Research

Working Papers

1. Basic income versus fairness: redistribution with inactive agents [NEW! February 2024]

Seminar video

Abstract (click to expand): Philosophers diverge on whether redistributive transfers to able-bodied inactives would be fair. This paper evaluates their claims. Labor markets feature multidimensional heterogeneity in leisure preferences, disutilities of participation, wages and home production. The social objective champions the ethics of equality of opportunity while upholding the Pareto principle. In the Mirrleesian second-best, it turns out that welfare analysis is reduced to a sufficient statistic. Its empirical application suggests that an inactivity benefit would not be welfare-improving in most high-income countries. Overall, the equity gains of introducing a basic income with respect to equality of opportunity are tenuous, whatever its efficiency costs.

Works in Progress

2. Working time regulations and redistribution

Abstract (click to expand): All countries except the US are mandating paid time off. Why? In standard labor supply models, working time regulations are inefficient as they clash with individuals' own choices. In this paper, I provide a novel welfare analysis of any working time regulations. Labor is unbundled into jobs and hours worked while firms are controlling schedules. Hence, the paper allows to study the co-movement of employment, wages and hours worked. I find that careful combinations of minimum wages and working time reductions erode monopsony power and may redistribute efficiently from firms' positive profits to workers' welfare. I disaggregate these welfare gains and losses in a model with directed search and matching frictions. I show that the elasticity of profits and employment to the reform are sufficient statistics for welfare evaluation.

3. Average money-metrics and equality of opportunity

4. Cyclical monopsony power and taxation

(with Rigas Oikonomou)

Talks

EDP Jamboree

Universtitat Pompeu Fabra, June 6, 2024

EAYE Annual Meeting

Paris School of Economics, May 24, 2024

IRES Lunch seminar

UCLouvain, February 13, 2024

IRLE Seminar Series

University of California, Berkeley, November 29, 2023

Public Finance Seminar

University of California, Berkeley, October 9, 2023

IRLE Seminar Series

University of California, Berkeley, September 13, 2023

79th Annual Congress of the IIPF

Utah State University, August 14, 2023

EDP Jamboree

Paris School of Economics, June 8, 2023

1st Welfare and Policy Conference

Bordeaux School of Economics, May 5, 2023

Public Economics Work-in-progress

London School of Economics, February 15, 2023

17th Belgian Day for Labor Economists

Federal Planning Bureau, Brussels, October 7, 2022

MICH seminar

Hoover Chair, UCLouvain, September 20, 2022

International Conference on Public Economic Theory

APET in Marseille, June 8, 2022

ECORES Summer School 2022

ECORES in Leuven, June 1, 2022

Doctoral Workshop in Economics

UCLouvain, May 23, 2022

PhD Apero

Economics School of Louvain, April 21, 2022

Doctoral workshop

UNamur, December 14, 2021

Fair Inheritance Workshop

Hoover Chair, UCLouvain, June 25, 2021

Lunch seminar

Federal Planning Bureau, Brussels, September 4, 2019

Publications