Welcome! I am PhD student at the Toulouse School of Economics.
My research interests are macroeconomics, public finance, dynamic contracts and labor economics.
I am available for interviews during the 2024-2025 job market.
Here are my CV and email: gerard.maideumorera@tse-fr.eu
Abstract: I argue that technical change has raised living standards not only by increasing wages but also by making work more pleasant and safer. Yet, traditional growth, distributional, or welfare accounting abstract from non-pecuniary job characteristics. By estimating shadow prices for job amenities, I first document an amenity-biased shift in labor demand in the US from 1980 to 2015, which reallocated workers from low- to high-amenity occupations. This reallocation significantly alters our understanding of several major macroeconomic changes. First, I theoretically show that the shadow value of amenities should be included in output to measure productivity growth. Otherwise, conventional measures---that only account for the costs of amenities---can underestimate it. Quantitatively, I find that total compensation (wage plus the value of amenities) grew 40% more than wages from 1980 to 2015. Compared to conventional estimates, this implies 25% higher productivity growth but a larger slowdown since 2004. Second, I find no labor market polarization along the distribution of total compensation; employment and relative wages declined the most at the bottom of the distribution instead of in the middle.
Presentations: Vigo Workshop on Dynamic Macroeconomics 2024
Abstract: Empirical evidence highlights women’s demand for flexible working hours as a critical cause of the persistent gender disparities in the labor market. We propose a theory of how hidden demand for flexibility drives gendered employment dynamics. We develop a dynamic contracting model between an employer and an employee whose time availability is stochastic and unverifiable. We model men and women only to differ in their probability of having low time availability, which we measure in the ATUS. We explore contracts designed specifically for each gender (gender-tailored) and the polar case where a male-tailored contract is given to both men and women. For the latter, we show that contracting frictions endogenously give rise to well-documented gendered labor market outcomes: (i) the divergence and non-convergence of gender earnings differentials over the life-cycle, and (ii) women’s shorter job duration and weaker labor force attachment.
Presentations (by coauthor): Vigo Workshop on Dynamic Macroeconomics 2023, SYME 2023, RES 2024, ESEM 2024
Abstract: I study a dynamic cash flow diversion model between a risk neutral lender and a risk averse entrepreneur who has persistent private information about the firm's productivity. In the optimal contract, the firm’s size is always distorted downwards and its distortions inherit the autoregressive properties of the type process. The entrepreneur's compensation is smoothed and decoupled from the firm size dynamics. These results contrast those of equivalent models with risk neutrality. I use numerical simulations to study a quasi-implementation with simpler contracts, which highlights that this class of models is is unable to generate realistic firm size and equity share dynamics simultaneously.
Presentations: EEA 2022, NSEF PhD Workshop 2022, EWMES 2022, ESEM 2023, Northwestern Macro Lunch Seminar, Midwest Macro Fall 2023
Abstract: The European Sovereign debt crises (2010-2012) showcased how excessive private leverage can threaten sovereign debt sustainability, making the existing fiscal rules targeting only public debt insufficient. In this paper, I study the optimal joint design of fiscal rules and macroprudential policies with sovereign default risk. I first consider a stylized two-period model of a small open economy where both the local government and a representative household borrow internationally. A central authority internalizes externalities from sovereign default by the local government and designs fiscal rules and macroprudential policies. The model yields two insights: (i) it provides a novel rationale for macroprudential policies, and (ii) sovereign debt limits that are a function of the quantity of private debt (private-debt-dependent fiscal rules) can implement the optimal allocation. Then, I generalize these results to a multiperiod model with heterogeneous households, aggregate risk, and a rich asset structure. Finally, I calibrate a quantitative version of the model to compute the private-debt-dependent fiscal rules and the size of the macroprudential wedges.
Presentations: EEA 2023
Abstract: We show that it is Pareto-efficient to subsidize savings in a widely studied class of economies with persistent earnings shocks and precautionary savings. In such an environment, workers who experience lower productivity have a higher inclination to save for precautionary reasons, which violates the key assumption of the Uniform Commodity Taxation theorem of Atkinson and Stiglitz (1976) that preferences for savings are independent of workers’ productivities. Surprisingly, our result applies even in settings where the well-known Inverse Euler Equation holds. This condition is often interpreted as motivating the opposite intervention – a savings tax. We reconcile the two results. We further show how our findings can be reframed as a novel arbitrage condition linking marginal tax rates to observable statistics: compensated elasticities of labour supply and savings, and the realised distributions of production and savings. Based on this, we argue that our results are particularly relevant at the lower end of the earnings distribution.
Presentations (by coauthor): BSE Summer Forum 2024