Publications

High levels of vaccine hesitancy remain poorly understood during an epidemic. Using high-frequency data in France at departmental level and exploiting the Covid-19 vaccination campaign calendar, we observe that vaccination among the elderly influences vaccination among young adults. We then propose a simple epidemiological economic model with two partially vaccinated demographic groups - the young and the elderly - and two opinions on vaccination - "vaxxers" and "antivaxxers". The utility to get vaccinated for the young depends on the vaccination behavior of the elderly, their opinion of the vaccine and the epidemic environment. Our results suggest that mutual interactions between individuals' vaccination opinions and infection prevalence may lead to the emergence of oscillations and disease traps. The vaccination behavior of the elderly can be harnessed to promote vaccination.

A large body of evidence suggests that women’s empowerment, both within the household and in politics, benefits to children and has the potential to promote economic development. Nevertheless, the existing interactions between these two facets of empowerment have not been considered thus far. The aim of the present paper is to fill this gap by proposing a theoretical framework in which women’s bargaining power within both the private sphere and the public sphere is endogenous. We show that the mutual interplay between the evolution of women’s voice in the family and in society may lead to the emergence of multiple equilibria and pathdependency phenomena. We also discuss policy interventions that are the most suitable to promote women’s empowerment when its multidimensional nature is taken into account. 

We propose a general equilibrium model where culture and institutions coevolve with the industrialization process. Institutions are defined as the balance of power between two social classes: workers and elites. Within the elite, there are two cultural groups: entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurs, with culture dened as the proportion of each group. The evolution of both culture and institutions feeds back with the scope of industrialization. This mutual interplay may lead to multiple equilibria. In particular, an economy in which the entrepreneurial culture is not widespread and/or workers have little power may become trapped in a preindustrial regime. A positive productivity shock makes it possible to leave this equilibrium and generate a democratization movement. Nevertheless, depending on the initial conditions, this movement may or may not be followed by the cultural transformations that are required for industrialization. Finally, we discuss England's industrialization experiences in light of our results.


Working Papers


We propose a theoretical framework to investigate how the cultural acceptance of serfs labor within the elite affects serfdom institution. To do so, we propose a model with two social classes: workers and the elite. Workers are split between free workers and serfs. Within the elite, there are two cultural groups: modernists and traditionalists. Modernists exhibit a higher disutility cost when they use serfs labor than traditionalists. Culture is defined as the distribution of these two traits within the elite. Its evolves via the cultural transmission mechanism proposed by Bisin and Verdier (2001). The existence or not of serfdom institution is determined by the cultural distribution within the elite through a majority voting rule. The long run dynamics of our model exhibits multiple equilibria: an equilibrium with serfdom abolition and an equilibrium where serfdom persists. The convergence towards one or the other depends on the structural parameters of the economy. The model argues that the fall of serfdom is a natural process driven by cultural changes in countries or regions where modernists attached higher importance to freedom and equality.

We develop and test a model to examine how the content and frequency of health reminders affect households' decision to use nets for malaria prevention. The model takes into account the fatigue associated with repeated net use and the increased costs of attention as reminders become more frequent. We test it using a randomized experiment in Burkina Faso, where mosquito nets were distributed free of charge. The experiment varies the content (general health or malaria-specific) and frequency of reminders, with data on net use collected by motion sensors. The results show that it is difficult to maintain regular net use because of the constant effort required. While malaria-specific reminders stimulate initial use, excessive frequency reduces effectiveness due to attention fatigue, further compounded by social spillovers. Our results highlight the need to balance the content and frequency of reminders in order to maintain preventive health behaviours, particularly in low-income settings.



Work in Progress