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Essays

Labour markets and the crisis of the European Monetary Union

by Bob Hancké, 29 April

Most observers think of the crisis of the European monetary union primarily as a crisis of failed fiscal discipline in a monetary union. Bob Hancke proposes a very different way of looking at (...)

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Reviews

Reassessing Enlightenment Economics

About: Sophus A. Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political Economy. Harvard University Press

by Michael Kwass, 25 March

Resurrecting the life of John Cary’s Essay on the State of England, a book which travelled all over Europe throughout the 18th century, S.A. Reinert challenges our understanding of Enlightenment (...)

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Essays

The Political Economy of Nazism

An Interview With Adam Tooze

by Nicolas Delalande, 28 February

In this interview with Books&Ideas, specialist of German economic history Adam Tooze answers questions on the history of the Third Reich : was there such a thing as a Nazi economic policy ? (...)

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Essays

Rebuilding a Monetary Union for Europe

From mutual insurance to fiscal federalism

by Shahin Vallee, 22 January

The crisis has cracked the intellectual and political consensus underpinning the architecture of the monetary union enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty. The mutualisation of economic risks cannot (...)

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Essays

The Day Income Gaps Were Finally Capped

by Jean Gadrey & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 15 October 2012

As we enter the twenty-second century, the need for capping income gaps to guarantee social cohesion and preserve the environment is no longer challenged. Yet only a century ago, this idea seemed (...)

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Reviews

Towards a Paradigm Shift in Economics?

About: André Orléan, L’empire de la valeur. Refonder l’économie, Seuil, 2011

by Franck Bessis, 10 October 2012

A specialist in monetary and financial issues, André Orléan has written a synthesis of his research that is intended as a handbook for the renewal of economic thought. His approach asks us to (...)

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Essays

Why Financial Crises Give Birth to Legends

by Nathan Marcus, 31 August 2012

In our haste to explain away the 2008 crisis, we have tended to put all the blame on bankers and regulators. This simplification, while soothing, might be just as misguided as Germans’ or (...)

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Dossiers

To Have or Not to Have

Poverty and Wealth in National Contexts

by Emilie Frenkiel, 15 July 2012

How to combat growing inequalities and injustice in a given country? Recent research suggests that solutions lie in better understanding and controlling access to education and working conditions (...)

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Reviews

Are Asian Economies Converging Towards American Capitalism?

About: Lechevalier, La Grande transformation du capitalisme japonais, Sciences Po, 2011 and Uemura & Isogai, Diversity and Transformations of Asian Capitalisms, Routledge, 2011

by Bernard Thomann & translated by John Zvesper, 23 May 2012

Should East Asia’s economic takeoff and the new hegemony of capitalism in that region be interpreted as parts of a convergence towards a global model based on Anglosphere economic liberalism, or (...)

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Reviews

Challenging the Libertarian Mind

About: Robert H. Frank, The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, Princeton.

by Jack Vromen, 12 April 2012

In a book that uses Darwinian insights alongside Adam Smith to change our thinking on economics, Robert H. Frank sets out to convince libertarians that more taxes can mean more growth and more (...)

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Reviews

Reflections of Value in Trading Rooms

About: Vincent Antonin Lépinay, Codes of Finance. Engineering derivatives in a global bank, Princeton.

by Horacio Ortiz, 3 April 2012

How does a bank work? Is information theory sufficient to the understanding of the complex interactions between clients and the different professions involved in creating financial products? (...)

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Reviews

French Economic Optimism

About: K. Berger et Valérie Rabault, Les Trente Glorieuses sont devant nous, Rue Fromentin Editions.

by Antoine Terrien & translated by John Zvesper, 22 March 2012

Karine Berger and Valérie Rabault don’t go along with the usual rhetoric of commentators on current economic developments. Instead of catching our attention with an alarming vision, they present (...)

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Reviews

Employment in France: Past and Future

About: P. Askenazy, Les décennies aveugles, Seuil.

by Matthieu Bunel & translated by Susannah Dale, 16 March 2012

Philippe Askenazy paints a very negative picture of 40 years of employment policy in France. He does not just criticise, but strives to draw recommendations for the future and find the path (...)

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Essays

How Should Executives Be Paid?

by Claire Célérier & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 13 March 2012

The explosion of executive pay in recent decades in all Western countries has been the object of considerable criticism. But it has also given rise to an important debate among economists. A (...)

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Essays

Tax Havens: A Guided Tour

An Interview with Gabriel Zucman

by Thomas Vendryes & translated by Susannah Dale, 24 January 2012

What sums of money are hidden in tax havens? By whom? And how? Using original methodology and data that has not yet been fully utilized, Gabriel Zucman sheds new light on these questions, in the (...)

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Dossiers

Is Protectionism the Solution?

by Florian Mayneris, 17 January 2012

Protectionism, a solution? Really? The economic crisis may not have turned the tide against liberalization, but we certainly cannot look at protectionism the same as we used (...)

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Reviews

Economics: a Cure for Pessimism

About: A. Delaigue et S. Ménia, Nos phobies économiques : ces peurs que l’économiste guérit mieux qu’un psy, Pearson Education.

by Emmanuel Bétry & translated by Michael C. Behrent, 22 December 2011

In a book devoted to economic anxieties in France, two economists well known in the blogosphere try to make their field accessible while conveying its (...)

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Reviews

Disorder in Modernity

About: R. White, Railroaded. The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, W.W. Norton & Company.

by Evelyne Payen-Variéras, 8 December 2011

Historians of business have looked at the development of railroads in the U.S. as a time of “managerial revolution.” Richard White’s latest book shows the role played by disorder and sheer (...)

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Reviews

The Economics of Carl Menger

About: Carl Menger, Recherches sur la méthode dans les sciences sociales et en économie politique en particulier, Presses de l’EHESS.

by Cyril Hédoin, 23 November 2011

All students of economics are aware that Carl Menger was one of the founding fathers of neoclassical economics. To mark the publication of a French translation of one of his major works, Cyril (...)

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Reviews

Get Yourself Into Debt!

About: L. Hyman, Debtor Nation. The History of America in Red Ink, Princeton University Press.

by Nicolas Delalande, 4 October 2011

The crisis currently affecting the United States is all the more serious when we consider how deep its roots go. The historian Louis Hyman shows how debt lodged itself at the heart of American (...)

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Essays

Protectionism and the Birth of Catalanism

by Jeanne Moisand, 16 September 2011

Critics of Catalanism often reduce the movement to a reaction based on economic and fiscal selfishness. Jeanne Moisand shows how Catalanism originally identified itself with the defence of (...)

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Essays

For a Social Investment Pact in Europe

by Anton Hemerijck & Bruno Palier & Frank Vanderbroucke, 15 June 2011

Three researchers react against the perspective for European countries of drastic austerity and emphasize the need, central to the Lisbon Agenda, for social investment. Investing in the skills of (...)

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Essays

The Active Solidarity Benefit and the Fight against Poverty

by Jean-Luc Outin & translated by John Zvesper, 1 June 2011

The economist Jean-Luc Outin reviews the history of welfare benefits in France, describes the issues surrounding the recent reform that combines the various benefits, and examines the potentially (...)

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Essays

Finance, an Inequality Factor

by Olivier Godechot, 15 April 2011

This study shows that, contrary to preconceptions, CEOs and stars of the sport and entertainment industry are not the first ones to blame for rising inequalities. The evolution of the wages of (...)

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Reviews

A Monetarist History of the Fed

About: Meltzer., 2003-2009, A History of the Federal Reserve, Vol. 1, 2 & 3, The University of Chicago Press.

by Éric Monnet, 11 October 2010

Economist Allan Meltzer has written a two-volume history of the American central bank that is both a treasure trove of new source material and a second great monetarist historical (...)

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Essays

Towards a Paradigm Shift in Economics?

A response to James K. Galbraith

by Cyril Hédoin, 17 June 2010

Where will the revival of economic theory come from ? From the margins or from the center? In responding to James K. Galbraith’s essay, Cyril Hédoin maintains that the center of economics already (...)

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Essays

The Food Crisis Is Not Over Yet

by Antoine Bouët & David Laborde Debucquet, 27 May 2010

Although agricultural protectionism is a major obstacle to development in some Southern countries, it cannot be blamed for the food crisis of 2007-2008. Growing trade liberalisation in the (...)

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Essays

The decline of manufacturing and its regional consequences in UK

by Tim Leunig, 4 May 2010

Like in other developed countries, manufacturing has sharply declined in Britain as a share of total income over the past century. While the movement stagnated in the 2000’s in France and in the (...)

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Essays

The Global Financial Crisis and the Evolution of Corporate Governance in Japan

by Hideaki Miyajima, 12 November 2009

Japan’s experience over the past year is probably more similar to that of Germany, whose rapid economic downturn was caused by a precipitous decline in exports, than to that of the U.S. and (...)

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Essays

Benefits and costs of free trade for less developed countries

by Nina Pavcnik, 5 November 2009

Trade liberalization seems to have increased growth and income in developing countries over the past thirty years, through lower prices, firm-level efficiency gains and improved access to foreign (...)

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Essays

Antidumping protection hurts good firms

by Hylke Vandenbussche, 27 October 2009

Antidumping measures have become an important form of commercial protection for countries, regulated by WTO. The effect of this kind of protection on firm-level productivity is highly (...)

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Reviews

Karl Polanyi, the Market and Socialism

by Arnault Skornicki, 22 October 2009

Is society sentenced to endure the law of the market? The publication of a number of essays by economist Karl Polanyi hitherto unpublished in French gives us the opportunity to re-discover (...)

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Reviews

What Globalisation Has Done to Wine

About: M.-F. Garcia-Parpet, Le Marché de l’excellence, Seuil.

by Pierre-Marie Chauvin, 27 July 2009

Confronted with transformations in the global market, does French wine still define itself as a product of excellence? By examining the “crisis” of the French model, Marie-France Garcia-Parpet, a (...)

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Essays

Can We Trust the “Society of Distrust”?

by Éloi Laurent, 16 April 2009

Confidence and trust have flown away: such seems to be the inevitable conclusion during these times of economic stagnation and collapsing banking system. It has thus become urgent to define more (...)

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Essays

Wages, taxation system and distribution of domestic chores

by Elena Stancanelli, 20 March 2009

Domestic chores and paid work are unequally distributed between men and women. Elena Stancanelli shows that the taxation system has an impact on the allocation of chores between spouses. Joint (...)

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Essays

Labour force participation of women and « marriage market » in the USA

by Shoshana Grossbard, 20 March 2009

In the USA, husbands are on average two years older than their wives. When people born during a baby boom are ready to get married, there are more women on the “marriage market” than men, their (...)

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Reviews

The Economics of Singular Goods

by Pierre-Paul Zalio, 3 July 2008

Economic theory makes the price the common measure of all goods. However, does it apply to singular goods? Is it the least help when we must choose a good restaurant, a good lawyer, or yet, the (...)

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Essays

Robert Putnam and the New American Indifference

by Éloi Laurent, 20 November 2007

A poisonous theory has emerged from the most unlikely of sources: empirical evidence in hand, a progressive American political scientist maintains that racial diversity leads to civic (...)

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Reviews

The New Class Struggle?

Economic Inequality and Political Polarization in the United States

by Michael C. Behrent, 14 October 2006

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