Drawing on internal records from a Colombian coffee processor and exporter, we explore the relationship between price-cost margins and product quality. We find that higher-quality coffee is sold at a higher price-cost margin. We develop a model of intermediaries that exercise both output-market and input-market power and use it to estimate the relative contributions of markups and markdowns to the observed price-cost margins, for different quality categories.

Housing Mobility Programs (HMPs) support residential mobility to reduce economic segregation. One design feature of HMPs requires identifying areas to which moving will most improve outcomes. We show that ranking neighborhoods’ effects using current residents’ outcomes has strengths over using previous residents’ outcomes due to statistical uncertainty, bias from sorting over time, and lack of support. We simulate how the choice of neighborhood ranking and others affect an originally-intended outcome of HMPs: reducing racial segregation. HMP success on this dimension depends on the ability to port vouchers across jurisdictions, access to cars, and the range of neighborhoods targeted.

Elodie Corvaisier

Impact of forced displacement on the development of social preferences and trust in children in the Sahel region

Abstract : 

The world is currently facing and will need to deal with an alarming number of forced displacements of populations, resulting from religious, political, ethnic conflicts, or climate change. Forced displacements, especially when caused by violence between groups, may seriously disrupt the cognitive and emotional development of children by creating an unpredictable environment leading to dramatic long-term consequences for societies’ ability to maintain or restore trust and democracy. Childhood is the period of life when the roots of prosociality and trust are built under the influence of education, culture, and social interactions. Understanding how and to what extent exposure to forced internal displacement during childhood and adolescence alters or calibrates these processes is crucial to provide evidence-based guidance for policy interventions. The FORDIS project examines the development of social preferences, trust, and social norms in children exposed to forced displacement due to intergroup conflicts in Burkina Faso. It will evaluate fairness, trust, trustworthiness, and cooperation, and the perception of gender social norms (specifically, genital mutilations and forced child marriage). We will conduct in Burkina Faso behavioral experiments and a Randomized Controlled Trial experiment with children, young adolescents and parents who have or not been displaced due to terrorist attacks. We include parents to understand social preferences and social norms, as parents play a fundamental role in transmitting them to children. This project is crucial to contribute to our understanding of the development of social preferences and how they can be affected by forced displacement and the associated uncertainty. It will be used to inform policy interventions to foster prosocial motivations, trust, and social norms that discourage violence, promote cooperation.

Romain Durand

 Public Housing Supply: Public Policies, Spatial Disparities and Suppliers

Abstract :

Social landlords must cope with a housing policy that pushes them to gain financial independence. The SRU law sets ambitious targets for public housing in municipalities, and therefore, landlords must take responsibility for building more public housing. One proposed means to enable social landlords to finance themselves is through the sale of social housing, to generate liquidity and leverage debt to increase construction. In this analysis, we employ an extension of the Tobit model to examine the behavior of social landlords regarding the sale and construction of public housing. Our findings indeed show a positive relationship between the sale of public housing and an increase in the volume of construction.