Research

• Wage Compression and Skill-Premium Concners Under Collective Bargaining

With Trang Tran Thanh

Abstract: Minimum wages are typically studied in the context of low-skill workers, but many countries around the world set wage floors by occupation, including for bothlow- and high-skill workers. When collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) change these wage floors, the wage distribution may compress. We study a 2014 CBA inTunisia’s banking sector that raised wage floors disproportionately more for low-skill occupations, compressing the wage distribution. We use newly-matched employer-employee data and leverage variation in the exposure of bank branch tothe increases. We find that branches comply. Surprisingly, we also find that internal branch skill premia increase, as more exposed branches raise the earnings of high-skill workers disproportionately more. Overall null employment effects mask important worker flows: Young hires increase and employment does not fall, suggesting that banks have labor market power. Our evidence suggests that firms restore pay differentials: decomposing increases in worker earnings, we find they mainly reflect increases to the wage cushion. A survey of bank employees indicates that high-skill workers expect branches to decompress the wage distribution. Our results challenge the view that wage floors contribute to the unemployment of young university graduates and show a novel channel through which employers respond to wage floors.

Published Journal Articles

• Promoting Innovative Startups: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Tunisia 

With Massimiliano Cali and Bob Rijkers

Journal of Development Economics, Volume 177, 2025, 103539, ISSN 0304-3878

Abstract: This paper evaluates Tunisia’s “Startup Act,” a policy initiative to foster innovative firms through a “start-up” label and a bundle of incentives including reduced social security contributions, corporate tax exemptions, easier access to foreign exchange, and simplified customs procedures. Detailed data on the program’s selection process allow us to identify marginal entrants and rejects, and hence limit selection on unobservables. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, the program is shown to increase survival and promote job creation. A back of the envelope cost–benefit calculation suggests that the program is cost effective.

Media coverage: l'economiste maghrebin

Working Papers

• What Do Market-Access Subsidies Do? Experimental Evidence from Tunisia (R&R at the American Economic Review)

With Giacomo De Giorgi, Aminur Rahman, and Eric Verhoogen

CEPR Discussion Paper No. 20398. CEPR Press, Paris & London.

NBER working paper No. 33985

Abstract: Many countries seek to promote exports by subsidizing market access, but evidence on such efforts has been mixed. We present the first randomized evaluation of a government financial-support program explicitly targeting exports, the Tasdir+ program in Tunisia. The program offered matching grants for fixed market-access costs but not variable costs. Tracking outcomes in administrative data, we find positive effects on exports on average. We find limited impacts on the number of destinations or exported products, which were stated policy targets. The finding that the fixed-cost subsidies expanded exports on the intensive margin but not the extensive margins of destinations or products stands in contrast to the predictions of several workhorse trade models.

Media coverage: webmanagercenter, l'economiste maghrebin

Teaching

Columbia University: 

Principles of Economics (Teaching Assistant, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2026)

Introduction to Econometrics (TA, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022)

Intermediate Microeconomics (TA, Fall 2023)

Behavioral Economics (TA, Fall 2022)

Harvard Kennedy School: 

Advanced Microeconomic Analysis II  (Course Assistant, Fall 2017)