Christophe J. Nordman - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Christophe J. Nordman

Locus de contrôle, identité sociale et endettement en Inde du Sud

Revue d'économie du développement, May 3, 2023

À partir de données originales sur 1635 individus d’Inde rurale du Sud, nous analysons la corréla... more À partir de données originales sur 1635 individus d’Inde rurale du Sud, nous analysons la corrélation entre l’endettement, le locus de contrôle (LOC) et l’identité sociale (genre et caste) des emprunteurs. Tandis que le LOC est corrélé avec la négociation de la dette, nous observons que c’est pour les hommes non-dalits (castes moyennes et élevées) que la relation est la plus forte. Ce résultat suggère qu’un LOC plus interne est un atout supplémentaire dans la négociation pour les individus ayant une position sociale déjà favorable. Codes JEL : D14, D91.

Many Rivers to Cross: Social Identity, Cognition, and Labor Mobility in Rural India

Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Sep 1, 2021

This study analyzes whether individual skills and personality traits facilitate labor market mobi... more This study analyzes whether individual skills and personality traits facilitate labor market mobility of disadvantaged groups and rural migrants. We use a panel dataset of individuals in rural South India to explore the relationship between individual cognitive skills, personality traits, and income mobility. We take advantage of intragroup heterogeneity in terms of cognitive skills and personality traits to examine whether these personal characteristics enable individuals to overcome rigid social structures, exploring the role of these skills and traits in migrants’ income mobility. We show that despite strong rigidity in the area’s labor market structure, personality traits are important determinants of labor mobility, enabling individuals to overcome caste and gender discrimination, but that these personality traits do not contribute to increases in migrants’ income mobility.

Making Sense of One Another in Crossing Borders: Social Cognition and Migration Politics

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Sep 1, 2021

Mondes en développement, 2014

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Oct 17, 2017

We use a representative sample of informal entrepreneurs in Madagascar to add new evidence on the... more We use a representative sample of informal entrepreneurs in Madagascar to add new evidence on the magnitude of the gender performance gap. After controlling for business and entrepreneur characteristics, female-owned businesses exhibit a value added 28 percent lower than their male counterparts. Correcting for endogenous selection into informal selfemployment raises the gap by 5 percentage points. We then investigate the role of sharing norms and gender-differentiated allocation of time within the household in the gender performance gap, by estimating their effect on the technical inefficiency of female and male entrepreneurs. Only male entrepreneurs seem subject to pressure to redistribute from the distant network. Our findings are consistent with situations where women working at home would essentially feel negatively the burden of their own community due to intense social norms and obligations in their workplace but also of domestic chores and responsibilities. We find evidence of females self-selecting themselves into industries in which they can combine market-oriented and domestic activities.

Base Institutionnelle de Recherche de l'université Paris-Dauphine (BIRD) (University Paris-Dauphine), Oct 20, 2017

In spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries, little is known about inform... more In spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries, little is known about informal sector income dynamics vis-à-vis the formal sector. Some works have been done in this field using household surveys, but they only consider some emerging Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico; Bargain and Kwenda, 2011) and more recently South Africa, Ghana and Tanzania for Africa and Vietnam for Asia . As a matter of consequence, there is still no way to generalize the (diverging) results to very poor part of the developing world. Taking advantage of the rich 1-2-3 Surveys dataset in Madagascar, in particular its four waves panel data (2000, 2001, 2003 and 2004), we assess the magnitude of various formal/informal sector earnings gaps while addressing heterogeneity issues at three different levels: the worker, the job (wage employment vs. selfemployment) and the earnings distribution. The questions asked are the following: Is there an informal sector job earnings penalty? Do some informal sector jobs provide pecuniary premiums? Which ones? Do possible gaps vary along the earnings distribution? Standard earnings equations are estimated at the mean and at various conditional quantiles of the earnings distribution. In particular, we estimate fixed effects quantile regressions to control for unobserved individual characteristics, focusing particularly on heterogeneity within both the formal and informal sector categories. Our results suggest that the informal sector earnings gap highly depends on the workers' job status and on their relative position in the earnings distribution. Penalties may in some cases turn into premiums. By comparing our results with studies in other developing countries, we draw conclusions highlighting the Madagascar's labour market specificity.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Dec 31, 2020

Social Science Research Network, 2017

Using a unique panel of household businesses for Vietnam, this paper sheds light on the links bet... more Using a unique panel of household businesses for Vietnam, this paper sheds light on the links between households' and entrepreneurs' social networks and business performance. We address two related questions. One first question asks if we can find evidence of a differentiated effect of employment of members of the family versus hired workers on the business performance. A second question tackles the respective effects of various dimensions of social networks on the business technical efficiency. The assumption is that, beyond the channel of labour productivity, entrepreneurs that are confronted with an unfavourable social environment may produce less efficiently and realize a lower output than what could be possible with the same amount of resources. We find evidence of a productivity differential between family and hired labour and highlight results consistent with the presence of adverse social network effects faced by households running a business, in particular ethnic minorities. We stress the importance of professional networks for successful entrepreneurship.

Oxford Economic Papers-new Series, Nov 5, 2018

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Gender and development'.

Social Science Research Network, 2014

We use a representative sample of informal entrepreneurs in Madagascar to add new evidence on the... more We use a representative sample of informal entrepreneurs in Madagascar to add new evidence on the magnitude of the gender performance gap. After controlling for business and entrepreneur characteristics, female-owned businesses exhibit a value added 28 percent lower than their male counterparts. Correcting for endogenous selection into informal self-employment raises the gap by 5 percentage points. We then investigate the role of sharing norms and gender-differentiated allocation of time within the household in the gender performance gap, by estimating their effect on the technical inefficiency of female and male entrepreneurs. Only male entrepreneurs seem subject to pressure to redistribute from the distant network. Our findings are consistent with situations where women working at home would essentially feel negatively the burden of their own community due to intense social norms and obligations in their workplace but also of domestic chores and responsibilities. We find evidence of females self-selecting themselves into industries in which they can combine marketoriented and domestic activities.

Applied Economics, Dec 1, 2008

In this paper, we investigate the relevance of the glass ceiling hypothesis in France, according ... more In this paper, we investigate the relevance of the glass ceiling hypothesis in France, according to which there exist larger gender wage gaps at the upper tail of the wage distribution. Using a matched worker-firm data set of about 130,000 employees and 14,000 employers, we estimate quantile regressions and rely on a principal component analysis to summarize information specific to the firms. Our different results show that accounting for firm-related characteristics reduces the gender earnings gap at the top of the distribution, but the latter still remains much higher at the top than at the bottom. Furthermore, a quantile decomposition shows that the gender wage gap is mainly due to differences in the returns to observed characteristics rather than in differences in characteristics between men and women.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2023

HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific re... more HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Working Paper Series, 2016

This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Discrimination and Affirmative Acti... more This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Discrimination and Affirmative Action: What have we learnt so far?', which is part of a larger research project on 'Disadvantaged Groups and Social Mobility'.

Journal of behavioral and experimental economics, Feb 1, 2015

Transitions in a West African Labour Market: The Role of Family Networks This paper sheds light o... more Transitions in a West African Labour Market: The Role of Family Networks This paper sheds light on the role of family networks in the dynamics of a West African labour market, i.e. in the transitions from unemployment to employment, from wage employment to self-employment, and from self-employment to wage employment. It investigates the effects of three dimensions of the family network on these transitions: its structure, the strength of ties and the resources embedded in the network. For this purpose, we use a first-hand survey conducted in Ouagadougou on a representative sample of 2000 households. Using event history data and very detailed information on family network, we estimate proportional hazard models for discrete-time data. We find that family networks have a significant effect on the dynamics of workers in the labour market and that this effect differs depending on the type of transition and the considered dimension of the family network. The network size appears to not matter much in the labour market dynamics. Strong ties however play a stabilizing role by limiting large transitions. Their negative effect on transitions is reinforced with high level of resources embedded in the network.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Jul 1, 2007

In this paper, we consider a model of on-the-job learning where workers learn informally by watch... more In this paper, we consider a model of on-the-job learning where workers learn informally by watching and imitating colleagues. We estimate the rate of knowledge diffusion inside the firm using three matched worker-firm data sets, respectively from Benin, Morocco and Senegal. We rely on non linear least squares to estimate the structural parameters of the informal training model and account for unobserved firm heterogeneity using firm factors derived from a principal component analysis. We find that the rate of knowledge diffusion is around 7% in Morocco and Senegal and much higher in Benin, but part of the learning by watching returns stems from firm heterogeneity. Informal training significantly affects the shape of returns to tenure in African countries. Finally, we estimate an extended model with both learning by watching and learning by oneself and find significant benefits from imitating colleagues in Morocco.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 20, 2017

Young people in Africa are confronted with many difficulties when it comes to their integration i... more Young people in Africa are confronted with many difficulties when it comes to their integration in the labour markets and their research for decent and productive jobs. Research on the links between formal education and vocational training and their economic returns are especially crucial in understanding inadequacy between labour supply and demand for young people. This paper aims to contribute to this needed diagnosis by presenting some evidence based on the 1-2-3 Surveys conducted in seven African countries, which provides a consistent and comparable picture of the situation of youth employment in urban labour markets in these countries. We provide some evidence that vocational education might be a good instrument for integrating the formal sector and that it is often more profitable than general education in terms of earnings and firm performance, especially at higher levels of schooling. Overall, young workers without any formal vocational education and training are the more disadvantaged in terms of working conditions, while workers who benefited from a traditional apprenticeship in a small firm occupy an intermediate position.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 20, 2017

This paper sheds light on the role of social networks in the dynamics of a West African labour ma... more This paper sheds light on the role of social networks in the dynamics of a West African labour market, i.e. in the transitions from unemployment to employment, from wage employment to self-employment, and from self-employment to wage employment. It investigates the effects of three dimensions of the social network on these transitions: its structure, the strength of ties and the resources embedded in the network. For this purpose, we use a first-hand survey conducted in Ouagadougou on a representative sample of 2000 households. Using event history data and very detailed information on social networks, we estimate proportional hazard models for discrete-time data. We find that social networks have a significant effect on the dynamics of workers in the labour market and that this effect differs depending on the type of transition and the considered dimension of the social network. The network size appears to not matter much in the labour market dynamics. Strong ties however play a stabilizing role by limiting large transitions. Their negative effect on transitions is reinforced when they are combined with high level of resources embedded in the network.

The IZA World of Labor, May 1, 2016