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In this introductory Chapter the rationale for this research is explained and an overview of the thesis is provided. This chapter serves as a concise introduction to the subject of the knowledge base and knowledge pipelines in a metropolis as Brussels, as well as providing an insight into the policy driven empirical research with additional focus on the appropriate spatial level of analysis to highlight the spatial inequality of innovation. The objectives of the thesis are reviewed by giving an overview of the research questions and the main hypotheses related to them. The theoretical background used in this thesis is briefly outlined. The structure of the thesis can be summarised as follows. The second chapter provides basic information about data on patents and scientific publications, the construction of indicators based on patents and scientific publications, as well as guidelines for the compilation and interpretation of patent and scientific publication indicators. The third chapter focuses on the determinants of the efficiency levels across regions in Belgium at different spatial levels. The fourth chapter builds on the research made in the previous chapters and focuses on the analysis of the impact of patent collaboration networks on the output growth of R&D active companies in Belgium. The fifth chapter analyses the impact of different collaboration ties on the productivity of innovative companies in Belgium, measured in several ways through the innovation survey and in terms of patents. The conclusion reported in the last chapter summarises the main findings and highlight possible suggestions for future research., Benchmarking exercises are increasingly used as an assessment instrument to guide policy-makers. They contribute to policy-making in three broad ways: delineating and monitoring development and progress; facilitating the exchange and gathering of knowledge on practices and policies; and promoting the image and attractiveness of economies. This research complements existing information about the Brussels Regional Innovation System (BRIS) with additional data that is less frequently available through current channels or difficult to make public due to the number of data manipulations. This research illustrates the Brussels innovation system by focusing on various aspects related to intra- and interregional connections. The dataset is based on scientific publications and patents over the period 1993-2013 containing at least one author with an affiliation or one inventor located in the Brussels-Capital Region, Vienna and Berlin. Patents and scientific publications provide a clear picture of the nature of technological change and innovation. Moreover, these sources give some further indication of R&D activities in the field and the position and specialisation of countries. The main benefit of such indicators is the unique empirical characterization they provide of the way actors interact as a collective system of knowledge production and diffusion (OECD, 1996). The main objective of this work is to compare Brussels with Belgian regions, city agglomerations and districts, as well as with capital cities of metropolitan regions (Vienna and Berlin) in terms of patenting and producing scientific publications, in order to map and understand how knowledge exchange takes place when Brussels actors are involved and which partners, locations, scientific fields and technological sectors are preferred. The main focus is on providing basic information about patent and scientific publication data, the construction of indicators based on patents and scientific publications, as well as guidelines for the compilation and interpretation of patent and scientific publication indicators., The topic of the spatial pattern in R&D activities was investigated by several scholars. It is worthwhile to explore the dynamism and change of R&D activities’ spatial spread as R&D activities are very much a dynamic phenomenon and the consequences in terms of past growth of these activities have painted the current relative position of the regions. Analysing the determinants of the efficiency levels across Belgian regions at different spatial levels (3 regions, 10 provinces, 43 districts, and city agglomerations), we derive a regression based on the measurement of regional output growth by estimating an extended Cobb-Douglas production function based on a representative sample of Belgian R&D active firms over the period 2000-2013. We investigate the role played by knowledge (private and public R&D stocks) on the output growth by applying spatial econometric methods that account for both heteroscedasticity and spatial autocorrelation. The chapter focuses on the comparison of obtained results with previous studies based on Belgium. It turns out that a large part of output growth differences across the Belgian regions are explained by disparities in the endowments of these determinants., Although the literature on the relations between patents and output growth of R&D active companies has been widely investigated, there has been little research with respect to the impact of patent collaboration networks on the output growth of R&D active companies. Integrating theoretical developments from the literature, we propose and test a conceptual framework that allows us to explain to what extent patent collaboration networks affect output growth. Testing the framework by using a constructed company-level dataset for Belgium, the empirical analysis reveals that output growth is significantly influenced by patenting activities and by collaborative relations with respect to patents. The chapter focuses on two distinct spatial levels. First, the spatial reach of the patent collaboration network is considered. The findings show that output growth is higher when collaborative relations are internationally oriented. Second, the regional location of the company shows differences in patenting activity, patent collaboration, and the spatial reach of the patent collaboration network., Inter-organisational relations are a crucial aspect of knowledge flows, which are at the same time an important engine for innovation. Collaboration has become an ever more important feature of entrepreneurial strategy to innovate. Network ties facilitate companies’ innovative capabilities by acting as key sources for innovations, helping to access the resources and boosting knowledge transfer. This chapter analyses the impact of different collaboration ties on the productivity of innovative companies in Belgium, measured in several ways through the innovation survey (Community Innovation Survey) and in terms of patents (Patstat). Patent statistics are used as an objective measure for innovation. Unlike patent data, innovation surveys measure innovation activities carried out in companies. This chapter is primarily concerned with the following research question: do collaboration networks, as measured by innovation surveys (CIS database) and by invention applications (Patstat database), impact productivity growth in the same way? Further, this chapter focuses on an alternative spatial approach in order to look into the role played by proximate and distant inter-organisational networks among organisations. The findings show that the collaboration ties between companies are contributing the most to productivity growth followed by collaboration ties involving universities and government, public or private research institutes. Second, the spatial reach of the inter-organisational networks shows divergent impact on productivity performance of innovating companies., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In 2019, the NGO Freedom House entitled its annual report “Democracy in retreat”. This report marked the 13th consecutive year of decline in overall freedom in the World. Freedom House attributes this decline to “the previous wave of democratization rolling back”. Democracy is losing ground in several places: leaders using an authoritarian rhetoric are flourishing whereas popular support for democracy is shrinking (Mounk, 2018). This democratic recession questions the performance of democracies (Diamond, 2015). Previous research showed that democracy is associated with higher growth (Acemoglu et al. 2019), higher education (Gallego, 2010) and higher development (Gerring et al. 2012). Those assessments, however, do not explain the challenges new democratic countries currently face or why many democracies recently rolled back. Comparing the performance of democracies with that of autocracies is not new. Back in ancient Greece, Plato already debated the risks of democracy (Plato, The Republic, Book VIII). Nevertheless, measuring the virtues of political regimes in such static terms has drawbacks. It disregards the history of a political regime and the specificities of political transitions. A tautological argument is that democracy materializes after a democratic transition and autocracy often after an autocratic reversal. These transitions are multifaceted. They breed uncertainty and/or stem from violent outbursts (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2001). They open a period of political instability by fueling claims over power and over wealth in the new polity (Higley and Burton, 1989). New regimes have to face specific challenges: setting new rules, dealing with former elites, stabilizing the new regime and facing new contestants (Clague 1996). Those elements interact with the intrinsic characteristics of political regimes. In order to measure the merits and disadvantages of different regimes, it then seems adequate to understand first what political transitions bring about and second what causes them. This dissertation aims at offering insights on those two interrelated issues. To do so, this dissertation focuses on the instability, the violence and the political risk accompanying political transitions. Its primary objective is not to question the merits of a type of regime over another but to understand the features of political transitions. First, I investigate the consequences of democratic transitions on political risk, defined as a risk of political nature compromising economic activities – e.g. poor investment protections, corruption, and conflict. History illustrates well how transitions cause this kind of risk. For example, the Burundian civil war erupted after the first free and fair elections in the country in 1993. Political transitions also provide the new leaders with incentives to abuse their power to expropriate properties. Understanding political risk – as a correlate of political transitions – adds on the assessment of political regimes found in previous literature. Considering the interplay between political risk and political transitions also sheds light on a so far under-studied consequence of political transitions.Second, I turn to identifying the determinants of a specific dimension of political risk: regime reversals. Regime reversals often occurred in chaotic circumstances as in, 1642 England, 1973 Chile and 1999 Indonesia. The second part of the dissertation analyzes these chaotic circumstances from two different angles. It underlines the long-term structural changes fostering transitions to democracy. It also clarifies the individual reasons why elected politicians may oppose an autocratic reversal.1. The consequences of democratic transitionsPolitical transitions change the way policies are decided. By integrating new people in the decision-process, democratic transitions generate reforms (Giuliano et al, 2013). As a result, the political and economic structures of a country in transition change (Grosjean and Senik, 2011). These changes in a country transiting to democracy shape its development path. Papaioannou and Siourounis (2008a) and Acemoglu et al. (2019) present evidence that democratic transitions foster growth. Aidt and Jensen (2013) observe that they increase public spending. These attractive features of democratic transitions have to be balanced against their less desirable outcomes. Reforms and changing political systems also generate new opportunities for rent-seeking and corruption (Mohtadi and Roe, 2003). By the same token, they may relax property rights to foster redistribution (Clague, 1996). As a consequence, the economic gains from democratic transitions are likely limited and surely unevenly distributed. The first chapter contributes to this literature by assessing the variations of foreign investments before, during and after democratic transitions. It examines the impact of democratic transitions on the attractiveness of new democracies to foreign investors. Using an event-study method on a panel of 115 developing countries from 1970 to 2014, we find that shifting to a democratic regime does not affect Foreign Direct Investment inflows (FDI), on average. We do find, however, that consolidated democratic transitions, defined as those that do not go into reverse for at least five years, actually increase these inflows, with the bulk of the improvement appearing ten years after the transition. Furthermore, when controlling for political risk, the effect of consolidated democratic transitions appears immediately after they occur, suggesting that higher political risk in the early years of the new regime offsets the positive intrinsic effect on FDI. Political transitions, however, do not only impact the economy and how economic transitions operate. They also influence the way different political groups interact. This explains how political transitions affect a specific component of political risk: violence. Democratic transitions have an ambiguous impact on violence. On the one hand, new policies are more aligned with the preferences of the newly-enfranchised population, thus reducing violence (Reynal-Querol, 2002). On the other hand, democratic transitions reduce the de jure power of former elites. These elites may, as a consequence, use violence to compensate for their loss of de jure power (Acemoglu et al. 2008). The overall effect of democratic transitions depends on how they materialize (Cervelatti and Sunde, 2013, Finkel et al. 2015), how they raise the opportunity cost of violence (Collier et al. 2009) and how they change policies in place (Aumann et al. 1983).Chapter 2 directly contributes to this debate. The analysis centers on the influence of enfranchisement on the use of violence as a political resource. This chapter investigates how the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 United States impacted political violence. The VRA forbade discrimination in voting. Its coverage formula generated both geographic and temporal local discontinuities in its application. The empirical strategy takes advantage of these features by comparing the evolution of political violence in geographically close covered and non-covered counties. Difference-in-differences estimates indicate that the VRA coverage halved the incidence and the probability of the onset of political violence. Extensions also show that redistribution does not explain these dynamics. Instead, I report empirical evidence suggesting that voting became the new institutionalized way to express political preferences. After elections, electoral results are a credible signal of political preferences. Political violence is, as a result, no more needed to correct the lack of representativity of pre-enfranchisement electoral results.As political transitions interplay with political risk, one of the main risk new political regimes face is the risk of reversal (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2001; Svolik, 2015). New autocracies and new democracies face political instability. Ultimately, political instability may result in a new transition reversing the previous one. This may offset any merits of the former transition. The second part of my PhD dissertation aims at establishing the determinants of democratic transitions and autocratic reversals to better understand in which circumstances autocracies and democracies may be at risk.2. Determinants of political transitionsThe “Modernization hypothesis” posits economic development; e.g. high growth, industrialization, urbanization, as a long-term determinant of political transitions (Lipset, 1959). The process of development generates tensions, allowing the emergence of new interest groups that may mobilize and claim more rights (Llavador and Oxoby, 2005). Those divisions promote the creation of new coalitions supporting reforms and forming a new opposition to the ruling elite, e.g. industrialists and workers. Economic development may also facilitate the organization of those groups. Growth, industrialization and urbanization then reduce the cost of protesting and the expected cost of repression as well as they increase civic capital and the demand for public policies (Glaeser and Millett-Steinberg, 2016). All these corollaries simplify the organization of opposition groups demanding a regime change.Chapter 3 tests the modernization hypothesis and the importance of industrialization to spur support for democracy. To do so, it uses data from industrial censuses and Napoleonic plebiscites in XIXth century France. The reported empirical evidence points to the importance of industrialization in prompting support for the new democratic ideals emerging at that time in France. Industrialization remains a main driver of the opposition to Napoleon III autocratic power even after controlling for different measures of “modernization”. Industrialization therefore laid the ground for an actual democratic transition to materialize at the end of the Napoleonic era.A political transition does not only arise as a result of structural changes such as industrialization. They also are the product of political leaders’ individual decisions. These decisions, even if personal, are influenced by politicians’ environments. For example, wars, riots and protests send a signal on the capacity of the opposition to coordinate and on the weakness of the ruling authority (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2001). Facing these signals, a politician may resort to his.her environment to get cues on the best reaction possible. The environments of politicians prompt them to protect or abandon the regime in place in different ways. It may encourage the coordination of coups plotters as emphasized by Naidu et al. (2016) in the case of Haiti’s 1991 coup or more directly monitor politicians’ actions (Olson, 1993; Besley et al. 2017). Politicians’ environments also impact their decisions indirectly by transmitting specific norms (Calvó-Armengol and Jackson, 2009). All in all, political transitions are also the results of politicians’ personal decisions. These decisions are directed by a politician’s experience and environment. Chapter 4 investigates the determinants of these personal decisions and the importance of politicians’ environments in shaping them. To do so, it uses data on the vote by the French parliament on July 10, 1940 of an enabling act that granted full power to Marshall Philippe Pétain, thereby ending the Third French Republic and aligning France with Nazi Germany. It complements the previous literature by focusing on the behavior of political dynasties in that peculiar event. The literature on political dynasties in democracies usually considers dynasties as a homogeneous group and points out their negative effects. By contrast, we argue that political dynasties may differ according to their origin and that democratic dynasties – dynasties whose founder was a defender of democratic ideals – show a stronger support for democracy than other dynasties. Using individual votes in July 1940 and newly-collected data from the biographies of the members of parliament, we observe that members of a democratic dynasty had a 7.6 to 9.0 percentage point higher probability to oppose the act than members of other political dynasties or elected representatives belonging to no political dynasty. Suggestive evidence shows that the effect of democratic dynasties was possibly driven by internalized democratic norms and beliefs.In a general conclusion, I relate the results of these four chapters together to reconcile the different results and nuances they emphasize. I also take the opportunity to underline how the dissertation brings new insights in the study of political transitions and further explore possible avenues it offers for future research., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The last ten years have been extremely challenging for both researchers in monetary economics and policymakers.The Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009, in spite of its size and severity, was initially widely perceived in the Euro Area (EA) as an imported and transitory crisis: it was frequently predicted that the EA economy would recover once the US and the World Economy rebounded. Instead, after a brief period of recovery, the Euro Area was hit by the Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2011-12, a domestic crisis which widened the divide already existing between core and peripheral countries up to the point of threatening a break-up of the euro. Thanks to the bold monetary policy response of the ECB this fear gradually vanished, but the sudden fall in oil price and the uncertain economic outlook led to the low inflation period, particularly severe in the EA, in which inflation, both in terms of headline and core measures, is well below the ECB target of 2%. This prompted the ECB to launch its Quantitative Easing program, at the beginning of 2015, much later than what the FED implemented to offset the impact of the 2007-09 crisis.This dissertation consists of two different but interlinked parts, which contribute to the empirical literature on monetary policy, low inflation and the business cycle. The first part is composed by Chapters I and II, and it is devoted to analyse the EA economy, both before the Global Financial Crisis and during the most recent low inflation period. The second one, composed by Chapters III and IV, focuses on the US economy to evaluate the possible negative consequences of the extraordinary monetary stimulus undertaken by the FED. In particular, we study the risks for both price and financial stability of the effects of the so called lift-off, i.e. the gradual normalization of monetary stance. In the first Chapter, we provide novel evidence on the different effects of the ECB common monetary policy on euro-area core and peripheral countries even before the eruption of the crisis.We estimate a structural dynamic factor model on a large panel of Euro Area quarterly variables to take into account both the comovement and the heterogeneity in the EA business cycle, and we then simulate the model to investigate the possible existence of asymmetric effects of ECB monetary policy on member states' economies. Data stop before the eruption of the Global Financial Crisis in order to only assess conventional monetary shocks, which are identified by means of sign restrictions. Although the introduction of the euro has changed the monetary transmission mechanism in the individual countries towards a more homogeneous response, we find that differences still remain between North and South Europe in terms of prices and unemployment. These results are the consequence of country-specific structures, rather than of European Central Bank policies.In the second Chapter we use a Bayesian VAR model to analyse the transmission of global and domestic shocks in the euro area, with a particular focus on the drivers of inflation, especiallyin the recent period labeled as low inflation. We identify several shocks by means of sign restrictions, and we account for the role of ECB unconventional monetary policies by using a shadow interest rate. We document that the recent low inflation phase was not entirely attributable to falling oil prices, but also to slack in economic activity and to insufficiently expansionary monetary policy, because of the Zero Lower Bound of interest rates. Interestingly, we show that the launch of the ECB Quantitative Easing turned the monetary stance into more accommodative, preventing deflationary outcomes. In the third Chapter we provide an empirical evaluation of the existence of a "dark side" of monetary policy, i.e. the possibility that credit spreads abruptly rise following a monetary tightening, after being compressed by an extraordinary period of monetary easing. This would create a problematic trade--off for the central bank, as temporary monetary expansions might at once stimulate the economy and sow the seeds of abrupt and costly financial market corrections in the future in terms of risks for financial stability (Stein, 2014).We investigate this possibility using data for the US by exploiting non-linear methods to examine the propagation of monetary shocks through US corporate bond markets. Across different methodologies, we find that the transmission of monetary shocks is mostly symmetric. What is asymmetric is instead the impact of macroeconomic data releases: spreads respond more to bad news. Crucially, these responses anticipate economic slowdowns rather than causing them directly.However, empirical evidence points to the possibility of larger effects of expansionary monetary shocks depending on (i) the type of non-linear estimation technique (ii) the identification of the shock and (iii) the inclusion of unconventional measures in the analysis. Finally, in the fourth Chapter, we ask whether the FED has riskily delayed the exit from its large monetary easing, increasing the probability of a future inflationary burst. We do so by means of medium and larger scale Bayesian VAR, which we use for both structural analysis, i.e. the evaluation of monetary policy shocks, and forecasting, i.e. the running of counterfactuals and scenario analysis.We show that expansionary monetary policy did not trigger a large deviation of inflation from its steady state. Furthermore, the FED monetary stance is totally in line with the concurrent macroeconomic dynamics. Last, our model predicts that US core inflation will lie well below its 2% target in 2017, a finding only recently acknowledged by the FOMC projections., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In an effort to make documented and fair decisions on work‐related opportunities and career progressions, job performance has emerged as a pivotal Human Resource tool due to its link to quasi‐every career‐related decision in the organization. Indeed, differences in performance evaluations can influence a number of career advancement variables. Performance measurement differences can impart both pay and promotions (Roth, Purvis & Bobko, 2012), lead to lower levels of job satisfaction (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter & Ng, 2001; King et al. 2010) and lower levels of perceived organizational justice (Colquitt et al. 2001; Motowidlo, 2003), which in turn break efforts to create a fair and balanced workplace. If within an organization allocation of bonuses, wages, responsibilities and promotions are partially or entirely determined by job performance evaluations, then job performance is likely to mediate the relationship between gender and career advancement, particularly for women in male dominated organizations.The centrality of job performance calls for scrutiny; as job performance has a potential to constitute a powerful mechanism in terms of its potential to marginalize and/or exclude women. Despite legislative and organizational efforts to alleviate gender inequality and shatter the glass ceiling, women are still disadvantaged in the labor market.In fact, women who have managed to enter male‐dominated organizations and occupations are still under‐represented and face numerous hurdles. Empirical evidence is plentiful on gender discrimination even when women are successful at their job (e.g. Parks‐Stamm et al. 2008, Heilman & Okimoto, 2007) and have secured positions in upper management (Heilman et al. 2004). However, little evidence is available on women’s experience of discrimination within the performance appraisal context and how existing job performance prototypes are affecting the perception of their work, including bias by other women.This dissertation is interested in filling that research gap and contributing to the body of knowledge on women’s experience in male‐dominated organizations. The potential of job performance having a marginalizing effect on women, in the sense of limiting women’s career opportunities, is examined with regard to women’s work experience and how women themselves can perpetuate their marginal position in the workplace. The intent is to reveal the mechanisms upholding and reinforcing the glass ceiling and gender inequity in the workplace.Based on the literature review and identified knowledge gaps two lines of enquiry have emerged and will be investigated in this dissertation:-  How job performance functions as a mean of (re)producing gender inequality in male dominated organizations and occupations by its gendered character-  How women in male‐dominated organizations can be participants in maintaining inequality by relying on gender stereotype expectations to evaluate their job performance and that of other female colleagues.In order to grasp and address the complexity of the potentially gendered character of job performance the dissertation takes on a multidisciplinary approach.The dissertation is divided into two main parts. The first part comprising chapters 1 to 3 reviews the current literature on women’s experience in male‐dominated organizations. These chapters provide the theoretical framework for the research contributions, presented as essays in part two of the dissertation. Chapter 1 presents a literature review depicting the situation of women in the European labor market and the persistent horizontal and vertical segregation. The specificities of token women (less than 15% representation; Kanter, 1977a) in male dominated organizations and the impact of tokenism on women’s job performance are discussed.Chapter 2 details gender stereotypes and explicates their direct impact on the assessment of women’s work and job performance. This chapter argues the case for genders stereotypes as the leading social psychological mechanisms impeding the perception of women’s work as being equivalent to that of men. Perceived incongruity between gender stereotype attributes gives rise to expectations on women’s performance, generally, that they will perform poorly in male‐typed occupations (Heilman, 1983, 1995, 2001). This can therefore penalize women in their career paths and become significant barriers to their social and economic opportunities. In fact, stereotype beliefs about attitudes, characteristics and roles of women and men influence the evaluation process and constitute the backbone of the analysis of this dissertation.Chapter 3 explores the existing literature on women’s participation in biased evaluation of themselves and other women. Women’s roles as evaluators as well as their self‐ perception as performers is outlined in relation to the way they can maintain and reinforce gendered performance norms. Building on system justification theory, this chapter highlights the complexity of gender inequality in organizations and seeks to acknowledge internalized and often unconscious gender biases at work.Subsequent to the literature review of part one, part two (chapters 4 to 8) presents the research contributions of the dissertation, namely the mechanisms, which maintain and reinforce gender inequality in male dominated organizations. Chapters 4 to 5 outline the investigations into the research enquiries posited. Each chapter of part two constitutes an independent essay highlighting through various analytical lenses the complexity of marginalization through job performance. In line with a multidisciplinary approach, the essays presented in chapters 4 and 5 are of a theoretical nature whereas chapters 6, 7 and 8 comprise empirical studies.Chapter 4 sets out to investigate the potential gendered character of job performance and the legitimating effects of meritocracy as the ideological framework, which informs each stage of job performance; from setting the criteria to using performance evaluation information to distribute organizational goods. The major contribution of this chapter is to bring forth the way in which performance and merit intertwine to perpetuate mechanisms of inequality and invalidate contestation at each stage of job performance. Gender‐blind and merit‐based HR (Human Resources) processes such as performance are rarely put to question and revealed as inherently biased themselves. The findings call for a critique of meritocracy on a systemic level as well as the implementation of an outcome‐oriented approach to job performance evaluations and reward allocation.Chapter 5 applies and extends social identity theory to explain the underrepresentation and marginalized position of women in European academia. The chapter illustrates the extent to which the Leading Academic Performer (LAP) is based on male characteristics and therefore contributes to the marginalization of female academics. This chapter endeavors to further the theoretical underpinnings by proposing an applicable taxonomy of social identity theory performance (Klein, Spears & Reicher, 2007). The chapter illustrates how social identities can be strategically performed to enhance the perception of female academics as leading academic performers.Chapter 6 and chapter 7 are contributions based on an empirical study using a social psychological experiment methodology, involving 163 Master students (Business major) from a Belgian university. The objective of the study was two fold. Chapter 6 investigated the standards and criteria used to evaluate male versus female job performance. Chapter 7 looked at how female and male evaluators differed in their evaluations and how they perceived the value of their evaluative work when evaluating a woman versus a man.More specifically, in chapter 6 participants were asked to evaluate the job performance of a randomly assigned female or male IT manager and to decide on whether they should retain their position. Major findings of this study show that not only did evaluators (regardless of their gender) automatically assign female IT managers higher interpersonal skills, thereupon confirming the use of stereotype beliefs, but they also used double standards to decide the retention of the female employee. When it came to female employees, their retention decision was directly linked to their performance evaluation. This was not the case for male employees. Other standards outside of job performance were used to retain the male employee. In addition, results reveal that female evaluators systematically gave lower ratings than their male counterparts. The results in this study show that both men and women evaluators not only use similar norms to evaluate but are also harsher when evaluating female performance.Chapter 7 explores the evaluators’ perceived entitlement in regards to the task of evaluating the job performance of a man versus that of a woman. Contrary to previous research on the depressed entitlement effect (i.e. phenomenon where by women underpay themselves relative to men but are just as satisfied with their employment situation as men) in this study, all evaluators, men and women expressed an elevated sense of entitlement when appraising the performance of a female worker. Evaluators assessing a woman’s job performance felt that they deserved 19,64% more (monetary reward) compared to those evaluating a man’s job performance. Interestingly, evaluators who gave high interpersonal skill ratings exhibited a depressed entitlement effect. It would seem that focusing on female associated skills gives evaluators the perception that this work is less worthy. Both chapters 6 and 7 highlight the gendered character of evaluating performance and point to the difficulty evaluators might have in evaluating female job performance. Equally, the findings support the claim that women themselves participate in system‐maintaining mechanisms that stress communality injunctions on female workers.Chapter 8 presents a study, using qualitative methodology, conducted in a Belgian subsidiary of a multinational IT corporation. The study is based on semi‐structured interviews with 32 managers and employees across organizational departments. The aim is to highlight job performance expectations and to render visible criteria thought to be best predictive of good employee performance. To bring forth existing yet hidden gendered elements in the discourse on job performance, gender subtext was chosen as the analytical tool. Gender subtext analysis allows for an understanding of how seemingly gender‐blind language is in fact embedded with gendered meanings. Results of this fieldwork support the analysis in previous chapters: Job performance expectations perpetuates a prototype of the exemplary performer as masculine, thereby forcing the few token women to position themselves in masculine terms or risk increased marginalization from deviating the dominant management style. Finally, a section of the chapter is dedicated to analyze how women do work in their predominately male dominated organization and how this could lead to perpetuating masculine norms of performance.A general discussion concludes the dissertation and analyses the findings (i.e. the four mechanisms that have been identified, which reinforce the glass ceiling and maintain gender inequality through job performance). Overall, the investigations into the research enquiries have revealed the gendered and thus biased character of job performance. If within an organization, androcentric job performance criteria and evaluations are partially or entirely used to determine the allocation of bonuses, wages, responsibilities and promotions, then job performance constitutes a powerful gendered mechanism legitimating and maintaining gender inequalities. Each essay in part two has examined and brought to light the (re)production of gender inequality in male dominated organizations and occupations through job performance. By using a multidisciplinary approach, the theoretical analyses presented, is consolidated the laboratory experiments and fieldwork. Equally, the role of women in maintaining gendered performance norms by relying on gender stereotypes, albeit unconsciously, is uncovered. The participation of women themselves in maintaining and reproducing the status quo limits the possibilities for contestation and hinders attempts at transformation towards more gender equity. To conclude, the chapter proposes practical recommendations alleviate contributing mechanisms behind the glass ceiling., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The paper investigates the role of central bank communication for monetary policy implementation. Firstly, we use a multi-disciplinary approach to disentangle several problematic contingencies of central bank communication, analyzing from this perspective the role of complex phenomena such as public opinion, perceptions, beliefs, framing, subjective probability, rhetoric, persuasion, cognitive limits and distortions, psychological and cultural biases etc. The result is a comprehensive survey of theory and practice in central bank communication, from the perspective of political science, social-psychology and media studies. Secondly, we attempt to draw on more psychological realism to central bank communication in the context of financial crises, using a parallel with risk management in the case of natural disasters. Thirdly, we conceive central bank information as a public good, thereby we construct a novel schematic model of supply and demand based on two respective behavioral logistic functions, in order to derive central bank informational equilibrium., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

For decades, economic theories have been mostly based on rational choices made by selfish individuals to maximize their utility, while sociology spent a lot of efforts describing the environment of individuals and explaining how this environment shapes theirs decisions. However, the last thirty years have seen many sociological concepts appear in the economic literature. For example, behavioral economics introduces things such as envy or altruism in economic theories. Other notions such as social capital, social norms, trust or community became more and more present in economic papers. The objective of this new strand of literature is to engage into sort of socioeconomic approach and to shed some light on interpersonal relationships. This thesis belongs to this socioeconomic approach, and tries to explore new aspects of various concepts. The two first papers are theoretical. In the first one, we explore the negative side of social capital, which has not been studied extensively, by investigating the effect of a norm on consumers when moving is costly. In the second one, we introduce a sociological concept, namely social identity, in a classic economic model in order to show how social interactions modifies its results, and hence, the importance of taking such interpersonal relationships into account. The third and final paper is an empirical case study of social capital in Belgium, an exercise that has not been done before, with the objective of comparing the level of social capital between the various regions of the country. In the first paper, The Tyranny of Social Norms on Individual Behavior, we study the negative effect of the existence of a norm and moving cost inside a community. Because of deviation cost (such as social shame or peer pressure for example), consumers inside a given community may not reach their ideal consumption, that is the consumption they would have without social constraint. On the other hand, moving to another community may be too expensive (in terms of social assets needed to be part of the new community). Hence, agents may get stuck in their community, being forced to consume something they do not want to. One example of such behavior is the underinvestment in education in some neighborhood. We show that such equilibria are possible and that they may be socially suboptimal equilibria as well as Pareto inferior equilibria. We also show that state intervention can correct those “bad” equilibria by operating transfers between agents in order to lower the moving cost.In the second paper, Social Identity, Advertising and Market Competition, we use a particular approach of a sociological concept, namely Social Identity, which focuses on the fact that people want to signal who they are to others. We assume that this is done by choosing a specific consumption (think of fashion market for example). We show that under this assumption, the classical result of Bertrand Price Competition does not hold anymore, and that prices and profits are positive, meaning that social identity creates market power for firms. Moreover, if the number of goods is limited, groups will be formed, and there will be multiple equilibria, each one corresponding to a particular partition of the consumers. We then add the possibility for firms to use advertising. This allows consumers to have a coordination tool, but increases also market powers for firms. We investigate the various equilibria that arise and their impact in term of welfare.In the third paper, Social Capital in Belgium, we construct an index of social capital using the European Social Survey, and we show that this index can be decomposed in three aspects: Trust, Social Activities and Social Network. We then study whether there is a difference in social capital between Belgium’s regions or not. We show that indeed, such difference exists, even when controlling for socioeconomic variables. In a third part, we investigate whether the level of social capital is higher or lower in Belgium than in other European countries, and we analyze European regional differences in term of social capital., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The active use of macroeconomic policies to smooth economic fluctuations and, as aconsequence, the stance that policymakers should adopt over the business cycle, remaincontroversial issues in the economic literature.In the light of the dramatic experience of the early 1930s’ Great Depression, Keynes (1936)argued that the market mechanism could not be relied upon to spontaneously recover froma slump, and advocated counter-cyclical public spending and monetary policy to stimulatedemand. Albeit the Keynesian doctrine had largely influenced policymaking duringthe two decades following World War II, it began to be seriously challenged in severaldirections since the start of the 1970s. The introduction of rational expectations withinmacroeconomic models implied that aggregate demand management could not stabilizethe economy’s responses to shocks (see in particular Sargent and Wallace (1975)). Accordingto this view, in fact, rational agents foresee the effects of the implemented policies, andwage and price expectations are revised upwards accordingly. Therefore, real wages andmoney balances remain constant and so does output. Within such a conceptual framework,only unexpected policy interventions would have some short-run effects upon the economy.The "real business cycle (RBC) theory", pioneered by Kydland and Prescott (1982), offeredan alternative explanation on the nature of fluctuations in economic activity, viewedas reflecting the efficient responses of optimizing agents to exogenous sources of fluctuations, outside the direct control of policymakers. The normative implication was thatthere should be no role for economic policy activism: fiscal and monetary policy should beacyclical. The latest generation of New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium(DSGE) models builds on rigorous foundations in intertemporal optimizing behavior byconsumers and firms inherited from the RBC literature, but incorporates some frictionsin the adjustment of nominal and real quantities in response to macroeconomic shocks(see Woodford (2003)). In such a framework, not only policy "surprises" may have animpact on the economic activity, but also the way policymakers "systematically" respondto exogenous sources of fluctuation plays a fundamental role in affecting the economicactivity, thereby rekindling interest in the use of counter-cyclical stabilization policies tofine tune the business cycle.Yet, despite impressive advances in the economic theory and econometric techniques, there are no definitive answers on the systematic stance policymakers should follow, and on theeffects of macroeconomic policies upon the economy. Against this background, the present thesis attempts to inspect the interrelations between macroeconomic policies and the economic activity from novel angles. Three contributionsare proposed. In the first Chapter, I show that relying on the information actually available to policymakers when budgetary decisions are taken is of fundamental importance for the assessment of the cyclical stance of governments. In the second, I explore whether the effectiveness of fiscal shocks in spurring the economic activity has declined since the beginning of the 1970s. In the third, the impact of systematic monetary policies over U.S. industrial sectors is investigated. In the existing literature, empirical assessments of the historical stance of policymakers over the economic cycle have been mainly drawn from the estimation of "reduced-form" policy reaction functions (see in particular Taylor (1993) and Galì and Perotti (2003)). Such rules typically relate a policy instrument (a reference short-term interest rate or an indicator of discretionary fiscal policy) to a set of explanatory variables (notably inflation, the output gap and the debt-GDP ratio, as long as fiscal policy is concerned). Although these policy rules can be seen as simple approximations of what derived from an explicit optimization problem solved by social planners (see Kollmann (2007)), they received considerable attention since they proved to track the behavior of central banks and fiscalpolicymakers relatively well. Typically, revised data, i.e. observations available to theeconometrician when the study is carried out, are used in the estimation of such policyreaction functions. However, data available in "real-time" to policymakers may end upto be remarkably different from what it is observed ex-post. Orphanides (2001), in aninnovative and thought-provoking paper on the U.S. monetary policy, challenged the waypolicy evaluation was conducted that far by showing that unrealistic assumptions aboutthe timeliness of data availability may yield misleading descriptions of historical policy.In the spirit of Orphanides (2001), in the first Chapter of this thesis I reconsider howthe intentional cyclical stance of fiscal authorities should be assessed. Importantly, inthe framework of fiscal policy rules, not only variables such as potential output and theoutput gap are subject to measurement errors, but also the main discretionary "operatinginstrument" in the hands of governments: the structural budget balance, i.e. the headlinegovernment balance net of the effects due to automatic stabilizers. In fact, the actualrealization of planned fiscal measures may depend on several factors (such as the growthrate of GDP, the implementation lags that often follow the adoption of many policymeasures, and others more) outside the direct and full control of fiscal authorities. Hence,there might be sizeable differences between discretionary fiscal measures as planned in thepast and what it is observed ex-post. To be noted, this does not apply to monetary policysince central bankers can control their operating interest rates with great accuracy.When the historical behavior of fiscal authorities is analyzed from a real-time perspective, it emerges that the intentional stance has been counter-cyclical, especially during expansions, in the main OECD countries throughout the last thirteen years. This is atodds with findings based on revised data, generally pointing to pro-cyclicality (see for example Gavin and Perotti (1997)). It is shown that empirical correlations among revisionerrors and other second-order moments allow to predict the size and the sign of the biasincurred in estimating the intentional stance of the policy when revised data are (mistakenly)used. It addition, formal tests, based on a refinement of Hansen (1999), do not rejectthe hypothesis that the intentional reaction of fiscal policy to the cycle is characterized bytwo regimes: one counter-cyclical, when output is above its potential level, and the otheracyclical, in the opposite case. On the contrary, the use of revised data does not allow to identify any threshold effect.The second and third Chapters of this thesis are devoted to the exploration of the impactof fiscal and monetary policies upon the economy.Over the last years, two approaches have been mainly followed by practitioners for theestimation of the effects of macroeconomic policies on the real activity. On the one hand,calibrated and estimated DSGE models allow to trace out the economy’s responses topolicy disturbances within an analytical framework derived from solid microeconomicfoundations. On the other, vector autoregressive (VAR) models continue to be largelyused since they have proved to fit macro data particularly well, albeit they cannot fullyserve to inspect structural interrelations among economic variables.Yet, the typical DSGE and VAR models are designed to handle a limited number of variablesand are not suitable to address economic questions potentially involving a largeamount of information. In a DSGE framework, in fact, identifying aggregate shocks andtheir propagation mechanism under a plausible set of theoretical restrictions becomes athorny issue when many variables are considered. As for VARs, estimation problems mayarise when models are specified in a large number of indicators (although latest contributions suggest that large-scale Bayesian VARs perform surprisingly well in forecasting.See in particular Banbura, Giannone and Reichlin (2007)). As a consequence, the growingpopularity of factor models as effective econometric tools allowing to summarize ina parsimonious and flexible manner large amounts of information may be explained notonly by their usefulness in deriving business cycle indicators and forecasting (see for exampleReichlin (2002) and D’Agostino and Giannone (2006)), but also, due to recentdevelopments, by their ability in evaluating the response of economic systems to identifiedstructural shocks (see Giannone, Reichlin and Sala (2002) and Forni, Giannone, Lippiand Reichlin (2007)). Parallelly, some attempts have been made to combine the rigor ofDSGE models and the tractability of VAR ones, with the advantages of factor analysis(see Boivin and Giannoni (2006) and Bernanke, Boivin and Eliasz (2005)).The second Chapter of this thesis, based on a joint work with Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, presents an original study combining factor and VAR analysis in an encompassing framework,to investigate how "unexpected" and "unsystematic" variations in taxes and governmentspending feed through the economy in the home country and abroad. The domesticimpact of fiscal shocks in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. and cross-border fiscal spilloversfrom Germany to seven European economies is analyzed. In addition, the time evolution of domestic and cross-border tax and spending multipliers is explored. In fact, the way fiscal policy impacts on domestic and foreign economiesdepends on several factors, possibly changing over time. In particular, the presence of excesscapacity, accommodating monetary policy, distortionary taxation and liquidity constrainedconsumers, plays a prominent role in affecting how fiscal policies stimulate theeconomic activity in the home country. The impact on foreign output crucially dependson the importance of trade links, on real exchange rates and, in a monetary union, onthe sensitiveness of foreign economies to the common interest rate. It is well documentedthat the last thirty years have witnessed frequent changes in the economic environment.For instance, in most OECD countries, the monetary policy stance became less accommodatingin the 1980s compared to the 1970s, and more accommodating again in thelate 1990s and early 2000s. Moreover, financial markets have been heavily deregulated.Hence, fiscal policy might have lost (or gained) power as a stimulating tool in the handsof policymakers. Importantly, the issue of cross-border transmission of fiscal policy decisions is of the utmost relevance in the framework of the European Monetary Union and this explains why the debate on fiscal policy coordination has received so much attention since the adoptionof the single currency (see Ahearne, Sapir and Véron (2006) and European Commission(2006)). It is found that over the period 1971 to 2004 tax shocks have generally been more effective in spurring domestic output than government spending shocks. Interestingly, the inclusion of common factors representing global economic phenomena yields to smaller multipliersreconciling, at least for the U.K. the evidence from large-scale macroeconomic models,generally finding feeble multipliers (see e.g. European Commission’s QUEST model), withthe one from a prototypical structural VAR pointing to stronger effects of fiscal policy.When the estimation is performed recursively over samples of seventeen years of data, itemerges that GDP multipliers have dropped drastically from early 1990s on, especiallyin Germany (tax shocks) and in the U.S. (both tax and government spending shocks).Moreover, the conduct of fiscal policy seems to have become less erratic, as documentedby a lower variance of fiscal shocks over time, and this might contribute to explain whybusiness cycles have shown less volatility in the countries under examination.Expansionary fiscal policies in Germany do not generally have beggar-thy-neighbor effectson other European countries. In particular, our results suggest that tax multipliers havebeen positive but vanishing for neighboring countries (France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria), weak and mostly not significant for more remote ones (the U.K.and Spain). Cross-border government spending multipliers are found to be monotonicallyweak for all the subsamples considered.Overall these findings suggest that fiscal "surprises", in the form of unexpected reductions in taxation and expansions in government consumption and investment, have become progressively less successful in stimulating the economic activity at the domestic level, indicating that, in the framework of the European Monetary Union, policymakers can only marginally rely on this discretionary instrument as a substitute for national monetary policies. The objective of the third chapter is to inspect the role of monetary policy in the U.S. business cycle. In particular, the effects of "systematic" monetary policies upon several industrial sectors is investigated. The focus is on the systematic, or endogenous, component of monetary policy (i.e. the one which is related to the economic activity in a stable and predictable way), for three main reasons. First, endogenous monetary policies are likely to have sizeable real effects, if agents’ expectations are not perfectly rational and if there are some nominal and real frictions in a market. Second, as widely documented, the variability of the monetary instrument and of the main macro variables is only marginally explained by monetary "shocks", defined as unexpected and exogenous variations in monetary conditions. Third, monetary shocks can be simply interpreted as measurement errors (see Christiano, Eichenbaumand Evans (1998)). Hence, the systematic component of monetary policy is likely to have played a fundamental role in affecting business cycle fluctuations. The strategy to isolate the impact of systematic policies relies on a counterfactual experiment, within a (calibrated or estimated) macroeconomic model. As a first step, a macroeconomic shock to which monetary policy is likely to respond should be selected,and its effects upon the economy simulated. Then, the impact of such shock should beevaluated under a “policy-inactive” scenario, assuming that the central bank does not respondto it. Finally, by comparing the responses of the variables of interest under thesetwo scenarios, some evidence on the sensitivity of the economic system to the endogenouscomponent of the policy can be drawn (see Bernanke, Gertler and Watson (1997)).Such kind of exercise is first proposed within a stylized DSGE model, where the analyticalsolution of the model can be derived. However, as argued, large-scale multi-sector DSGEmodels can be solved only numerically, thus implying that the proposed experiment cannotbe carried out. Moreover, the estimation of DSGE models becomes a thorny issue when many variables are incorporated (see Canova and Sala (2007)). For these arguments, a less “structural”, but more tractable, approach is followed, where a minimal amount ofidentifying restrictions is imposed. In particular, a factor model econometric approachis adopted (see in particular Giannone, Reichlin and Sala (2002) and Forni, Giannone,Lippi and Reichlin (2007)). In this framework, I develop a technique to perform the counterfactual experiment needed to assess the impact of systematic monetary policies.It is found that 2 and 3-digit SIC U.S. industries are characterized by very heterogeneous degrees of sensitivity to the endogenous component of the policy. Notably, the industries showing the strongest sensitivities are the ones producing durable goods and metallicmaterials. Non-durable good producers, food, textile and lumber producing industries arethe least affected. In addition, it is highlighted that industrial sectors adjusting prices relatively infrequently are the most "vulnerable" ones. In fact, firms in this group are likely to increase quantities, rather than prices, following a shock positively hitting the economy. Finally, it emerges that sectors characterized by a higher recourse to external sources to finance investments, and sectors investing relatively more in new plants and machineries, are the most affected by endogenous monetary actions., Doctorat en sciences économiques, Orientation économie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished