🇬🇧”Let’s Play with Participatory Budgets” Workshop

17th Jul 202517th Jul 2025 ~ Mara Vidali ~ Leave a comment

On April 2nd, I had the pleasure of taking part in the workshop “Let’s Play with Participatory Budgets” at Le Dôme in Caen, co-organized by the LIG (Grenoble Computer Science Lab) and the CREM (Research Center in Economics and Management).

The goal was to make participatory budgeting more understandable and accessible to the general public. Through a hands-on session, participants worked in small groups to explore real-life scenarios: how to prioritize projects, allocate limited budgets, and engage in collective decision-making processes.

Part of the workshop used the Whale application, a digital tool designed to simulate and support collective decision-making in participatory budgeting contexts. It allowed participants to experiment with different voting systems and better understand how allocation rules can influence final outcomes.

I was honored to contribute alongside:

Vincent Merlin (CNRS, CREM)
Isabelle Lebon (University of Caen, CREM)
Sylvain Bouveret (Ensimag-INP, LIG Grenoble)
Myself, Mara Vidali (University of Rennes, CREM)
Alexis Hummel (Paris Dauphine-PSL, LAMSADE)

It was a dynamic, participatory moment, promoting civic engagement and democratic innovation through simple yet powerful tools.

👉 More information here

This workshop was part of the Turfu Festival 2025, an event focused on participatory research, civic innovation, and the co-creation of knowledge. The festival brings together researchers, citizens, and local stakeholders to imagine and prototype the tools of tomorrow.

🇫🇷 Retour sur l’atelier “Jouons avec les budgets participatifs”

Le 2 avril dernier, j’ai eu le plaisir de participer à l’atelier “Jouons avec les budgets participatifs”, organisé au Dôme à Caen, en partenariat avec le LIG (Laboratoire d’Informatique de Grenoble) et le CREM (Centre de recherche en économie et management).

Cet événement avait pour objectif de démystifier le fonctionnement des budgets participatifs à travers une session interactive et accessible au grand public. Les participants ont pu expérimenter, en petits groupes, des scénarios concrets de décisions collectives : comment prioriser des projets, répartir un budget, et comprendre les mécanismes démocratiques qui sous-tendent ce type de démarche.

Une partie de l’atelier s’appuyait sur l’application Whale, un outil numérique développé pour simuler et faciliter la prise de décision collective dans des contextes de budgets participatifs. Elle permet aux participant·es d’explorer différentes méthodes de vote et de mieux saisir les effets des règles de répartition sur les résultats.

L’atelier a réuni :

Vincent Merlin (CNRS, CREM)
Isabelle Lebon (Université de Caen, CREM)
Sylvain Bouveret (Ensimag-INP, LIG Grenoble)
Moi-même, Mara Vidali (Université de Rennes, CREM)
Alexis Hummel (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, LAMSADE)

Un moment riche d’échanges, de pédagogie et de réflexion collective, qui a permis d’initier les citoyen·nes à des outils concrets de démocratie participative.

👉 Plus d’informations ici

Cet atelier s’inscrivait dans le cadre du Festival Turfu 2025, un événement dédié à la recherche participative, à l’innovation citoyenne et à la co-construction des savoirs. Le festival propose chaque année une programmation ouverte où chercheur·es, citoyen·nes et acteur·rices du territoire imaginent ensemble les outils de demain.

Why Do Some Countries Grow Faster Than Others? A Look at Productivity Across Sectors and Borders.

15th Mar 202515th Mar 2025 ~ Mara Vidali ~ Leave a comment

New Publication Alert: Measuring Productivity and Convergence Across Countries and Sectors, published in Bulletin of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.1111/boer.12492

This paper dives into the evolution of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth across 13 OECD countries from 1995 to 2017. Using detailed industry-level EU KLEMS data and a modern estimation method (Ackerberg et al., 2015), I uncover how productivity varies not just between countries, but also across sectors.

Key takeaway? TFP growth is sluggish overall—but it’s not the same story everywhere. Even within Europe, there are “two speeds”: some countries are catching up, while others lag behind. Notably, the US and UK haven’t regained their 2000s momentum, and Japan shows a very different growth path altogether.

A closer look reveals that each country’s productivity story is driven by different sectors. Germany’s gains come mainly from manufacturing, while the Netherlands’ drag stems from agriculture. This makes sector-level analysis essential for understanding the bigger picture.

Interestingly, I find signs of convergence—countries and sectors slowly closing the productivity gap. The services sector shows weaker convergence, but the trend is there. Why? Possibly because it’s easier to copy best practices when knowledge barriers are low—think legal systems, banking, tech, even management styles.

Still, this study focuses on labor and capital, and future research should consider other factors like management, effort, or capital utilization. Understanding what drives sectoral and cross-country differences is key to designing policies that promote inclusive growth.

No Road with Roses in developing countries!

27th Jan 202527th Jan 2025 ~ Mara Vidali ~ Leave a comment

No Road with Roses !

New publication on the nexus between gender bias and total factor productivity. A work with I. Bournakis and V. Motta

Abstract

The paper investigates the gender-driven disparities in total factor productivity (TFP) between women-owned enterprises (WOEs) and male-owned enterprises (MOEs) across 30 developing countries. Utilizing firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, the study addresses biases in previous gender literature by employing a semi-parametric technique to more accurately measure TFP. The results reveal a significant TFP gap, with WOEs being 5.5% to 6.7% less productive than MOEs, even after controlling for key firm characteristics like age, innovation, human capital, and ownership status. The study attributes this productivity disparity primarily to financial obstacles faced by WOEs, which hinder their ability to innovate and capitalize on opportunities. The lack of access to credit leads to a misallocation of capital, excluding equally efficient women entrepreneurs from financial resources that could stimulate productivity. Contrary to some assumptions, the study finds no evidence that WOEs underperform in sectors with high financial dependence, suggesting that WOEs are not inherently inefficient in their use of capital. Our findings provide causal evidence as we control for selectivity bias in the TFP-WOEs nexus by identifying exogenously the factors that affect financial constraints and innovation.

Policy implications

This study emphasizes significant opportunities for impactful policy interventions. The exclusion of women entrepreneurs from access to finance leads to aggregate capital misallocation, which can hinder overall productivity growth. To address this issue, policymakers should prioritize creating a more equitable environment for female entrepreneurs through a two-pronged strategy.

First, institutional frameworks must be strengthened to guarantee women’s legal rights to property ownership and ensure fair access to credit from financial institutions. Second, targeted policy measures should facilitate financing for women-owned and women-managed enterprises (WOEs and WMEs). Initiatives such as low-collateral loans specifically designed for female entrepreneurs can play a crucial role. In addition, training programs aimed at enhancing financial literacy and digital skills can empower women entrepreneurs, improving their confidence in navigating financial systems.

On the innovation front, policies should aim to help women-led firms overcome financial barriers to innovation. While general innovation policies benefit all firms, women-led enterprises stand to gain disproportionately from grants, subsidies, and tax incentives designed to encourage innovation. Such programs should explicitly prioritize female entrepreneurship, with a particular focus on supporting women entrepreneurs in developing countries.