Essais sur les effets indirects des programmes de transfer en espèces

• Auteur / Autrice : Matteo Bobba
• Direction : François Bourguignon
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Analyse et politique économiques
• Date : Soutenance en 2011
• Etablissement(s) : Paris, EHESS

Mots clés

Mots clés contrôlés

Politique publique

Paiements de transfert

Économie régionale

Envois de fonds

Mots clés libres

Redistributive politics

Schooling multipliers

Occupational choices

Cash transfers

Résumé

Ce travail explore certains effets non intentionnelles des transfères en espèces sur les comportements individuels. Nous avons associé certaines caractéristiques particulières du programme Progresa-Oportunidades à des sources crédibles de variations exogènes afin de mettre en évidence trois effets indirects et distincts du programme. Dans la première partie, nous étudions le rôle que le programme a joue dans le rehaussement des aspirations scolaire a travers les interactions sociales au sein de la population ciblée. La deuxième partie s'intéresse aux choix professionnels par les membres adultes du programme. Dans la troisième partie de cette thèse, nous étudions comment la mise en place du programme a affecté les stratégies en terme de politiques redistributions intra-gouvernementaux.

This dissertation combines some specific features of the Mexican Progresa¬Oportunidades Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program with credible sources of exogenous variations in order to shed light on three distinct indirect effects of the intervention on individual behaviors. The first part studies the role of the program in enhancing higher educational aspirations through social interactions among the targeted population. To this aim, we evaluate the effects of the geographic concentration of recipients living in different but neighboring villages on individual enrollment decisions. The second part ofthe analysis explores the effects of cash transfer on the functioning of the labor market in this setting, by focusing in particular on the driving factors behind the decision to become micro-entrepreneur. We interpret the program as a random variation in households' income and show that receiving its benefits increases the probability of entering self-employment both from salaried work and from unemployment. We next explore whether cash transfers enhance entrepreneurship as they provide liquidity to undertake some initial capital investment or rather as they foster the willingness to bear the risk posed by entrepreneurial returns. The third and last part considers one possible political economy by-product of the intervention by inspecting the effects of cash transfers targeted to the poor on the allocation of tactical transfers across government levels. We find strong supportive evidence in favor of a displacement effect of the cash transfer program on discretionary intra-governmental transfers and no effects on targeted transfers. This displacement effect seems to have deteriorated the amount of public goods provided in districts with many program beneficiaries. Redistributive politics thus creates a welfare trade-off for CCT recipients and a net welfare decrease for non-recipients. Accordingly, we found negative electoral results for mayors affiliated with the federal incumbent's party, especially in opposition stronghold districts.