Research
Publication:
Left behind, but not immobile: Living arrangements of Mexican transnational households, joint with Simone Bertoli and Elie Murard, Economic Development and Cultural Change:
We provide evidence that most Mexican children exposed to the international migration of their fathers experience further variations in their living arrangements, or the dissolution of the marital union of their parents. Children left behind typically join the household of their maternal grandparents. These changes have relevant implications for the analysis of the effects of migration and remittances: they interfere with the identification of instances of paternal migration in standard cross-sectional or longitudinal surveys, and they can give rise to heterogeneity in the effects of interest making some key household-level variables endogenous with respect to the treatment.
Working papers:
Men’s premarital migrations and marriage payments: Evidence from Indonesia, joint with Hugues Champeaux and Karine Marazyan
Bride price customs are widespread in many developing countries. While the economic literature has widely investigated the implications of such transfers on women’s welfare, little is known about their consequences on men’s premarital behavior. In this paper, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment of a school-building program in Indonesia (INPRES) to investigate the relationship between marriage norms and the internal migrations of young men in age to marry. Based on empirical and theoretical settings of the literature, we rely on the effects of the INPRES program on girls’ education and the parents’ expectations on their daughters’ bride price. Combining anthropological, administrative, and individual-based datasets, we implement a triple-difference approach. We find that men with bride price customs were more likely to migrate to areas more economically attractive than their district of origin. In contrast, no evidence exists of such behavior for men from ethnic groups without marriage payments. We interpret these results as evidence for the fact that men migrate to accumulate resources at destination to meet the parents’ bride price expectations and marry at home. We also highlight that these migration strategies are implemented by the less advantaged males in their origin marriage market (latter-borns or from lower social class). These findings suggest that the interaction between marital norms and policies can result in unintended consequences, such as increasing premarital migration.
GLO Discussion Paper, No. 1375
Selection into child fostering and its implications for education: Evidence from Ghana
Studying the consequences of fostering children remains challenging for researchers due to many data constraints. Using large-scale survey data from Ghana, we propose a method to identify households fostering out children. This approach enables us to compare the educational outcomes of foster children with different reference groups: their host siblings, a proxy of their biological siblings remaining with the mothers, and other non-foster children. It also allows us to investigate the selection issues related to fostering at different levels: mothers and siblings. We provide evidence that foster children have worse educational outcomes than groups of non-foster children. However, the marital instability experienced by the mother is a major correlate of child fostering and partly explains the differences between foster and non-foster children. In addition, comparing the structure of the sending and receiving households, foster children move into households with a more advantageous demographic composition for investment in child education. Significantly foster children benefit from more inter-generational support than the biological siblings remaining in the maternal household.
Work in progress:
Child fostering and nutrition in South Africa, joint with Christelle Dumas and Adrien Gosselin-Pali
Migrant premium on marriage markets in risky environments, joint with Marion Richard
Conferences - Workshop - Seminars:
Organization:
PhD Seminars (5/6 per semester) at the University of Fribourg Department of Economics, January 2024-Present
Junior Seminars on The Economics of Migration, CERDI, PSE, LISER, the University of Luxembourg, Universidad Carlos III, CEPII, the IC Migrations, the Development Research Group of the World Bank, Global Migration Center of UC DAVIS, and Global Development Policy Center Boston University, Online, April 2020-2023
Workshop on Measuring Migrations in Mali through different data sources, IRD-INSTAT, Bamako, 2021
Participation:
Leuven Summer Event, Migration and Family Economics, Department of Economics at KU Leuven, 2024
Ski and research internal seminars, University of Fribourg Department of Economics, Grimentz, 2024
22nd Journées Louis-André Gérard-Varet, AMSE, Marseille, 2023
Journées de Microéconomie Appliquée, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA), Strasbourg, 2023
Internal Seminar, CRED, Université de Namur, Namur, 2023
Internal Seminar, Université Paris Dauphine, DIAL-LEDa, Paris, 2020, 2023
Paris Migration Economics Seminar- IC Migrations, PSE, Paris, 2022
Happy Days, Population Flows & International Economics teams LEM, Lille, 2022
International Conference in Development Economics, AFEDEV, CERDI, Clermont-Ferrand, 2022
Internal Seminar, Université Clermont Auvergne, CERDI, Clermont-Ferrand, 2019, 2022
International Seminar 2022, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), IEDES, AFD Paris 2022
5th International Conference Understanding Voluntary and Forced Migration, University of Lille, LEM, Lille, 2021
International Conference in Development Economics, DIAL - GREThA - Larefi, Online, 2021
Journées de Microéconomie Appliquée, Université Savoie Mont Blanc, Online, 2021
PSE Summer School, Program Migrations, Paris School of Economics, Paris, 2019
Reviewing of academic articles:
Economics Bulletin; The Economics of Transition; Journal of Family and Economic Issues; Journal of Population Economics; China Economic Review; Mondes en Developpement; Economics of Education Review; Journal of Development Studies, World Development, European Review of Agricultural Economics.
Banner photo made available by IOM at https://www.flickr.com