This paper studies a new mechanism that allows political elites from a non-democratic regime to survive a democratic transition: connections. We document this mechanism in the transition from the Vichy regime to democracy in post-World War II France. The parliamentarians who had supported the...

We study the electoral impact of protesting against the far right by investigating the demonstrations held during the 2002 French presidential elections against far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. Instrumenting rally attendance with rainfall while factoring in that some municipalities never...

This paper explores OUIGO (pronounced ‘we go’), the low-cost high-speed rail (HSR) service launched by the French state-owned railways in April 2013. In this exploration, we: (1) compare OUIGO with the traditional French HSR and the low-cost airlines (LCAs), and (2) analyse fares proposed by...