GOULAO Catarina

This thesis is composed of three articles, each of which asks a question about discrimination. The first article examines whether the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis are statistically discriminated against on the basis of supposed violence . where the practice of a combat sport would be a signal of violence. The second article looks at whether Marseilles accents are discriminated against in the labor market. The last article asks whether employers could use the surname and address of job applicants to correlate their accent and, if they infer that they have an accent from the big cities, to discriminate against them on this point. The "testing" method is used to answer these three questions. The first two testings lead to a negative answer to the first two questions. Regarding the third question, even if it cannot be answered, the third test proves that the accent of the large ensembles is discriminated. Moreover, it shows that discrimination on the patronymic can overshadow that on the address. In general, this work shows that employers do not take sport into account in their hiring practices and that when designing a test, one must distinguish between strong and weak signals. He also shows that testing can be used up to the point where employers contact candidates by phone and engage different stereotypes depending on the accent they hear. Finally, he suggests that policymakers should seek to reduce discrimination based on surname first if they want to reduce total discrimination.

An unhealthy good causes health issues in the long run. It creates a misperceived utility loss and increases health care costs. Conversely, a healthy good provides misperceived utility gains and reduces health care costs. Individuals differ in income and in their degree of misperception. they vote over a fat tax according to their misperceived utility. A fraction of the tax proceeds is “earmarked” to reduce health insurance premiums. the remainder finances a subsidy on the healthy good. This earmarking rule is determined to maximize welfare, anticipating the induced political equilibrium. The equilibrium fat tax is always lower than the utilitarian level. This is not necessarily true with a Rawlsian objective. The determination of the earmarking rule is complex. Even in the utilitarian case, it is not just used to boost political support for the fat tax. Instead, it may involve a tradeoff between fat tax and healthy good subsidy.

We extend the framework of Dubey and Geanakoplos (2002) to the case of moral hazard. We analyze the equilibrium properties of the model and we show that equal ex-ante consumers may choose to promise differently, and, as a consequence, choose different actions. This illustrates how the pool of voluntary promises can induce redistribution from consumers with high expected endowment to those with low expected endowment.

We extend the framework of Dubey and Geanakoplos (2002) to the case of moral hazard. We analyze the equilibrium properties of the model and we show that equal ex-ante consumers may choose to promise differently, and, as a consequence, choose different actions. This illustrates how the pool of voluntary promises can induce redistribution from consumers with high expected endowment to those with low expected endowment.

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