Alexandra Roulet, winner of the 2024 Best Young Economist Award, talks about her work and experience as an economic adviser to the president's and prime minister's offices.
I was hesitating between an academic career and an administrative one. Meeting my professors – Daniel Cohen at the Ecole Normale, then Philippe Aghion at Harvard – was decisive, thanks to their infectious enthusiasm. As for the work issue, I took it on with Lawrence F. Katz, a professor at Harvard. Many French people are drawn to this theme, perhaps because of the importance of the unemployment issue in our country.
Unemployment insurance is designed to soften the blow of the loss of income. But it must also help in finding a new job. Like all insurance, it carries a moral hazard if it does not encourage people to find work quickly enough.
With Thomas Le Barbanchon and Roland Rathelot, we looked at whether a longer duration of compensation induced a longer duration of seeking work. We found that if the duration of compensation is increased by 10%, the duration of unemployment increases by 3%. This figure is consistent with studies carried out abroad on the same subject. It would surely be closer to 2% if we had been able to look at the duration of non-employment, as some exits from unemployment do not necessarily lead to employment. But, above all, we wondered about the interpretation of this finding: Do people stay unemployed longer because they have time, or because they're looking for a better job?
Our work, which covered the period from 2006 to 2012, shows that a longer benefit period does not alter job search criteria (reservation wage, type of contract, etc.) and is therefore unlikely to lead to a better job.
That's the whole question. Are the gains sufficient in light of other criteria, such as the risk of inducing a shift toward minimum social benefits? This is where economists differ and political scientists arbitrate. Our paper in itself was not a piece of public policy advice.
Economics counts, of course, but decision-makers also have other factors to take into account, whether social, legal, or political. In my opinion, the influence of economists is only real in the medium-to-long term. No decision is motivated by a single result, but when a lot of different work points in the same direction, it ends up having an impact.
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