Publications
In this paper we present a principled view that grounds the need for whistleblowing protection, often missing in the literature. They argue that whistleblowers have a right to protection because of their role in ensuring accountability against wrongdoings that go unnoticed due to unrestrained practices of secrecy. This right derives from the crucial role of whistleblowing in exposing right limitations, in absence of procedures of redress, and information of public interest. Given this role, absence of procedures of protection and fair hearing of disclosure claims puts unfair burdens on whistleblowers so much as to, in some instances, preclude the very possibility of disclosure. In this regard, a cognizance of their role in ensuring protection of rights and structure of accountability demands a system of protection extended to human rights defendants. We argue that the European Union should stand up for the legal protection of whistle-blowers and encourage their contribution towards more transparent institutions and economic transactions.
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).
Asymptotic and bootstrap inference methods for inequality indices are for the most part unreliable due to the complex empirical features of the underlying distributions. In this paper, we introduce a Fieller-type method for the Theil Index and assess its finite-sample properties by a Monte Carlo simulation study. The fact that almost all inequality indices can be written as a ratio of functions of moments and that a Fieller-type method does not suffer from weak identification as the denominator approaches zero, makes it an appealing alternative to the available inference methods. Our simulation results exhibit several cases where a Fieller-type method improves coverage. This occurs in particular when the Data Generating Process (DGP) follows a finite mixture of distributions, which reflects irregularities arising from low observations (close to zero) as opposed to large (right-tail) observations. Designs that forgo the interconnected effects of both boundaries provide possibly misleading finite-sample evidence. This suggests a useful prescription for simulation studies in this literature.
-
This chapter reviews the literature about inequality and welfare with a particular focus on whether Europe has a special sensitivity to these matters or specific outcomes. It is argued that both statements are likely to be true, which raises the possibility of a causal link. Europe has relatively good results in terms of inequality and welfare in comparison with other continents and more specifically America, because these issues matter for European people. Still, research needs to be fostered in at least 5 areas that are detailed at the end of this review. Specific attention is devoted to the contribution of other social sciences and natural sciences (cognitive science) to the development of our knowledge for the field of inequality and welfare.
-
-
En France, la tradition de philosophie économique est brillamment illustrée : la publication d’un « état des lieux » en fournit le référent francophone, un panorama aussi complet que possible afin de s’y orienter. La critique que peut porter la philosophie économique se comprend comme un partage bien pensé entre bon et mauvais usage de la raison, comme méthodologie ainsi que comme ontologie, une discussion du rôle des sciences adjacentes (comme la psychologie), de l’usage des normes, des modes de raisonnement, l’explicitation des bases trop souvent dans l’ombre de l’analyse économique vue en ses champs d’application multiples : simulation, analyse institutionnelle, finance et autres enjeux.
Empirical studies of commercial relationships between firms reveal that (i) suppliers encounter situations in which they can gain in the short run by acting opportunistically—for example, delivering a lower quality than promised after being paid; and (ii) good conduct is sustained not exclusively by formal contracts but through informal relationships and the expectation of future business. In such relationships, the need to offer each supplier a large enough share of future business to deter cheating limits the number of supply relationships each buyer can sustain. The market thus becomes networked, with trade restricted to durable relationships. We propose and analyze a simple dynamic model to examine the structure of such overlapping relational contracts in equilibrium. Due to exogenous stochastic shocks, suppliers are not always able to make good on their promises even if they wish to, and so links are constantly dissolving and new ones are forming to take their place. This induces a Markov process on networks. We study how the stationary distribution over networks depends on the parameters—most importantly, the value of trade and the probability of shocks. When the rate at which shocks hit increases, as might happen during an economic downturn, maintaining incentive compatibility with suppliers requires promising each more future business and this necessitates maintaining fewer relationships with suppliers. This results in a destruction of social capital, and even if the rate of shocks later returns to its former level, it can take considerable time for social capital to be rebuilt because of search frictions. This creates a novel way for shocks to be persistent. It also suggests new connections between the theory of relational contracting, on the one hand, and the macroeconomic analysis of recessions, on the other.
