Dynamic microsimulation

Electrification of trucking combined with connected technologies promise to cut the cost of freight transportation, reduce its environmental footprint, and make roads safer. If electric trucks are powerful enough to cease behaving as moving bottlenecks, they could also increase the capacity of existing roads and reduce the demand for new road infrastructure, a consequence that has so far been understudied. To explore the potential speed changes of replacing conventional heavy-duty drayage trucks with electric and/or connected trucks, we performed microscopic traffic simulations on a network centered on I-710, the country's most important economic artery, between the San Pedro Bay Ports and downtown Los Angeles, in Southern California. In addition to a 2012 baseline, we analyzed twelve scenarios for the year 2035, characterized by three levels of road improvements and four types of heavy-duty port trucks (HDPT). Our results show that 1,000 hp electric/hydrogen trucks (eTs) can be a substitute for additional freeway lanes in busy freight corridors. While conventional HDPTs with CACC would only slightly increase network speeds, replacing conventional HDPTs with eTs and improving selected I-710 ramps should be sufficient to absorb the forecast increases in drayage demand for 2035 without adding a controversial lane to I-710. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for the impacts on speed of new vehicle technologies in infrastructure planning. They also suggest shifting funding from building new capacity to financing 1,000 hp connected electric trucks in freight corridors until the market for these vehicles has matured.

De Belgische verzorgingsstaat wordt geanalyseerd vanuit de combinatie van hoge niveaus van sociale overheidsbestedingen met een uitgebouwde "verzorgingsmaatschappij" (d.i. het geïnstitutionaliseerde middenveld tussen individu en staat) die haar eigen is. In het eerste deel van deze bijdrage worden een aantal tijdreeksen voorgesteld, ondermeer over de ontwikkeling van het aandeel van sociale overheidsbestedingen in het B.B.P. en over de ontwikkeling van de respectievelijke aandelen van de onderscheiden functies in deze overheidsuitgaven. De factoren die de ontwikkeling van een aantal inkomenswaarborgende programma's hebben bepaald, worden van naderbij bekeken. De institutionele dimensie van de verzorgingsstaat wordt in een tweede deel bestudeerd. Bijzondere aandacht gaat uit naar een aantal verschuivingen inzake de beginselen die aan de basis van de sociale zekerheid liggen en inzake de zogenaamde "corporatieve democratie" (of overlegeconomie), die het central...

This paper presents plans to initiate a European network for dynamic microsimulation, one of whose tasks will be to facilitate and stimulate exchange of research ideas and researchers. Also, it aims to serve as a platform for researchers to bid for and generate funds to enhance the development and use of the dynamic microsimulation models, with a particular focus on research funds available in Europe. The comments and support from the microsimulation community have been received during the European workshop on dynamic microsimulation modelling in Brussels (2010) and also during the 3 rd General Conference of the International Microsimulation Association in Stockholm (2011). Further comments are requested and gratefully received.

Findings from the 1992 Generation survey carried out by Creq in 1997 among young people exiting the French school system indicates that work-related disparities encountered by young labor market entrants in France can be characterized according to the worker's gender. Obstacles facing women include the following: (1) risk of unemployment or imposed part-time work; (2) lower wages; and (3) more difficult access to managerial posts. These inequalities are often interpreted to be the result of gender segregation or unequal access in the educational process. Under certain conditions, non-traditional education and training (in programs usually reserved for men) can benefit young women in the school-to-work transition. However, in the most mixed training programs (programs traditionally chosen by men and women alike), women still face more workplace disparities than men. Gender inequities do tend to diminish as training levels increase. Gradual improvement is also happening due to lab...

Today’s world is opening up to great bilateral trade. Cooperation agreements keep growing and the countries of the world are getting closer and closer. As part of education, world universities are filled with students of different nationalities, for all available professional training. Faced with different education systems, students experience adaptations and certain challenges, both on foreign lands and after their studies back in their country of origin. And these adaptations and challenges must also be recognized by the countries of origin. Thus, this study mainly deals with the issue of Gabonese students in Chinese territory, for higher studies, the equivalence of diplomas and integration into the labor market after graduation. It also offers some suggestions and recommendations to meet the challenges posed for a promising and better future for African youth and more particularly for Gabonese youth. But it is also with a view to improving cooperation relations between countries...

Acknowledgments The estimates used for microsimulation in this paper are done on three sets of data: the French Labour Force Survey for 2003-2005, which is available online (http://www.insee.fr), the French Labour Force Survey 1968-2002, which is available for ...

This paper presents plans to initiate a European network for dynamic microsimulation, one of whose tasks will be to facilitate and stimulate exchange of research ideas and researchers. Also, it aims to serve as a platform for researchers to bid for and generate funds to enhance the development and use of the dynamic microsimulation models, with a particular focus on research funds available in Europe. The comments and support from the microsimulation community have been received during the European workshop on dynamic microsimulation modelling in Brussels (2010) and also during the 3 rd General Conference of the International Microsimulation Association in Stockholm (2011). Further comments are requested and gratefully received.

In veel landen hebben de afgelopen tijd pensioenhervormingen plaatsgevonden. Mede als gevolg daarvan zijn er verschuivingen opgetreden in de pensioenvoorziening van publiek naar privaat. Op basis van een internationale vergelijking voor 15 Europese landen voor de periode 1995-2007 onderzoeken wij de inkomensgevolgen voor ouderen van verschuivingen in de publiek-private verhouding van pensioenen. Een interessante bevinding is dat verschuivingen in de pensioenvoorziening van publiek naar privaat niet hebben geleid tot hogere niveaus van inkomensongelijkheid of armoede onder 65-plussers.

Compared to other European higher education systems, the French one seems more complex. Indeed, it juxtaposes a huge, mainly open, university sector and a myriad of schools and institutes with generally limited access. The university sector is itself rather complex, since it is not organised around a clearly defined first degree. There exist different layers of diplomas which follow each other without any explicit exit level. The university sector also has an official role in preparing students for the competitive exams for civil service occupations. In the university sector, there are five levels of diplomas:

In this paper, we investigate the impact of fixed-t rm employment spells (fixed-term contracts and temporary work) on the integration on the labou r market for French school-leavers. Integration on the labour market is translated by t he transition to a permanent contract. We study, at the same time, the impact of three catego ri s f determinants on the school-leavers’ integration on the labour market: individual’s feat ures, a first fixed-term employment spell and a later fixed-term employment episode. More pre cisely, by taking into account the fixedterm employment spell duration, we identify four po ssible trajectories and we examine if fixed-term employment is a “stepping-stone” to perm anent employment. In order to control for possible endogeneity biases, trivariate probit models are implemented on a sample of 11 303 individuals obtained from the French “Généra tion 98” survey.

Improving incentives in tertiary education in Belgium The tertiary education system has been transformed from an elite-oriented system to a system providing tertiary education to a much larger share of each new generation. This reorientation has contributed to raising education attainment in Belgium. However, in many respects the organisation of the tertiary education systems has not been changed fundamentally and economic incentives are only to a minor extent in place for securing the supply and quality of tertiary education. The system has come under strain, as revealed in the high failure rate among first-year students and the high incidence of subject change. There is thus a need for the system to adapt to be able to continue to support the improvement in educational attainment.

The tertiary education system has been transformed from an elite-oriented system to a system providing tertiary education to a much larger share of each new generation. This re-orientation has contributed to raising education attainment in Belgium. However, in many respects the organisation of the tertiary education systems has not been changed fundamentally and economic incentives are only to a minor extent in place for securing the supply and quality of tertiary education. The system has come under strain, as revealed in the high failure rate among first-year students and the high incidence of subject change. There is thus a need for the system to adapt to be able to continue to support the improvement in educational attainment.Améliorer les systèmes d'incitation dans l'enseignement supérieur en BelgiqueAuparavant élitiste, l’enseignement supérieur a été transformé en un système devant permettre à une part plus importante de chaque nouvelle génération de faire des études...

Since the early 90's, the Federal Planning Bureau assesses the sustainability of pensions in Belgium. Since a couple of years, it uses a dynamic microsimulation model, MIDAS_BE, to assess the development of the adequacy of pensions. This working paper illustrates the possibilities generated by the joint analysis by two different models that are as consistent as possible in terms of

Student recruitment is an increasingly important topic and a major challenge for engineering schools all over Europe, which have difficulties in attracting and enrolling gifted students. On the contrary, French graduate engineering schools attract the most talented students of the nation. What are the forces at play? The aim of this paper is to investigate the decision-making processes behind the students' choice of engineering school. We carried out 18 semidirective interviews with engineering students of three French graduate engineering schools and completed content analysis of our data. Based on the findings, we identified various individual, social, economic and institutional factors influencing the students' choice of engineering school. The findings indicate that the pre-university model (preparatory classes) has a key influence on engineering schools' recruitment process for attracting talented students.

Should access to higher education remain 'free'? Theoretical answers to this question are at least twofold. First, public higher education is said to be regressive as a privileged minority profits from extra human capital, and all the private benefits it generates, while the general public foots the bill. A counter-argument is that higher education students enjoying 'free' access are implicitly borrowing public money that they pay back when entering the labour market, via progressive income taxes. Using a simple lifecycle framework this paper produces realistic estimates of how much graduates are likely to 'reimburse' society via income tax. Using Belgian, German & UK data on higher education public expenditure and income taxes paid by both graduates and non-graduates over their lifetime, we show that the implicit reimbursement rate ranges from 37% to 95%. It is much higher for bachelors than master graduates, and for males. 1 We would like to thank L. Jacque...

Simulation techniques are nowadays widely applied in many areas of knowledge, trying to provide tools predicting future behaviors or reactions. Public economy is one of the areas paying more and more attention in last years to simulation techniques in order to evaluate the achievement of different public policies, though these techniques are not as developed as in other subjects. In this context, this paper attempts to provide empirical evidence to simulation literature, gathering two main aspects: on one hand, an extended and alarming problem in Spain, the monetary costs associated with early school leaving (Spain's ESL rate stands at more than 30%, making it one of the highest in the EU); and on the other, a not very common methodology to approach this phenomenon: microsimulation techniques. Specifically, a behavioral microsimulation model is proposed in order to study the effects on employment and wages of eradicating early school leaving in Spain over a twenty-year time horizon. Our results, under various scenarios, indicate that an increase in GDP of between 4 and 17% could be achieved.

Public spending for higher education is generally considered as an investment. This investment is heterogeneous at the individual level-this is particularly true for France where there is an important distinction in terms of public subsidies between the elite schools' curriculum and the universities' curriculum. From a public policy point of view, the collective returns of this investment are of two kinds: (i) externalities, (ii) the supplement of taxes perceived on the former student over his life course-that could be calculated from the wage premium and the socio-fiscal regime. In this paper we focus on the measurement of the effect (ii) by means of dynamic microsimulation. The GAMEO model simulates the heterogeneity of the careers for a given generation: transitions on the labour market, wages, mortality, etc. The model is mainly estimated on the basis of the French Labour Force Surveys. Based on this output it is possible to compute the individual level of income tax as well as the level of VAT. Moreover, we use a relatively disaggregated measure of public subsidies for higher education that could be linked to individuals given their specific tertiary diploma (16 classes). In France, the individual taxes which contribute to finance higher education are income tax and VAT. In this view the fiscal return of higher education is discussed considering the distribution of two indicators of fiscal equity: lifelong tax rate and duration of net fiscal contribution.

Cost-sharing policies for higher education have been implemented in several countries in various ways. We argue that to assess their appropriateness and facilitate their implementation it is necessary to develop statistical indicators of the distribution of returns. When starting a higher education programme, the return on a particular degree is uncertain, and risk-adverse students or those from low-income families may be reluctant to enrol if this means taking out a loan. These statistical indicators would therefore be natural inputs of cost-sharing policies intended to preserve the individual economic incentives to go to university and simultaneously provide an insurance role. We present a dynamic microsimulation model of individual lifetime educational output in the French labour market which uses econometric modelling of individual wages, labour market transitions, social security contributions and benefits. It relies largely on labour force survey data and mortality tables. In the standard internal rate of return framework, the model is used to compute the distribution of returns to higher education, for a given generation. The results show that the percentage of negative returns is close to 3.5%.

Si la mortalité et les incapacités continuent d’évoluer selon les tendances actuelles, la génération née en 1960 peut espérer, à 50 ans, vivre en moyenne 19 années à la retraite sans incapacité sévère, c’est-à-dire sans restriction dans les activités de la vie quotidienne. Du fait de l’augmentation de la durée de vie et du progrès médical, et malgré des départs en retraite de plus en plus tardifs jusqu’à la génération née en 1975, cet indicateur de la qualité de vie à la retraite se stabiliserait, voire s’améliorerait à partir de la génération née en 1975.

Les femmes nées en 1960 passeraient six ans de plus à la retraite que les hommes de la même génération, mais seulement quatre années de plus sans incapacité. Ces deux différences devraient légèrement diminuer pour les générations suivantes. Lorsque ces durées sont rapportées à la vie entière, les femmes restent avantagées par rapport aux hommes.

Les moyennes recouvrent cependant des disparités importantes : 4 % des hommes et 13 % des femmes vivraient plus de 30 ans à la retraite sans incapacité, mais 14 % des hommes et 8 % des femmes vivraient moins de cinq années dans cette même situation.

Les principaux déterminants de l’espérance de vie en retraite sans incapacité sévère sont l’espérance de vie, l’évolution de la survenue des incapacités et d’éventuels changements de législation sur les retraites. Ainsi, l’espérance de vie en retraite sans incapacité varie d’environ deux années entre les deux scénarios haut et bas d’évolution future de l’espérance de vie et d’une année entre les deux scénarios haut et bas d’évolution future des incapacités. Les gains constatés pour les générations nées après 1975 seraient atténués en cas de poursuite de l’augmentation de la durée d’assurance nécessaire pour obtenir le taux plein au-delà de la génération née en 1973.

The AlmaLaurea working paper series is designed to make available to a wide readership selected works by AlmaLaurea staff or by outside, generally available in English or Italian. The series focuses on the study of the relationship between educational systems, society and economy, the quality of educational process, the demand and supply of education, the human capital accumulation, the structure and working of the labour markets, the assessment of educational policies. Comments on this series are welcome and should be sent to pubblicazioni@almalaurea.it.

The rate of female activity has risen continuously over the past thirty-five years, and women now constitute 45 percent of the labour force. But this hardly means that differences between men and women on the labour market have disappeared. In particular, women’s careers remain more sharply marked by extra-professional events. Nonetheless, the persistence of inequalities does not exclude the emergence of encouraging trends, and in this respect, the diploma seems to be an instrument of change.

Compared to other European higher education systems, the French one seems more complex. Indeed, it juxtaposes a huge, mainly open, university sector and a myriad of schools and institutes with generally limited access. The university sector is itself rather complex, since it is not organised around a clearly defined first degree. There exist different layers of diplomas which follow each other without any explicit exit level. The university sector also has an official role in preparing students for the competitive exams for civil service occupations.

Abstract: With increasing numbers of young people participating in higher education in Ireland and a heavy reliance of higher education institutions on State funding, the introduction of an alternative finance system for Ireland has been muted over the past number of years. However, no study has been conducted to gauge the potential impact of such measures.

Compared to other European higher education systems, the French one seems more complex. Indeed, it juxtaposes a huge, mainly open, university sector and a myriad of schools and institutes with generally limited access. The university sector is itself rather complex, since it is not organised around a clearly defined first degree. There exist different layers of diplomas which follow each other without any explicit exit level. The university sector also has an official role in preparing students for the competitive exams for civil service occupations.

Public spending for higher education is generally considered as an investment. This investment is
heterogeneous at the individual level―this is particularly true for France where there is an important
distinction in terms of public subsidies between the elite schools' curriculum and the universities’ curriculum.
From a public policy point of view, the collective returns of this investment are of two kinds: (i) externalities, (ii)
the supplement of taxes perceived on the former student over his life course―that could be calculated from
the wage premium and the socio-fiscal regime. In this paper we focus on the measurement of the effect (ii) by
means of dynamic microsimulation.
The GAMEO model simulates the heterogeneity of the careers for a given generation: transitions on the labour
market, wages, mortality, etc. The model is mainly estimated on the basis of the French Labour Force Surveys.
Based on this output it is possible to compute the individual level of income tax as well as the level of VAT.
Moreover, we use a relatively disaggregated measure of public subsidies for higher education that could be
linked to individuals given their specific tertiary diploma (16 classes).
In France, the individual taxes which contribute to finance higher education are income tax and VAT. In this
view the fiscal return of higher education is discussed considering the distribution of two indicators of fiscal
equity: lifelong tax rate and duration of net fiscal contribution.

The paper assesses the implementation of income contingent loan schemes for higher education (ICL) in an institutional context characterized by two main features: (i) a former tuition free system and (ii) a great heterogeneity in tertiary education's diplomas quality and cost, which impacts the individual career paths. In this particular case, IC L implementation leads to a trade-off between increasing 'career' equity in terms of collective public spending versus individual gains and widening low education traps by reducing the economic incentives to pursue a tertiary education curriculum. Based on a dynamic microsimulation model we propose an ex ante evaluation of the enlargement of low education traps induced by the implementation of different ICL designs in France. We conclude that the risk of low education traps' enlargement remains very small.