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We model the interaction between the marriage market and the intrahousehold allocation of resources. We do this within a setting that accountsfor both economic gains to marriage (through public consumption) and unobserved non-material match quality, without relying on the transferable utility assumption. We adopt an axiomatic approach that leads to the empirically tractable “Additive Quantity Shifting” (AQS) model. We develop a revealed preference methodology that is able to identify individuals’ heterogeneous match qualities and to quantify them in money metric terms. The methodology can include both preference factors, affecting individuals’ preferences over private and public goods, and match quality factors, driving differences in unobserved match quality. We demonstrate the practical usefulness of our methodology through an application to the Belgian MEqIn data. Our results reveal intuitive patterns of match quality that allow us to rationalise both the observed matches and the within-household allocations of time and money., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We introduce a nonparametric methodology for analyzing production technologies characterized by weakly separable structures involving intermediate inputs. Weakly separable production functions allow for modeling production stages where raw inputs aggregate into intermediate inputs before interacting with other factors of production. We establish nonparametric testable conditions for cost minimizing behavior that accommodate production with intermediate inputs. These conditions offer practical tools for empirical analysis of separable production processes. We show that they provide a useful basis for measuring productive efficiency and for identifying shadow prices of intermediate inputs. Additionally, we discuss potential extensions to handle jointly used raw inputs, multiple final outputs, and scenarios with limited price and quantity information., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We propose a method to identify individuals’ marriage markets assuming that observed marriages are stable. We aim to learn about (the relative importance of) the individual’s observable characteristics defining these markets. First, we use a nonparametric revealed preference approach to construct inner and outer bound approximations of these markets from observed marriages. We then use machine learning to estimate arobust boundary between them (as a linear function of individual characteristics). We demonstrate the usefulness of our method using Dutch household data and quantify the trade-off between the characteristics such as age, education and wages defining individuals’ marriage markets., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Echenique et. al. (2013) established the testable revealed preference restrictions for stable aggregate matching with transferable (TU) and non-transferable utility (NTU) and for extremal stable matchings. In this paper, we rephrase their restrictions in terms of properties on a corresponding bipartite graph. From this, we obtain a simple condition that verifies whether a given aggregate matching is rationalisable. For matchings that are not rationalisable, we provide a simple greedy algorithm that computes the minimum number of matches that needs to be removed to obtain a rationalisable matching. We also show that the related problem of finding the minimum number of types that we need to remove in order to obtain a rationalisable matching is NP-complete., We introduce a notion of fairness, inspired by the equality of opportunity literature, into the centralized school choice setting, endowed with a measure of the quality of matches between students and schools. In this framework, fairness considerations are made by a social evaluator based on the match quality distribution. We impose the standard notion of stability as minimal desideratum and study matchings that satisfy our notion of fairness, and an efficiency requirement based on aggregate match quality. To overcome some of the identified incompatibilities, we propose two alternative approaches. The first one is a linear programming solution to maximize fairness under stability constraints. The second approach weakens fairness and efficiency to define a class of opportunity egalitarian social welfare functions that evaluate stable matchings. We then describe an algorithm to find the stable matching that maximizes social welfare. We conclude with an illustration on the allocation of Italian high school students in 2021/2022., This paper studies the object allocation problem, which involves assigning objects to agents while taking into account both object capacities and agents’ preferences. I focus on two classes of allocations: the Pareto efficient and Individual rational allocations and the Pareto efficient and Weak-core stable allocations. The goal is to look at two optimality criteria within these classes: one that maximizes the number of individuals improving upon their initial endowment (MAXDIST), and the one that minimizes the number of individuals who need to change from their initial allocation to the final one (MINDIST). I present an efficient algorithm for addressing the MAXDIST problem for the first class of allocations (Pareto efficient and Individual rational). Next, I study a special case of this problem where priority is given to the most disadvantaged individuals. I establish NP-completeness results for the other problems. I also look at how the results change when restricting individual preferences to be dichotomous. Finally, I present an integer programming formulation to solve small to moderately-sized instances of the NP-hard problems., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation explores the potential alternative currencies have as flexible tools to generate resilience. Their flexible nature, because complementary to conventional ones, makes them particularly useful to economic agents as it empowers them to utilize these when needed. Therefore, this thesis asserts that their strength lies significantly in a transitional power, offering a capacity to adapt amid uncertainties and thus creating resilience. This relationship between resilience and alternative currencies is investigated using robust empirical methods. Given vast differences in design and purpose, the study distinguishes between Complementary Currencies (CCs), considered to benefit local sustainability and economic development, and cryptocurrencies. This differentiation is crucial in understanding their varied impacts at different levels of the economic system: CCs influence organizational and potentially regional resilience, impacting local economic dynamics. In contrast, cryptocurrencies, studied for portfolio diversification, may affect overall portfolio resilience at a broader economic level. Key contributions in the initial chapters unveil deliberate and strategic business engagement with CCs, recognizing a distinct economic rationale. Findings suggest this economic rationale manifests as an "insurance" function when CCs actively mitigate the detrimental effects of economic crises. Notably, such dynamics prove most effective for the more vulnerable enterprises. These results further validate our conceptualization of the transitional power of CCs, emphasizing their ability to foster resilience in the face of economic challenges. The last chapter explores parallel dynamics for cryptocurrencies, highlighting Bitcoin's potential in wartime portfolio diversification, serving as an alternative asset. Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of alternative currencies' effectiveness in enhancing resilience, providing timely insights for reshaping eco, Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Guided by the Value-Based Healthcare framework, the healthcare landscape is evolving towards prioritizing patent value over mere service volume. Attaining better patient value, defined as the balance between patient-relevant health outcomes and the associated treatment costs, requires decision-making that integrates the interests of both patients and health providers. Currently, navigating this balance remains complex due to the multidimensionality of the value concept, which underscores the need for novel value measurement techniques. In response, this study introduces a four-step roadmap leveraging Data Envelopment Analysis and Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing to translate the value equation into unified, individual value scores. Unlike traditional healthcare evaluation methods, our approach directly connects the multiple health outcomes to granular costing information without the need for monetary values or subjective weighting. Through the case of psoriasis, we demonstrate our approach is feasible and can be adapted to the complexities across diverse medical domains. Additionally, we illustrate the potential of the value scores to pinpoint inefficiencies on an individual level, analyse patterns of health improvements through cluster analysis, and assess the impact of contextual variables on value creation. Our findings underscore the importance of holistic value assessment by revealing new insights compared to the common practice of evaluating costs and outcomes independently. Accordingly, our research proposes a first standard for true value-based evaluation of healthcare. Having established a metric for value, our approach enables the benchmarking of patients, treatments, and hospitals according to patient value, ultimately contributing to the effective delivery of value-based healthcare., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The thesis is composed of four chapters.Chapter 1 axiomatically studies how to measure well-being when individuals have heterogeneous preferences and consumption bundles are evaluated by comparison with some reference bundle (a poverty line bundle, an index of needs, the average consumption in a reference group, etc.). The key requirement is that well-being remains constant if the reference bundle changes towards a bundle that the individual deems equivalent. Accounting for preferences may lead two individuals with identical consumption and reference bundles to have unequal well-being levels. To limit this inequality, four axioms based on the lattice structure of the set of indifference contours are studied. Three well-being measures are defined and characterized. One prominent measure corresponds to the ratio between equivalent income at consumption and at reference, with prices being chosen to maximize well-being.Chapter 2 proposes a framework to assess fairness in multidimensional distributions while respecting individual preferences. It introduces a simple measure - Equivalent Advantage - that captures the distance from the current outcome to the potentially individual specific norm outcome. A nonparametric approach is proposed to partially identify Equivalent Advantage via set identification of individual indifference curves. The methodology is illustrated by analysing multidimensional fairness in Belgium using the MEqIn database. Despite the set identification, the analysis of the Equivalent Advantage distribution allows for interesting insights on multidimensional inequality, poverty and opportunity distribution. Chapter 3 investigates the possibility of integrating a notion of fairness, inspired by theequality of opportunity literature, into the centralized school choice setting. By doing so, it widens the list of available tools to realize equality of opportunityin education. This chapter enriches the standard school choice setting with the notion of educat, Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Belgium exhibits a rather constant level of income inequality during the last decades, contrary to Germany, the United States, and some Nordic countries, which all faced substantial increases in inequality. We use the available surveys from 1985 to 2020 to describe the evolution of income inequality by means of the Gini index. Earnings inequality has slightly decreased in the last two decades, at least if one takes into account the impact of the substantial increase in employment of especially older and female persons. Though the education gap in earnings is widening, the rapid increase in (mostly female) education may have a dampening effect on earnings inequality. The income surveys largely underestimate financial capital incomes. Moreover, they, by definition, do not cover undistributed profits of the corporate sector. When correcting for this, it turns out that pre-tax factor income inequality increased substantially between 2009 and 2016. The redistributive role of the welfare state through taxes has increased, while redistribution through the social security system exhibited a more irregular course. While there has been an increase in assortative matching in the last two decades, its impact on the evolution of income inequality is unclear., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We propose a nonparametric method to assess financial portfolio performance that naturally integrates the well-known Sharpe ratio. The method produces an intuitive “efficiency” measure that quantifies the evaluated household’s portfolio performance relative to the observed performance of other (best performing) households. It allows us to account for cross-household variation in risk-free return rates and to mitigate the impact of outlier behavior. We use our method to analyze the financial portfolio performance of Belgian households, using data from the 2010, 2014 and 2017 waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. We report significant crosssectional variation in portfolio efficiency. Highly educated, non-retired and wealthier households generally achieve higher levels of efficiency, as do households with a female head. We also report that households improve their performance over time, suggesting a learning-by-doing effect., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We present a framework to analyse household consumption and time use behavior under the assumption of marital stability while incorporating thedecision to participate in the labor market. Our method follows a revealed preference approach which does not require a prior specification of individual utilities. Using our method and data drawn from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we examine the welfare effects of marriage and the impact of own and spouse’s employment and education on individual well-being. We estimate within-household allocations and conduct a robust individual welfare analysis that documents the important role of employment and education on household bargaining and poverty analysis., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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This dissertation consists of four self-contained chapters, each based on an independent research paper. The first two address the role of expert judgments on consumer behavior and welfare by focusing on the Goncourt Prize and the Booker Prize. The third and fourth chapters study the role of demonstrations and the determinants of corruption. All four chapters are empirical and rely on observational data. The challenge in applied work when randomized control experiments cannot be used is to draw causal inferences, which is the core message of the “identification revolution” in economics. The common feature of the chapters of this dissertation is that each one addresses causality by using a specific identification strategy taking advantage of a natural experiment. Specifically, Chapter 1 rests on a regression discontinuity design allowed by the decision process of the Goncourt to assess the effect of the prize on sales. Chapter 2 relies on a difference-in-differences strategy to investigate the impact of the Booker on consumer welfare. Chapter 3 estimates the efffect of demonstrations on voting outcomes in the 2002 French presidential election by using weather conditions as an instrumental variable. Finally, Chapter 4 implements a regression discontinuity design to study the effect of electoral rules on political corruption by leveraging the fact that the French law for municipal elections conditions the electoral rules on the population size of a municipality. I provide below a succinct overview of the method and findings of each chapter., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

We created a unique data set based on social media data by collecting and geo-localising all the tweets of 54 thousand Swedish citizens from January 2019 to June 2019. This allows us to construct an attractive individual-level measure of preferences for pro-environmental behavior. We demonstrate this by using our measure in two applications. We first document a subjective well-being gap between individuals with and without green preferences, using the average sentiment scores in tweets as a proxy of individuals’ subjective well-being. We then investigate the existence of a gender gap in green preferences and the propensity to act for the environment, relating our measure to publicly available data on electric and hybrid car registrations and political support for environmental policies in Sweden., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

To analyze the impact of changes in the value of marriage on household decisions, we present a limited commitment framework of household behavior in which decisions are made regarding labor supply, divorce and housing demand over the lifecycle. We identify and estimate our structural model using exogenous variation in female labor supply and divorce rates due to the White v. White case in England. We conclude that limited commitment dampens the added worker effect, while the changes in the value of marriage due to a housing price shock have an asymmetric impact on individual welfare both across gender and marital state. We also show that tightening the credit market in different ways can lead to opposite behavior in terms of household savings and female labor supply., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This thesis analyses the socioeconomic repercussions of armed conflicts and natural disasters. Calculating the consequences of global public bads helps uncover the scale, distribution, and structure of their socioeconomic burden. State-of-the art causal inference methodologies are used to ensure the validity of the results. Both short- and long-term effects are explored, by considering various generations and indicators. The first chapter sets out to measure the global cost of all the major armed conflicts that took place in the world between 1970 and 2014. A counterfactual analysis shows that had there been no such conflicts throughout those decades, global GDP would have been 12% higher in 2014. The largest absolute losses associated with violence emanate from Asia, while many highincome economies are found to benefit economically from participating in conflicts on foreign soil. The second chapter compares the effects of the two main types of natural disasters that exist: geological and climatic disasters. Given its wide geographical variety, Mexico is used for this study, and educational attainment amongst 17 and 18-year-olds is used to capture the potential long-term effects of these shocks. Climatic disasters are found to have the worst effect, and the difference between the two is most pronounced in highly urbanized municipalities. Finally, the third chapter analyses the spillovers of public violence on intimate partner violence (IPV). Focusing on Mexico, the study finds that municipalities that saw an upsurge in conflict-related homicides since 2007 also experienced an average rise of 8 to 12% in the share of surveyed women who declared having experienced IPV. This result is mostly found amongst women with fewer options outside marriage, as measured by lower income, educational attainment, and decision-making power within their household. The thesis thus shows how younger generations, women, and economies as a whole can be affected by conflicts and disasters., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

We identify the population shares of poor hand-to-mouth households, wealthy hand-to-mouth households and non hand-to-mouth households in Belgium. We apply the methodology proposed by Kaplan and Violante (2014) and Kaplan, Violante and Weidner (2014) to the Belgian component of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. We find that the fraction of hand-to-mouth households in Belgium is substantial and predominantly consists of wealthy hand-to-mouth households. We also compare the observable characteristics and marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) of the three household types We find that Belgian wealthy hand-to-mouth households have characteristics that resemble those of the non hand-to-mouth households, while their MPCs are often more similar to those of the poor hand-to-mouth households. This pleads for giving a unique place to each type of households when evaluating the effects of fiscal policy., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In its most basic form, the classical theory of consumer behaviour describes how a consumer allocates a given budget to a set of goods and services, while taking as given the prices of these goods and services. Although the most important implications of this theory have been known at least since Hicks (1939)’ Value and Capital, it has taken another fifteen years before the theory was brought in its entirety to real world data. This was done by Richard Stone (1954), who applied the Linear Expenditure System (LES) to British aggregate demand data. As shown by Geary (1950), the underlying preferences of the LES are of the Stone-Geary type. In other words, if one maximizes a direct utility function that presents Stone-Geary preferences subject to the consumer’s budget constraint, then one obtains the LES as the relation between the quantities purchased by the consumer, and her budget and the prices she is faced with. As is well-known, this system of Marshallian demand functions will satisfy all the theoretical implications of the maximization of rational preferences subject to a linear budget constraint. Firstly, it will satisfy adding-up, which implies that the sum of all the expenses on the different goods and services purchased by the consumer will be equal to the consumer’s budget. Secondly, the demand will be homogeneous of degree zero in prices and budget, which implies that if one multiplies all prices and the budget by, say, two, that the quantities purchased will remain unaffected (this implies that the consumer does not suffer from money illusion). Finally, the Slutsky matrix, that contains all the Hicksian or compensated price effects, will be symmetric and negative semidefinite. The latter implies, among others, that the consumer’s Hicksian or compensated demand of a given good can never increase following a price increase of that good, ceteris paribus. Stone’s work thus implies that for the first time a demand system was estimated that in principle could s, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We make use of rich micro data from the Belgian MEqIn survey, which contains detailed information on individual consumption, public consumption inside households and time use. We explain the observed household behavior by means of a collective model that integrates marriage market restrictions on intrahousehold allocation patterns. We adopt a revealed preference approach that abstains from any functional form assumptions on individual utility functions or intrahousehold decision processes. This allows us to (set) identify the sharing rule, which governs the intrahousehold sharing of time and money, and to quantify economies of scale within households. We use these results to conduct a robust and meaningful individual welfare and inequality analysis, hereby highlighting the important role of detailed consumption and time use data., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In sequential social dilemmas with stranger matching, initiating cooperation is inherently risky for the first mover. The disclosure of the second mover’s past actions may be necessary to instigate cooperation. We experimentally compare the effect of mandatory and voluntary disclosure with non disclosure in a sequential prisoner’s dilemma situation. Our results confirm the positive effects of disclosure on cooperation. We also find that voluntary disclosure is as effective as mandatory one, which is surprising given the results of existing literature on this topic. With voluntarydisclosure, second movers with a good track record decided to disclose because they expect that not disclosing signals non-cooperativeness. First movers interpret nondisclosure correctly as a signal of non-cooperativeness. Therefore, they cooperate less than half as often when the second mover does not disclose., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Firms may share information to discover potential synergies between their data sets and algorithms, which eventually may lead to more efficient mergers and acquisitions (M&A) decisions. However, as pointed out by Arrow, information sharing also modifies the competitive balance when companies do not merge, and a firm may be reluctant to share information with potential rivals. Under general conditions, we show that firms benefit from (partially) sharing information. Because more sharing of information may increase industry expected profits both when there is head-to-head competition and when there is an M&A, the presence of a regulator who can prevent or allow the M&A can decrease or increase the level of information sharing, as well as consumer surplus, with respect to the no-regulator case. A regulator who can also control the level of information sharing will allow firms to share information., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We present a novel DEA-type method to evaluate the productive efficiency of DMUs when the empirical analyst has incomplete output information. Our method builds on the Afriat Theorem that was originally proposed in the context of consumer analysis. We translate this result to a production setting and show that it provides a productive basis for cost efficiency analysis in the absence of output information. Our method is versatile in that it can accommodate a continuum of instances characterized by incomplete information on output quantities. We illustrate its practical usefulnessthrough an empirical application that evaluates the productive efficiency performance of countries., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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This PhD thesis focuses on the socioeconomic determinants of health outcomes and drug consumption, the evaluation of policy levers aimed at limiting inappropriate pharmaceuticals’ use, as well as the role played by pharmaceutical advertising in the healthcare sector. The thesis is broadly divided into two parts. The first part investigates how socioeconomic disparities are empirically related to the spread of an infectious disease, the COVID-19 pandemic (Chapter 1), as well as consumption of potentially addictive medicines, as given by opioid pain-relievers (Chapter 2). The second part analyses the impact of laws restricting access to narcotic medications. The focus here is on Codeine-containing products, classified as mild opioids. I show how the impact of this type of policies varies depending on the socioeconomic environment in which they are applied in Chapter 3. Chapter 4, instead, studies how pharmaceutical companies reallocate their advertising expenses across geographical areas following the implementation of such policies and how this, in turn, affects sales. This research is primarily empirical and policy-oriented, even though one of my projects includes a theoretical component. The empirical analyses rely on the use of French data collected from several sources., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

***, Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Performance analytics are commonly used in managerial decision making, but are vulnerable to an omitted variable bias issue when there is incomplete information on the used production factors. In this paper, we relax the standard assumption in productive efficiency analysis that all input quantities are observed, and we propose a nonparametric methodology for cost inefficiency measurement that accounts for the presence of unobserved inputs. Our main contribution is that we bridge the OR/MS and the economic literature by addressing the general critique of Stigler (1976) on the concept of inefficiency (Leibenstein, 1966), which states that found inefficiencies reflect unobserved inputs rather than waste. Our methodology explicitly differentiate between cost inefficiency (i.e. waste; deviations from optimizing behavior) and unobserved input usage (i.e. optimally chosen input factors that are unobserved to the empirical analyst). We apply our novel method to a purpose-built dataset on Belgian railway traffic management control rooms. Our _findings show the existence of meaningful inefficiencies that cannot be attributed to use of unobserved inputs or environmental factors. In addition, we document how the omitted variable bias impacts cost efficiencies of individual observations in a dissimilar way in case the use of unobserved inputs is not controlled for., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This PhD dissertation aims at broadening the knowledge on household economics and their behavior. More precisely, it focuses on the well-being of household’s members, and its determinants, with, among others, an emphasis on the individuals’ time allocations. This analysis is performed in several steps as different ways of measuring well-being and of considering households are allowed for. Concerning households, it goes from considering them as a single entity to modeling them as a collection of individuals trying to take into account the potential interdependencies between these individuals. As for the measure of well-being, it starts by simply looking at the consumption of the households, then at the self-declared well-being of their members (what is called subjective well-being in the literature), to finally indirectly consider the well-being of the children in the households. The first chapter of this thesis therefore investigates on the effect of households’ indebtedness on their consumption. The second chapter, analyses the relationship between time allocations of household’s members and their subjective well-being (SWB). Finally, the third chapter tries to look at the impact that parents’ and grandparents’ level of education has on the investments that the children in the households receive, both in terms of time and money., Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Empirical welfare analyses often impose stringent parametric assumptions on individuals' preferences and neglect unobserved preference heterogeneity. In this paper, we develop a framework to conduct individual and social welfare analysis for discrete choice that does not suffer from these drawbacks. We first adapt the class of individual welfare measures introduced by Fleurbaey (2009) to settings where individual choice is discrete. Allowing for unrestricted, unobserved preference heterogeneity, these measures become random variables. We then show that the distribution of these objects can be derived from choice probabilities, which can be estimated nonparametrically from cross-sectional data. In addition, we derive nonparametric results for the joint distribution of welfare and welfare differences, as well as for social welfare. The former is an important tool in determining whether the winners of a price change belong disproportionately to those groups who were initially well-off. An empirical illustration demonstrates the relevance of the methods and the importance of considering welfare instead of income., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In this paper, we propose a game in which each player decides with whom to establish a costly connection and how much local public good is provided when benefits are shared among neighbors. We show that, when agents are homogeneous, Nash equilibrium networks are nested split graphs. Additionally, we show that the game is a potential game, even when we introduce heterogeneity along several dimensions. Using this result, we introduce stochastic best reply dynamics and show that this admits a unique and stationary steady state distribution expressed in terms of the potential function of the game. Hence, even if the set of Nash equilibria is potentially very large, the long run predictions are sharp., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We propose a novel method for structural production analysis in the presence of unobserved heterogeneity in productivity. Our approach is intrinsically nonparametric and does not require the stringent assumption of Hicks neutrality. We assume cost minimization as the firms’ behavioral objective, and we model productivity on which firms condition the input demand. Our model can equivalently be represented in terms of endogenously chosen latent input costs, which avoids an endogeneity bias in a natural way. Our empirical application to unique and detailed Belgian manufacturing data shows that our method allows for drawing strong and robust conclusions, despite its nonparametric orientation. For example, we confirm the well-documented productivity slowdown, and we highlight a potential bias when using a common-scale intermediate inputs price deflator in the estimation of productivity. In addition, we provide robust empirical evidence against the assumption of Hicks neutrality for the setting at hand., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Empirical welfare analyses often impose stringent parametric assumptions on individuals’ preferences and neglect unobserved preference heterogeneity. In this paper, we develop a framework to conduct individual and social welfare analysis for discrete choice that does not suffer from these drawbacks. We first adapt the broad class of individual welfare measures introduced by Fleurbaey (2009) to settings where individual choice is discrete. Allowing for unrestricted, unobserved preference heterogeneity, these measures become random variables. We then show that the distribution of these objects can be derived from choice probabilities, which can be estimated nonparametrically from cross-sectional data. In addition, we derive nonparametric results for the joint distribution of welfare and welfare differences, as well as for social welfare. The former is an important tool in determining whether those who benefit from a price change belong disproportionately to those who were initially well-off. An empirical application illustrates the methods., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Firms have become increasingly customer centric, implying that customers, rather than products are treated as the most important asset of a firm. The switch to customer-centric strategies also implies that firms are collecting an enormous amount of customer-related data. The purpose of this paper is to propose a DEA-based methodology to determine the contribution of customer segments to firm value. We show the practical usefulness of our methodology through an application to Activity Based Costing (ABC) data collected from a large European telecom provider, which offers fixed telephone, mobile telephone, digital television and internet subscriptions. Our analysis reveals that the average cost reduction potential across all customer segments amounts to 1.26% of the total controllable costs, which represents approximately EUR 5 million when expressed in monetary terms. We also document substantial variation in the cost reduction potential across customer segments., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

To understand the household decision-making process regarding food expenditures for children in poor households in Nairobi, we conduct an experiment with 424 married couples. In the experiment, the spouses (individually and jointly) allocated money between themselves and nutritious meals for one of their children. First, we find strong empirical support for individual rationality and cooperative behavior. Second, our results suggest that women do not have stronger preferences for children’s meals than men. Third, the spouses’respective bargaining positions derived from consumption patterns strongly correlate with more traditional indicators. Finally, we document significant heterogeneity both betweenindividuals and intra-household decision processes., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

We present a methodology for the structural empirical analysis of household consumption and time use behaviour under marital stability. Our approach is of the revealed preference type and non-parametric, meaning that it does not require a prior functional specification of individual utilities. Without making use of the transferable utility assumption, but still allowing for monetary transfers, our method can identify individuals' unobserved match qualities and quantify them in money metric terms. We can include both preference factors, affecting individuals' preferences over private and public goods, and match quality factors, driving differences in unobserved match quality. We demonstrate the practical usefulness of our methodology through an application to the Belgian MEqIn data. Our results reveal intuitive patterns of unobserved match quality that allow us to rationalise both the observed matches and the within-household allocations of time and money., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

When alternative market institutions are available, traders have to decide both where and how much to trade. We conducted an experiment where traders decided first whether to trade in an (efficient) double-auction institution or in a posted-offers one (favoring sellers), and second how much to trade. When sellers face decreasing returns to scale (increasing production costs), fast coordination on the double-auction occurs, with the posted-offers institution becoming inactive. In contrast, under constant returns to scale, both institutions remain active and coordination is slower. The reason is that sellers trade off higher efficiency in a market with dwindling profits for biased-up profits in a market with vanishing customers. Hence, efficiency alone might not be sufficient to guarantee coordination on a single market institution if the surplus distribution is asymmetric. Trading behavior approaches equilibrium predictions (market clearing) within each institution, but switching behavior across institutions is explained by simple rules of thumb, with buyers chasing low prices and sellers considering both prices and trader ratios., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The paper studies the effectiveness of communication in a two-player two-sided asymmetric information context. Both players choose simultaneously between two actions, with action L leading to a lower payoff for the co-player than action H. There are two types of players: D-types for whom L is dominant, and C-types for whom the optimal action is the same as the one chosen by the co-player, with both player choosing H providing the C-type a higher payoff than both players choosing L. Before the actions are chosen, each player can signal his/her intention to choose H. We consider three communication environments: No communication (NC), cheap talk (CT), and an environment with extrinsic communication costs (FC). According to standard theory the range of equilibrium payoffs of both types is the same in NC and CT, while for C-types the equilibrium payoff is highest in FC due to the Spence mechanism (Spence 1973). When we tested these predictions experimentally, the C-type payoffs were the highest in CT. In this environment the average observed C-type Payoff was even higher than the maximum equilibrium payoff. In CT about half of the D-types did not mimic the communication behavior of C-types, and hence even cheap talk revealed some information to the C-types. This indicates that half of the D-types were reluctant to make promises they would break. We introduce a theoretical model with promise-keepers. When the probability of an agent being promise-keeper is around 50%, the signaling rate will be higher in CT than in FC. On the other hand, for the same signal structure C-types choose more often H in the FC than in CT. These predictions are confirmed by the experimental results. Overall, the effect of the higher signalling rate in CT dominates: Together with presence of promise-keepers the higher signalling rate allows the C-types to coordinate more often on the « good » (H;H) outcome in CT, resulting in higher C-type payoffs in CT than in FC., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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This study looks at the time allocations of individuals with a focus on paid and unpaid work, its division within the households, as well as its link with life satisfaction. The analysis is performed for Belgium in 2016 using the MEqIn database, a database containing information on both partners in the household. Time use by men and women appears to be quite different. Men are found to be more active in the paid activities and women in the unpaid ones. The link between time use and life satisfaction appears to be different for each gender as well. As in previous tudies, women are found to be happier when working part-time. However, the usual conclusion that they follow traditional gender norm is challenged as it appears that this result remains only when they also undertake the majority of the unpaid work. This supports the idea that women active on the paid labor market suffer from a double burden. We then look at the within household interdependencies in the time allocations and at the link these can have with the subjective well-being of both men and women. Doing so, it appears that men’s behavior can be related to the gender-identity hypothesis, and more precisely to its bread-winner version, while women’s behavior is closer to a egalitarian vision of the division of work. We further observe that those behaviors are softened by the presence of children., info:eu-repo/semantics/published