Activités immatérielles et relationnelles : quels nouveaux enjeux de régulation pour les secteurs et les territoires ?

The paper aims to shed a renewed light on structural obstacles restraining growth by focusing on the dynamics of intangible and relational activities and on the possible obstacles to their own development. This leads to consider how crucial can be the role of institutional measures in overcoming such obstacles. These measures have to do with sectors and territories considered as historical outcomes in which externalities can be dealt with. They also have consequences on the way competences and borders of these sectors and territories have been defined until now. Such a process takes place in a necessity to consider governance as the new relevant logic of action.     

Effets d’agglomération et dynamisme économique local : approfondissement récent des connaissances

In 2001, major publications improved knowledge about agglomeration outputs on three aspects: measure of concentration in absolute volume, especially in calculating the effect size of a city labour market; the respective weight of concentration factors, particularly the average speed of transportation systems; the impact of concentration on labour productivity.     

Investissement étranger et développement régional : le cas de l’industrie automobile au Portugal

This paper tries to conceptualise the role of inward investment to the regional development process. The stereotype of the plundering of regional resources by foreign capital seems, in many cases, to belong to the past. Major firms, such as the transnationals, tend to emulate some organisational models characteristic to SME, thus establishing strong linkages with regional firms and local institutions. The study of the automobile cluster polarised by Autoeuropa (a VW plant) and its value chain allowed stressing the technological and organisational innovation in the Autoeuropa suppliers as a result of collaboration and co-operation forms of relation in the network. Among the most stimulating conclusions, one may highlight the existence of relevant forms of trade and untraded interdependencies between Autoeuropa and a restricted group of suppliers, which contradict the “cathedral in the desert” stereotype and confirm a new type of relation between inward investment and the regional development process.     

Développement et gouvernance aux échelles locales et métropolitaines : une analyse comparative nord-américaine

In this article, we present the results of a study of the linkages between local initiatives and metropolitan institutions in their respective practice for development and governance. The research was carried out on four North-Americans cities —Boston and Pittsburgh in United-States ; Montreal and Toronto in Canada. The results lead us to mitigate our judgment about the participation of local initiatives in the overall regulation of metropolitan space. Beyond a local influence on some aspects of development related to social questions, our study do not permit to valid a popular hypothesis in liberal circles of thought which sees in the development of civil society organizations a real improvement in the capacity of the civil society to really participate in the metropolitan mechanisms of development and governance. At the very most, these organizations create local innovative strategies that procure external resources for the fight against exclusion.     

Planification de l’offre de soins et télémédecine

The existence of geographical disparities in the French supply of medical care begs the question of the adjustment between needs and effective access to medical care. This access depends on the sharing out of financial resources, first between regions and second between medical infrastructures in each region. The two priorities of the government in the field of Health, which are equality in medical care access and the control of medical public spending, may obviously be conflicting. The concentration of medical activities in some regions and the agglomeration of specialized hospitals in urban centers can be observed. So the methods used by the government to plan medical supply seem to be inefficient in resolving this geographical imbalance. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the field of Health appears to be an innovative solution. In particular, the development of telemedicine may resolve the problem of medical supply concentration. The first contribution of the paper is to develop a theoretical model in order to explain the French disparities in hospital medical care access between urban and rural areas in the same region. It describes the allocation of public funds to hospitals in a region, which determines the medical care supply in this region. We show that the optimal allocation mechanism leads to large disparities between the two areas in terms of quality of medical care access and of utility. Second, we introduce telemedicine into our model to measure its effect on the inequality in medical care access. We show that telemedicine increases regional utility only if the urban area has a great advantage in terms of medical infrastructures. This result implies that telemedicine has to be considered as an alternative to public policies attempting to re-allocate the funds between the two areas. We then propose some public policy recommendations concerning the development of telemedicine.     

TIC,diffusion spatiale des connaissances et agglomération

The decrease in information costs induced by the development of ICT would make innovative activities free of spatial constraint. However, based on both the recent theoretical approaches and the first empirical observations, this paper rejects the idea of the end of distance. The economic geography models, as well as the analyses of ICT impact on interpersonal relations, consider opposite forces that may generate either a spatial dispersion of economic activities or conversely a reinforcement of agglomerations. The empirical studies likely to evaluate these forces now essentially highlight the complementarity between ICT and face to face contacts, predicting the somewhat persistence of distance.     

Le conseil en agriculture : un investissement immatériel entre développement sectoriel et développement territorial

Agriculture is subject to political measures that follow, on the one hand, a sector-based development rationale, and on the other hand, a territorial development rationale. The confrontation of both rationales generates new requirements concerning intangible investments in agriculture: (i) there is a growing demand for advice as well as for new knowledge, which would make it possible to accommodate various regulatory instructions that are not necessarily compatible. In addition to this, (ii) public and semi-public technical support organisms should address a broader public. But analyses of ongoing reorganisations in five selected EU countries reveal that sector-based frameworks are insufficiently adapted to these requirements of territorial development. This ill-adaptation is nowhere compensated by emerging local institutions which would enable people having a farming activity to benefit from the new type of intangible investments they need.     

L’économie de la qualité, en ses secteurs,ses territoires et ses mythes

This text proposes a “régulationniste” framework to analyze the emergence of an “economy of quality” in the agrofood system, that is of a new productive model centered on the differentiation of the qualities. Methodological and analytical propositions of more general reach are confronted with the stylized facts which one can establish in this domain. The notion of productive model allows a joint analysis of the dynamics of the productive systems and of the institutional arrangements. The notion of “space of regulation” refers to the analysis of the “sector-based” and “territorial” dimensions of the mode of regulation. Sectors (agrofood chains considered both as productive and governance structures) and territories (considered in the same dimensions) are co-constructed. Transformation of the regime of accumulation integrating immaterial values modifies both nature and boundaries of sectors and territories. Two main lines of innovation appear, the one aiming at specifying always more in depth the functional characteristics of the food services by exploiting the scientific and technological developments, the other integrating identity attributes. Crisis of particular nature characterize this evolution.     

La régulation des mouvements trans-frontières de déchets. Un dispositif à consolider

Following nasty affairs of wastes exports toward developing countries, international agreements (notably the Basel Convention) have been passed to try to regulate the international movements. A statistical overview (for the year 1998) of the official movements is given, but other traffics are existing and are very difficult to estimate. Some factors explain these exchanges and traffics, then the vulnerability of some countries; the waste movements generally follow the economic and social “slopes” (the “differentials”) between countries. More precisely, how to discover these traffics? What is the risk for the offender? The monitoring of the plan or the command-and-control process has to be improved. Moreover some legal aspects have to be clarified. Affairs (since 1990) and cases of substances and products are briefly reminded. More globally the requirements for a more effective regulation are brought into question.     

Structures spatiales de l’économie montréalaise : le high-tech joue-t-il un rôle ?

Which are the economic activities more likely to structure the metropolitan area? This is the principal question addressed in this research taking its empirical substance from the example of Montreal (Canada). We use 1996 sectoral employment data by census tract. The methodology used—gravity model combined with the principal components analysis (PCA)—allows us to identify the agglomeration of some activities and the tendency of co-location of such activities. High-tech activities are analyzed in the first instance. Their role in the spatial structure of the local economy varies according the importance of immediate proximity. However, the most outstanding result of this analysis is the extent to which the spatial pattern is linked to the sectoral pattern.     

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roblems is suggested.A program was written with this method.It catches the interface of the multi-medium fluid with levelset and deals with the interface with the modified ghost fluid method.Some Riemann problems and problems about shock wave impacting the     

L’évolution de la pensée géographique au 20e siècle

This paper traces the involvement of theoretical ideas in the history of human geography during the last century. The authors address major theoretical advances and the practices they begot both in Europe and in the US since the days of Ratzel, Reclus and Semple. The paper is also one of the last publications by Peter Gould, who died in 2000. Since Peter loved all things French, we are convinced that he would have been proud of the translated essay.     

Linearisierungsverfahren für Standortplanungsprobleme mit nichtlinearen Transportkosten

Zusammenfassung  Dieser Aufsatz analysiert das Standortplanungsproblem in der Ebene mit stückweise linearen bzw. stückweise konstanten Transportkosten, die an praxisrelevante Frachtsatztabellen angelehnt sind. Für diese nicht-differenzierbaren Transportkostenfunktionen werden statische und dynamische Verfahren der Linearisierung vorgestellt, die auf Durchschnitts- und Grenzkostenapproximationen basieren. Diese Verfahren werden in einer umfangreichen numerischen Untersuchung mit Ergebnissen verglichen, die sich durch Approximationen der Transportkostenfunktionen mittels linearer und geometrischer Regression ergeben. Die numerischen Untersuchungen zeigen, dass die dynamischen Linearisierungen sehr gute Resultate liefern, wobei die relative Abweichung von den minimalen Transportkosten von der Anzahl betrachteter Abnehmerorte und der jeweils verwendeten Initialisierung abh?ngt.      

La territorialisation des activités scientifiques dans le Sud-Ouest européen (France,Espagne, Portugal)

For more than twenty years, most of European countries are involved in a process of regional decentralization of their higher education systems. This process follows a previous set of universities creations in the sixties years, answering the increase of students number. We examine here three countries of South-West of Europe (Spain, France and Portugal) and we link the history of universities creation in different regions and towns and the study of scientific publications. This allow us to evaluate the effects of the territorialization process on the current “scientific map”.     

Is Numérairology the Future of Monetary Economics?

The paper discusses some fundamental problems in monetary economics associated with the determination and role of the numéraire. The issues are introduced by formalising a proposal, attributed to Eisler, to remove the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates by unbundling the numéraire and medium of exchange/means of payment functions of money. The monetary authorities manage the exchange rate between the numéraire (‘sterling’) and the means of payment (‘drachma’). The short nominal interest rate on sterling bonds can then be used to target stability for the sterling price level. The paper puts question marks behind two key bits of conventional wisdom in contemporary monetary economics. The first is the assumption that the monetary authorities define and determine the numéraire used in private transactions. The second is the proposition that price stability in terms of that numéraire is the appropriate objective of monetary policy. The paper also discusses the merits of the next step following the decoupling of the numéraire from the currency: doing away with currency altogether—the cashless economy. Because the unit of account plays such a central role in New-Keynesian models with nominal rigidities, monetary economics needs to devote more attention to numérairology—the study of the individual and collective choice processes that govern the adoption of a unit of account and its role in economic behaviour.