy to improve primary school children’s educational attainment.

We analyze the assimilation patterns of Muslim immigrants in Western countries with a unique identification strategy. Survey and experimental data collected in France in 2009 suggest that Muslims and rooted French are locked in a sub-optimal equilib- rium whereby (i) rooted French exhibit taste-based discrimination against those they are able to identify as Muslims and (ii) Muslims perceive French institutions as system- atically discriminatory against them. This equilibrium is sustained because Muslims, perceiving discrimination as institutionalized, are reluctant to assimilate and rooted French, who are able to identify Muslims as such due to their lower assimilation, reveal their distaste for Muslims.

We examine the middle-run eff ects of the Global Fund's malaria control programs on the educational attainment of primary schoolchildren in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using a quasi-experimental approach, we exploit geographic variation in pre-campaign malaria prevalence (malaria ecology) and variation in exogenous exposure to the timing and expenditure of malaria control campaigns, based on individuals' years of birth and year surveyed. In a large majority of countries (14 of 22), we find that the program led to substantial increases in years of schooling and grade level as well as reductions in schooling delay. These countries are those for which pre-campaign educational resources are the highest. Moreover, although by and large positive, we nd that the marginal returns of the Global Fund disbursements in terms of educational outcomes are decreasing. Our findings, which are robust to both the instrumentation of ecology and use of alternative ecology measures, have important policy implications on the value for money of malaria control eff orts.

No summary available.

Relying on census data collected in 2002 and historical weather data for Uganda, we estimate the impact of weather-induced internal migration on the probability for non-migrants living in the destination regions to be employed. Consistent with the pre- diction of a simple theoretical model, our results reveal a larger negative impact than the one documented for developed countries. They further show that this negative impact is significantly stronger in Ugandan regions with lower road density and therefore less conducive to capital mobility: a 10 percentage points increase in the net in-migration rate in these areas decreases the probability of being employed of non-migrants by more than 10 percentage points.

No summary available.

Muslim immigrants to Europe display distinctive attitudes toward women in a wide range of survey data. This study investigates whether this translates into distinctive behavior. Relying on a dictator game in France and an identification strategy that isolates the effect of religion from typical confounds such as race, we compare the donations of matched Christian and Muslim immigrants and rooted French to in-group and out-group men vs. women. Our results indicate that Muslim immigrant participants deviate from Christian immigrant and rooted French partici pants in their behavior toward women: while the latter favor women over men, Muslim immigrants favor men over women.

Using a within-student analysis, we find no average impact of textbook access (ownership or sharing) on primary school achievement. Instead, it is only for students with high socioeconomic status that one form of textbook access - sharing - has a positive impact.

The New Political Economy1 is based on the postulate of homo politicus that Downs (1957) presents as the clone of homo oeconomicus, a rational agent mo- tivated by the maximisation of his material self-interest. Goodin and Roberts (1975) were the first to propose an alternative to the homo politicus postulate by introducing the notion of ‘ethical voter' 2. The ‘ethical voter' describes a rational agent who is not only motivated by the maximisation of his short term material self-interest but also by the promotion of what he considers as fair for the society as a whole. There have been so far only few attempts to model ‘ethical voting'. Most of them liken ‘ethical voting' to caring about the well-being of the worst-off when voting (see Snyder and Kramer (1988), Kranich (2001) and Galasso (2003)). Alesina and Angeletos (2005) constitute an exception. Following responsibility-based theories of justice, they assume that individuals share the conviction that one deserves the income on the basis of his skill and effort and that only luck creates unfair differences they are consequently willing to compensate. However, the ‘responsibility cut' (Dworkin (1981)) used by Alesina and Angeletos (2005) lacks justification, should one consider the theoretical literature on fair redistribution or the empirical literature on individual opinions on distributive justice. I propose to analyze ‘ethical voting' in a more comprehensive way. The thread of this work is a ‘fair utility function'. More precisely, I specify in paper 1 a ‘fair utility function' to model citizens' trade-off between their self-interest and some of their major concerns for fairness. Paper 2 and paper 3 rely on the ‘fair utility function' to study voting behavior over the (re)distribution of economic surpluses in different contexts of democracy4. In paper 2, my coauthor and I compute the politico-economic equilibrium that emerges when citizens are endowed with the ‘fair utility function'. We model the institutional setting of a typical Western democracy where political cleavages are mainly income-based. In paper 3, I estimate the ‘fair utility function'. I base my estimation on survey data that I collected in an ethnically polarized democracy where political cleavages are mainly ethnic-based. Paper 1 investigates whether concerns for fairness influence the aggregate out- come in real life interactions so that economic analysis should complete the postulate of homo economicus with the postulate of homo ethicus. I conduct a three-step analysis addressing the following research questions: • Which are the main concerns for fairness that individuals are able to show? • Do these concerns for fairness influence the aggregate outcome in the eco- nomic field? • Do these concerns for fairness influence the aggregate outcome in the po- litical field? Based on experimental evidence, I identify three main concerns for fairness likely to influence individual behaviors besides self-interest: utilitarian altru- ism, ‘Rawlsian' altruism and desert-sensitivity. Utilitarian altruism consists in maximizing the sum of all utilities. ‘Rawlsian' altruism consists in maximizing the utility of the worst-off. Desert-sensitivity consists in weighting one's con- cerns for fairness towards others, should they be utilitarian altruistic concerns or ‘Rawlsian' altruistic concerns, depending on these others' deservingness with respect to their responsibility characteristics. I find out that concerns for fairness have no impact on market aggregate out- comes, should I focus on markets involving complete contracts or on markets involving incomplete contracts. I provide evidence that concerns for fairness have a significant impact on po- litical aggregate outcomes. More particularly, concerns for fairness (utilitarian altruism, ‘Rawlsian' altruism, and desert-sensitivity) seem to express through citizens' position on a liberalism/conservatism scale which ultimately impacts their voting behavior. However, evidence also shows that ethnic prejudice, an unambiguously unfair motivation, constitutes a serious challenger to individual concerns for fairness, even in the Western democratic context where political parties are officially divided along income-based, not ethnic-based, lines. My findings suggest that economic theory in general (and the New Political Economy in particular) should pay more attention to the modelling of ethical voting behaviors to improve its explanatory and predictive power. I propose a provisional ‘fair utility function' to model citizens' trade-off between their self-interest and the three various concerns for fairness which are utilitarian altruism, ‘Rawlsian' altruism and desert-sensitivity. • Which is the politico-economic equilibrium emerging in a society where individuals are endowed with the ‘fair utility function'? We study a simple voting model where a unidimensional redistributive parame- ter is chosen by majority voting in a direct democracy where political cleavages are income-based. We allow for heterogeneities in productivities and preferences for consumption and leisure and incorporate the incentive effects of taxation. We show that in a society where altruistic preferences are desert-sensitive, (i) strictly lower levels of redistribution emerge in political equilibrium comparedto a society where altruistic preferences are not desert-sensitive and (ii) lower or equal levels of redistribution emerge in political equilibrium compared to a society where preferences for redistribution are purely egoistic. We then investigate the following research question: • Can our theoretical result help explain the differences between the Ameri- can and the European social contract? Using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 1992 dataset, we provide empirical evidence that: (i) preferences for redistribution are not purely egoistic, (ii) desert-sensitivity induces lower support for redistribution and (iii) differences in desert-sensitivity hold between both continents, inducing lower support for redistribution among Americans compared to Europeans. We see two apparent explanations helping to understand why preferences for re- distribution are more desert-sensitive among individuals in the US than among individuals in Europe (see Alesina et al. (2001) and Alesina and Glaeser (2004) for an extensive discussion). First, the myth of the US being the ‘land of op- portunity' greatly entrenched its customs. Meanwhile, European perceptions are influenced by the historical (from medieval times till the nineteenth cen- tury) division of society into classes, where birth and nobility were the main determinants of wealth and success. Second, the American belief of undeserv- ingness of the poor may reflect racial prejudice against the black minority. Poor white voters might reduce their support for redistribution when they believe that poor black citizens also benefit from redistribution (see Luttmer (2001) for strong empirical evidence). Roemer et al. (2007) find out that marginal income taxes would have been much higher when racial prejudice would have been absent. They believe that racial prejudice is the major underlying factor explaining why in the US, while the past twenty years were characterized by a sharp rise in inequality, the effective marginal income taxes have fallen. • In an ethnically polarized country, does aversion towards inter-ethnic in- equity induce citizens to vote for a party promoting an equitable allocation of national resources among ethnic groups?5 or, in other words, Could ethical voting help reduce risks of conflict in ethnically polarized countries? Relying on data collected among students from Addis Ababa University, my answer is threefold. First, I show that aversion towards inter-ethnic inequity significantly lowers university students' temptation to vote for their ethnic party. This finding is encouraging. Under my initial assumption that the degree of ethical concerns of university students constitute an upper bound of the degree of ethical concerns of the average citizen, this finding indeed suggests that ethical concerns could also influence his voting behavior. In other words, nationwide civic education programmes could be a promising conflict-reducing strategy in ethnically po- larized countries. Finkel (2002, 2003) provides evidence that civic education programs have a significant impact on participants' ‘political tolerance', while his concept of ‘political tolerance' is close to our notion of ‘aversion towards inter-ethnic inequity'. Second, I find out that, though significant, the relative impact of ethical concerns is very small in comparison to the impact of ethnic group loyalty, an important determinant of ethnic voting. This finding is discouraging since it suggests that the relative impact of ethical concerns will be even lower across a more representative sample of the Ethiopian population. In other words, the ‘return' on nationwide civic education programmes in terms of switch from ethnic voting to ethical voting is expected to be low. Third, I analyse the sociodemographic determinants of university students' aver- sion towards inter-ethnic inequity and ethnic group loyalty. I provide confirma- tion that some specific sociodemographic characteristics significantly (i) increase the degree of aversion towards inter-ethnic inequity and (ii) lower ethnic group loyalty. Those characteristics have in common that they reduce the ‘psycholog- ical' distance between ethnic groups, like living in a cosmopolitan city and hav- ing parents belonging to different ethnic groups (see Atchade and Wantchekon (2006) for a first evidence). Besides, I find that ethnic group loyalty is par- ticularly strong among ethnic groups experiencing a severe level of grievance. Finally, evidence shows that aversion towards inter-ethnic inequity depends pos- itively on the income of the household in which the respondent grew up in.