Publications
Income Mobility and Support for the Welfare State: Panel Evidence from Germany, Economics Bulletin, 2026 (forthcoming)
The Evolution of Affluent Support for Redistribution in Germany in the Context of Rising Inequalities with T.Darcillon, European Journal of Political economy, 2024, vol 85.
Another Wind of Change? Evidence about Political Outsiders in the French Parliament (Joint with A.Volle and A.Cazals) ; Revue d'économie politique, 2023/2 (Vol. 133), p. 203-231.
The Effect of the Arab Spring on Preferences for Redistribution in Egypt, with A.Volle, Review of Income and Wealth, 2020, vol. 66, no 4, p. 875-903. (WP)
Working papers
Intergenerational Transmission of Welfare Attitudes: Evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel (Sole-authored ; R&R at German Economic Review)
Abstract: The literature abounds with studies highlighting the existence of strong intergenerational correlations, some of which relate to preferences. This paper is the first to investigate empirically the intergenerational correlation of preferences for redistribution between parents and children. The main findings using the SOEP data suggest a substantial intergenerational transmission of preferences for taxation. In addition to the fact that the estimated correlations put parental preferences at the head of the determinants of individual attitudes towards redistribution, our mediation analysis challenges the impact of some variables considered as key determinants in the literature. Regarding the mechanism of transmission of these preferences, the social environment seems to play a more important role than direct family socialization. This study also shows that the absence of opinion on these redistribution issues can be explained by the individual's parents' attitudes as well as by the individual's level of education, gender and political orientation.
Measuring Inequality of Opportunity in Education under Minimal State Provision: Evidence from Lebanon (Sole-authored)
Abstract: Lebanon combines minimal public investment in education, an unusually large private school sector, and extreme income concentration. It has nonetheless remained absent from the literature on inequality of opportunity in education, owing to a long-standing scarcity of reliable microdata. Using the nationally representative 2018--2019 Labour Force and Household Living Conditions Survey, this paper provides the first measurement of inequality of opportunity in educational progression in Lebanon. We estimate the probability of reaching intermediate, secondary, and university education as a function of pre-determined circumstances, summarise inequality of opportunity with a dissimilarity index under its standard and translation-invariant normalisations, and decompose it across circumstances using a Shapley approach. On the standard index, inequality of opportunity rises from 0.048 at the intermediate to 0.107 at the secondary and 0.201 at the university threshold; once differences in mean access rates are netted out, the association is strongest at the secondary threshold. Parental education is the dominant circumstance throughout, accounting for 57--62% of the total, with maternal education the larger contributor at the secondary and university thresholds. The transmission of parental education weakens with household income and is stronger for boys and in public schools, consistent with household and institutional resources partly substituting for parental human capital.
When War Narrows the Gender Gap: Educational Attainment and Labor-Market Persistence in Lebanon (Sole-authored)
Abstract: Protracted conflicts are major shocks to human-capital formation, yet their effects on the gendered structure of educational attainment remain highly context-dependent. This paper studies the 1975--1990 Lebanese Civil War and examines how it reshaped educational trajectories across birth cohorts. Using nationally representative microdata from the 2018--2019 Labour Force and Household Living Conditions Survey, we construct five-year birth cohorts and compare cohorts whose schooling years overlapped with the war to adjacent cohorts. We then benchmark Lebanon against Egypt and Tunisia using triple-difference specifications. The results show that educational attainment expanded across Lebanese cohorts, but that this expansion became sharply gendered during the war-exposed window. Men’s progression slowed substantially at the intermediary level and nearly stagnated at the secondary level, while women continued to advance. The female-specific cohort trend is significantly stronger in Lebanon than in the comparator countries, Egypt and Tunisia. Finally, we show that this educational convergence did not translate into labour-market convergence: women remain about 45--47 percentage points less likely than men to be active or employed, even after controlling for education.