Special sessions > Invited sessions

Monday, May 14

3:55 pm – 5:30 pm -  Conference room

Invited Session (1): "Welfare: measure and mismeasure"

Decelerating GDP growth has raised concern about its possible mismeasurement. Why don’t large innovations show up in growth statistics ? An additional challenge comes from the increasingly global and digitalized character of production, allowing for rapid and erratic reallocation of the income across countries: does the notion of « domestic » production remain relevant in this new context?  Assessing mismeasurement requires a shared definition of what we want to measure, and the purpose of this measurement - macroeconomic stabilization, welfare. This session will offer an occasion for a discussion between statisticians and specialists of growth and welfare.

Speakers: 

Philippe Aghion (Collège de France)

Didier Blanchet (Insee)

Andrew Clark (PSE)

Diane Coyle (Cambridge University)

Paul Schreyer (OECD)

Chair: Jean-Luc Tavernier (Insee, Vice-President of AFSE)

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Tuesday, May 15

4:20 pm – 6:00 pm - Conference room

Invited Session (2): "How can economists contribute to improve refugee integration?"

What can economists contribute to refugee integration?" The session will (hopefully) demonstrate that they can contribute a lot, both in terms of theoretical insights and in terms of policy evaluation. Alex Teytelboym (Oxford University) will first explore the potential for market designers to inform refugee "dispersion" policies, using various matching models adapted from the school choice literature to the context of refugee resettlement. How to best match refugees' needs with the characteristics of the municipalities which are likely to host them? Which type of matching models are best suited to balance out efficiency, fairness and incentive compatibility? Dispersion policy is precisely one of the two integration policies (together with the duration of the procedures to examine asylum requests) that will be evaluated by Francesco Fasani (Queen Mary U.) using observational data from a large set of European countries from a comparative perspective. Finally, Matti Sarvimaaki (Helsinki) will describe the design of a large-scale RCT evaluation of integration programs for refugees in Finland and provide preliminary results from their ongoing evaluation.

Speakers: 

Alex Teytelboym (Oxford University)

Francesco Fasani (Queen Mary University)

Matti Sarvimaaki (University of Helsinki)

Chair: Hillel Rapoport (PSE, University Paris 1)