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Centralization of pricing decisions and collusion. This paper compares the feasibility of tacit collusion when pricing decisions are either centralized or decentralized. The intuition is that the number of pricing decision makers on a market is likely to have more impact on the price competition than the number of firms. When the firms face a random demand and have multimarket contacts, we prove that centralization is more collusive than decentralization because it reduces the cost of price-cutting dissuasion. This result is reinforced if centralization decreases the frequency of price revision. Finally, this study emphasizes some practices that can facilitate collusion with imperfect monitoring.

Pension system and income and wealth inequalities. When analyzing the choice of a pension system (between a pay as a go system and a capitalized system), one generally focuses on the effects of that choice on savings, on the equilibrium interest rate and wage, hence on the capital stock available in the economy. One also analyzes the effects, depending on the dominant pension system, of the relative yield of the two systems on the discounted income of consumers. We include in the analysis the income distribution between skilled (high wage) and unskilled (low-wage) wage earners and pensioners, concentrating on the possibility that unskilled pensioners get a very low pension level. We use an overlapping generations model, introducing an altruistic behavior which justifies the existence of a bequest between generations and a possible liquidity constraint for unskilled wage earners. The choice of the optimum pension system can differ very much of the one obtained with a single group of wage-earners. The introduction of wealth inequalities through bequests leads to a substantial change in the results, making the concerned consumers indifferent to the design of the pension system and by making production independent from the nature of the pension system. We use an overlapping generations model, introducing an altruistic behavior which justifies the existence of a bequest between generations and a possible liquidity constraint for unskilled wage earners. The choice of the optimum pension system can differ very much of the one obtained with a single group of wage-earners. The introduction of wealth inequalities through bequests leads to a substantial change in the results, making the concerned consumers indifferent to the design of the pension system and by making production independent from the nature of the pension system.

Market insurance and willingness to pay. In this paper, we compare different levels of willingness to pay. Individuals can differ from several manners : they can be insured or not and they can be risk-neutral or risk averse. We establish classification rules in order to compare the willingness to pay with and without market insurance.

Enterprise in the "economics of conventions". The economics of conventions develops a conception of enterprise which stresses the role of tools enabling the enterprise's community to ensure market success for its products. This success depends on the quality (i.e. the characteristics) of the products, which do not appear as impersonal goods but as commodities which carry the quality of the coordinations established around the production and the development of the collective knowledge. This contribution renews the representation of enterprise but also of the linkages between the micro- and the macro-economic levels, although it can exhibit some limits.

Production structure and knowledge: towards an Austrian theory of the firm. In this contribution, our aim is to melt in the same analytical framework the Austrian conceptions, on the one hand, of the structure of production, and on the other hand, of the dynamics of knowledge; and then to propose a renewed theory of the firm and more generally of the analysis of the coordination of activities of the firms. In the debate concerning the new theories of the firm, we show that it is necessary to take into account the processual dimension of both production and knowledge in order to analyse as a process the coordination of firms plans.

Product differentiation and oligopolistic competition: a study of the French automobile market. Discrete choice models are now used to study the markets of differentiated products. The model presented associates demands defined by a nested multinomial logit model, to an oligopolistic supply offered by multiproduct firms ha ving anon cooperative behaviour. An application is performed on the french automobile market. We estimate the characteristics of the products and individuals which determine car market shares. We also propose some elements of analysis of the effects generated by government quality incentives, which was bind in 1994 and 1996, and of the producer margins.

Income inequalities in France from the early eighteenth century to 1985. This study analyzes the evolution of the inequality in the income distribution in France from the beginning of the XVIIIe century to the present. Using the roles of the capitation tax and estimates of the number of persons in various socio-professional groups and their respective incomes, we present estimates of the income distribution for 1788 that suggest that there was not any great difference from the inequality that existed in 1715. Furthermore we show that the degree of inequality in 1866 was not so very different from what it had been nearly 100 years earlier. However, between the two dates, income inequality decreased during the revolutionary era after which it increased until the 1860s. By the last decade of the XIXe century the income distribution began a period of greater equality, a tendency that has since continued with notable accelerations after World Wars I and II. Our estimates of the evolution of income inequality are supplemented with discussions analyzing the reasons that explain the variations in the inequality.