HAL Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques
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The Pearl of the Empire? Private Capital and Concession Rubber in Indochina, 1910-1945
No full textIn this paper, we provide an estimate of "colonial returns" in the French Empire, using a case study on Indochinese rubber plantations between 1910 and 1945. While French colonial capitalism is often distinguished from British and Dutch cases as purely mercantilist and speculative, we show that capital investments and profits were sustained and long-lasting for a number of firms in this context. Relying on an exhaustive list of listed and non-listed companies, along with capital stock, equity prices, surfaces, tonnage, and labor usage, we explain how rubber became, in less than three decades, the colony's primary crop in export value. In doing so, this paper makes three contributions to the economic history of late colonialism. First, we provide a comparison to recent studies of "colonial returns" in South East Asia: as a late-comer to the industry, Indochina benefited from innovations implemented elsewhere, and remained insulated from global limitations on production during the 1920s and 1930s, along with a rise in the global demand. Second, we show that the main driver of capital flows was a new iteration of the concession regime -the mise en valeur -, which provided firms a lenient access to land and unfree, contract labor in exchange for strict equity and cultivation clauses. As a result, Indochinese plantations had much larger surfaces than elsewhere and a more limited share of smallholder production, but also experienced less speculation than in other parts of the Empire. Third, we show that much of the gains happened after 1935, following a massive support from the French government during the Great Depression and a shift of exports from France to the U.S. These gains persisted well into the war, following a wave of concentration at the benefit of a small number of firms; pointing to the long, postcolonial legacies of colonial capital
A Model of Economic Growth and Biodiversity
No full textThis paper develops a macroeconomic growth model that integrates biodiversity as a productive input via its role in water regulation, a key ecosystem service. Land-use decisions drive biodiversity loss, which reduces water availability and, hence, productivity across all sectors.Using global input-output data, I estimate production functions that incorporate water and land as environmental inputs. Quantitatively, internalizing biodiversity's contribution to water supply leads to a significant reduction in land conversion, with about half of this optimal reduction attributable to the impact on industrial and service sectors, not just agriculture. Although GDP slightly declines, long-term welfare improves thanks to higher consumption and a more sustainable reliance on natural capital. The reallocation from produced to natural capital lowers investment requirements. The framework highlights biodiversity's macroeconomic value and its relevance for optimal land-use policy.</p
Optimal Land Use and Pollution Abatement under Discounting: A Spatiotemporal Analysis with State Constraints
No full textWe develop a rigorous spatiotemporal framework that incorporates ecological state constraints and reversible pollution dynamics with fertile land as the sole bounded production input. Using an extended Pontryagin Maximum Principle and generalized Kuhn-Tucker conditions, we characterize the structure of optimal solutions across discounting regimes. Thus, this paper investigates optimal strategies for land use and consumption under varying time discount rates in spatial settings. Under low discounting, the system supports sustainable dynamics, avoiding excessive consumption and enabling full restoration of fertile land. Fertility restoration is local in the heterogeneous case and global in the homogeneous case. In contrast, high discounting leads to boundary behavior, partial degradation, or irreversible loss, depending on critical thresholds. We derive explicit solutions when space is homogeneous. In heterogeneous settings, we construct hybrid solutions where the system transitions from a finite-horizon control problem to a structured long-run regime. Our results provide analytical benchmarks and highlight the pivotal role of time preferences in shaping long-term environmental and economic outcomes. This work contributes to the literature on spatial growth, optimal control with state constraints, and sustainable resource management under ecological limits
Workers as Partners: a Theory of Responsible Firms in Labor Markets
No full textWe study responsible firms that internalize incumbent-worker surplus in frictional labor markets. In a firm-level benchmark, responsibility creates an endogenous wedge in the effective marginal cost of labor—akin to a hiring subsidy in the firm’s first-order conditions—so it changes wage and vacancy incentives rather than only redistributing rents.The wedge is largest when outside options are weak and separations are rare, implying larger responsible wage premia in low-mobility environments and pointing to a countercyclical role for responsible wage setting. In a wage-posting model with on-the-job search, responsible firms occupy the upper tail of thewage distribution and can generate a segmented high-wage sector. In a DMP model with bargaining and endogenous tightness, responsible governance raises the value of unemployment and spills over to wages at profit-maximizing firms
Reassessing the benefits of European integration and the European Union's ability to achieve strategic autonomy
No full textEuropean integration is now faced with the question of strategic autonomy. Against this backdrop, this paper has three objectives. First, it uses disaggregated trade data and established empirical methods to assess the benefits of European integration on trade among the members of the European Union (EU) as well as on trade between EU members and non-member countries, including non-members that are part of the Single Market. Second, it evaluates the costs of EU strategic autonomy -implying not trading with "riskier" partners. Third, it asks whether deeper integration within the EU can alleviate these costs. The paper shows that the gains from European integration are substantial, albeit heterogeneous across Member States, non-members, and sectors, and that the costs of strategic autonomy can be offset by deeper, but comparatively more modest, integration efforts within the European Union
L'impact des licenciements sur les individus et les entreprises
No full textCe papier synthétise la recherche économique autour des impacts des licenciements, individuels et collectifs, sur les individus et les entreprises. Après avoir présenté un cadre conceptuel pour comprendre les mécanismes susceptibles de moduler les impacts des licenciements, il présente la recherche en France et à l'étranger sur leurs impacts, en s'appuyant sur des articles clés de la littérature économique. Il finit avec des propositions pour la recherche à l'avenir
The political effects of X’s feed algorithm
No full textInternational audienceFeed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects1. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk’s platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users’ feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship
Sharing Model Uncertainty
No full textInternational audienceThis paper examines efficient allocations in economies where consumers exhibit heterogeneous smooth ambiguity preferences and face model uncertainty with a common set of identifiable models. Aggregate endowment is ambiguous. We characterize economies where the representative consumer is of the smooth ambiguity type and derive efficient sharing rules. Heterogeneous ambiguity aversion leads to sharing rules that systematically differ from those in vNM-economies. The representative consumer’s ambiguity aversion differs from that of the typical consumer; this leads to more compelling asset-pricing predictions. We focus on point-identified models but show that our insights extend to partially-identified models
Convention citoyenne sur la fin de vie (France, 2022-2023). Volume 1 : Analyse de la représentativité de la Convention et comparaison des données de l’équipe de recherche avec des données d’enquêtes nationales
No full textLa Convention citoyenne sur la fin de vie (CCFV) (2022-2023) est le deuxième exercice de démocratie délibérative d'envergure à avoir eu lieu en France, après la Convention citoyenne pour le climat (2019-2020). Au cours de la CCFV, des citoyennes et citoyens (essentiellement tirés au sort) ont travaillé au Cese pendant 27 jours, répartis sur neuf week-ends, pour répondre à la question suivante posée par la Première ministre : « Le cadre d'accompagnement de la fin de vie est-il adapté aux différentes situations rencontrées ou d'éventuels changements devraient-ils être introduits ? ». Au cours de la CCFV, les chercheuses et chercheurs, d'un côté, et les animatrices et animateurs, d'un autre, ont administré des questionnaires auprès des conventionnelles et conventionnels.Le présent rapport se compose de deux volumes. Le volume 1 (Apouey, Pénigaud et Santoro, 2025) compare les caractéristiques sociodémographiques des membres de la CCFV avec celles de la population française, ce qui nous conduit à montrer que la CCFV n'était pas vraiment représentative de la population générale. En effet, nous observons à la CCFV une sur-représentation des catégories sociales favorisées et des catégories moyennes (personnes les plus diplômées, cadres, professions intermédiaires) et une sous-représentation des catégories sociales défavorisées. De plus, les habitantes et habitants des communes appartenant à un grand pôle étaient sur-représentés à la CCFV. La représentativité de la CCFV en termes de sexe, d'âge et de région est quant à elle bien respectée. Le volume 1 décrit ensuite le protocole d'observation du déroulement de la CCFV et le processus de passation des questionnaires par l'équipe de recherche. Finalement, nous comparons certaines des données tirées des questionnaires de l'équipe de recherche avec des données d'enquêtes nationales.Le volume 2 (Apouey, Pénigaud, Santoro et al., 2025) rend publics les questionnaires administrés par les équipes de recherche et d'animation et l'ensemble des statistiques descriptives des données (quantitatives) ainsi collectées
