Was colonization very costly for the metropole? This view has been widely accepted among French historians even though little empirical evidence has been provided. Using original data from the colonial budgets of French West Africa (AOF) this paper provides new insights into the actual colonial...

Since the independences, having a single currency is an official policy objective of West African countries. In April 2000, West African decisions-makers decided to accelerate the integration of the region by creating a second monetary zone in addition to the WAEMU (West African Economic and...

There are continuing efforts at the monetary integration and unionization in West Africa. Several academics argue that a monetary union among West African states would be costly because of the magnitude of asymmetric shocks. A common monetary policy is inappropriate and ineffective to respond to...

We build a simple model of self-selection into migration and immigration policy determination. We first show that the effect of any immigration policy can be decomposed into a size and a composition effect. We then explore how the optimal policy may change once the latter effect is considered.

Many OECD countries have changed the rules for immigrants in recent decades, generally making harder to enter and to stay. France is one example. This paper studies the immigrants' response to the 2004 reform of the immigration law, which made it harder for foreigners to obtain resident status....