Contenu du sommaire

From General Theory to the New Classical Theory : An Essay on the Novelty in Macroeconomics. By comparison with the 60' s, the contemporary macroeconomics displays a quite new paradigm : the vision, concepts, core results and suggestions for economic policy are totally different. Thus, the relations between innovation in theorizing, the search for micro-foundations and the empirical relevance of the new classical macroeconomics are investigated. The premium given to novelty is explained by the infrequent implementation of the Popperian refutability principle and the strong historicity of macroeconomic issues. A survey of the AER 1997 Proceedings suggests that beneath the consensus upon general hypotheses, the various authors differ about their visions, tools, results and economic policy recommendations.

Representations of market society and the economists 'approachs The case of neo-institutonalism analysis. We can find nowadays differents theories such as the « new microeconomy », the economy of conventions, the new istitutional economy or the economic sociology, which all emphasize the functions of the organisation of economic life and which all try also to explain their origins. If, on the one hand, thises approaches strongly differ from thoses of the « mainstream » which are not concerned whis the analysis of the social forms of economy (an economy without society), on the other hand they strongly differ among them as far as their methodology or their ambitions are concerned. The puspose of this aricle is to show that despite thises differences, they have something in commun coming from the same presuppositions, and more essentialy from the same

A Critique of the Neo-institutionnalist Theories of Labor Contract. The Anglo-Saxon neo-institutionnalist theories are sometimes regarded as prefiguring a general theory of the economic institutions. Thank to the hypotheses of bounded rationality and of imperfect information, combined with secondary hypotheses such as the degree of specificity of assets, they would bring about a more realistic representation, though as much rigourous as the neoclassical one. In this perspective, they aim at building a theory of the firm that allows both for the marxist thesis of labour force as the matter of the exchange on the labour market and for the idea according to which the different types of contracts on the labour market are efficient. But this idea is in contradiction with the idea of an imperfect cognition.

New Economic Sociology, Structural Analysis and Economie Theory. Beginning with a threefold division of contemporary economic sociology (sociology of economic life, critical economic sociology and theoretical economic sociology), the paper studies the nature of the relations between this new research agenda and standart economic theory. In this respect, the theoretical pole of economic sociology grounded on network analysis is singled out. Nevertheless, two different uses of network analysis are distinguished : the first one (M. Granovetter) keeps contact with the usual sociological theories of action and institution whereas the second one (R. Burt) considers the network is the starting point for implementing economic sociology. As a consequence, the paper claims that a connexion with economic theory is more easily established following Granovetter' s case.

Theories of Action and Normativity. Harsanyi's account of the rational ethical behaviour refers explicitly to A. Smith's mecanism of the impartial spectator. A comparison between the two authors shows important differences concerning the impartial spectator's moral judgement. In Harsanyi's case, it is a determinant judgement that calculates the consequences of actions according to moral preferences. For Smith, the impartial spectator operates in an analogical manner to evaluate the actor's motives in specific situations.lt is a reflective judgement, in Kant's sens. The article delves into the different conceptions of actions and relations between morals and economics that lie between these two kinds of judgement.