How do citizens perceive centralization reforms? Evidence from the merger of French regions

Lionel Wilner

No 2020-20, Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics

Abstract: Using the 2016 merger of French regions as a natural experiment, this paper adopts a difference-in-difference identification strategy to recover its causal impact on individual subjective well-being. No depressing effect is found; life satisfaction has even increased in regions that were absorbed from both economic and political view points. The empirical evidence at stake suggests that local economic performance has enhanced in these regions, which includes a faster decline of the unemployment rate. In the context of a unitary state, economic gains have therefore outweighed cultural attachment to administrative regions.

Keywords: Merger of regions; natural experiment; difference-in-difference; subjective well-being; centralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2020-07-09, Revised 2021-06-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hap and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://crest.science/RePEc/wpstorage/2020-20.pdf CREST working paper version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Fusion des régions: quels effets perceptibles par la population ? (2021)
Working Paper: Fusion des régions: quels effets perceptibles par la population ? (2021)
Working Paper: How do citizens perceive centralization reforms? Evidence from the merger of French regions (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crs:wpaper:2020-20

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Secretariat General () and Murielle Jules Maintainer-Email : murielle.jules@ensae.Fr.