Dialogues économiques

An online media outlet dedicated to making economics accessible, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and the general public. Dialogues économiques publishes articles, video interviews, and infographics, twice a month, providing information on a wide range of topics addressed by economic research. Available in both French and English, the content may be reproduced in its entirety, provided the authors and the source Dialogues économiques are credited (CC BY-NC-ND). Readers can subscribe to receive each new publication directly in their inbox.
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Dialogues économiques

Voting When Conflicted
When you step into a voting booth, you are faced with a choice: who do you vote for? What happens to people who share the ideas of several parties at once? How can these people influence elections? These are the questions that Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde and João V. Ferreira answer in an article that examines how individuals divided between several ideologies can impact elections.
OCTOBER 12, 2021
OCTOBER 12, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

Collective Decision: Preventing the Worst from Happening
Should we wish for the best or focus on damage control? From deciding who will sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, to choosing a cake for guests, or distributing a budget, the question is always there. Anna Bogomolnaia, Ron Holzman, and Hervé Moulin look at the mechanisms of decision-making and come up with ways to increase the guarantee that the worst will not happen.
SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
©AMSE
Dialogues économiques

Health economics - Interview with Bruno Ventelou
Bruno Ventelou (AMSE/CNRS), a health economist, talks about his research.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

Prevention is better than ... getting old?
In 2019, public health expenditure in the European Union amounted to 983 billion euros - 7% of GDP on average. According to a study conducted by researchers Yevgeniy Goryakin, Sophie Thiébaut, Sébastien Cortaredona, Aliénor Lerouge, Michele Cecchini, Andrea Feigl, and Bruno Ventelou, health spending will continue to increase steadily, reaching an estimated figure of between 1223 and 1278 billion euros by 2050.
AUGUST 31, 2021
AUGUST 31, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

Why do most prices rarely change?
Fuel prices are almost constantly changing, whilst prices paid for electrical appliances may remain stable for several months. For most products, prices tend to remain the same over weeks or even months. There is a simple explanation for this: it would be too expensive for companies to perpetually analyse market price changes. This is the conclusion reached by economists Mark N. Harris, Hervé Le Bihan and Patrick Sevestre after analysing the evolution of prices of several hundred industrial product pricess.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2021
SEPTEMBER 14, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

Summer with Dialogues économiques
Dialogues économiques is taking its summer break and looks forward to seeing you on September 1st ! To keep you waiting until then, the online magazine offers you a selection of articles to (re)read...
JULY 19, 2021
JULY 19, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

Making doubt profitable
In May 2021, a French youtuber revealed on social networks that he had been approached by a communication agency to discredit the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Following his statement, other European influencers report receiving an identical proposal. The deal was that they would put forward a pre-written false argument in exchange for a fee. The aim? Likely to promote another vaccine over the German one. This attempt to cast doubt is reminiscent of how industrialists attempt to manipulate public opinion. Economists Yann Bramoullé and Caroline Orset modelled the cost of firms’ manipulation of scientific facts.
JUNE 29, 2021
JUNE 29, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

Talent, Taxes & Equal Opportunity
What is talent? According to the economist Alain Trannoy, it is the sum of an initial skill and the efforts made to maintain it. This definition is part of a larger philosophical sphere focused on equal opportunity, which applies to a redistributive tax model that aims to reduce income inequality.
JUNE 15, 2021
JUNE 15, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

How Much Is a Cleaner Air Worth?
It can provoke cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, contribute to climate change, impair the growth of crops, and damage buildings... Needless to say, air pollution causes a myriad of harmful effects. But how do you calculate the benefits associated with cleaner air when they do not come with a price tag? One way to do it is to estimate the amount we would be willing to pay to avoid associated deaths. And this is exactly what the economist Olivier Chanel did. Using research from Santé publique France, he expresses in euros the deaths that could be prevented by reducing air pollution.
MAY 11, 2021
MAY 11, 2021
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Dialogues économiques

When growth takes on debt
With the Covid-19 crisis, the level of French national debt has shot up, but can we be sure that such high levels of debt will impede growth? This is a tricky question to answer, because there are many factors at work, such as variations in GDP (the primary consequence of excessive debt), or the quality of the information received by economic players. A study by economists Arnaud Chéron, Kazuo Nishimura, Carine Nourry, Thomas Seegmuller and Alain Venditti examines the complex issue of the relationship between debt and GDP.
APRIL 27, 2021
APRIL 27, 2021