I am an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Strasbourg. I hold a Ph.D. in Economics from LEM-CNRS University of Lille and from Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay.
My research interests are international macroeconomics and inequality, with an emphasis on financial cycles. I explore the circular relationship between income inequality, household credit and financial crises. I also investigate the consequences and the policy implications of these cycles.
My Curriculum Vitae is here in english and in french.
Publications
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Trilemma, Dilemma and Global Players, Journal of International Money and Finance, 2018, 85(6), 20-39. Supplementary Material
- La relation circulaire entre inégalités de revenu et finance: tour d’horizon de la littérature et résultats récents, Revue d’Economie Financière, 2018, 128(1), 127-152 (with Rémi Bazillier and Jérôme Héricourt).
Working Papers
- Fire Sales and Debt Maturity (New Version – September 2019) GSIE
Abstract: How does debt maturity structure affect fire sales? I show how debt maturity can trigger financial crises by introducing debt maturity in a Fisherian deflation model. In particular, using a stock/flow analysis, I find (i) that an excessive reliance on short-term debt exacerbates the risk of financial crises due to fire sales and (ii) that this risk is driven by a rise in the term premium. I confirm these two testable predictions with an empirical study of data from 69 emerging and developing countries from 1970 to 2017. This shows that debt maturity structure is a good early warning indicator of financial crises, which adds information compared with the level of external debt alone. Overall, this paper shows that the optimal policies against fire sales are determined by balancing current and future solvency concerns, as well as by liquidity concerns.
2. Structure of Income Inequality and Household Leverage: Theory and Cross-Country Evidence (with Rémi Bazillier and Jérôme Héricourt) (New Version)
CES Working Paper (2019), CEPII Working Paper (2017-01), Lettre du CEPII N°379. In the media: Le Monde, The Conversation
Abstract: How do income inequality and its structure affect the volume of credit? We extend the theoretical framework by Kumhof et al. (2015) to distinguish between upper, middle and low-income classes, and show that most of the positive impact of inequality on credit predicted by Kumhof et al. (2015) should be driven by the share of total output owned by the middle classes. Consistently, this impact should weaken in countries where financial markets are insufficiently developed. These theoretical predictions are empirically confirmed by a study based on a 41-country dataset over the period 1970-2014, where exogenous variations of inequality are identified with a new instrument variable, the total number of International Labor Organization conventions signed at the country-level.
Work in Progress
- Do Credit Distribution and Demography Matter for Regional Inequality? (with Florian Bonnet)
Contact: ligonniere@unistra.fr
