The computational economics of Jacques Lesourne

“Le calcul économique”, by Jacques Lesourne, was first published in 1964. It was then an outstanding volume, containing a clear and general approach to cost-benefit analysis and its links with (a) the optimal allocation of time (a theory proposed by Lesourne before Becker, 1965), (b) the introduction of the State in a general equilibrium approach, (c) the introduction of time, uncertainty and transaction costs in Pareto-optimal as well as in sub-optimal situations. With its second edition (1972), the book has “increased in wisdom and stature”. Enlarged by 250 pages, above all devoted to numerous and distinct applications, it now becomes a handbook of computational economics, in fact the most complete and rigorous presentation published on the subject to date. I shall take into account the fact that the first edition was not translated into English to review it as an entirely new book. For analytical purposes, it can be divided into three parts: (1) The foundations, (2) The superstructures, (3) The applications.     

Improving the Decision Making Process in the Design Project by Capitalizing on Company’s Crucial Knowledge

In this paper, we propose a method to locate the companys crucial knowledge for improving the quality of decision making in a design project. It comprises of a preliminary survey regarding the approach that has been carried out at automotive company for identifying the crucial knowledge, aiming at choosing and justifying the necessary investment to capitalize on the knowledge. This method will then be used as basis for a dialogue between the stakeholders involved in the identification of the crucial knowledge developed and/or used in a design project.     

Commodity and asset demands with and without quantity constraints in the labour market

This paper reformulates the consumer's decision-making problem in a temporary framework with and without quantity constraints in the labour market in such a way as to define a complete demand system which includes consumption, labour and saving. Then, based on American and Canadian data (1948–1980), this extended complete demand system is estimated using a priori theoretical properties. Quantity constraints in the labour market cannot be rejected, and marginal propensities to consume out of labour income are very different from the marginal propensities out of non-labour income. Temporal separability is rejected and Slutsky conditions are preserved.     

The signaling role of policy actions

In an economy affected by shocks that are imperfectly known, the monetary instrument takes on a dual stabilizing role: as a policy response that directly influences the economy and as a vehicle for information that reveals the central bank's assessment to firms. Because mark-up shocks cannot be neutralized by monetary policy, providing firms with more information about these shocks exacerbates their reaction and creates a larger distortion. Recognizing the signaling role of its instrument, the central bank distorts its policy response in order to optimally shape firms’ beliefs. While providing firms with more information is always detrimental to the output gap, it has a more subtle effect on price dispersion depending on whether information is provided through the transparency channel or through the signaling channel. Although more transparency is always detrimental to welfare, the information that is conveyed by the monetary instrument improves welfare when firms’ coordination is highly valuable.     

Land titling policy and soil conservation in the northern uplands of Vietnam

In Vietnam, a quasi-private property regime has been established in 1993 with the issuance of exchangeable and mortgageable long-term land use right certificates. Using primary qualitative and quantitative data collected in a mountainous district of Northern Vietnam, this paper investigates the role of the land policy in the adoption of soil conservation technologies by farmers. This issue is of crucial importance in the region where population growth and growing market demands have induced farmers to intensify agricultural production. While poverty has been reduced, environmental problems such as soil erosion, landslides, and declining soil fertility have become more severe over the past years. Our findings suggest that despite farmers’ awareness of erosion, soil conservation technologies are perceived as being economically unattractive; therefore, most upland farmers continue to practice the prevailing erosion-prone cultivation system. Focusing on agroforestry as one major soil conservation option, we estimate household and plot-level econometric models to empirically assess the determinants of adoption. We find that the possession of a formal land title positively influences adoption, but that the threat of land reallocations in villages discourages adoption by creating uncertainty and tenure insecurity. The analyses reveal that these two effects interact with each other but are of small magnitude. We conclude that the issuance of land titles is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite to encouraging the adoption of soil conservation practices. However, current practices remain economically unattractive to farmers. This deficiency needs to be addressed by interdisciplinary research and complemented by strong efforts by local authorities to promote sustainable land use.     

Developing a smartphone app to enhance Oxfam's supply chain visibility

This paper reports on the development of a smartphone app designed to give drivers and managers in a charity organisation greater visibility of transport, donation bank and shop stock in time and space. Trials of the app with samples of drivers and shop managers across three counties in the UK showed that users' understanding of vehicle activity and how time was utilised in the business was enhanced. The app also informed their decision-making, aided some collaboration and helped in their understanding of donation bank and shop performance, with one region altering their collection schedules. The quality of 3G signal was an issue in certain areas which impeded performance and the rules by which the messaging platform should be used in such a tool need careful consideration.     

Controversies as governing processes in technology assessment

The first part of this article shows that in actual practice technology assessment (TA) has clearly moved from its basic conception as a set of objective methodologies developed and used by experts, to a standpoint which increasingly recognizes the need to make room for public participation. This has led to a view of controversies as informal processes of TA. The second part of the article argues for a further step, namely to conceive of TA as a social proces taking place in a space largely defined by controversies. Correlatively, it provides some initial elements for an analytical understanding of controvtersies as the ‘limiting factor’ of TA.     

Urban Structure and Environmental Externalities

The objective of this paper is to analyze policy design for air pollution management in the spatial context of urban development. We base our analysis on the paper of Ogawa and Fujita (Reg Sci Urban Econ 12:161–196, 1982), which offers a proper theoretical framework of non-monocentric urban land use using static microeconomic theory where the city structure is endogenous. First, we show that when households internalize industrial pollution in their residential location choice, spatialization within the city is reinforced. This impacts directly the emissions of greenhouse gases from commuting. Then, we analyze policy instruments in order to achieve optimal land use pattern when the policy maker has to manage both industrial and commuting related polluting emissions, that interact through the land market.