Contenu du sommaire : Varia

Tariff growth paradox : a critical survey This article offers a critical survey of the recent contributions on the “tariff-growth paradox” (also known as “Bairoch paradox”). The publication in 2000 of an important article by K. O'Rourke has sparked a lively debate on the linkages between trade policy and economic growth during the “first globalization” (1870 to 1914). The question was explored using new econometric techniques, often with references to recent inroads in the theoretical foundations for economic growth. The consensus view among various scholars tends to confirm a positive correlation between tariffs and growth for the most advanced European countries as well as overseas European Offshoots (Canada, Australia, Argentina...) – but not necessarily for periphery countries. Two factors seem to have played an important role : the quality of institutions of countries embracing protection and their legislators' ability to handpick the protected industries (those with extensive externalities). But the hypothesis of an efficient sectoral protectionism cannot be validated by the observation of effective protection rates, an approach which remains at the present stage, very fragmented, limited to a handful of sectors, for selected benchmarks and which does not take into account the dispersion of tariff rates by country of origin for identical goods.

Anomalies of Rational Choice under Uncertainty : Taxonomy of the Empirical Failures of the Invariance Principle An individual is sensitive to its context if his actions are greatly affected by the manner in which a decision is framed. Such individual violates the foundation of all the theories of choice, i.e. the invariance principle. Sensitivity to context is now well documented, but its definition remains vague. This paper revisits the invariance principle and discusses its importance in the rational choice theory. It then proposes a taxonomy of the invariance principle to discriminate between different types of preference reversals. This taxonomy enables to focus on each type of inconsistency separately in order to understand its causes, which may lead to a more accurate theoretical reflection.

Economic analysis of the colonial issue in France (1870-1914) Despite the deep resistance of economists to colonial expansion, the colonial phenomenon had numerous ardent supporters amongst the political, intellectual and industrial circles of Second Empire France. This pro-colonialist position would further blossom during the first years of the Third Republic, embodied in particular by the existence of a colonialist party ; it was at this time that a true doctrine of French imperialism was founded. Amongst economist writings of the time, one text stands out, De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes by Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1874), a book which would see multiple editions, with the 6th and final one published in 1908. This book would be the catalyst for debates amongst economists. The great paradox is that these key politicians, Jules Ferry in particular, would defend colonial expansion on the basis of primarily economic arguments – “Colonial policy is the daughter of industrial policy” although most economists themselves were opposed to such endeavours. The purpose of this paper will be to analyse the debate amongst economists and to understand why the importance of this economic thought was minimised in French debates, in spite of the fact that colonisation was considered an appendage of political economics, and finally, we will explore the extent to which this issue led to advances in economic theory.

Does tertiarization foster the production of municipal waste ? The discussion of a paradox on the basis of a multi-agent model This article proposes an explanation for the paradox of the polluting tertiarization. We are particularly interested in the growth of municipal wastes which seems to follow the tertiarization process in developed economies. Relying on recent evolutionary works proposing a micro-foundation of structural change based on the agents'adaptative behaviors, we build a multi-agent system and we evaluate its relevance regarding stylized facts in the field of municipal wastes production. Finally, we use the model to compare the efficiency of eco-taxes and regulatory policies regarding the reduction of municipal wastes.

Environmental compensation using Habitat and Resource Equivalency Analysis This article deals with environmental damage valuation in France. In coming years, current practices should be influenced by the Environmental Liability Directive which sets out requirements that member states must enact to prevent and remedy environmental damage, specifically damage to habitats and species. Directive 2004/35/CE reinforces the “polluter pays” principle and introduces new useful methodologies to assess and compensate environmental damage : the equivalency methods. These methods, developed by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are used to scale remediation needed to compensate for past, current and future damages related to an incident. Two approaches to resource compensation can be distinguished : the service-service approach (or resource-resource approach) and the valuation scaling approaches (value-to-value and value-to-cost approaches). After introducing both of them, we identify some theoretical and practical pitfalls related to their use.