Antoine Jacquet
Post-doctoral researcher
University of Basel
Research
Working papers
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Transferable Utility Matching Beyond Logit: Computation and Estimation with General Heterogeneity
(with Alfred Galichon and Georgy Salakhutdinov) [arXiv]Abstract
We present a general framework for matching with transferable utility (TU) that accommodates arbitrary heterogeneity without relying on the logit structure. The optimal assignment problem is characterized by tractable linear programming formulation, allowing flexible error distributions and correlation patterns. We introduce an iterative algorithm that solves large-scale assignment problems with guaranteed convergence and an intuitive economic interpretation, and we show how the same structure supports a simulated moment-matching estimator of the systematic surplus. Experiments using simulated data demonstrate the algorithm’s scalability and the estimator’s consistency under correct specification, as well as systematic bias arising from logit misspecification.
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Culture, human capital, and marital homogamy in France
[link]Abstract
What economic sacrifices are people willing to make to transmit their culture? Using data on religious affiliation in France, I study the intergenerational transmission of religion and how it interacts with children's educational outcomes. A reduced-form analysis suggests that mothers contribute to religious transmission more than fathers; religious minorities more than majorities; and lower-educated parents more than higher-educated ones. A mechanism that can explain these patterns is that higher-educated parents have a higher opportunity cost of transmitting their religion to their children. I investigate this mechanism through a structural model, in which parents endogenously decide their time investments in their child's culture on the one hand, and in their formal education on the other hand. The analysis suggests that heterogeneities in transmission patterns are driven primarily by heterogeneities in preferences for religious transmission across genders and religious groups, rather than by differences in parents' education. Furthermore, religious minorities pay a higher price for religious transmission in terms of their children's educational outcomes. For instance, by measuring this cost in terms of the probability that the child will obtain a college education, Muslim parents pay a cost between 8 and 13 times greater than that for Christians.
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Veiling and the economic integration of Muslim women in France
(with Sébastien Montpetit) [link] [ssrn]
R&R at Canadian Journal of Economics
Media coverage: Les Echos (Aug 2023), Le Monde (Nov 2024), Jéco 2024, Le Monde (Jan 2026)Abstract
This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the economic costs of wearing the Islamic veil and on motives for veiling in a secular Western country. Using French observational data rather than small-scale interviews, we demonstrate a significant negative correlation between veiling and economic participation, even conditional on the respondent's religious environment. This newly-documented fact is not consistent with the existing economic theory of veiling in Muslim-majority countries, which has focused on the socio-religious signalling effect of veiling. We then show that a model which also accounts for reduced economic opportunities for veiled women is consistent with our findings in the Muslim-minority context. Using a structural interpretation of the model, we then disentangle the various motivations behind the joint decision to veil and to be economically active. Our findings indicate that veiled women are less economically active not due to religious preferences, but rather because veiling is costly on the labor market. Additionally, our results emphasize the significance of personal religious motives in the decision to veil, rather than signalling piety to others.
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The emergence and cultural persistence of ineffective solutions
(with Ali Seyhun Saral, Manvir Singh, Haneul Jang & Maxime Derex)
R&R at Nature Communications
Abstract
Through cumulative cultural evolution, populations discover novel solutions that allow them to solve complex problems. However, populations also reliably develop and sustain practices that are costly yet appear to have no effect on their stated outcome, such as bloodletting, divination, and malicious sorcery. Here, we show that ineffective, costly solutions can develop and be maintained because of their subjective appeal. In a pre-registered transmission-chain experiment, participants were tasked with developing a solution to a problem over several trials, after which they passed instructions onto the subsequent generation. The visual appearance of the experimental task was manipulated to vary the extent to which cognitive biases could interfere with participants’ expectations of efficacy, enabling a direct test of the effect of cognitive appeal on cumulative cultural evolution. Participants in the low-appeal treatment (n = 240) progressively developed more efficient solutions across generations. Participants in the high-appeal treatment (n = 240), in contrast, produced costlier solutions with no increase in efficiency over the course of the experiment. These results suggest that, even under conditions favorable to cumulative cultural evolution, a form of cognitive appeal alone can alone prevent the process and promote the emergence and cultural persistence of ineffective solutions.
Work in progress
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Matching with very costly transfers
(with Georg Nöldeke)Abstract
In this paper, we view matching with nontransferable utility (NTU) as the limit of matching with imperfectly transferable utility (ITU) when utility is very costly to transfer. In the corresponding limit model, utility is not only nontransferable but also disposable. We show that stable outcomes in ITU models with very costly utility transfers are close to stable outcomes in this NTU model and, under a familiar regularity condition, that every stable outcome in the NTU model with disposable utility in which identical individuals are treated equally is close to a stable outcome in some ITU model with very costly utility transfers. We conclude that assuming utility to be nontransferable and disposable is an appropriate simplification to model situations in which transferring utility is difficult but not impossible.
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The NTU logit model
(with Alfred Galichon)Abstract
We propose two fast algorithms to compute aggregate equilibrium outcomes in two-sided matching problems with non-transferable utility (NTU) and logit heterogeneity. Our first algorithm is an application of Jacobi's method. We show that this algorithm converges to the equilibrium, and also that the Jacobi iterates can be written in closed form, allowing for quick computation. Our second algorithm, which alternates between Jacobi steps and damped Newton steps, is guaranteed to converge in finite time. Specifically, if X and Y are the sets of individual types on each side of the market, then our Jacobi–Newton algorithm converges in |X||Y| steps at most.
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Welfare consequences of rent-control policies: a matching perspective
(with Amine Fahli)Abstract
How do rent control policies affect equilibrium in housing markets and shape investment decisions? This paper delves into these questions by proposing a novel structural model to empirically study the influence of rent ceilings on the general equilibrium in housing markets, in which some landlords are able to freely adjust their rents (thus falling under the standard transferable utility assumption), while other landlords cannot (non-transferable utility).
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Are marriage markets segmented?
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of market segmentation in marital assortativeness, a feature traditionally attributed to variations in the surplus of potential matches within transferable utility models. I propose a modification to the Choo–Siow model, allowing individuals to be assigned to submarkets according to their gender and other relevant traits. This segmentation introduces a new explanation for spousal assortativeness, which is accompanied by a redistribution of surplus among partners compared to the original model. The significance of market segmentation is empirically examined by focusing on the termination of the mandatory military service in France in 1996, a quasi-natural experiment that arguably altered the structure of the marriage market. Preliminary event study analysis reveals an observable shift in educational homogamy post-termination, emphasizing the influence of market segmentation. Finally, I discuss the possibility of structurally estimating this extended model.
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On scale effects in matching markets
(with Alfred Galichon)Abstract
This note investigates population scale effects in several bipartite matching models commonly used in empirical applications. Such models are typically characterized by matching functions, which predict the number of matches of any pair of types based on the number of singles of each of these types. In models for which the matching functions are homogeneous of degree 1, the equilibrium matching distribution scales linearly with the population size. In the case of models with matching functions which are not homogeneous of degree 1, however, this simple scaling property does not hold in general. We thus analyze the asymptotic behavior of the equilibrium matching distribution for such models as the population size grows to infinity.
Publications
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Alfred Galichon, Yu-Wei Hsieh & Antoine Jacquet
"Aggregate stable matching with money burning"
To appear in Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design, Special Issue on Market Design in Memory of YingHua He
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Alfred Galichon & Antoine Jacquet
"The matching problem with linear transfers is equivalent to a hide-and-seek game"
Games and Economic Behavior, vol. 152 (July 2025): pp. 333–344
[open access article] [arXiv] -
Sabine Nöbel, Antoine Jacquet, Guillaume Isabel, Arnaud Pocheville, Paul Seabright & Etienne Danchin
"Conformity in mate choice, the overlooked social component of animal and human culture"
Biological Reviews, vol. 98, n. 1 (February 2023): pp. 132–149
[open access article] [code]