Publications

Abstract This paper investigates the predictive power of several risk attitude measures on a series of medical practices. We elicit risk preferences on a sample of 1500 French general practitioners (GPs) using two different classes of tools: scales, which measure GPs' own perception of their willingness to take risks between 0 and 10; and lotteries, which require GPs to choose between a safe and a risky option in a series of hypothetical situations. In addition to a daily life risk scale that measures a general risk attitude, risk taking is measured in different domains for each tool: financial matters, GPs' own health, and patients' health. We take advantage of the rare opportunity to combine these multiple risk attitude measures with a series of self-reported or administratively recorded medical practices. We successively test the predictive power of our seven risk attitude measures on eleven medical practices affecting the GPs' own health or their patients' health. We find that domain-specific measures are far better predictors than the general risk attitude measure. Neither of the two classes of tools (scales or lotteries) seems to perform indisputably better than the other, except when we concentrate on the only non-declarative practice (prescription of biological tests), for which the classic money-lottery test works well. From a public health perspective, appropriate measures of willingness to take risks may be used to make a quick, but efficient, profiling of GPs and target them with personalized communications, or interventions, aimed at improving practices.
Keywords Lottery choice, Medical practices, Risk attitude, Scale, Domain specificity JEL Classification C93, D81, I10
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Abstract Economists ceased at some point to discuss the “self” of the “economic agent.” Moralists criticized them for this. Yet attention had been paid to the “self” from the start of modern economics with Adam Smith “self-love.” Granted, the contemporary mathematized mainstream in economics ignores the “self,” its representations, and its realization through economic life. Economic philosophers, however, bring it to the fore and debate identity issues, the flesh and “reality” of agents beyond an axiomatic skeleton. Inspired by Ancient thought and heterodox individualistic currents (like the Austrian school), the inquiry as to what “self-realization” may, or may not mean in the economists’ realm and in economic life is essential to ethical and methodological issues so as to make sense of how to realize the self from an economic viewpoint (and far from popular folk psychology).
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Abstract Two duopolists first decide in which proportions to incorporate in their product two different Lancasterian characteristics and then compete in quantities or prices. In the Cournot case, minimum differentiation obtains at equilibrium whatever the degree of substituability between the characteristics. In the Bertrand one, the equilibrium depends crucially on the degree of substituability/complementarity between the two characteristics. Maximal differential obtains if and only if the characteristics are strong enough substitutes. On the contrary as characteristics become closer and closer complements one obtains in the limit a minimal differentiation result. JEL Codes: L13. Keyword: Horizontal Product Differentiation, Lancasterian Characteristics.
Keywords Duopoly, Lancasterian Characteristics, Horizontal Product Differentiation
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Abstract Les idées d’Henry George ont semblé être enterrées pendant plus d’un siècle. Sa principale idée était de financer un revenu de base au moyen d’une taxe prélevée uniquement sur la rente foncière. Après avoir montré que le retour du capital, tel que mis en avant par Thomas Piketty, peut plutôt s’interpréter comme un retour sur le devant de la scène de la rente foncière, nous construisons un modèle augmenté d’accumulation du capital à la Judd : les capitalistes possèdent de la terre qui est louée aux travailleurs pour qu’ils se logent, et en retour ceux-ci louent leur force de travail aux capitalistes. Nous montrons tout d’abord que la taxe sur le capital n’est pas une taxe de premier rang, puis qu’une taxe foncière ou une taxe d’habitation sont des taxes de premier rang qui permettent de financer un supplément de revenu aux travailleurs. En particulier, la taxe d’habitation est entièrement supportée par les propriétaires. Sa suppression devrait donc se traduire par une hausse des loyers. Si la terre urbaine est en quantité fixe, les loyers, y compris les loyers imputés, augmentent en proportion du revenu national pour une élasticité de la quantité de logement par rapport au loyer relativement inélastique (inférieure à 1) quand la population augmente. En conclusion, nous abordons le volet préconisations en matière fiscale auquel conduit ce type d’analyse, en évoquant la suppression de la taxe d’habitation, la création de l’impôt sur la fortune immobilière et la cotisation foncière des entreprises.
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Abstract This article offers a reflexive presentation of an interdisciplinary case study involving environmental sociology and marine biology. The creation of the Calanques National Park (April 2012), next to Marseille, the second largest city in France, has fuelled debate over the increasing impact of widespread leisure activities on the conservation of biodiversity. Given this, our research programme has developed visual interdisciplinary methods and critically analysed the notion of overuse. This paper presents a case study of Sormiou Bay, a natural anchorage site whose seabed is covered in a meadow of protected seagrass, Posidonia oceanica. Our research involved qualitative and quantitative field surveys and interval photography over a 19-month period, as well as the use of historical aerial photographs. Three main findings are presented here. First, our analysis reveals that a gap exists between actual and perceived levels of use, and this is exacerbated by a scale effect. Secondly, we point out the social and cultural factors, as well as the political context underpinning users’ discourse regarding (over)use of the Calanques. Lastly, we underscore the gap between the environmental awareness of boaters, their actual behaviour and their impact on Posidonia oceanica meadows.
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Abstract In the aftermath of the great contraction of 2008, policymakers were faced with the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) on nominal interest rates. Central banks implemented several unconventional monetary policies to overcome the ZLB, including setting negative nominal interest rates. This paper explores possible unintended effects of setting negative policy rates. Using Danish data, I assess the impact of paying a negative interest rate on reserves. Results suggest that going into negative territory has a particular impact, distinct from that of simply lowering interest rates: it leads to higher banking outflows and depreciation of the currency. Due to the reluctance of commercial banks to pass on negative rates to their depositors (retail deposits can easily be switched into cash), paying a negative (vs. positive) interest rate on reserves creates a disconnection between the assets and liabilities of commercial banks' balance sheets. Commercial banks can avoid this disconnection by holding external assets or assets in foreign currencies. This incentive to increase banking outflows appears to explain the particular impact of going into negative territory.
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Abstract What makes people happy? Why should governments care about people’s well-being? How would policy change if well-being was the main objective? The Origins of Happiness seeks to revolutionize how we think about human priorities and to promote public policy changes that are based on what really matters to people. Drawing on a uniquely comprehensive range of evidence from longitudinal data on over one hundred thousand individuals in Britain, the United States, Australia, and Germany, the authors consider the key factors that affect human well-being.
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Abstract This paper studies the constrained multiobjective optimization problem of finding Pareto critical points of vector-valued functions. The proximal point method considered by Bonnel, Iusem, and Svaiter [SIAM J. Optim., 15 (2005), pp. 953--970] is extended to locally Lipschitz functions in the finite dimensional multiobjective setting. To this end, a new (scalarization-free) approach for convergence analysis of the method is proposed where the first-order optimality condition of the scalarized problem is replaced by a necessary condition for weak Pareto points of a multiobjective problem. As a consequence, this has allowed us to consider the method without any assumption of convexity over the constraint sets that determine the vectorial improvement steps. This is very important for applications; for example, to extend to a dynamic setting the famous compromise problem in management sciences and game theory.
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