La question économique chez les Goncourt

Le Journal et les œuvres littéraires des Goncourt sont riches en références à l’actualité politique, sociale et économique. Peut-on pour autant lire chez les Goncourt une opinion économique ? Et si oui, comment s’articule-t-elle avec leurs opinions réactionnaires bien connues et leur fascination pour le XVIIIe siècle ? En rappelant certains aspects cruciaux des utopies socialistes et libérales, d’une part, de leur critique par les « réactionnaires » d’autre part, il est possible de restituer le fond général à partir duquel les Goncourt jugent du contexte économique et d’éclairer leurs positions. En particulier, cela permet de comprendre la nature et l’évolution de leur antisémitisme, pierre de touche de la pensée conservatrice et catholique du XIXe siècle.The Goncourts' Journal and literary works are rich in references to current political, social and economic events. Can we read in the Goncourts an economic opinion? And if so, how does it fit in with their well-known reactionary views and their fascination with the 18th century? By recalling certain crucial aspects of socialist and liberal utopias, on the one hand, and their criticism by the “réactionnaires” on the other, it is possible to restore the general background against which the Goncourts judged the economic context and to shed light on their positions. In particular, it allows us to understand the nature and evolution of their anti-Semitism, a touchstone of 19th century conservative and Catholic thought

Le scandale financier comme projet de recherche

Comme tout autre type de scandale, le scandale financier est un objet hybride, qui pose à la recherche des problèmes de repérage et de définition. Son histoire n’est pas à confondre avec celle de la corruption ou des transgressions, ni avec celle des crises et des krachs. Injustement boudé, à de rares exceptions près, par la profession historienne, le scandale financier permet pourtant d’interroger le régime des valeurs et des normes légales ou morales qui gouvernent une société ainsi que les formes de mobilisations et de contre-mobilisations auxquelles donnent (ou non) lieu la mise en cause publique d’acteurs issus du monde de l’économie et de la finance. Exposant au regard collusions inavouables et collisions inattendues, il est toutefois plus qu’un simple révélateur des relations entre l’argent et le pouvoir : sa dynamique même se nourrit des transformations qu’il est capable ou incapable d’impulser dans le fonctionnement usuel des différents univers sociaux qu’il met en tension. C’est à cet objet riche et pluridimensionnel, enjeu d’investissements stratégiques et sémantiques toujours intéressés, que sont consacrées les contributions réunies dans le présent numéro d’Entreprises et Histoire. Celui-ci veut être à la fois un hommage aux travaux pionniers parus sur la question et un appel à renouveler les recherches sur cette thématique qui intéresse aussi bien l’histoire économique et financière que l’histoire sociale, politique et culturelle

Nonurgent patients in the emergency department? A French formula to prevent misuse

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Overcrowding in emergency department (EDs) is partly due to the use of EDs by nonurgent patients. In France, the authorities responded to the problem by creating primary care units (PCUs): alternative structures located near hospitals. The aims of the study were to assess the willingness of nonurgent patients to be reoriented to a PCU and to collect the reasons that prompted them to accept or refuse.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We carried out a cross sectional survey on patients' use of EDs. The study was conducted in a French hospital ED. Patients were interviewed about their use of health services, ED visits, referrals, activities of daily living, and insurance coverage status. Patients' medical data were also collected.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>85 patients considered nonurgent by a triage nurse were asked to respond to a questionnaire. Sex ratio was 1.4; mean age was 36.3 +/- 11.7 years.</p> <p>Most patients went to the ED autonomously (76%); one third (31.8%) had consulted a physician. The main reasons for using the ED were difficulty to get an appointment with a general practitioner (22.3%), feelings of pain (68.5%), and the availability of medical services in the ED, like imaging, laboratory tests, and drug prescriptions (37.6%). Traumatisms and wounds were the main medical reasons for going to the ED (43.5%).</p> <p>More than two-thirds of responders (68%) were willing to be reoriented towards PCUs. In the multivariate analysis, only employment and the level of urgency perceived by the patient were associated with the willingness to accept reorientation. Employed persons were 4.5 times more likely to accept reorientation (OR = 4.5 CI (1.6-12.9)). Inversely, persons who perceived a high level of urgency were the least likely to accept reorientation (OR = 0.9 CI (0.8-0.9).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study provides information on the willingness of ED patients to accept reorientation and shows the limits of its feasibility. Alternative structures such as PCUs near the ED seem to respond appropriately to the growing demands of nonurgent patients. Reorientation, however, will be successful only if the new structures adapt their opening hours to the needs of nonurgent patients and if their physicians can perform specific technical skills.</p

Be careful with triage in emergency departments: interobserver agreement on 1,578 patients in France

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>For several decades, emergency departments (EDs) utilization has increased, inducing ED overcrowding in many countries. This phenomenon is related partly to an excessive number of nonurgent patients. To resolve ED overcrowding and to decrease nonurgent visits, the most common solution has been to triage the ED patients to identify potentially nonurgent patients, i.e. which could have been dealt with by general practitioner. The objective of this study was to measure agreement among ED health professionals on the urgency of an ED visit, and to determine if the level of agreement is consistent among different sub-groups based on following explicit criteria: age, medical status, type of referral to the ED, investigations performed in the ED, and the discharge from the ED.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We conducted a multicentric cross-sectional study to compare agreement between nurses and physicians on categorization of ED visits into urgent or nonurgent. Subgroups stratified by criteria characterizing the ED visit were analyzed in relation to the outcome of the visit.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of 1,928 ED patients, 350 were excluded because data were lacking. The overall nurse-physician agreement on categorization was moderate (kappa = 0.43). The levels of agreement within all subgroups were variable and low. The highest agreement concerned three subgroups of complaints: cranial injury (kappa = 0.61), gynaecological (kappa = 0.66) and toxicology complaints (kappa = 1.00). The lowest agreement concerned two subgroups: urinary-nephrology (kappa = 0.09) and hospitalization (kappa = 0.20). When categorization of ED visits into urgent or nonurgent cases was compared to hospitalization, ED physicians had higher sensitivity and specificity than nurses (respectively 94.9% versus 89.5%, and 43.1% versus 30.9%).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The lack of physician-nurse agreement and the inability to predict hospitalization have important implications for patient safety. When urgency screening is used to determine treatment priority, disagreement might not matter because all patients in the ED are seen and treated. But using assessments as the basis for refusal of care to potential nonurgent patients raises legal, ethical, and safety issues. Managed care organizations should be cautious when applying such criteria to restrict access to EDs.</p

Cliometrics and Time Series Econometrics: Some Theory and Applications

The paper discusses a range of modern time series methods that have become popular in the past 20 years and considers their usefulness for cliometrics research both in theory and via a range of applications. Issues such as, spurious regression, unit roots, cointegration, persistence, causality, structural time series methods, including time varying parameter models, are introduced as are the estimation and testing implications that they involve. Applications include a discussion of the timing and potential causes of the British Industrial Revolution, income „convergence ‟ and the long run behaviour of English Real Wages 1264 – 1913. Finally some new and potentially useful developments are discussed including the mildly explosive processes; graphical modelling and long memory

"War Finance (France)"

International audience[Introduction] Though it entered war with an already important public debt, France managed its growth in ways comparable to that of other main warring powers, mixing monetary financing, internal and external debt. Monetary financing was made possible by the 5 August 1914 convertibility suspension, while strong British and, later on, American support avoided a decline of the exchange rate before the end of the war. State debt purchases were transformed into a patriotic act through intense marketing, but it did not prevent a slow increase in interest rates, albeit a rudimentary circuit policy, leading to a growing share of short-term debt

ISOCO : Produire des séries statistiques à partir de données textuelles

National audienceLes progrès de la numérisation et de la mise en ligne de masses considérables d’imprimés océrisés ouvre de nouvelles perspectives d’utilisation, qui sont moins fondées sur la recherche d’une information spécifique et pertinente que sur l’agrégation d’un grand nombre d’éléments textuels et syntaxiques en vue de la construction d’indices plus généraux. C’est cela que souhaite explorer le projet ISOCO, en cours de lancement, et centré sur la presse française, d’une part, la période 1880-1938 d’autre part, en rapprochant des indices de presse construits autour de thématiques économiques et des indices fondés sur les sources statistiques actuellement disponibles. En cas de succès, cette démarche pourrait être élargie à d’autres domaines. Dans tous les cas, elle suppose un travail par étapes, prudent, afin de tenir compte non seulement des biais de la source elle-même (périodicité, recopie des articles, évolution des publications) mais aussi de l’évolution des manières de traduire un concept au cours du temps

[compte rendu d'ouvrage] François-Michel Chrétien-Deschamps, Lettres sur le Visa des dettes de l'État ordonné en 1721, éditées par François R. Velde, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2015, 254 p.

International audienc