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.

Current research:

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

We analyze the employment effects of directing job seekers’ applications toward establishments likely to recruit. We run a two-sided randomization design involving about 800,000 job seekers and 40,000 establishments, based on an empirical model that recommends each job seeker to firms so as to maximize total potential employment. Our intervention induces a 1% increase in job finding rates for short term contracts. This impact comes from a targeting effect combining (i) a modest increase in job seekers’ applications to the very firms that were recommended to them, and (ii) a high success rate conditional on applying to these firms. Indeed, the success rate of job seekers’ applications varies considerably across firms: the efficiency of applications sent to recommended firms is 2.7 times higher than the efficiency of applications to the average firm. This suggests that there can be substantial gains from better targeting job search, leveraging firm-level heterogeneity.


Joint with A. Bergeaud, P. Cahuc, C. Malgouyres and S. Signorelli

Using French administrative data we estimate them wage gap distribution between in-house and temporary agency workers working in the same establishment and the same occupation. The average wage gap is about 3%, but the gap is negative in more than 25% of establishment $\times$ occupation cells. We develop and estimate a search and matching model which shows that while the wage gap is largely inefficient, eliminating it reduces efficiency, as it also arises from objective factors that contribute to the efficient allocation of jobs. 


Joint with K. Frick, Y. Hazard and D. Mayaux. 

La formation professionnelle contribue-t-elle à la résorption des déséquilibres structurels du marché du travail? Nous testons cette hypothèse en étudiant les trajectoires professionnelles et le retour à l'emploi faisant suite à une formation, à partir de données administratives françaises. En utilisant une nouvelle mesure d'écart de compétences entre métiers, nous observons que les retours à l'emploi suite à une formation se font dans des métiers plus éloignés en termes de compétences par rapport au dernier poste occupé. D'un point de vue purement réallocatif, l'effet sur le retour à l'emploi de la formation professionnelle ne semble cependant pas être tiré par des redirections plus nombreuses vers des métiers en forte tension. 


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.


Publications:

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.



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