Building Core Competencies in Crisis Management Through Organizational Learning: The Case of the French Nuclear Power Producer

Drawing from the resource-based theory of the firm, we develop a conceptual framework to show how organizational learning helps companies build a set of embedded knowledge assets (core competencies). The evolution of the core competencies over time depends on the ability of the firm to maintain a high level of organizational learning. In this article, we take the case of the French nuclear industry to illustrate how the most powerful French electricity producer and supplier, EDF, had succeeded, for 20 years, in building a core competence in nuclear risk and crisis management. Referring to the future deregulation of the European electricity market and the fierce competition of substitute resources of energy, the article shows that nuclear safety is a crucial issue for the survival of EDF and the European nuclear industry. We explore how EDF has learned from Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 to improve and enrich continuously its core competence in risk and crisis management. We distinguished three phases in the learning process of EDF: the technical phase (1977–1982), the human phase (1982–1989), and the cultural phase (1989–1995). Each phase is analyzed as a step toward a greater awareness of the multidimensional nature of risk and crisis management.     

What do we really know about fiscal sustainability in the EU? A panel data diagnostic

We assess the sustainability of public finances in the EU-15 over the period 1970–2006 using stationarity and cointegration analysis. Specifically, we use panel unit root tests of the first and second generation allowing in some cases for structural breaks. We also apply modern panel cointegration techniques developed by Pedroni (Oxf Bull Econ Stat 61(1):653–670, 1999; Econom Theory 20(3):597–625, 2004), generalized by Banerjee and Carrion-i-Silvestre (Cointegration in panel data with breaks and cross-section dependence, European Central Bank, Working Paper 591, 2006) and Westerlund and Edgerton (Econ Lett 97(3):185–190, 2007), to a structural long-run equation between general government expenditures and revenues. While estimations point to fiscal sustainability being an issue in some countries, fiscal policy was sustainable both for the EU-15 panel set, and within sub-periods (1970–1991 and 1992–2006).     

Modelling Cross-Border Integration: The Role of Borders as a Resource

Cross-border integration is a multifaceted as well as contextually contingent process. While various conceptualisations have been developed, the theoretical foundations of the concept appear insufficient in order to grasp the very significance of such a process of cross-border regionalism. In order to help make sense of the diversity of configurations observed, this article seeks to deconstruct the concept according to the role played by the border as a resource and to develop a theoretical framework based on two contrasted models of cross-border integration. The underlying hypothesis is that cross-border integration does not derive from the mere opening of national borders that it supposedly helps at the same time to remove, but stems from the strategic behaviour of actors who actively mobilise borders as resources. The first model, called ‘geo-economic’, is mainly based on the mobilisation of the border as a differential benefit and aims to generate value out of asymmetric cross-border interactions. In doing so, this process of functional integration is likely to increase cross-border socio-economic disparities and leads to cooperation oriented towards instrumental purposes such as increasing the economic utility of the border or regulating negative externalities. The second model, called ‘territorial project’, emphasises the border resources that involve a convergence of both sides of a border, either through a process of hybridisation/innovation or via the territorial and symbolic recognition borders entail. In this process of place-making that transcends the border, mutual understanding and trust between the actors is seen to be key and the willingness to cooperate essential. Conceived as ideal-types, the two models of cross-border integration are contrasted and to some extent contradictory. They are however not mutually exclusive and different kinds of combinations are examined based on concrete examples.     

Short Sales Constraints, Liquidity and Price Discovery: An Empirical Analysis on the Paris Bourse

In the Paris Bourse some stocks are traded on a spot basis, while others are traded on a monthly settlement basis. The latter are likely to be less subject to leverage and short sales constraints. We empirically analyse the consequences of this difference for the order flow and the return process. Consistent with the theoretical analysis of Diamond and Verrechia (1987), we find that market sell orders are less frequent on the spot market than on the monthly settlement market (although not very significantly) and that the spot market reflects good news (significantly) faster than bad news.     

Sharing Money Creation in a Monetary Union*

How to share money creation among the members of the European Monetary Union? To address this issue, we construct a two‐country New Open‐economy Macroeconomics model of an asymmetric monetary union with an incomplete financial market and home bias in consumption. We consider two sharing rules consistent with the current regulations of the European System of Central Banks. First, each participating National Central Bank supplies half of the European Central Bank determined money creation in the monetary union. Secondly, each National Central Bank adapts the national increase in money demand, under the constraint that the total money creation in the union does not exceed the level determined by the ECB for the whole union. We show that the current sharing rule, which ignores countries’ heterogeneity, is superior in terms of welfare. The key role of the current account is emphasized. It proves an efficient decentralized mechanism for allocation of money.     

Weighted norm inequalities and hedging in incomplete markets

Let be an -valued special semimartingale on a probability space with canonical decomposition . Denote by the space of all random variables , where is a predictable -integrable process such that the stochastic integral is in the space of semimartingales. We investigate under which conditions on the semimartingale the space is closed in , a question which arises naturally in the applications to financial mathematics. Our main results give necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the closedness of in . Most of these conditions deal with BMO-martingales and reverse H?lder inequalities which are equivalent to weighted norm inequalities. By means of these last inequalities, we also extend previous results on the F?llmer-Schweizer decomposition.     

Self-Insurance, Self-Protection and Market Insurance within the Dual Theory of Choice

As demonstrated by Ehrlich and Becker [1972], Expected Utility Theory predicts that market insurance and self-insurance are substitutes, whilst surprisingly, market insurance and self-protection could be complements. This article examines the robustness of this conclusion, as well as its extensions under the Dual Theory of Choice [Yaari, 1987]. In particular, the non-reliability of self-insurance activities, background risk and asymmetric information are considered.