Contenu du sommaire : Varia

Too often, research is paying attention to the ricardian gain or to corruption only, while what is needed in the real world is, above all, a residual appreciation of both phenomena. Arthur Dunkel and Pietro Balestra – two great economists who both passed away in June 2005 – were preoccupied, among other things, with the necessity of a good balance between theoretical and empirical analyses. In the time of the 21th century globalisation, we have to go beyond a simplistic conception of the ricardian gain and subtract the increasing costs of corruption. The money diverted and dissipated needs to be measured by creditor states as well as by developing countries, beyond the severity and the laxity present in the new big regional unions and mentioned in some dubious international press.

Information and Communication Technologies and dynamics of rural areas : a French case study This paper studies the influence of rural areas density on the diffusion process within firms of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Besides spatial's determinative factors of the diffusion process, I also deal with organizational and structural factors. The empirical support of the study is a survey of whole rural entreprises of the French region « Midi-Pyrénées ». By manipulating this survey, I underline differentiated behaviors in terms of intensity of use of ICT according to the density of the localisation area. ICT also appear as potential tools of opening up for remotes areas.

Learning, innovation and competitiveness in tourist clusters : a comparative study between Spain and Italy In the current phase of development of advanced economies, the importance of knowledge is described as the dynamics of growth and competitiveness. However, the importance of knowledge varies according to the sectors of economic activity. In this study, we shall analyze the relation between the knowledge of the tourist sector workers and their competitive capacity, measured by the productivity of labour. The results show the importance of specific tacit knowledge.

The paradoxal performances of the Ile de France Region : An attempt at interpretation This article was inspired by an important number of empirical studies on regional performances, studies which on the one hand classify the Ile de France Region as a high performing entity in terms of productivity, and on the other hand, as an entity which does not exploit its full potential (relatively weak growth). This leads us to interpret such contrasting data in terms of adaptability subjected to the constraints of the productive system of Paris and its suburbs. One explanation put forward is the existence of a lack of coordination due, among other things, to the density and to the highly complex nature of this metropolitan area. On an analytical plane, one has to call into question the approach which links performances to structures. There isn't necessarily interaction linked to geographical proximity which is implicitly the hypothesis of such a model. We suggest a return to the mechanisms of microeconomics.

Estimation de l'effet des conditions environnementales sur l'efficacité technique : le cas des services d'incendie This study analyzes the influence of the environmental conditions on the levels of technical efficiency of the activity of prevention and extinguishing of fires, for a sample of 29 Spanish municipalities with over 50 000 inhabitants. In order to achieve our objective, first we designed a basic DEA model, formed by resources-intervention-and-prevention variables. Subsequently, a complete DEA model was estimated which incorporated, as non-controllable inputs, those conditions of the environment which, using Tobit analysis, could be considered statistically as variables that explain efficiency. The comparison of the two models reveals that the specific environmental conditions of each town have a strong effect on the performance of the service analysed. Although, individually, the changes that any environmental factor causes in the efficiency index are not statistically significant.

Analyse territoriale de la convergence/différence des salaires en Espagne The purpose of this paper is to analyze territorial convergence in Spain from the perspective of real wages for the period 1995-2001. To do that, we employed classical, non-parametric and spatial techniques. The main conclusions that we draw are as follows : a) there is a process of wage convergence between the Spanish provinces ; b) the intra-distributional mobility is, however, low ; c) some spatial effects are observed in the provincial distribution of wages, and when these are taken into account the rate of convergence rises ; d) the main factor lying behind provincial wage differentials are disparities in provincial labour productivity, with provincial unemployment rates playing no role whatsoever.

Conflicts and proximity during innovative projects in cooperation of French biotech firms
Economics of proximity analyses the articulation of organizational and geographic proximity. Innovation projects, above all when they are lead in cooperation can lead to conflicts between the members of the projects. We shall demonstrate in this contribution that conflict resolution is the variable that explains the articulation of proximities. We made a survey of 80 managers of innovative projects lead in cooperation in French biotechnology firms. This allows us to show that more cooperative is the resolution of conflicts and more managers mobilize organizational and geographic proximities.