Research

Abstract: We study the relative impact of custodial and non-custodial sentences on later crime and labor-market outcomes in Denmark, a country where detention conditions are particularly good. To do so, we take advantage of a large-scale reform of the Danish legislation implemented in 2000, whereby incarceration was replaced by a non-custodial sentence for most drunk-driving crimes, which represented a quarter of the custodial sentences inflicted prior to the reform. Our first key finding is that stakeholders anticipated the consequences of the reform: around the time of the reform, the number of cases tried dropped and the nature of the cases changed significantly. To measure the relative impact of incarceration, we therefore resort to a novel instrumental variable approach exploiting quasi-exogenous variation in the probability of being tried after the reform, and therefore incarcerated, based on the crime date. We find that incarcerated offenders commit more crimes and have weaker ties to the labor market after release. The pattern of results suggests that part of the explanation for this increase in offenders’ criminal activities can be found in their greater precariousness.

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of ethnic fractionalization on public service use by exploiting a major constitutional reform in Kenya. Following an important period of inter-ethnic conflict, responsibility for local health services was decentralized to 47 newly created county governments across the country. Crucially, this changed the ethnic composition of the administrative area responsible for healthcare, while leaving the composition of the local population unchanged. Using an event-study design, we find that use of public clinics for births increased significantly more in counties that were relatively ethnically homogeneous after the reform. We also find a significant increase in the correlation between county ethnic fractionalization and a range of other measures of public health service use. Using within-county variation to investigate mechanisms, we find healthcare use increases were concentrated among individuals of the same ethnicity as members of the new county government executives. Overall, the results suggest that more ethnically homogeneous subnational jurisdictions can lead to more public service use relative to more fractionalized ones.

Abstract: This paper explores how diversity affects individuals’ employment prospects, using recent data from the French Labor Force Survey. Employment correlates positively with local labor market diversity, but negatively with neighborhood diversity. Using an instrumental variable approach to deal with local labor market diversity drives the positive correlation to zero, supporting the intuition that immigrants self-select into more economically dynamic areas. Taking advantage of the very precise localization of the data, we correct biases related to residential sorting and confirm the negative effect of neighborhood diversity. We also show that diversity in terms of nationalities (a proxy for cultural diversity) matters more than diversity based on parents’ origins (a proxy for ethnic diversity), giving insights on the underlying mechanisms.

Abstract: Recent evidence reveals that transportation’s improvements within metropolitan areas have a clear effect on population and job decentralization processes. Yet, very little has been said on how these improvements affect the spatial organization of the economic activity in the suburbs. This paper analyses the effects of transportation’s changes on employment subcenters formation. Using data from metropolitan Paris between 1968 and 2010, we first show that rail network improvements cause the expected job decentralization by attracting jobs to suburban municipalities. Our main contribution is to show that the new rail transit clearly affects the spatial organization of employment through the number and size of the employment subcenters: not only does the presence of a rail station increase the probability of a suburban municipality of belonging to a subcenter by 5 to 10 %, but a 10 % increase in municipality proximity to a suburban station is found to increase its chance to be part of a subcenter by 3 to 5 %.

Abstract: This paper analyzes the influence of transportation infrastructure, and in particular of the Regional Express Rail (RER), on employment and population growth in the Paris metropolitan area between 1968 and 2010. In order to make proper causal inference, we rely on historical instruments and control for all other transportation modes that could be complement or substitute to the RER. A dynamic analysis accounting for spatial heterogeneity reveals that for municipalities located less than 13 kilometers from an RER station, each kilometer closer to the station increases employment and population growth by 12% and 8% respectively. Regarding the time pattern of these effects, we find no impact of the RER expansion on employment growth during the first part of the period, while the effect on population growth appears earlier but declines over time.

Abstract: This paper demonstrates the effects of ethnic diversity on social relationships and the quality of public spaces at a very finite neighborhood level. We use detailed block level data on diversity and housing quality from a representative survey on housing in France. We show how and to what extent diversity within a neighborhood can directly affect household well-being and the quality of the common spaces, whereas the previous literature looks at more aggregate outcomes through voting channels. Our identification strategy relies on the exogeneity of public housing allocations with respect to ethnic characteristics in France, to address the bias due to endogenous residential sorting. Diversity is shown to have a negative effect on the quality of local public goods, either due to vandalism, not deterred by other-regarding preferences and social policing, or due to collective action failure to ensure effective property management. However, we find that diversity has no robust effect on public safety at a local level and, if anything, is more related to social anomie.