Working Paper

Abstract: Trust is an important economic variable that may however be subject to measurement error, leading to econometric issues such as attenuation bias or spurious correlations. We use a test/retest protocol to assess the measurement error in the two main tasks that are used to elicit trust, namely survey questions and experimental games. We find that trust measures based on the trust game entail substantial measurement error (with up to 15% of noise), while there is virtually no noise in stated trust measures. Given the specificity of our subject pool (students in a top Engineering school) and the short period of time between the test and the retest, we consider these percentages of noise as lower bounds. We also provide a sub-group analysis based on measures of cognitive ability and effort. We find substantial heterogeneity across sub-groups in trust-game behavior, but none for the survey questions. We finally discuss which measure of trust should be used, and the estimation strategies that can be applied to limit the effect of measurement error. 


Work in progress

Abstract: We investigate the impact of the rise of on-demand food delivery platforms on local employment and crime rates, leveraging the temporal and geographic disparities in their introduction in France. Our staggered difference-in-differences approach reveals that the arrival of a delivery platform in an employment area increases job opportunities for unqualified jobs, as evidenced by a rise in registered riders. This increase in employment opportunities concurrently leads to a large reduction in drug-related crimes. These results indicate that the gig economy fosters employment opportunities for low-skilled workers, youth, and migrants, facilitating their engagement in lawful economic activities.

Non-Academic Publication