Michèle Belot

Immigrant Selection in the OECD

In this paper, we examine the determinants of educational selectivity in immigration using immigrant stock data for 70 source countries and 21 OECD destination countries, as observed in the year 2000/2001. We develop a variant of the Roy model to estimate the determinants of educational selectivity. Two key findings emerge. First, the effect of the skill premium, which is at the core of the Roy model, can be observed only after we take into account the poverty constraints operating in the source countries. Second, cultural similarities, colonial legacies, and physical distance are often more important determinants of educational selectivity than wage incentives or selective immigration policy.

Welfare-Improving Employment Protection

This paper derives new results on the welfare effects of employment protection. Using data from 17 OECD countries, we show that there exists an inverse U-shape relationship between employment protection and economic growth. Using a simple theoretical model with non-contractible specific investments, we show that over some range increasing employment protection does indeed raise welfare. We also show that the optimal level of employment protection depends on other labour market features, such as the bargaining power of workers and the existence of wage rigidities like the minimum wage.

Anthropometry of Love - Height and Gender Asymmetries in Interethnic Marriages

Both in the UK and in the US, we observe puzzling gender asymmetries in the propensity to outmarry: Black men are more likely to have white spouses than Black women, but the opposite is true for Chinese: Chinese men are half less likely to be married to a White person than Chinese women. We argue that differences in height distributions, combined with a simple preference for the husband to be taller than the wife, can help explain these ethnic-specific gender asymmetries. Blacks are taller than Asians, and we argue that this significantly affects their marriage prospects with whites. We provide empirical support for this hypothesis using data from the Millennium Cohort Study. Specifically, we find that ethnic differences in propensity to intermarry with Whites shrink when we control for the proportion of suitable partners with respect to height.

Can Observers Predict Trustworthiness

We investigate whether experimental subjects can predict behavior in a prisoners dilemma played on a TV show. Subjects report probabilistic beliefs that a player cooperates, before and after the players communicate. Subjects correctly predict that women and players who make a voluntary promise are more likely to cooperate. They are able to distinguish truth from lies when a player is asked about her intentions by the host. Subjects are to some extent able to predict behavior; their beliefs are 7~percentage points higher for cooperators than for defectors. We also study their Bayesian updating. Beliefs do not satisfy the martingale property and display mean reversion.

Beauty and the sources of discrimination

We analyze discrimination against less attractive people on a TV game show with high stakes. The game has a rich structure that allows us to disentangle the relationship between attractiveness and the determinants of a players earnings. Unattractive players perform no worse than attractive ones, and are equally cooperative in the prisoners dilemma stage of the game. Nevertheless, they are substantially more likely to be eliminated by their peers, even though this is costly. We investigate third party perceptions of discrimination by asking subjects to predict elimination decisions. Subjects implicitly assign a role for attractiveness but underestimate its magnitude.

Dating Preferences and Meeting Opportunities in Mate Choice Decisions

Much empirical evidence shows that female and male partners look alike along a variety of attributes. It is, however, unclear how this positive sorting comes about because marriage is an equilibrium outcome arising from a process that entails searching, meeting, and choosing one another. This study takes advantage of unique data to shed light on the forces driving choices at the earliest stage of a relationship. Both women and men value physical attributes, such as age and weight, and reveal that their dating choices are assortative along several traits. Importantly, meeting opportunities have a substantial role in determining dating proposals.

Why is Employment Protection Stricter in Europe than in the United States

I argue that the reason why the United States prefers a lower level of employment protection than the European countries lies in the differences in gains and costs from geographical mobility. I present a model in which labour migration and employment protection are both determined endogenously. The labour market is modelled within a matching framework, where the employment protection reduces both the job finding and job firing rates. Countries with low migration costs and high economic heterogeneity may prefer no employment protection so that workers can move quickly to better horizons rather than being maintained in low productive activities.

Friendships and Favouritism on the Schoolground – A Framed Field Experiment

We present experimental evidence on favouritism practices. Children compete in teams in a tournament. After the first round of a real effort task, children indicate which group member they would prefer to do the task in the second round, for the benefit of the team. Friends are much more likely to be chosen than others after controlling for performance. We also find that children who are favoured by their friend subsequently increase performance. Consequently, favouritism does not hurt efficiency. These results show the importance of observing performance ex post in order to properly evaluate the efficiency implications of favouritism.

Why is the Employment Protection Stricter in Europe than in the US

In this paper, we argue that the reason why the United States prefer a lower level of employment protection than the European countries lies in the differences in gains and costs from geographical mobility.We present a model where labor migration and employment protection are both determined endogenously.The labor market is modeled within a matching framework, where the employment protection reduces both the job finding and firing rates.Countries with low migration costs and high economic heterogeneity may prefer no employment protection so that workers can move quickly to better horizons rather than being maintained in low productive activities.

Do Teacher Strikes Harm Educational Attainment of Students

This paper investigates the effects of a teacher strike on student achievement. From May 1990 until November 1990 teachers in the French community of Belgium stroked to obtain a salary increase. We exploit the political division of Belgium in a French community and a Flemish community, with similar educational institutions, for estimating the long-term effects of the strikes. Based on a difference-in-differences approach, using data from two different surveys, we find some evidence that the strikes reduced educational attainment and increased class repetition. We also find that the strikes led to a significant reallocation of students to a lower level of higher education. Overall, the results suggest that teacher strikes can lead to substantial costs for those not involved in the conflict.