Research

This paper investigates U.S. foreign aid drivers over the period 2002-2009. It combines a dynamic model taking account of the inertia in aid allocation, a proper treatment ofthe sample selection problem, and a better proxy for the merit-based motivation of the donor country. I find considerable evidence that the pattern of aid giving is dictated,heavily by bureaucratic inertia. Most importantly, when measured properly, merit-based motivations of the donor is shown to also impact the pattern of aid. Next, the paper assesses the relative economic importance to the U.S. of need, merit, and self-interest when allocating aid. The findings confirm the importance of the merit-based motivation. Lastly, I examine the extent at which the relative importance of motivation vectors changes among regions of the world. This may explain why conditionality is not enforced inthe same way by the same donor.

 

The paper focuses on conditional development aid and investigates the incentives of the donor to invest in reputation. Past experience has shown that conditionality failedat enhancing aid effectiveness. One reason for such a failure is that donor countries are usually confronted to a disbursement pressure to which they tend to yield. This inducesa lack of commitment to punish non-contracted use of aid and opens the door to reputation building strategies by the donor. I develop such a model in this paper and I showthat reputation building may expand the scope of contracting and at times make both the donor and the recipient better-off.  Moreover, I show that the donor is better-off if hekeeps dealing with the same recipient rather that contracting with a new one. This facilitates incentive compatibility and enhances recipients’ compliance with aid contracts.

 

  (Joint with Patrick LEGROS)

A donor has a preference on how aid should be allocated among the different agents in the recipient country, but has to rely on the local government for performing this allocation. Because the donor has no control on the way the recipient will allocate monetary transfers between the rich and the poor, the donor may favor targeted investmentsin projects like infrastructure building. Under perfect information, the aid package involves a fixed project and positive transfer to recipient countries which exhibit a lowwillingness or ability to redistribute to the poor. For recipient countries with a larger willingness or ability to redistribute, they benefit from larger infrastructure projects but arerequested to co-finance the project. When the recipient country ability to distribute is private information, the donor prefers to offer pooling contracts, which may exclude somepoor recipients when the contract specifies a co-payment for infrastructure projects. Grant matching programs generate separation among types but, because they create a one-to-one link between the monetary transfer and the project, they are not ex-ante optimal.  Moreover, they exclude more recipient countries from receiving aid than does thepooling contract.

 

The effects of environmental policies on a given industry are usually examined while assuming independence between market demand and environmental quality. In this paper, we remove this assumption and examine cases where the dependence is effective. A local industry of K firms is considered. Firms discharge their waste on the sameneighborhood.  The paper investigates the effects of a tradable emission system on the performance of the industry. Bringing together direct effects on the quality of the environment and feedbacks on firms’ performance, optimal second best price of the permit is determined and two sets of propositions are developed.  The first set deals withthe performances of the firms. It examines the effect of the permits system on output, price, market shares industry concentration and profits in the oligopoly. The last set ofpropositions exploits the asymmetry across firms to extract information about the performances of each individual firm. The results suggest that emission rights could be apowerful tool to control for pollution as well as an instrument for a market regulation by, selectively, advantaging some productive units.

Despite the highly significant flows involved, development aid turned to be ineffective in a large number of recipient countries. This paper[1] explores the reasons behind aid failure. It starts from an investigation of donors’ motivations behind aid allocation and examines their potential implications on aid policies. The main findings are that aid seems to be heavily impacted by inertia. Along with self-interest, this may explain the time-inconsistency problem facing aid donors. Next, the paper examines strategies toward mitigating such a time-inconsistency, including reputation signaling and changing aid modalities. This provides guidance on how should aid be optimally allocated among recipient countries.

At the era of media and the advancement of education practices, the roles of the university lecturer go largely beyond his teaching services provided to the audience. Managing these  activities assumes that diversified course material has been produced and integrated, in first place: these include his own material and those devoted to the teaching activity, as such.The present study builds on an experiment involving a course in statistics for social sciences. It was through a combination of several surveys and over four years that the difficulties of integrating a teaching material kit into the students learning approach are highlighted. Investigating these difficulties allowed to put the kit into its context and the constraining forces governing it. The present paper proposes a comprehensive framework that contributes in understanding the issues pertaining to teaching material. The surveys also have enlightened the visions of the actors - professor, teaching assistants and students - on the teaching material kit and its use. They made it possible to spot dysfunctions, to identify means to better integrate the kit to the course apparatus and promote in-depth learning, and to raise questions about the practices of students and teaching assistants.