La lutte contre la pauvreté à l'épreuve des essais cliniques. Réflexion sur l'approche expérimentale de l'économie du développement

URL des Documents de travail : http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/cesdp2014.htmlDocuments de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 2014.26 - ISSN : 1955-611XBy trying to guarantee that the fight against poverty is based on evidence, randomized experiments, essentially developed by Esther Duflo within the J-PAL, offer a new way to fight poverty. The originality of such approach is to import the methodology of clinical trials in development economics. In order to stress the main epistemological issues of Esther Duflo's methodology, this paper aims to interrogate this new approach in development economics through the philosophical analysis of Georges Canguilhem in medicine. Afterwards, we show that such approach struggles to produce efficient remedies against poverty; instead, it offers a global view of poverty symptoms.Les évaluations randomisées développées par Esther Duflo au sein du J-PAL ont transformé la lutte contre la pauvreté, cherchant à en faire une lutte " rigoureuse " fondée sur des preuves " scientifiques ". Cette approche tire son originalité d'une volonté de se rapprocher de la méthodologie d'un essai clinique médical, afin d'aboutir à une démarche neutre et impartiale. Cet article questionne la méthodologie du J-PAL en la rapprochant de celle des essais cliniques médicaux. Pour cela, nous utiliserons l'analyse de Georges Canguilhem, afin de pointer les principaux enjeux épistémologiques de l'approche du J-PAL. Nous montrons ensuite que cette approche peine à produire des remèdes efficaces contre la pauvreté et qu'elle ne peut, de ce fait, offrir qu'un panorama des symptômes de la pauvreté

The Mongol Peace and Global Medieval Eurasia

Der Mongolische Frieden (pax mongolica) bezieht sich auf die Zeit, in der die Nachfahren von Dschingis Khan den Großteil der eurasischen Landmasse beherrschten. Er war ein bedeutender Moment des globalen Mittelalters, denn er verwandelte die humane Landschaft Eurasiens und verband das Mittelmeer mit Indien und China. Die Mongolen stimulierten neue Formen des Fernhandels, indem sie Vereinbarungen mit den Mamluken, Byzantinern, Italienern und anderen abschlossen. Unter ihrer Herrschaft entstand eine neue Wirtschaftsordnung, die nicht als bloße Wiederbelebung der „Seidenstraßen“ der alten Welt angesehen werden kann. Die Forschung hat den Mongolischen Frieden als kontinentales Phänomen eingeordnet, aber nur wenige Historiker haben neuerdings versucht, dieses Phänomen über die Feststellung einesgegenseitigen Interesses der Mongolen und der Kaufleute hinaus zu analysieren. Dieser Artikel vertieft das Verständnis dieser Interdependenz, indem die praktischen Aspekte des ortaq- Systems genauer untersucht werden. Er soll, allgemeiner gesehen, das Konzept des Mongolischen Friedens durch einen neuen Ansatz wiederbeleben, der das Handeln der Nomaden in der kommerziellen Wirtschaft in den Blick nimmt. Dies schließt eine Neubewertung der „spirituellen“ Motivationen der Mongolen und ihrer politischen und diplomatischen Fähigkeiten bei der Integration des nördlichen Eurasien in das größte ökonomische Netzwerk der Landmasse ein.The Mongol Peace refers to the period when the descendants of Chinggis Khan dominated most of the Eurasian landmass. It was a major moment of the global middle ages for it transformed the human landscape of Eurasia and connected the Mediterranean Sea to India and China. The Mongols stimulated new forms of long-distance trade by concluding agreements with the Mamluks, the Byzantines, the Italians, and others. Under their domination a new economic order emerged that cannot be seen as the mere revival of the “silk roads” of the ancient world. Scholarship has classified the Mongol Peace as a continental phenomenon, but few historians have actually attempted to analyse it beyond noting a mutuality of interest among the Mongol leaders and merchants. This article deepens understanding of this interdependency by scrutinising the practicalities of the ortaq system more closely. The more general aim is to reinstate the concept of Mongol Peace through a new approach that attends to the nomads’ agency in the commercial economy. This includes a reassessment of the Mongols’ “spiritual” motivations, and of their political and diplomatic skills in integrating northern Eurasia into the biggest economic network of the landmass

The Economics of Convention: From the Practice of Economics to the Economics of Practice

There would not have been an economics of convention (EC) without the use of the word "convention" in chapter 12 of the "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" (1936) by Keynes, and without the book "Convention. A Philosophical Study" (1969), by the philosopher and mathematician David Lewis. But representatives of EC reinterpret the usual reading of those two texts. They extract from the first one the idea of a convention as regulating a professional community (the financial one and the academic one in economics). As for the second one, they privilege the final revision of Lewis' initial game-theoretic definition, which puts non-observable "beliefs" on a par with observable "actions." The coherence between both elements can only be produced by the emergence of a "(social) practice." Therefore a very different practice of economics is promoted by EC (for instance reunifying coordination and reproduction). Following Foucault who studied states as a practice (through the notion of "governmentality"), we study business firms as a practice. Because of the gap between the legal person (corporation whose members are the share-holders) and the economic organization (with all its stake-holders), the firm as a practice needs to be regulated by a convention, in order to make the inequality not unbearable for workers. Otherwise the working of the firm as a dispositive of collective creation would be blocked. We conclude that conventions, practices, and dispositives belong to the same analytical space

Hector, a fast simulator for the transport of particles in beamlines

Computing the trajectories of particles in generic beamlines is an important ingredient of experimental particle physics, in particular regarding near-beam detectors. A new tool, Hector, has been built for such calculations, using the transfer matrix approach and energy corrections. The limiting aperture effects are also taken into account. As an illustration, the tool was used to simulate the LHC beamlines, in particular around the high luminosity interaction points (IPs), and validated with results of the Mad-X simulator. The LHC beam profiles, trajectories and beta functions are presented. Assuming certain forward proton detector scenarios around the IP5, acceptance plots, irradiation doses and chromaticity grids are produced. Furthermore, the reconstruction of proton kinematic variables at the IP (energy and angle) is studied as well as the impact of the misalignment of beamline elements.Comment: 40 pages, 20 figures; added references, corrected typos ; submitted to JINS

Two Strands of Field Experiments in Economics : A Historical-Methodological Analysis

While the history and methodology of laboratory experiments in economics have been extensively studied by philosophers, those of field experiments have not attracted much attention until recently. What is the historical context in which field experiments have been advocated? And what are the methodological rationales for conducting experiments in the field as opposed to in the lab? This article addresses these questions by combining historical and methodological perspectives. In terms of history, we show that the movement toward field experiments in economics has two distinct roots. One is the general orientation of medical and social sciences to evidence-based policy evaluation, which gave rise to randomized field experiments in economics (e.g., behavioral public policy, poverty alleviation policy). The other is an awareness of several methodological limitations of lab experiments in economics, which required practitioners to get out of the lab and into the field. In these senses, the movement is a consequence of influences from both outside and inside economics: the general evidencebased trend in policy science and an internal methodological development of experimental economics. In terms of methodology, we show that these two roots resulted in two somewhat different notions of “external validity” as methodological rationales of field experiment. Finally, we suggest that analysis of experiments as exhibits highlights a methodological strategy in which both strands complement each other.Peer reviewe

Introduction

avec Olivier Faverea

DELPHES 3, A modular framework for fast simulation of a generic collider experiment

The version 3.0 of the DELPHES fast-simulation is presented. The goal of DELPHES is to allow the simulation of a multipurpose detector for phenomenological studies. The simulation includes a track propagation system embedded in a magnetic field, electromagnetic and hadron calorimeters, and a muon identification system. Physics objects that can be used for data analysis are then reconstructed from the simulated detector response. These include tracks and calorimeter deposits and high level objects such as isolated electrons, jets, taus, and missing energy. The new modular approach allows for greater flexibility in the design of the simulation and reconstruction sequence. New features such as the particle-flow reconstruction approach, crucial in the first years of the LHC, and pile-up simulation and mitigation, which is needed for the simulation of the LHC detectors in the near future, have also been implemented. The DELPHES framework is not meant to be used for advanced detector studies, for which more accurate tools are needed. Although some aspects of DELPHES are hadron collider specific, it is flexible enough to be adapted to the needs of electron-positron collider experiments.Comment: JHEP 1402 (2014