Publications
Does the ELIE system of redistribution always lead to positive social emotions and improve social recognition? Receiving a transfer in ELIE could be a sign that your social status is that of the less talented: even if you make the sacrifice of working more in order to contribute to the transfer, your productive capacities may have no market value. This could decrease the strength of the social bond. In order to avoid this, we need to be able to attach social recognition to the passive sacrifice implied in being less talented. One way is to relate this situation to the value for collective adaptability of a level of randomness in the distribution of talents. The redistribution procedure – the sacrifices of the more talented people – leaves the less talented people free to contribute or not by their work to their community, and their passive sacrifice is thereby changed into an active one. Social recognition can thus become mutual.
This chapter presents an axiomatic analysis of the allocation rules that assigns each economy with its set of ELIE (Equal Labour Income Equalisation) allocations. Two fairness properties, directly inspired by Serge Kolm’s theory of macrojustice are defined. Then, minimal lists of axioms are identified that, when combined to those two fairness properties, characterise the ELIE allocation rules. Finally, other fairness properties are defined that are not satisfied by the ELIE allocation rules.
ELIE can be interpreted as a minimum income scheme, financed by lump-sum taxes. While Kolm is careful in stating that his theory of macrojustice does not apply to individuals voluntarily working less than the “initial equal labour” k, we consider an extended scheme in which equal-labour income equalisation is also applied to these individuals. This extended ELIE may induce social waste as individuals with a low taste for working may opt for voluntary unemployment. We simulate the magnitude of this social waste with microdata for Belgium and compare extended ELIE with a first-best scheme and a second-best scheme (based on a linear income tax), implementing the same minimum income. The social waste induced by extended ELIE is intermediate between the social waste induced by the first- and second-best schemes, and remains relatively small for realistic levels of redistribution. Assumptions about the preferences of the voluntarily unemployed play a crucial role.
Ce document utilise des textes jusqu'ici inédits de Carl Menger(fonds Duke University) pour évaluer plus avant, relativement au travail publié en 2008, les dissensions de Menger et Böhm-Bawerk concernant la théorie du capital et de l'intérêt. Menger, après avoir considéré la théorie de l'intérêt Böhm-Bawerk, et le reproche que ce dernier lui fait d'une approche de l'intérêt en termes d'utilisation du capital, réaffirme sa vision mais sans répondre de manière convaincante aux arguments de son jeune collègue.
Does productivity increase with density? We revisit the issue usingFrench wage and TFP data. To deal with the ‘endogenous quantity of labour' bias (i.e., urban agglomeration is consequence of high local productivity rather than a cause), we take an instrumental variable approach and introduce a new set of geological instruments in addition to standard historical instruments. To dealwith the ‘endogenous quality of labour' bias (i.e., cities attract skilled workers so that the effects of skills and urban agglomeration are confounded), we take a worker fixed-effect approach with wage data. We find modest evidence about theendogenous quantity of labour bias and both sets of instruments give a similar answer. We find that the endogenous quality of labour bias is quantitatively more important.
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The use of taxes as regulatory instrument in environmental economics is a classic topic. In a nutshell, the need for regulation usually arises because producing causes detrimental emissions. Due to the lack of a proper market, the firms do not internalize the impact of these emissions on the utility of Other agents.Thus,they take their decisions on the basis of prices that do not reflect the true social costs of their production. Taxes can be used to modify the prices, confronting the firms so that the socially desirable decisions are taken. The problem has been exhaustively investigated in static settings, where there is no room for strategic interaction between the regulator and the firms.
