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A childhood intervention to improve the social skills and self-control of at-risk kindergarten boys in the 1980s had positive impacts over the life course: higher trust and self-control as adolescents; increased social group membership, education, and reduced criminality as young adults; and increased marriage and employment as adults. Using administrative data, we find this intervention increased average yearly employment income by about 20 percent and decreased average yearly social transfers by almost 40 percent. We estimate that $1 invested in this program around age 8 yields about $11 in benefits by age 39, with an internal rate of return of around 17 percent. (JEL I21, I26, I28, J13, J24, J31, Z13)

Center for Law & Economics Working Paper Series, 2022 (03)

This paper studies how economic incentives influence cultural transmission, using a crucial expression of cultural identity: Child naming decisions. Our focus is on Arabic versus Non-Arabic names given in France over the 2003-2007 period. Our model of cultural transmission features three determinants: (i) vertical (parental) cultural transmission culture; (ii) horizontal (neighborhood) influence; (iii) information on the economic penalty associated with Arabic names. We find that economic incentives largely influence naming choices: Would the parental expectation on the economic penalty be zero, the annual number of babies born with an Arabic name would be more than 50 percent larger.

Until now, the literature on opposition or resistance to regional integration has concentrated on the European Union (UE). So far, no systematic attempt has been pursued to explain opposition to regional integration in Latin America and identify its main influential factors. Based on Latinobarometro surveys, two main findings have emerged from this paper. First, opposition to regional integration is not a generalised attitude among Latin Americans. Secondly, the way in which citizens across Latin America evaluate regional integration is strongly influenced by the same predictors as in the EU: citizens' assessments of economic performance (both at the individual and national level), education, ideology, age, and income. Thus, socio-economic variables have proven to be directly linked to support for/opposition to economic integration. If Latin America continues along its recent path of economic growth these findings imply that it will likely see stable high support for regional integration. Conversely, the less that Latin America prospers from regional trade and the more that its economies deteriorate, the lesser support there will be for economic integration.

Le populisme est le produit de deux secousses telluriques. Premier séisme : la montée d’un immense ressentiment contre les partis et les institutions politiques. Face à l’échec de la droite et de la gauche à contenir les excès du capitalisme, la radicalité « anti-système » a brisé les compromis que l’un et l’autre camps étaient parvenus à édifier. Deuxième séisme : la fin de la société de classes, au profit d’une société d’individus pensant leur position sociale en termes subjectifs. Une nouvelle polarité en résulte, qui sépare les « confiants » des « méfiants » envers autrui. La droite populiste surgit au croisement d’une double méfiance – à l’égard des institutions politiques et à l’égard de la société. Elle prospère sur le désenchantement démocratique, tout en renouvelant le clivage gauche-droite. Fondé sur des données inédites, cet ouvrage se révèle essentiel pour comprendre le présent et l’avenir des sociétés démocratiques.Doyen de l’École d’affaires publiques, Yann Algan est professeur d’économie à Sciences Po. Économiste, Elizabeth Beasley est chercheuse à l'Observatoire du bien-être au CEPREMAP, et ancienne directrice de J-PAL France. Daniel Cohen est directeur du département d’économie de l’École normale supérieure et professeur à l’École d’économie de Paris. Directeur du CEVIPOF (CNRS), Martial Foucault est professeur des universités en science politique à Sciences Po.

We study how friendship shapes students' political opinions in a natural experiment. We use the indicator whether two students were exogenously assigned to a short-term "integration group", unrelated to scholar activities and dissolved before the school year, as instrumental variable for their friendship, to estimate the effect of friendship on pairwise political opinion outcomes in dyadic regressions. After six months, friendship causes a reduction of differences in opinions by one quarter of the mean difference. It likely works through a homophily-enforced mechanism, by which friendship causes politically-similar students to join political associations together, which reinforces their political similarity. The effect is strong among initially similar pairs, but absent in dissimilar pairs. Friendship affects opinion gaps by reducing divergence, therefore polarization and extremism, without forcing individuals' views to converge. Network characteristics also matter to the friendship effect.

Ce travail propose pour la première fois d’étudier les clivages cachés du soutien aux Gilets jaunes à partir des données de l’enquêe du Baromètre de la confiance du CEVIPOF. Nous montrons que le soutien au mouvement entérine l’ effacement de l’axe droite-gauche traditionnel. Les Gilets jaunes réunissent des personnes dont les taux de satisfaction dans la vie sont très faibles, indépendamment de leur accord sur les moyens d’y répondre. Ce sont majoritairement d’anciens éecteurs de Marine Le Pen, de Jean-Luc Mélenchon ou des abstentionnistes (dans cet ordre). Ils partagent une critique plus radicale de l’Etat et du gouvernement que l’un et l’autre de ces électorats, tout en ayant des positions plus médianes sur des questions morales comme la tolérance a l’ égard des minorités. L’analyse de la géographie des ronds-points confirme le caractère original de ce mouvement. Le Nord-Est et le Sud-Ouest sont les points forts de la mobilisation, soit les deux régions ou Marine Le Pen et Jean-Luc Mélenchon ont fait leurs meilleurs scores en 2017

We build models to estimate well-being in the United States based on changes in the volume of internet searches for different words, obtained from the Google Trends website. The estimated well-being series are weighted combinations of word groups that are endogenously identified to fit the weekly subjective well-being measures collected by Gallup Analytics for the United States or the biannual measures for the 50 states. Our approach combines theoretical underpinnings and statistical analysis, and the model we construct successfully estimates the out-of-sample evolution of most subjective well-being measures at a one-year horizon. Our analysis suggests that internet search data can be a complement to traditional survey data to measure and analyze the well-being of a population at high frequency and local geographic levels. We highlight some factors that are important for well-being, as we find that internet searches associated with job search, civic participation, and healthy habits consistently predict well-being across several models, datasets and use cases during the period studied.

This paper describes the results of an international initiative on trust (Trustlab) run in six OECD countries between November 2016 and November 2017 (France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Slovenia and the United States). Trustlab combines cutting-edge techniques drawn from behavioural science and experimental economics with an extensive survey on the policy and contextual determinants of trust in others and trust in institutions, administered to representative samples of participants. The main results are as follows: 1) Self-reported measures of trust in institutions are validated experimentally, 2) Self-reported measures of trust in others capture a belief about trustworthiness (as well as altruistic preferences), whereas experimental measures rather capture willingness to cooperate and one’s own trustworthiness. Therefore, both measures are loosely related, and should be considered complementary rather than substitutes; 3) Perceptions of institutional performance strongly correlate with both trust in government and trust in others; 4) Perceived government integrity is the strongest determinant of trust in government; 5) In addition to indicators associated with social capital, such as neighbourhood connectedness and attitudes towards immigration, perceived satisfaction with public services, social preferences and expectations matter for trust in others; 6) There is a large scope for policy action, as an increase in all significant determinants of trust in government by one standard deviation may be conducive to an increase in trust by 30 to 60%.

Understanding the origins of political authoritarianism is of key importance for modern democracies. Recent works in evolutionary psychology suggest that the preference for dominant leaders is a calibrated response to stressful environments. In this paper, we hypothesized that people’s political preferences are partly driven by an early calibration of social preferences occurring during childhood. We experimentally elicited children’s (Study 1) and adults’ (Study 2) political preferences using faces controlled for dominance and trustworthiness and showed that early childhood harshness has an enduring effect on adult political attitudes. Importantly, this impact was further confirmed using self-reported extreme authoritarianism (Study 2) and by the analysis of the large database of the European Value Survey (Study 3). We discuss the political implications of this early calibration of authoritarianism.

L’objectif pédagogique d’Énergie Jeunes est d’encourager la persévérance scolaire et de développer l’autodiscipline chez les élèves de collèges défavorisés. Le programme consiste en trois interventions en classe de 55 minutes, chaque année de la 6èmeà la 3ème. A l’issue de la première année du programme, il est constaté que les élèves de 6èmebénéficient d’une augmentation significative de leurs résultats scolaires, un résultat remarquableétant donné la faible intensité du programme. L’analyse des mécanismes suggère que l’amélioration des notes serait due à une amélioration de la qualité du travail fourni plus qu’à une augmentation de la quantité de travail. Si les élèves ne se perçoivent pas eux-mêmes plus disciplinés dans leur travail, la mesure de l’autodiscipline fondée sur l’observation des enseignants montre une petite amélioration. Enfin, l’acceptation et la perception du programme est globalement très bonne, aussi bien par les élèves que par les enseignants.

La présente contribution rassemble un certain nombre de résultats d’études et d’observations, américaines en majorité, concernant l’impact gouvernemental des évaluations des politiques publiques.

Using the PISA surveys (2000-2012), this paper explores the relationship between math test scores and everyday computer gaming by gender and for high income and middle income countries. We use two identification strategies in the spirit of an ideal experiment that would reduce computer gaming through limited internet access or through schools alternative demands. We find that everyday computer gaming has positive effects for boys, but negative effects for girls arising mostly in collaborative games suggesting a role for social effects. Computer gaming is becoming the new "swimming upstream" factor in the quest to close the gender gap in math.

This paper shows how a public policy shapes convergence of beliefs through newly-formed social networks, with a focus on political opinion. We use a unique natural experiment that randomly assigns students into first-year groups at a French college that forms future top politicians. Pairs of students in the same group are much more likely to become friends. The randomized group membership serves as instrumental variable in a dyadic regression of differences in beliefs on friendship. We find that students’ political opinions converge particularly strongly between friends, reaching 11% of a standard deviation only after 6 months. Convergence is strongest among pairs least likely to become friends without the randomized exposure, or friends whose characteristics are the most different. While there is evidence of homophily in network formation, it does not seem to affect the estimates of convergence, except among very similar friends. The same strategy shows that a longer network distance implies slower convergence.

La violence entre pairs à l’école est un phénomène préoccupant, en particulier compte tenu du potentiel impact de long terme sur le devenir des enfants. Nous évaluons ici les effets d’un dispositif de « Médiation Sociale en Milieu Scolaire » (MSMS) visant à réduire la violence entre pairs. Grâce à un protocole expérimental par assignation aléatoire, nous montrons que les effets du programme sont très importants lorsqu’il est mis en place par des médiateurs assez expérimentés : au collège, le taux de harcèlement ressenti est alors réduit de 11%. Précisément, le programme est extrêmement bénéfique pour les élèves les plus exposés à la violence : ainsi la probabilité de se sentir harcelé diminue de 46% chez les garçons de 6ème et de 26% chez les filles de 5ème. Des effets intéressants sont également visibles sur le bien­être psychologique et social des élèves, ainsi que sur l’absentéisme des élèves et des enseignants. Peer violence in schools is a worrying phenomenon, especially the potential longterm impact it may have on a child’s future. Here we evaluate the effects of a program of social mediation at school implemented to reduce peer violence. Through a randomized experimental design, we show that the effects of the program are very important when it is implemented by mediators who are over 25 years old: in junior high school, the rate of experienced harassment is reduced by 11%. Specifically, the program is extremely beneficial for students most exposed to violence: the probability of feeling harassed decreased by 46% in boys in 6th grade and by 26% in girls in 7th grade. Interesting effects on the psychological and social well­being of students, as well as on student absenteeism and teachers are also visible.