The August 2025 issue of the American Economic Review (Vol. 115, No. 8) features two articles linked to CREST, highlighting both the strength of our doctoral training and the reach of our research programs.
Randy Kotti, former PhD student at CREST, has published an article based on one chapter of his dissertation “Essays in Political Economy“, defended in June 2023 under the supervision of Pierre Boyer and Jean Ponce.
Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections
(co-authored with Rafael Di Tella, Caroline Le Pennec, and Vincent Pons)
This article provides new empirical evidence on how political candidates strategically adjust their platforms between electoral rounds. Drawing on an original dataset of over 9,000 US campaign websites and 57,000 French electoral manifestos (1958-2022), the authors show that candidates converge toward the center and strategically align their discourse with narrowly qualified opponents. The findings offer one of the first direct tests of the Downsian model of electoral competition.
Di Tella, Rafael, Randy Kotti, Caroline Le Pennec, and Vincent Pons. 2025. “Keep Your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during US and French Elections.” American Economic Review 115 (8): 2488–2528.
Pauline Rossi, researcher at CREST and Full Professor at Ecole polytechnique, also appears in this issue with a publication in the scope of her ERC-funded project P3OPLE (Peers and Possible Partners: exploring the Origins of Population Long-term Equilibria).
The Negligible Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso
(co-authored with Pascaline Dupas, Seema Jayachandran, and Adriana Lleras-Muney).
The paper reports on a large-scale randomized controlled trial involving 14,545 households in rural Burkina Faso. Contrary to a widespread assumption, offering free access to modern contraception over a three-year period had no significant impact on fertility rates, even when combined with additional interventions targeting social norms or misperceptions about child mortality. The results challenge the notion that lack of access is the primary barrier to contraceptive use in West Africa.
Dupas, Pascaline, Seema Jayachandran, Adriana Lleras-Muney, and Pauline Rossi. 2025. “The Negligible Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso.” American Economic Review 115 (8): 2659–88.
The American Economic Review is one of the world’s most prestigious economics journal, part of the so-called “Top 5”. These two publications reflect the diversity and international visibility of research conducted at or in connection with CREST.