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Assessing Pension Reforms. In order to assess the welfare costs and gains of different scenarios of pension reforms for French socio- occupational groups, we compute transition paths from the current situation to the steady states resulting from the ultimate effects of reforms. Accounting for different income and mortality risks, together with bequests, allows our model to better reproduce wealth inequality than standard life-cycle models do. Alternative pensions reforms are considered, combining : i) reduced generosity through lower replacement rates or postponing retire- ment ; ii) alternative financing schemes : current balance vs. building a temporary smoothing fund or a permanent funded pillar. The consequences of these scenarios on macro aggregates, inequality measures and age/group specific welfare and consumption profiles are computed at the rational expectation equilibrium. We first show how the situation of young cohorts deteriorates in the no-reform case, with a passive adjustment in contribution rates. However, the intergenerational redistributive effects of reforms are found to be large, thus supporting the view that structural pension reforms are not Pareto-improving. We especially show that postponing the retirement age increases inequalities more than reducing replacement rates does and that alternative financing adjustements involve only modest intra-generational redistributive effects.

Funding the French Social Security Through Incentive Schemes This paper develops a life cycle model with endogenous retirement decisions and consumption - savings choices in a quantitative Markovian overlapping generation model with altruistic individuals and incomplete financial markets. The only risk tic : elder workers face a risk of being pre-retired or unemployed, which results in a lower income ; the elderly face an uncertain time of death ; a child can be born in a lower social category than his father's. Individuals choose each year whether to retire or not the following year. Their decisions are based on expected income, life expectancy and their personal level of wealth. We first show that the model is consistent with the retirement distribution as well as the contribution rates as observed in France nowadays. We then compare the impact of two alternative reforms aiming at delaying retirement : a mandatory lenghtening of the contributive period versus incentive schemes (additional pension when retirement is postponed). The current Social Security provisions impose a 100 % implicit tax on continued work beyond the full rate. We look for the optimal tax rate that maximizes Social Security revenues. We then face a trade-off between the number of individuals who delay retirement and the level of implicit tax on continued work. This tradeoff is captured by a Laffer curve whose top is reached with an implicit tax of 20 % on the actuarially fair scheme. We find that 10 to 35 % of the expected Social Security deficit can be financed through incentives, which corresponds to a mandatory lenghtening of the contribution of 3 to 14 quarters. Incentives relying on life expectancy, especially when combined with financial returns, are more effective than the constant marginal increase in pension of 3 % proposed by the Raffarin governement.

Growth is not Enough for Poverty Reduction. This paper contributes to the current debate on pro-poor growth. It discusses the respective impacts of macro-economic growth and the reduction of income inequality on monetary poverty. Our results emphasise the potential importance of the latter factor and suggest putting forward redistribution policies, which are usually hardly even considered. They also question the credibility of the first of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aims at halving the proportion of the population living in absolute poverty by 2015. The first section analyses the factors which lead to placing poverty reduction at the core of development policies. The second section conducts a survey on the impact of growth and inequality on poverty reduction in the economic littérature. The third section presents the results of simulations on the evolution of poverty incidence in all the developing countries by 20 1 5. These simulations are based on an analytical formulation of the poverty elasticity, under a log-normal hypothesis concerning the income distribution, and making various assumptions on growth rates and the evolution of inequalities. Our estimates suggest that African countries will not meet the first MDG ; they also come to convergent conclusions on the potential gains in terms of poverty reduction brought about by pro- poor growth. The fourth and final section reveals the contrast between the above result and the lack of interest for redistribution policies within existing PRSPs (Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers).

Is aid to Corsica efficient ? Why is the Corsican economy stagnating in spite of generous transfers from France ? We address this question using a standard model of international trade linking the essential stylised facts of the island's economy: emigration, abundant external aid, low output - but also improving living standards. This analysis suggests that the macroeconomics effects of emigration, and more recently of net transfers, may have led to a misalignment of labour costs with labour productivity, in turn leading to lower external competitiveness. The study evidences the need to allocate transfers toward investment that can positively influence competitiveness (for example: infrastructure and education), rather than consumption. But it is the latter that is currently the main beneficiary of transfers, which increases the risk of a full-fledged Dutch disease in Corsica.

Spadal Constraint and Unemployment Duration. Individual transition from unemployment to employment is conditioned by various elements. If some of them concern directly the individual characteristics of workers, other ones implicate indeed their environment when searching for a job. The residential location, in town centre or in suburbs and high travel distances to each labour market areas or public intermediates for example are factors which can influence the exit rate of unemployment. Dealing with such an issue is the purpose of the paper. In a first stage we present a survey of the literature that treat about the introduction of spatial constraint in job search model. In a second stage, using the survey « Trajectoires des demandeurs d'emploi — marchés locaux du travail » from the French Ministry of Employment, we proposed non-parametric and parametric estimation of duration model to analyse the influence of spatial constraints during job search on unemployment duration.