Bastien Alvarez

I am currently working in the Industry, knowledge economy and innovation division of the French Treasury, where I am in charge of industrial policy. I previsouly worked in the International Diagnostic and Forecast division of the same institution. 

My PhD was completed at the ENS Paris-Saclay in 2020 and I previously studied in TSE (Toulouse School of Economics) and PSE (Paris School of Economics).

I was previsouly a postdoctoral researcher working with Ariell Reshef, Farid Toubal and Gilles Saint-Paul on French confidential administrative data. 

My research interest include international macroeconomics, labour markets, industrial policy and most of my research had a focus on European matters.

Here, you may find my CV (English) (French).

You can contact me at bastien_alvarez@hotmail.com or bastien.alvarez@dgtresor.gouv.fr .

Working papers :

• Alvarez, B., Orefice, G., Toubal, F. (2025). Trade Liberalization and Working Conditions. CEPR Discussion Paper no. 20047 and CESifo Working Paper No. 11674. [Under review for publication]

This paper examines how trade liberalization-induced labor demand shocks affect wages and nonwage working conditions. Using exogenous trade shocks from EU enlargement and worker-level data, we find that export liberalization increases temporary contracts and atypical work schedules, particularly for production workers. However, it has no significant effect on wages, which may reflect firms’ ability to expand employment without raising pay due to labor supply elasticity and unemployment. Import liberalization weakly affects working conditions but, consistent with previous studies, lowers wages as firms face stronger competition and reduced labor demand.

• Blöchliger, H., Egert, B., Alvarez, B., Paciorek, A. (2015). The stabilisation properties of immovable property taxation: Evidence from OECD countries, OECD Economics Department Working Papers No. 1237, OECD Publishing. Link

The paper estimates a fiscal reaction function which analyses the reaction of property tax revenues to house prices. Results suggest that property taxes tend to be a-cyclical or slightly pro-cyclical. They provide stable revenue for sub-central governments without stabilizing the economy. The results also suggest that higher property taxation tends to reduce house price volatility.

• Brown, Z., Alvarez, B., Johnstone, N. (2015). Tender instruments: programme participation and impact in australian conservation tenders, grants and volunteer organisations, OECD Environment Working Papers No. 85, OECD Publishing. Link

In Australia, conservation grants and a reverse auction  are used to achieve conservation objectives. To investigate if monetary incentives for conservation skew landowners’ motives towards monetary concerns (moral crowding out), a telephone survey was conducted with 266 farmers. Analysis of the data provides fairly strong evidence for the potential for moral-crowding-out : tender or grant receipt appears to shift stated motivations towards more monetary concerns.

Policy papers :

• "Enseignements des politiques industrielles passées”, Trésor-Eco n°358. Link.

• "Implementation of Monetary Policy in the Euro Area and the United States”, Trésor-Eco n°340. Link.

• "World Economic Outlook in Spring 2023: The Economy Reaches Its Trough”, Trésor-Eco n°325. Link.

• “Measurement of Government Consumption and Its Impacts on Output”, Trésor-Eco n°320. Link.

• “World economic outlook in autumn 2022: The economy is bruised, but not broken”, Trésor-Eco n°312. Link.

Work in progress :

• European Integration and the the Substitution between Offshoring and Immigration (with Enxhi Tresa, OECD, Trade and Agriculture Directorate). Link.

While the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements led to an instant trade liberalization, Western European labour markets only gradually opened to Eastern European workers. We use this gap to provide evidence that the migration wave that followed reduced offshoring as employing low-skill immigrant Eastern European workers in Western Europe became easier. We also provide evidence of the absence of detrimental effects for native workers and some diversion effect as other foreign workers were partly replaced by Eastern Europeans.

• Labour Mobility and Skill Heterogeneity in Europe.

The paper presents a two-country overlapping generation model comprising labour mobility, heterogeneous agents investing in education and fluctuations to reassess the value of labour mobility as an adjustment mechanism in a currency area. I show that, if agents are mobile, short-term asymmetric shocks lead to a population-wide upgrade in skills. Using the OECD migration database we provide empirical evidence confirming some of the theoretical assumptions and results. Finally, we illustrate both the trade-off between the skill-upgrade effect and the size of migration flows and the persistence of shocks using a simulation of the model.