Dr. Cédric Chambru (Associate Professor at the Department of Economics at the École normale supérieure de Lyon) presented a paper that studies the effects of the spread of Protestantism at the turn of the eighteenth century. In 1685, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ended religious toleration in France and triggered an unprecedented wave of out-migration, known as the Huguenot exodus. Using new data on the places of origin of Huguenot refugees after 1685, Dr. Chambru exploits spatial heterogeneity in the Protestant population to investigate the relationship between Protestantism and male literacy rates in the late seventeenth century (1686–90) and the late eighteenth century (1786–90).
He shows that the effect of Protestantism on literacy was weaker in areas where the share of Huguenot refugees exceeded the national mean. In a preliminary analysis, he also examines how religious persecution impacted the upper tail of the human capital distribution, a key determinant of long-run economic development. Focusing on the economic consequences of the Revocation, He finds that the departure of Huguenots had no effect on agricultural productivity, measured by annual changes in wheat prices, and weak effects on living standards, measured by the incidence of food riots. Finally, he assembles new datasets on population levels across subsamples of thousands of towns and on the location of textile manufactures (drawn from the original Desmarets survey of 1708) to document the impact of the Revocation on industrial and economic development in the early eighteenth century.

The EPI Lab hosted a seminar by Dr. Fethi Mansouri (Deakin Distinguished Professor, Founding Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, and UNESCO Chairholder in Cultural Diversity and Social Justice), who presented his research on transnational practices of migrant youth in the West. Transnationalism is part of broader globalisation processes and raises important questions in relation to migration, identity, multiculturalism and the very nation-state itself. The focus of the paper is on the transnational practices of migrant youth in three Western, multicultural cities. The transnational engagements of migrant youth often engender cultural, social and political connections between both countries of origin and countries of residence. These multi-dimensional networking practices and connections raise questions around the cultural identity of migrant youth, the nature of their membership of multiple political community(ies) and the social implications of their cross-border practices. Using comparative insights from qualitative and quantitative empirical findings, the paper posits that migrant youth engage in transnational practices in agentic ways that create and strengthen the possibilities for multiple articulations of cultural identity, political attachment and social belonging. This framing of transnational practices, within an increasingly inter-dependent and fluid global context, challenges the otherwise hyper-securitised discourse around the singularity of political allegiance and fixity of cultural identification among migrant youth.

As part of the Savoirs Éco project, funded by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France, which aims to support public debate on economic issues in Tunisia, the EPI Lab organized a training session on policy brief writing. The two-day training was delivered by Mr. Hédi Larbi, Professor of Public Policy at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po Paris) and former Minister of Equipment, Territorial Planning, and Sustainable Development.

The EPI Lab organized a seminar with Dr. Fethi Mansouri (Deakin Distinguished Professor, Founding Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, and UNESCO Chairholder in Cultural Diversity and Social Justice), during which he presented the Institute’s research activities and opened the discussion on potential areas for future collaboration.

From 2016 to 2024, Canada allowed its immigration rate to increase fivefold from 0.6% to 3.3%. Prof. Pierre Fortin (Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Quebec at Montreal) showed that the economic and social consequences of this natural experiment in 'demographic engineering' have unfortunately been disastrous. In the past year, the Canadian government has recognized that there have been severe problems and has now begun to moderate the pace of immigration significantly. There are important lessons to learn from this policy failure.

Maleke Fourati, Mediterranean School of Business, presented a paper which examines the role of religion on individual cooperative behavior towards women and the poor. Using a prisoner’s dilemma game, the team compared Lebanese Muslims and Christians in Australia (destination country) and Lebanon (native country). By studying these groups, they controled for confounding factors like economic institutions, ethnolinguistic groupings, and shared culture. The findings reveal that in Lebanon, Muslims and Christians exhibit similar behaviors. However, in Australia, Muslims are more cooperative than Christians, particularly towards poor females. This pattern persists even after accounting for altruism. The study suggests that these differences are not rooted in religion but rather in migration status, with varying levels of social capital between the groups in Australia explaining the observed behaviors.

What are the aggregate effects of large-scale college expansions in developing economies with high graduate unemployment? Dhia Khalfallah, PhD student at Mannheim University, presents a project which incorporates the unemployment margin into a general equilibrium framework, addressing a key gap in existing studies of college expansion. Using Tunisia’s 2002-2003 college reform as a natural experiment, Dhia documents a persistent 27-percentage point increase in the unemployment rate of young college graduates. Leveraging a novel administrative dataset, a puzzling labour market pattern emerges after the reform: the job finding rate for university graduates declines simultaneously with the filling rate of vacancies targeted towards them. Two key mechanisms were identified: congestion and composition effects driven by declining graduate quality. To quantify the importance of each channel, Dhia developed a structural general equilibrium model combining search frictions, constrained firm technology adoption, worker-firm heterogeneity, and college selection. Simulating the reform in the model quantitatively replicates the empirical facts and reveals that congestion accounts for 55-62% of the graduate unemployment increase. This research offers a unified framework to study graduate unemployment and its implications for the aggregate returns to college expansion. It highlights the importance of coordinated education, labour market, and industrial policies to mitigate risks and maximize developmental gains from expanding tertiary education.

Christina Sarah Hauser, PhD student at the European University Institute, presented a project where the research team evaluate a classroom management program designed to foster a positive learning environment in disadvantaged middle schools. The program encourages teachers to shift the responsibility of establishing positive behavioral standards and eliminating disruptive behavior to students. Covering over 7,500 students from 127 middle schools in Bangladesh, it is found that the program significantly improves classroom social climate, measured as enhanced cooperation, positive behavioral norms, a higher sense of belonging, and strengthened social support ties. the team shows that high-ability students are the primary beneficiaries of this improved social climate. This subgroup exhibits a significant improvement in academic performance, achieving higher scores than their untreated counterparts in math and language tests. A one-year follow-up reveals that this improvement extends to lower-achieving students, who also experience significant academic gains. The study highlights the vital role of effective adolescent behavior management in achieving high academic performance.

Despite the large fiscal footprint of corporate tax incentives, limited causal evidence exists on their impact on economic outcomes. Massimiliano Calì, World Bank, presented a paper which helps fill this gap by exploiting the phasing out of a large income tax exemption scheme for export-oriented firms in Tunisia. Using data on the universe of registered Tunisian firms, the analysis shows that the reform caused a decline in the entry of new firms in the sector previously benefiting from the incentives. However, the reduced entry did not translate into any effects on employment, revenue or the wage bill, as the reform did not impact the activities of incumbent firms, which account for the bulk of economic activity in Tunisia. The findings are robust to addressing various threats to the empirical identification and they confirm emerging evidence casting doubt on the importance of tax incentives to determine investments relative to other factors in an economy.

There is mounting evidence of the salutary effects of exporting. To promote exports, many developing countries have turned to matching grants, but to date there is limited rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of these programs. Nadia Ali, PhD student at Columbia University, explained how in this work, the team used a randomized controlled trial and firm-level administrative data to track outcomes and evaluate TASDIR+, a matching grant program in Tunisia that sought to diversify export performance by subsidizing fixed market-access costs.

Houda Boubaker, Assistant Professor at the Mediterranean School of Business and Monia Idoudi, PhD student at theUniversity of Hamburg' presentation explored the connection between constitution-making processes and the length of written constitutions, focusing on the critical role of the drafting body. While constitutional length varies significantly, the impact of drafting entities— such as executives, legislatures, constituent assemblies, or special committees— remains underexplored. To address this gap, they have initiated a research project, supported by the Institute of Law and Economics at Hamburg University, to systematically collect data on constitution-making processes across the world. This presentation highlighted the importance of this data, the methodology behind its collection, and some preliminary observations. The main goal is to use this dataset to analyze the impact of drafting bodies on constitutional design, providing insights for scholars and policymakers involved in constitutional making.

Dr. Sami Bensassi (Birmingham Business School) presented his paper titled "Combating trade-related fraud: Do the Financial Action Task Force recommendations bite?"

Paper's abstract: We evaluate the efficacy of “the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Recommendations 2012”, which set the global standard on combating money laundering and terrorist financing, by exploiting its staggered adoption in 16 East and South African countries. Using the trade gap as a proxy for trade-related fraud activities, such as trade-based money laundering (TBML), we find that the adoption of the FATF recommendations is correlated with a 15.3% reduction in trade-related fraud. The FATF is particularly effective within countries with capable state and low corruption. The magnitude of which the FATF adoption can reduce trade-related fraud depends on a country’s compliance level. Our results are robust to a series of robustness checks and contribute to a lively policy debate surrounding the role of international organisations in combating the financing of organised crimes.

This seminar was led by Dr Maleke Fourati. Organ transplant technology saves lives and significantly improves the life quality of patients who would otherwise depend on very intrusive - and expensive - medical treatment. From a health economic perspective, organ transplants are an efficient way to cure several diseases. But the problem is a considerable shortage of donated organs where demand outweighs supply by far. Up to this date, most research on how to encourage organ donation has focused on Western economies. However, the optimal policy choice is likely to depend on the cultural context. This research aims to make a first contribution to fill this gap by evaluating the impact of an informational intervention on young adults’ willingness to become deceased organ donors in the context of Tunisia.