Published articles
"Confronting Climate Change : Adaptation vs. Migration strategies in Small Island Developing States", in collaboration with Paolo Melindi Ghidi and Fabien Prieur, Resource and Energy Economics, August 2022 (Download).
This paper examines the adaptation policy of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) facing climate change. We consider a dynamic economy with the following ingredients: (i) natural capital is an input in local production that is degraded as a result of climate change; (ii) the government has two instruments to cope with climate-related damages: it can adjust the population size thanks to migration policies and/or it can undertake adaptation measures in order to slow the degradation of natural assets; (iii) expatriates send remittances back home. We identify two critical conditions on the fundamentals of the economy that helps understand the features of the optimal policy. We especially show that in most situations, the migration policy is a valuable instrument. Calibrating the model for Caribbean SIDS, we find that the optimal policy of the Caribbean region displays heterogeneity, that is explained by the different degradation rate, population size, and endowment in natural capital. We also highlight that the higher the climate damages, the higher the incentives to conduct an active adaptation policy, combining conventional adaptation actions and migration.
"The impact of remittances on savings, capital and economic growth in small emerging countries", in collaboration with Zouhair Ait-Benhamou, Economic Modelling, January 2021, (Download)
This work aims at studying the interplay between demographic features and environmental impact in Caribbean small island countries. For that, we build a simple overlapping generations model reproducing the strong dependence of these countries to remittances and the effect of pollution on human capital accumulation. Our theoretical analysis, complemented by numerical results, shows that economic gains and human capital improvement are still possible thanks to migration, despite pollution, if the emigration rate is already high. This occurs when the emigration leads to a reduction of the population but to an increase in production per capita. In this context an environmental tax is tested, however to profit from this policy the tax rate must lead to the complete reduction of emissions, especially if the pollution intensity is high.
"The effects of migration and pollution externality on cognitive skills in Caribbean economies : a theoretical analysis", Environment and Development Economics, July 2020, (Download)
This paper uses an OLG model in order to capture the economic and demographic effects of remittances in small open economies. We describe household decisions on education and savings, where elderly people receive remittances and domestic transfers from their children. Due to a boost in returns from human capital investments as well as higher levels of productivity elsewhere, remittances increase education at the expense of domestic savings. A significant negative correlation is thus found between domestic savings and remittances in a large set of countries. The model also predicts inverted U-shaped curves between remittances and physical capital and between remittances and economic growth because of this substitution effect. Furthermore, we conduct a counterfactual analysis on five Caribbean islands, which shows that different strategies regarding domestic transfers and remittances may be successful in fostering growth, depending on the scale of migration or the transfer rate.
Working papers
"Go where the wind doesn’t blow: Climate damages heterogeneity and future migrations ", in collaboration with Aurélie Méjean and Stéphane Zuber, 2023, Working Paper in Faere Working Paper Series.
In the context of climate change, migration can be considered as an adaptation strategy to reduce populations' exposure to climate damages. Those damages are very heterogeneous across regions. In this paper, we study migration induced by climate change damages. To do so, we estimate the socio-economic determinants of migration, focusing on economic damages. We then model endogenous migration in an integrated assessment model based on those estimates. We highlight the importance of the heterogeneity of the damages distribution to explain migration flows due to climate change. We find that high levels of climate damages globally do not necessarily induce large climate migration. Rather, large differences in exposure between regions may lead to substantial migration.
"The impact of income inequality on public environmental expenditure with green consumerism", in collaboration with Paolo Melindi Ghidi and Fabien Prieur, 2021, Working Paper in CEE-M Working Paper Series.
This article analyzes the impact of income inequality on environmental policy in the presence of green consumers. We first develop a model with two main ingredients: citizens, with different income capacities, have access to two commodities whose consumption differs in terms of price and environmental impact, and they vote on the environmental policy. In this setting, there exists a unique political equilibrium in which the population is split into two groups, that differ in the type of good, conventional vs. green, they consume. The analysis shows that a change in the level of inequality induces variations in both the size and composition of these two groups of citizens. This in turn determines whether or not more inequality stimulates the public policy. We then conduct an empirical investigation on a panel of European countries over the period 1996-2019. We find the existence of an inverted J-shape relationship between inequality and public environmental spending. This outcome can be explained by the combination of a composition effect, affecting the green group, and a substitution effect between private green consumption and public environmental spending.
Work in progress
"Migration, climate change and repeted extreme events", in collaboration with Thais Nuñez Rocha
Download my thesis here.