BELZIL Christian

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Preferences, abilities, and personality predict a wide range of economic outcomes. I map them into a structural decision-making framework using unique experimental data collected on more than 1200 individuals each making more than 100 financially relevant decisions.I jointly estimate the distributions of risk and time preferences in the population, their stability at the individual level, and the tendency of people to make mistakes. I use the Randomized Preference Model (RPM), which has recently been shown to have superior theoretical properties to previously employed models. I show that the RPM has strong internal validity. The five estimated structural parameters dominate a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic variables when explaining observed individual choices. I demonstrate the economic and econometric importance of using preference shocks and incorporating the so-called "shaky hand" parameter. Errors and instability in preferences are related to different capabilities. I propose a rationality index that condenses them into a single predictor of welfare losses.I use a factor model to extract cognitive ability and "Big Five" personality traits from many measures. They explain up to 50% of the variation in people's preferences and ability to make rational choices. Conscientiousness alone explains 45% and 10% of the cross-sectional variation in discount rate and risk aversion, and 20% of the variation in their individual stability. In addition, risk aversion is related to extraversion and errors depend on cognitive ability, effort, and task parameters. Preferences are stable for the median individual. Nevertheless, a portion of the population has some instability in preferences that is indicative of imperfect self-knowledge.These results have implications both for the specification of reduced-form and structural economic models, and also for the explanation of inequality and the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status.

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In the first chapter, co-authored with Bruno Crépon, we study the impact of an experiment aimed at increasing the use of health care by unemployed youth in France. Young people in precarious situations are more likely to underinvest in their health, which can have short and long-term economic and social consequences. In this study, we examine two possible barriers: the cost of care, and misperception of need. Using a randomized experiment, we find that informing these youth individually about their needs as well as the health insurance system increases their investments, including doubling the likelihood of seeing a psychologist. Our results also suggest that such an intervention can promote entry into training. In order to distinguish between barriers related to the cost of care and barriers related to a misperception of needs, we also test an intervention in which young people receive only information on the health insurance system. Unlike the combined intervention, this intervention does not increase the use of health care, highlighting the crucial role of subjective perceptions in health care decisions.In the second chapter, based on work with Marc Gurgand, Nina Guyon, and Marion Monnet, we evaluate a policy of referring children living in sensitive urban areas (ZUS) in France to facilities that address their difficulties. In the ZUS, some children tend to accumulate academic difficulties, health problems, socialization problems, and sometimes family problems. The policy studied consists of setting up individualized and multidimensional interventions for the children, involving their parents and their teacher. These interventions consist, for example, of enrolling the child in a sports club, carrying out a health check-up, and offering administrative assistance to parents, and rely on the resources available at the commune level. In order to identify a causal effect, we implement matching methods that we combine with a difference-in-differences estimator. We find that the program has no effect on children's behavior or cognitive skills, and a negative effect on socialization and school motivation. It does, however, reduce absenteeism. A comparison with other schemes suggests that early and more intensive interventions are needed to improve the situation of these disadvantaged children.In the third chapter, I examine the extent to which information policies designed to guide high school students in the transition to higher education increase the use of scholarships among disadvantaged students in Canada. The growing doubts about the ability of financial aid policies to reduce inequalities in access to higher education lead to questions about the conditions for their effectiveness. This study aims to better understand the informational barriers that students face. Based on a controlled experiment, I model the demand for scholarships as a function of the perceived utility of the university, which itself depends on the level of information of young people. I then use the model to simulate different information policies that are often implemented but rarely evaluated. Informing young people about the financial aid system is particularly effective. Meeting with a school counselor or taking a skills and guidance test also increases the use of aid. Simulations suggest that such schemes could equalize demand between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

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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.