This paper models the relationship between income and reported well-being using latent class techniques applied to panel data from twelve European countries. Introducing both intercept and slope heterogeneity into this relationship, we strongly reject the hypothesis that individuals transform...

We review the empirical literature that studies the effect of ethnic diversity on the welfare state and on individual attitudes. The outcome variables that we cover in the survey are on the one hand public spending, and on the other hand individual attitudes and behaviour, including charity...

We report here a summary of our recent research on the effect that the race issue, in the United States, and the immigration issue in European countries, is having on the degree of redistribution and the size of the public sector that is implemented through political competition. We model...

We consider a committee facing a binary decision under uncertainty. Each member holds some private information. Members may have different preferences and initial beliefs, but they all agree which decision should be taken in each of the two states of the world. We characterize the optimal...

La France est-elle prête pour une réforme électorale majeure ? Entre proportionnelle et scrutinmajoritaire, les enjeux de représentation et de gouvernabilité s’entrechoquent.

We assume that students can acquire a wage premium, thanks to studies, and form a rational expectation of their future earnings, which depends on personal ability. Students receive a private, noisy signal of their ability, and universities can condition admission decisions on the results of...

We completely characterize the set of second-best optimal "menus"of student-loan contracts in a simple economy with risky labour-market outcomes, adverse selection, moral hazard and risk aversion. The model combines structured student loans and an elementary optimal income-tax problem à la...

The average voting procedure reflects the weighted average of expressed opinions in [0,1]. Participants typically behave strategically. We evaluate the discrepancy between the average taste and the average vote. If the population is sufficiently large, it is possible to construct approximations...

We investigate how the optimal nonlinear income tax schedule is modified when taxpayers can evade taxation by emigrating. We consider two symmetric countries with Maximin governments. Workers choose their labor supply along the intensive margin. The skill distribution is continuous, and, for...

We examine how allowing individuals to emigrate to pay lower taxes abroad changes the optimal non-linear income tax scheme in a Mirrleesian economy. An individual emigrates if his domestic utility is less than his utility abroad net of migration costs, utilities and costs both depending on...