Publications

This study develops a new theoretical framework to explain how secularity influences migration aspirations in the Arab world. We argue that secular individuals incur significant psychological costs when living in highly religious societies. This value incongruence pushes them to seek out more secular environments, whereas strongly religious individuals face higher cultural costs of moving and thus prefer to stay. We derive testable hypotheses on how individual secularity and socio-political secularity act as push pull factors for different communities and migration destinations. We then test these hypotheses using 2018 2019 Arab Barometer data from eleven MENA countries. We construct original indices for individual secularity and socio-political secularity via multiple correspondence analysis. Consistent with our theory, probit and instrumental-variable probit estimates show that secular individuals are significantly more likely to express intentions to emigrate particularly to highly secular Western countries. Among Muslim majority populations, both individual and socio-political secularity increase the desire to migrate, whereas among Christian minorities only individual secularity has this effect. Moreover, secularity drives regular migration aspirations, with no measurable impact on irregular migration except in the case of religiously unaffiliated “nones,” who exhibit a heightened willingness to migrate by any means. These findings contribute to the migration literature by emphasizing the substantial, yet previously underexplored, influence of secular beliefs and practices on migratory behavior in the Arab context.

The livelihoods of 130 to 270 million people depend on artisanal mining. Artisanal mining is a labour-intensive, often illegal, extractive activity. We combine geological knowledge and a source of exogenous temporal variation to construct the first proxy for artisanal gold mining in Africa—the main form of artisanal mining. We establish that an increase in the potential value of artisanal mining is a significant driver of deforestation. The historical increase in the gold price accounts for 8% of forest loss across the continent and, within the subset of gold-suitable areas, 28 %. In parallel, artisanal mining increases local economic wealth and may provide an alternative livelihood should a weather shock jeopardise agricultural output. Finally, mining-induced deforestation seems rooted more in the direct clearing of trees for the activity than in indirect deforestation triggered by increased local demand.

ABSTRACT Power outages hinder economic development. Although their effects are less pronounced in developed countries, they are more severe in developing nations. Recent literature suggests, in addition to traditional strategies, the adoption of energy management measures as an adaptation strategy to power outages. This study evaluates, in the context of Sub‐Saharan Africa, the impact of adopting energy management measures while also considering traditional strategies such as backup generators. The analysis is based, on the one hand, on the 2023 World Bank Enterprise Survey dataset and, on the other hand, on the implementation of a Probit model to identify the determinants of adoption, as well as a 2SLS model to address endogeneity in impact measurement. The findings reveal that, although implementing energy management measures incurs costs, their adoption significantly increases business turnover and net income, particularly in the industrial sector. Conversely, although adopting a generator backup has a positive impact on turnover, it reduces net income in the service sector. Its impact on net income in the industrial sector is not even statistically significant. It is generally recognized in the ISO 50001 standard that, aside from optimizing energy consumption within businesses, the adoption of energy management measures also contributes to reducing the ecological footprint. By adopting this approach, businesses can enhance their resilience to power outages while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact.

This study analyzes the impact of international climate agreements-specifically the Kyoto Protocol-on the trade in environmental goods over the period 1997-2021. Using entropy balancing and a sample of 112 countries, we show that the Kyoto Protocol led to an overall increase in the trade of environmental goods among Annex B countries. During this period, the protocol notably stimulated imports, although it did not significantly boost exports prior to 2016. The analysis also highlights heterogeneities linked to countries' technological capacities, economic structures, and institutional characteristics.

This article has two primary objectives: 1) to propose a new parametric model of volatility and 2) to identify the days with the most significant volatility shocks, while exploring the events that triggered these shocks. We analyze financial volatility during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, utilizing high-frequency financial data and an improved model, which incorporates asymmetry and handles outliers, to estimate volatility and determine the timing of the largest shocks within the day. For instance, for the global financial crisis, major volatility shocks coincide with events such as the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the failure of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. However, the largest shock occurred on February 27, 2007, which, despite coinciding with market events like a Chinese stock market crash and Freddie Mac's tighter subprime loan policy, was primarily caused by a computer glitch. Our analysis underscores the value of high-frequency data in modeling financial volatility and identifying the key events driving volatility shocks.

We investigate the immediate impact of monetary policy surprises on exchange rates by using a text indicator to detect them. A textual analysis method is applied to 746 business press articles. A database of monetary policy decisions is thus created. This database contains 510 decisions communicated between 2018 and 2023 for 11 countries with floating exchange rates and includes 78 surprises. To identify a causal effect, the impact of surprises on exchange rates is captured the minute the decision is communicated. This is done using high-frequency data. The amplitudes of exchange rate variations for surprises are compared with decisions qualified as “expected”. The results show that, compared to expected decisions, monetary surprises increase the amplitudes of minute-to-minute variations at the communication time by 0.19 percentage point (p.p.) up to 0.39p.p. In order of magnitude, the amplitudes of minute-to-minute variations for monetary surprises are 100 to 1,000 times greater than the median ones calculated over a year for the currencies in the database. Due to demand effects, appreciation and depreciation of currencies are immediate in the currency market following macroeconomic announcements.