Geopolitics after geopolitics: A French experience

What can be the goal for a state that is no more an empire in an environment where empire cannot be a goal anymore? In this paper, it is argued that there is a classic French geopolitical stance which has conserved a large part of its characteristics over centuries and which can be compared to the attitudes of other European states. It is precisely because this long‐lasting, consistent set of ideas and behaviours is coming apart that it is urgent to put it in the perspective of its own historical development. After some general remarks on the particular part played by France on the European geopolitical checkerboard, the fate of the ‘special relationship’ between France and Africa, as a dramatic case study of the widening gap between the traditional imperial stance and newly emerging realities, is considered. The third aspect of this reflection is an analysis of the original characteristics of the European Union in terms of international relations and the impact of this new context on the evolution of the French state.     

Measuring the Impact of Various Income Sources on the Link between Inequality and Development: Implications for the Kuznets Curve

To understand the link between inequality and development, a decomposition of the Gini index by income sources is used that emphasizes the role of three components measuring the impact of the shares of the sources, the degree to which they are unequally distributed, and their correlation with total income. Such a breakdown explains why the rising section of the Kuznets curve is mainly the consequence of the increasing share of wages while its declining section reflects the decreasing share of entrepreneurial income and the negative correlation between transfers and total income. The data sources were provided by the International Labour Office.     

Recent maritime research projects on the Lower Loire area

This paper deals with the problems of access to an estuary port, the security of navigation and services such as towage provided for shipping. The port triptych is also considered — the port itself, its foreland and hinterland — showing to what extent the port can be seen as a fundamental feature of the regional economy.     

Fiscal policy independence in a European Monetary Union

Do plans for a monetary union in Europe call for limits on the freedom of the country members of the union to use fiscal policy? In order to provide a tentative answer, we simulate the IMF model MULTIMOD, given various shocks, in the case of a European Monetary Union consisting only of France and Germany. The results clearly indicate the possible value of allowing unfettered use of fiscal policy in both countries. The reasons lie partly in differences in the initial position of the two, partly in differences in their preferences. We also examine the change in the policy significance of the current account in the monetary union. Current account imbalances clearly cease to have the same significance in a monetary union; but they do not therefore become irrelevant.     

Monetary equilibria over an infinite horizon

Summary. Money provides liquidity services through a cash-in-advance constraint. The exchange of commodities and assets extends over an infinite horizon under uncertainty and a sequentially complete asset market. Monetary policy sets the path of rates of interest and accommodates the demand for balances through open market operations or loans. A public authority, which, most pertinently, inherits a strictly positive public debt, raises revenue from taxes and seignorage, and it distributes possible budget surpluses to individuals through transfers. Competitive equilibria exist, under mild solvency conditions. But, for a fixed path of rates of interest, there is a non-trivial multiplicity of equilibrium paths of prices of commodities. Determinacy requires that, subject to no-arbitrage and in addition to rates of interest, the prices of state-contingent revenues be somehow determined.Received: 16 April 2003, Revised: 16 January 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D50, E40, E50.We are grateful to Pietro Reichlin, Rabah Amir, Tomoyuki Nakajima, Armando Dominioni and Leo Ferraris for helpful discussions and their reading of preliminary drafts. The usual disclaimer applies. An earlier version was circulated as [4].     

Monopoly and optimal nonlinear pricing: the case of route monopolies and heteregeneous demand in the air transport market

This paper explores the robustness of the one-dimensional screening model with respect to increasing the number of instruments and the number of characteristics. We study a case of nonlinear pricing (2 instruments (2 routes on which the airline provides customers with services), 2 characteristics (demand of services on these routes) and two values per characteristic (a low or a high demand of services on these routes)) and we show that none of the conclusions of the one-dimensional analysis remain valid. In particular, upward incentive compatibility constraint may be binding at the optimum. As a consequence, they may be distortion at the top of the distribution. In addition to this, we show that the optimal solution often requires bundling, while it is sometimes optimal for the monopolist to produce only one good or to exclude some buyers from the market. This means that the monopolist cannot fully apply his monopoly power and is better off selling two goods independently. We define all possible solutions in the case of a quadratic cost function for a uniform distribution of agent types and demonstrate that the range of services proposed by an airline is often larger than the corresponding range in demand.     

The Bases of Compromise in the Workplace: A Theoretical Framework

Schemes for workplace participation have long been promoted and vilified. Such conflicting views have been brought into sharp focus by the highly variable results of such practices as teamwork. Yet a theoretical framework to grasp workplace co‐operation is lacking. This paper develops a framework on the basis of theory and a review of a wide range of empirical studies. Capital and labour each have two sets of ‘concerns’: over ‘control’ of the workplace and the longer term ‘development’ of the productive forces. Cross‐classifying these concerns produces a matrix of patterns of workplace relations. Each cell of the matrix represents a different combination of the interests of capital and labour. The matrix can be used to map participation schemes so as to capture their varying features. The next task, pursued elsewhere, is to identify the conditions leading to locations in different cells of the matrix.     

MEASURING MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY: AN EMPIRICAL COMPARISON OF VARIOUS APPROACHES

This paper makes a systematic comparison of four approaches to multidimensional poverty analysis based respectively on the theory of fuzzy sets, information theory, efficiency analysis and axiomatic derivations of poverty indices. The database was the 1995 Israeli Census that provided information on the ownership of various durable goods. There appears to be a fair degree of agreement between the various multidimensional poverty indices concerning the identification of the poor households. The four approaches have also shown that poverty decreases with the schooling level of the head of the household, first decreases and then increases with his/her age and with the size of the household. Poverty is higher when the head of the household is single and lower when he/she is married, lowest when the head of the household is Jewish and highest when he/she is Muslim. Poverty is also higher among households whose head immigrated in recent years, does not work or lives in Jerusalem. These observations were made on the basis of logit regressions. This impact on poverty of many of the variables is not very different from the one that is observed when poverty measurement is based only on the income or the total expenditures of the households.