Thomas Zuber

Research economist at Banque de France


Current position: Economist, Banque de France (since 2021).

Research fields: Structural change, innovation, occupational mismatch and training. 

Contact: thomas.zuber@banque-france.fr

I am an economist at the Bank of France since september 2021 and obtained my PhD from the Paris School of Economics.  My main research interests are related to the different aspects of structural change: going from firm level responses to increased trade competition to occupational transitions in the labor market.  You can find my CV here.

Research 

Joint with L. Behaghel, S. Dromundo, M. Gurgand and Y. Hazard

We analyze the employment effects of directing job seekers' applications towards establishments likely to recruit, building upon an existing Internet platform developed by the French public employment service. Our two-sided randomization design, with about 1.2 million job seekers and 100,000 establishments, allows us to precisely measure the effects of the recommender system at hand. Our randomized encouragement to use the system induces a 2% increase in job finding rates among women. This effect is due to an activation effect (increased search effort, stronger for women than men), but also to a targeting effect by which treated men and women were more likely to be hired by the firms that were specifically recommended to them. 

In a second step, we analyze whether these partial equilibrium effects translate into positive effects on aggregate employment. Drawing on the recent literature on the econometrics of interference effects, we estimate that by redirecting the search effort of some job seekers outside their initial job market, we reduced congestion in slack markets. Estimates suggest that this effect is only partly offset by the increased competition in initially tight markets, so that the intervention increases aggregate job finding rates.

Joint with P. Aghion, A. Bergeaud, M. Lequien and M. Melitz 

We decompose the "China shock'" into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: an output shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, and an input supply shock affecting firms using inputs similar to the imported Chinese goods. Combining French accounting, customs, and patent information at the firm-level, we show that the output shock is detrimental to firms' sales, employment, and innovation. Moreover, this negative impact is concentrated on low-productivity firms. By contrast, we find a positive effect - although often not significant - of the input supply shock on firms' sales, employment and innovation.


Joint with M. Gravoueille and S. Margolin

Using linked employer-employee data matched to unemployment records as well as bankruptcy filings from France, this paper asks whether and how job flows react to the prospect of an upcoming financial turmoil. At the firm level we find that (i) distressed firms' layoffs start to increase two years prior to the actual bankruptcy filing and are followed one year later by a surge in job-to-job moves from departing employees. At the worker level we show that (ii) inherently productive individuals quit more frequently and sooner than less productive ones, that firm specific human capital decreases the probability of a layoff, and that firing costs play an important role in shaping bankrupt firms layoff policy. Finally, we find that (iii) workers  in distressed firms are willing to accept significant earning cuts in order to escape the risk of a layoff, and that these earning cuts are driven by lower hours worked in the destination firm.


Memorable moments in the history of economic thought: 

"Even the Lord rested after the beginning, so let us tackle one problem at a time..." (Samuelson, 1958)

"I am hoping that this application of Pontryagin's Maximum Principle [...] is familiar to most of you." (Lucas, 1988) 

"In the tradition of statistical inference, let us take the average." (Lucas, 1988)

"I have never been sure exactly what it is that is `balanced' along such a path, but we need a term for solutions with this constant growth rate property and this is as good as any." (Lucas, 1988)

"We assume that a researcher has access to a matched employer employee data set with a time dimension of twenty years." (Hagedorn, Law and Manovski, 2017)

"Because our model makes the unambiguous prediction that counteroffers do not occur in equilibrium, there is no use asking if workers make counteroffers in reality." (Hall and Milgrom, 2008)

"In addition to all the assumptions already explicitly or implicitly stated in the theory." (Postel-Vinay and Robin, 2002)

"La « situation nette » de l’Etat (écart entre le total des actifs et le total des passifs) est d’ailleurs négative (- 1 758 Md€ à fin 2022), ce qui correspond à l’accumulation des déficits réalisés depuis ses origines (il n’a pas de capital initial car on ne sait pas exactement quand et comment il a été créé)." (Fipeco, 2023)

"Les SNF parviendront-elles à conserver tout leur SRPB ? Le compte suivant met fin à ce suspense insoutenable." (Piriou et al., 2019)


Teaching

Introduction to growth theory - I 

Introduction to growth theory - II