Research
Peer reviewed articles in English
Trust and specialization in complexity: Evidence from U.S. States, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 216:332-353, 2023. (with J. De Sousa, A. Guillin and J. Lochard)
The political reception of innovations, Economics & Politics 35(2):595-628, 2023. (with J. Frieden)
Global Regulations for a Digital Economy: Between new and old challenges, Global Policy 11(4):515-22, 2020. (with G. Beaumier, M. Campbell-Verduyn, K. Kalomeni, M. Lenglet, S. Natile, M. Papin, D. Rodima-Taylor, and F. Zhang)
How informality can address emerging issues: making the most of the G7, Global Policy, 10(2):267-73, 2019. (with A. Anne, L. Bélanger, P. Dietsch, H. Dobson, J. Fabian, J. Kirton, R. Marchetti, J.-F. Morin, C. Peacock, M. Prys-Hansen, S. Romano, M. Schreurs, and E. Vallet)
A theory of regional conflict complexes, Journal of Development Economics, 133:434-47, 2018. (with T. Verdier)
Asset complementarity, resource shocks and the political economy of property rights, Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(7):1489-516, 2018.
Peer reviewed articles in French
Guerres indirectes : pourquoi les États soutiennent-ils des rébellions à l’étranger ?, Revue d'Économie du Développement, 31(2/3):191-96, 2023. (with M. Mercier and B. Tremblay-Auger)
Résistance et abolition de l'esclavage au Brésil, Revue d'Économie du Développement, 31(2/3):185-90, 2023. (with F. Seyler)
Maurice : l'industrialisation inclusive, Afrique Contemporaine, 266(2):97-114, 2018.
Fragilité régionale, capacité de l’État et guerre civile, Revue Économique, 69(6):937-60, 2018. (with T. Verdier)
Botswana et Maurice, deux miracles africains, Afrique Contemporaine, 242(2):29-45, 2012.
translated for Cairn International
Chapters in edited volumes
“Formal modelling”, in Morin, Jean-Frédéric, Olsson, Christian, and Ece Özlem Atikcan (eds). Research Methods in the Social Sciences: An A-Z of Key Concepts. OUP, 2021. (with É. Duchesne)
“Regional fragility clusters: state capacity and civil conflicts”, in Besedeš, Tibor and Volker Nitsch (eds). Disrupted Economic Relationships: Disasters, Sanctions, Dissolutions. The MIT Press, 2019. (with T. Verdier)
Book reviews
Soudain, le développement, La Vie des Idées, 2022 (with J. Stieglitz)
Le capital et sa transmutation juridique, La Vie des Idées, 2020 (with A. Terrien).
Quand les statistiques minent la finance et la société. Risque, responsabilité et décision, Esprit 451:163-4, 2019.
Working or looting, Books and Ideas, 2017.
Dictators and Democrats. Masses, Elites, and Regime Change, Études Internationales 48(1):123-4, 2017.
Nouveau regard sur le développement, La Vie des Idées, 2017.
A new look at development Books and Ideas, 2018.
Other publications
The Political Economy of GovTech. IMF Note 2023/003, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. 2023 (with M. Moszoro)
L'invasion de l'Ukraine annonce-t-elle un nouvel ordre mondial ?, La Conversation, 2022 (with J. Paquin).
L'enjeu politique de l'enseignement de l'économie en perspective internationale, Revue nouvelle 74(2):66-71, 2019.
Working papers
Migration and cultural change (with S. Sardoschau and H. Rapoport, wp)
We propose a novel perspective on migration and cultural change by asking both theoretically and empirically - and from a global viewpoint - whether migration makes home and host countries culturally more similar. Our theoretical model derives distinctive testable predictions as to the sign and direction of cultural convergence for various compositional and cultural diffusion mechanisms. We use the World Value Survey for 1981-2014 to build time-varying measures of cultural similarity for a large number of country pairs and exploit within country-pair variation over time. Our results support migration-based cultural convergence, with cultural remittances as its main driver.
A longstanding debate opposes two mechanisms by which labor coercion persists or changes to free labor: a labor demand effect, by which the elite coerces labor when supply is scarce, and an outside option effect, by which labor scarcity and better outside options for the workers undermine coercive arrangements. Using a novel data set of roll-call votes on 1884-1888 emancipation bills in the Brazilian legislature, we find that both mechanisms played a role in building the coalition that eventually abolished slavery.
Democratic spillovers--Rent-seeking elites, mobile capital, and the coevolution of political institutions (with T. Verdier, CESifo wp, CEPR dp, R&R JDE)
We introduce a dynamic model that investigates the persistence and evolution of elite-dominated societies, where inherited political capital determines one's social standing. Our analysis highlights the critical role of the distribution of exit options in the evolution of political inclusiveness across generations. An elite comparatively more mobile than the masses generally entrenches a politically stratified society, whereas a more widespread distribution of exit options can encourage inclusiveness. Under certain conditions differential mobility may still induce political inclusiveness across generations. Exit options across different political entities lead to a joint evolution of local power structures.
Building reputation: proxy wars and transnational identities (with M. Mercier and B. Tremblay-Auger, IZA dp)
With a global security infrastructure that deters interstate wars, states establish a reputation of resolve by supporting rebellions abroad. Co-ethnicity, in particular, is used as a narrative by states who want to establish their international reputation: i) with more co-ethnic groups in neighboring countries, a state is more likely to support a given co-ethnic rebellion, and ii) ethnic groups whose potential foreign sponsor state count more co-ethnic groups in the neighboring countries benefit from higher political inclusion. The first relationship shows that states intentionally seek to build their reputation and the second result shows that such a strategy is effective. With a data set composed of 280,354 ethnic identity x sponsor state x target state x year observations, our empirical results lend credence to the reputation-building mechanism as a determinant of the support to rebellions abroad.