Publications

Résumé A large literature characterises urbanisation as resulting from productivity growth attracting rural workers to cities. Incorporating economic geography elements into a growth model, we suggest that causation runs the other way: when rural workers move to cities, the resulting urbanisation produces technological change and productivity growth. Urban density leads to knowledge exchange and innovation, thus creating a positive feedback loop between city size and productivity that initiates sustained economic growth. This model is consistent with the fact that urbanisation rates in western Europe, most notably England, reached unprecedented levels by the mid-eighteenth century, the eve of the Industrial Revolution.
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Résumé This article offers a general reflection on governance and managerial practices within a Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) and suggests that in a time of profound socioeconomic change, it is in SSE companies’ interest to establish global sustainable governance and responsible team management systems consistent with both the values structuring this domain as well as employee aspirations. This a French point of view with a sustainable dimension based on a literature review and on several published studies but not on an empirical approach. In a way it is an essay more than a demonstration. It is a proposal which could lead to methodological work. Here is a first step.
Mots clés Governance, Management, SE, Values, Staff, Sustainability
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Résumé In an earlier article, we found that a univariate state space time series model estimated using the Kalman filter provided reasonably accurate monthly forecasts of generic Bordeaux red wine prices for the period up to 2016. We use the same model to forecast prices for the period 2017 to 2020, a period in which the market for this wine was subject to a number of demand and supply shocks. We find that the model's forecasts are poor from late 2018 through 2019 when the price collapsed from an all-time high and returned levels not seen since 2012. There is evidence of a structural break or regime change, and we explore the underlying reasons for this. The main one is the collapse in Chinese demand for Bordeaux wines which was brought about by a combination of shocks.
HAL Google Scholar
Résumé In this chapter, we revisit the origins and genesis of the french school of proximity and its evolution trough time, in order to better understand how and why the small group of researchers who were the driving force of this new way of thinking were quickly able to get a real legitimacy and effective recognition. First of all, it was clear that the role of space in economic dynamics was too often the subject of confusion and abusive assertions. Asking this question in terms of coordination made it possible to consider non-spatial factors in the analysis. The notion of proximity as a polysemic concept therefore opened the way to understanding how space matters or not, together with these other factors thus a renewed approach of questions related to space and territories. But, even starting from issues of economic nature, such an approach could not remain limited to its economic dimension, the questions of coordination involving social individuals, located in geographical space but also embedded in bundles of relationships and in institutions. Thus, it had to broaden very quickly to other disciplines in social sciences which largely contributed to consolidate the bases of what became a multidisciplinary approach and to develop theoretical as well as empirical tools.
Mots clés Multidisciplinary approach, Social science, Territory, Embeddedness, Coordination, Geography, Space, Proximity
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Résumé En suivant une démarche pluridisciplinaire, associant le droit, l'économie et la littérature, cet ouvrage se propose de resituer le marché dans la genèse de l'idée d'Europe et de son corollaire : le projet européen. Le marché, le grand marché sous sa forme contemporaine, est-il un facteur de civilisation suffisamment puissant pour unifier le continent ? Et, partant, peut-on le relier à un sentiment d'appartenance ? Si c'est le cas, sur quelles valeurs culturelles repose-t-il et quelle est la teneur de son message éthique ? Ce questionnement s'inscrit dans le mouvement actuel d'universalisation de l'économie de marché, mouvement lui-même en débat dès lors qu'il est soumis à la discussion d'une opinion publique mondiale. Les auteurs du présent ouvrage se sont confrontés à ces débats qui portent tout autant sur l'héritage économique de l'Europe que sur son devenir. Le principal enjeu est bien de définir une spécificité européenne, plus précisément une éthique, dans la vision du marché qui concerne tous les secteurs de l'économie, y compris l'économie de la culture. (éditeur)
HAL Google Scholar
Résumé In his Scope and Method of Economics (1890), John Neville Keynes applied a tripartite distinction to the tasks of economists, dividing these into descriptions, norms and prescriptions. Keynes’s book both recapitulated debates revolving around the goals and limits of Classical political economy and opened a path towards debates between contemporary economists (Marshall among others) and philosophers of economics. The Scope and Method was thus a landmark that both closed an era and opened the next epoch in the history of economic thought. The chapter discusses his stance with respect to historical economics and its role in Britain at the time the Historical school dominated economics in Germany and the German-language literature. These issues are relevant to the normative vs. positive debate since German historicists’ defence of an ‘ethical’ orientation of political economy led to major methodological debates. Lessons are to be drawn that go beyond the disputes of the time on the role of the normative and the positive in economics regarded as a science.
HAL Google Scholar
Résumé This paper investigates the effects of e-procurement on firm corruption to secure public contracts, highlighting the moderating roles of the quality of governance institutions and supranational support in that relationship. Taking transaction cost economics as our theoretical lens, and building on a sample of 8,373 firms in 72 countries from 2008 to 2019, we find that the adoption of an e-procurement system in fact reduces firm corruption. However, this effect is only unveiled once one accounts in the analysis for the quality of country-level governance institutions, which also makes the relationship stronger. We also find an eprocurement system only to effectively address firm corruption when it benefits from supranational support. The study contributes to the ongoing academic debate on the impact of digitalization on corruption.
Mots clés Corruption, E-procurement, Governance institutions, Supranational support, Transaction costs, Digitalization
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Résumé This paper provides a tool to build climate change scenarios to forecast Gross Domestic Product (GDP), modelling both GDP damage due to climate change and the GDP impact of mitigating measures. It adopts a supply-side, long-term view, with 2060 and 2100 horizons. It is a global projection tool (30 countries/regions), with assumptions and results both at the world and the country/regional level. Five different types of energy inputs are taken into account according to their CO2 emission factors. Full calibration is possible at each stage, with estimated or literature-based default parameters. Compared to other models, it provides a comprehensive modelisation of Total Factor Productivity (TFP), which is the most significant determinant of the GDP projected path. We present simulation results of different energy policy scenarios. They illustrate both the “tragedy of the horizon” and the “tragedy of the commons”, which call for a policy framework that adequately integrates a long run perspective, through a low-enough discount rate and an effective intergenerational solidarity as well as international cooperation.
Mots clés Climate, Global warming, Energy prices, Environmental policy, Growth, Productivity, Long-term projections
Publication HAL Google Scholar
Résumé We compare distributions of Body Mass Index (BMI) categories among genders in France, the US and the UK on the basis of effciency and inequality considerations. The new normative criteria that we propose are well-suited to the ordinal nature of this variable. Our empirical results, which are supported by robust statistical inference, are twofolds. First, BMI categories are better distributed in France than in the UK, and in the UK than in the US for the two genders. Second, BMI categories happen to be more equally distributed among men than among women in all three countries.
Mots clés Ordinal, Gender, Effciency, Equality, Body mass index
Publication HAL Google Scholar