Crossing the holding of views and their weighting.

The theory of informal transactions in bureaucracies: some qualifications

The ambition of the paper is certainly not to change substantially Breton and Wintrobe‘s story. We can be sure that many of the differentpieces that they have forged and assembled in their book v ill be replaced or modified in the course of time. This is the fate of all interesting theories. But only time-consuming and collective efforts can achieve this. The only ambition of this paper is a small beginning in that direction. Section II of the paper compares some of the mechanisms, others than trust, vhich have been proposed to explain self-enforcing exchanges. Then, Breton 8nd Wint robe's modelling of trust and trust accumulation is looked at critically in Section III. Section IV presents …

The logic of pressure groups and federalism

Constructing a complete model of the relations between politicians, bureaucrats, interest groups, and voters is not an easy task. Consequently most economic models of government have to do away with some of these relations. One way to simplify matters is the so-called group theory of politics (or "pluralism”) which assumes that the influence of interest groups dominates policy-making. In political sciencel, where this line of thinking has been important for a long time, the theory is not very striking, since it isnot always clear that an interest group is anything more than a number of individuals, or firms, who share a common concern, Lg. an interest category. Thus, the theory can be made …

La tendance politique des grandes villes : conséquence ou cause de la répartition de la population dans les agglomérations ?

Référence interne IREDU : 85030; Les élections municipales françaises de 1983 se sont traduites par un succès particulièrement marqué des partis de droite ou de centre-droit dans les grandes villes, et de façon particulièrement sensible à Paris1. A cette occasion, on a vu réapparaître dans les commentaires politiques l’idée que. en raison de la répartition de la population dans les agglomérations, les villes-centres sont plus ou moins vouées à voter "à droite". Préciser et vérifier empiriquement cette hypothèse est le premier objet de notre étude.Mais celle-ci a un deuxième objet. En admettant qu'elle ait effectivement uneincidence politique, la répartition de la population d'une agglomérat…

A comparison of internal and international barriers to trade

In a world in which barriers to trade at all levels - international and internal - are mostly a by-product of the implementation by governments of different regulatory policies to deal with domestic or local problems, the mechanisms that are set in motion by the operation of competition among the governments inhabiting the different jurisdictional tiers of federal countries lead to outcomes that are different from those generated by the 'agreed-upon' rules that govern the relations of national governments with each other in matters of international trade. A model is used to compare two ways of dealing with the external damages that are consequent on the pursuit of beneficial domestic regula…

Thinking about something else: a rationality-compatible mechanism with macroscopic consequences

International audience

Competition and cooperation of the implementation of divine prescriptions

Constitutional Implications of electoral assumptions

International audience

L'originalité de juglar

This is a version, slightly corrected in 2011 with regard to form, of a thèse complémentaire defended at the University of Paris in March 1966 (at the time, writing a "complementary thesis" in a domain adjacent to, but distinct from, economics proper was a requirement added to the doctorate in economics for participating in the national competition to become a university professor in economics). The subject of the thesis, supposedly in the domain of economic history, had been proposed by Professor Jean Lhomme. The contribution of Clément Juglar (1819-1905), whose name has remained associated with the business cycle, was deemed particularly important and original by Joseph Schumpeter in his …

Science économique et sens commun : trois thèses sur leurs relations réciproques

Trois thèses sur la relation entre science économique et sens commun sont défendues dans cet essai. La première est que la science économique trouve dans la critique des vérités supposées du sens commun un facteur providentiel de légitimité. A cette fin, elle s'est en partie employée à révéler et expliciter des mécanismes sous-jacents surprenants ou paradoxaux par rapport aux idées reçues. La deuxième thèse est que l'opposition entre le langage théorique et celui du sens commun constitue pour l'essentiel, malgré sa popularité, un faux problème. Il y a moins opposition entre deux langages que, très largement, complémentarité. La troisième thèse est programmatique: la réflexion philosophique …

Don't tell us: the demand for secretive bahaviour

International audience

Accumulation and destruction of the trust ? : Popperian inspiration plan

When, following other social sciences, economists address the mechanism of trust, they typically focus on the search of a justification or a foundation for trusting, the implicit starting point of the process they have in mind being zero trust, or distrust. By contrast, the present paper, inspired by the philosophy of Popper, suggests, as a starting point for trust, an individual decision associated with what Popper calls a conjecture - that is, a kind of theory - on how the individual (potentially) trusted "functions". The conjecture requires no justification but only the test of its implications. In turn, the decision to trust or to distrust does not reflect in a mechanical or passive way…

Assigning powers in the European Union in the light of yardstick competition among governments

Intergovernmental yardstick competition is based on voters comparing the performance of their own elected government with what obtains in other jurisdictions. This mechanism can produce results that are favourable to voters but it may also be the case that it has consequences that are not favourable. Both cases are given some attention in the essay. Someof their implications for the assignment of powers in the European Union are then derived.

Vertical competition in a unitary state

The paper is concerned with what Albert Breton, in his theory of competitive federalism has called vertical competition, that is, competition between governments situated at different levels. However its setting is government systems that are unitary rather than federal and structured around three or four levels of government rather than the two often implicitly assumed. The paper tries to show that these characteristics may offer a partial solution to what is perhaps the major problem raised by vertical competition, that is, how winners in a vertical contest get protected against retaliation by the losers when the latter can change the rules (which are not constitutionally entrenched). In …

Instrumentalism in economy

L'instrumentalisme n'a jamais été complètement absent du débat méthodologique ou épistémologique et il est revenu au premier plan récemment grâceaux écrits de Boland [1979][19S2] et à la controverse que ces écrits ont suscitée (en voir les références dans MST, chapitre 6) . La section II sera consacrée à un examen de quelques interprétations courantes de l'instrumentalisme, la section III à la place qu'il peut prendre dans la réflexion sur l'économique, compte-tenu des particularités de cette discipline, et la conclusion à quelques brèves remarques ou suggestions, inspirées par l'examen de sa fonction en économique, sur la signification plus générale qu'on peut lui attribuer.

Accounting for centralisation in the European Union: Niskanen, Monnet or Thatcher?

La méthode hypothético-déductive et les raisonnements en termes de 'comme si' en économique: illustration par la théorie moderne du marché financier"

International audience

Free riding as méchanism

Free-riding is methodologically puzzling. It is at the same time important and often not observed as an actual phenomenon. The paper explores the possibility of treating free riding as an underlying or causal mechanism. As such, free riding is to be treated as part of the real world rather than of the world of models or theories. However, the free riding mechanism is particularly prone to operate not in isolation but together with other mechanisms. This feature has consequences on issues such as empirical content, testability or relevance. These questions are discussed in the light of some recent work in philosophy of science and with special attention given to the development of experiment…

Electeur médian

La logique de l'action collective, de Mancur Olson

Bijural services as factors of production

This study is primarily concerned with the security of transactions and contracts in contexts in which there is more than one legal system - in bijural (or multijural) societies - and with the contribution that bijural lawyers can make to the security of transactions and contracts, that is with the productivity of bijural lawyers. It is, as a consequence, focused on the demand for bijurallawyers as factor inputs in the production of contractual security and, at one remove, transaction security.1 To be in a position to proceed with this analysis, certain basic concepts must be clarified and the domain of the inquiry delineated. We devote the Introduction to these tasks.(...)

Le multijuridisme: manifestations, causes et conséquences

National audience; .

Comment on interjurisdictional regulatory competition in Canada.

The assignment of powers in an open-ended European Union

Presented at CESIFO Conference “A Constitution for the EU”, February 2003; International audience; A major characteristic of the European Union is its transitional or evolving nature, in particular with regard to the assignment of powers between the two main levels of government. More precisely, under current constitutional arrangements, this evolving nature takes the form of an integration process which tends to be monotonous, that is, which can only with great difficulty be reversed. The paper is mainly devoted to the explanation of how this comes about and what effects this has on other features of the process. As a concluding remark, however, it suggests that an additional criterion for…

Nations conspiring against themselves: an interpretation of European integration

Accounting for centralization in the European Union : Niskanen, Monnet or Thatcher ?

Centralisation at the level of the European Union takes the form, not so much of increased, staff or budget, but of enlarged responsibilities and an increased share in regulation. The paper first reviews possible explanations of that trend that are based on a view of bureaucracy inspired by, or closely related, to William Niskanen's. It then turns to a discussion of the extent to which any characteristic of the EU machinery can develop without the acquiescenceor agency of a majority of the member-state governments, and of the discussion of whether centralisation as a process is not simply a way to implement, in the manner suggested by Jean Monnet, the "ever closer union" that was - and, to …