Contenu du sommaire : Formes et sciences du marché

This paper addresses the issue of alternative means of economic organization. In the « transaction costs » analysis, the market remains the final judge of actions. Organization can reduce transaction costs, but does not introduce new rules of evaluation. We propose an analysis in which firms are able to implement new methods of assessment of goods and labour, in particular as regards quality. Since new units of measure can be introduced by firms into the market, then we cannot simply compare the coordination by the firms and the coordination by the market using a unique measure of efficiency.

In this article, a critical evaluation of some recent studies in the field of the « New Economic History » is presented. These studies try to show that the eighteenth century is a kind of golden age for financial markets, to which the concepts of integration and efficiency may be applied. However, their results appear to be historically irrelevant, econometrically suspect and theoretically inconsistent. It is then suggested that some rules of the monetary and exchange regimes cannot be reduced to traditional market analysis.

This paper aims at clarifying the relations between the caracteristics of the laws of value and the possibility of representing the market adjustment processes. It starts with a simplified model of a smithian economy which produces three commodities. We first look for the necessary conditions for equilibrium. We examine what happens when the agents' choices generate a variation of one of the parameters of the model. We show then that the market mechanisms cannot easily assure the return to an equilibrium position. Particularly, the caracteristics inherent to the smithian theory of value and revenues generate perturbations.

The paper considers three examples taken from the history of economic analysis. They emphasize the possibility to characterize competitive phenomena and their restrictions, within a particular conception of competition. These three examples refer to the classical analysis, to John Hobson 's analysis and to the work of E. Mason. This conception stresses the process more than the state ; it rests upon supply conditions more than on market forms. It allows the introduction of an alternative history of industrial economics.

In his works, Boisguilbert develops différents views on markets according to the nature of the social link. On the one hand, our study of Boisguilbert's texts has shown a nearly modern model of markets. In this model, markets regulate the connection between the crafts through a metaphysical equilibrium. On the other hand, we have brought up to date a second model of markets, which is valid to the developed state. Within this classical model, the market for corn regulates, by a collective logic, the connection between the classes which constitute the opulent society.

This paper aims at clarifying the relations between the caracteristics of the laws of value and the possibility of representing the market adjustment processes. It starts with a simplified model of a smithian economy which produces three commodities. We first look for the necessary conditions for equilibrium. We examine what happens when the agents' choices generate a variation of one of the parameters of the model. We show then that the market mechanisms cannot easily assure the return to an equilibrium position. Particularly, the caracteristics inherent to the smithian theory of value and revenues generate perturbations.

This paper tries to investigate, in the light of the general equilibrium theory, Torrens' s propositions connected with general glut. In opposition to familiar opinions, the general equilibrium approach is very well suited to the analysis of a set of propositions which are not reducible to the neoclassical tradition.

Game Theory offers the natural tool for a theoretical analysis of markets. Its usefulness becomes evident in the analysis of imperfect competition. To illustrate this theme we first examine the analysis of price competition stemming from the Bertrand- Edgeworth model which has led to the Theory of Contestable Markets. We then review some recent applications of Dynamic Games in the field of Industrial Organization.

Here are applied the concepts of discussion, rhetoric and analogy to the construction of a model of market — named meeting-market — as opposed to the neo-classical model of market, named mechanical market.

The notoriety of the Sherman Act, enacted in 1890, is still remarkable. However, it lacks a clear understanding and the US antitrust policy in the twentieth century is quite contradictory. Such a posterity of the law becomes understandable when it is recognized that the aim of the law was not strictly economical (« protecting competition ») but political. What was at bay was the balance of power between the states and the federal government. Viewed as such, the Sherman Act appears as a milestone event in the centralizing process at work in the US.

If economists are all talking about the market, they designate with this word different entities according to their institutions or the way they are regulated. The market can denote an economy adjusted by prices and/or hierarchies, an economy with or without money, with or without goods being all merchandises, with or without organizations, with one or different kinds of agents. . . This ambiguity lies in the fact that the market is more a scientific approach, concerned by all social forms that can be described according to the postulate of individual rationality, rather than a defined territory. Conversely, the programme of ambivalence takes for granted that the market is a part of a system including other social structures and rules.

This paper tries to construe as fully as possible the context in which the movements of market prices, either monopoly or competition ones, may get their full meaning in the Wealth of Nations. First, it replaces these movements within the framework of Smith's reproduction and accumulation model. Second, it identifies what the specific role played by rents is, as opposed to wages and profits. The outcome is that movements of market prices are much more complex than they are generally conceived. Even the competition market prices cannot be simply viewed as converging towards or diverging from some natural positions, which are entirely determined by the conditions of production. The movements of both types of market prices should rather look like the gravitations of planets towards a sun, which is itself shifting.

The paper has two goals. The first one is to show that the notion of self-organized system may fill the epistemological gap between, on one side, méthodologie individualism, and on the other side, market equilibria. The second goal is to show that it is possible to build tools for micro-economic analysis (models) taking inspiration from the theory of self -organized systems. In these dynamic models, individuals are slow adaptative systems : their rationality is a bounded rationality « à la Simon ». The interactions between individuals are stochastic and explicitly formalised. An example of analysis is given : a model of « creation of skills ».