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
Working Papers
Abstract: I argue that technical change has raised living standards by improving non-pecuniary compensation (job amenities), which makes conventional income and output measures inadequate for measuring welfare, productivity improvements, and distributional effects. Using amenity price estimates, I first document an amenity-biased reallocation of labor demand between 1980 and 2015; employment and relative wages decreased in low-amenity occupations and increased in high-amenity ones. This amenity-biased reallocation significantly alters our understanding of major macroeconomic changes of the last decades. First, I find no labor market polarization along the distribution of total compensation (wage plus the value of amenities). Second, I show that conventional measures can underestimate productivity growth because the costs of providing amenities are measured but not their value. Including the value of amenities in output yields a more welfare-relevant growth estimate and properly measures productivity improvements. Quantitatively, I find that total compensation grew 40\% more than wages between 1980 and 2015, implying 25\% larger productivity growth than suggested by conventional measures.
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: 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
Work in Progress
Subsidising Self-Insurance (with Charles Brendon and Christian Hellwig)
Presentations: BSE Summer Forum 2024