Public Economics and Startup Entrepreneurs

This paper surveys the various forms of market failure that can arise when innovating entrepreneurs consider entering an industry, and outlines possible implications for public policy. Externalities can arise from entrepreneurial activities such as spillover benefits from new innovations and spillover costs on incumbent firms. New entrepreneurs can also face various barriers to entry, either natural ones or those created by incumbent firms or government policy. They may also face problems in obtaining credit at efficient terms if there are information asymmetries in markets for either loan or equity finance. Finally, asymmetric information may also plague new firms in the hiring of workers. These various inefficiencies are of contradictory sign, some calling for an incentive to startup firms and other for the opposite. Thus, public policy is ambiguous and depends on the circumstances at hand.

Du « pas dans ma cour » à l’écocitoyenneté : Opposition aux centrales hydroélectriques privées et projets locaux de société

L’opposition aux centrales hydroélectriques privées sur les rivières du Québec, souvent étiquetée comme étant une autre expression du phénomène « pas dans ma cour », a rapidement évolué au cours des dernières années pour devenir un véritable mouvement citoyen motivé par les questions d’équité sociale et intergénérationnelle autour des aspects environnementaux des rivières. Le mouvement de préservation des rivières a contribué à construire socialement un enjeu environnemental majeur que les gouvernements ont été forcés de prendre en considération. Le changement de rationalités qui en résulte est analysé ici par le biais d’un cadre théorique inspiré des théories de l’apprentissage social, puis illustré à l’aide du cas de la préservation et de la mise en valeur du récréotourisme d’eau vive dans la Vallée-de-la-Gatineau.Opposition to private hydroelectric projects on Quebec rivers has often been presented as a new expression of the Not in My Backyard Syndrome or NIMBY. However this opposition has expressed, in recent years, a citizen-based environmental social movement primarily motivated by intergenerational and social equity concerns. This movement to preserve rivers is now considered a major environmental issue that has forced governments to reconsider their approach. The changing rationalities defining this issue are analysed here using an approach based on social learning theories and is illustrated with the case study of the preservation and recreational movement of the Gatineau River

Benchmark of a modified Iterated Perturbation Theory approach on the 3d FCC lattice at strong coupling

The Dynamical Mean-Field theory (DMFT) approach to the Hubbard model requires a method to solve the problem of a quantum impurity in a bath of non-interacting electrons. Iterated Perturbation Theory (IPT) has proven its effectiveness as a solver in many cases of interest. Based on general principles and on comparisons with an essentially exact Continuous-Time Quantum Monte Carlo (CTQMC) solver, here we show that the standard implementation of IPT fails away from half-filling when the interaction strength is much larger than the bandwidth. We propose a slight modification to the IPT algorithm that replaces one of the equations by the requirement that double occupancy calculated with IPT gives the correct value. We call this method IPT-$D$. We recover the Fermi liquid ground state away from half-filling. The Fermi liquid parameters, density of states, chemical potential, energy and specific heat on the FCC lattice are calculated with both IPT-$D$ and CTQMC as benchmark examples. We also calculated the resistivity and the optical conductivity within IPT-$D$. Particle-hole asymmetry persists even at coupling twice the bandwidth. Several algorithms that speed up the calculations are described in appendices.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures, minor changes to improve clarit

The Efficiency of Voluntary Pollution Abatement when Countries can Commit

We characterize a mechanism for reducing pollution emissions in which countries,　acting non-cooperatively, commit to match each others’ abatement levels and may　subsequently engage in emissions quota trading. The mechanism leads to an efficient level of emissions, and if the matching abatements process includes a quota trading stage, the marginal benefits of emissions are also equalized across countries. Given equilibrium matching rates, the initial allocation of emission quotas (before trading) reflects each country’s marginal valuation for lower pollution relative to its marginal benefit from emissions. These results hold for any number of countries, in an environment where countries have different abatement technologies and different benefits from emissions, and even if the emissions of countries are imperfect substitutes in each country’s damage function. In a dynamic twoperiod setting, the mechanism achieves both intra-temporal and inter-temporal efficiency. We extend the model by assuming that countries are voluntarily contributing to an international public good, in addition to undertaking pollution abatements, and find that the level of emissions may be efficient even without any matching abatement commitments, and the marginal benefits of emissions may be equalized across countries even without quota trading.Voluntary pollution abatement, matching commitments, emissions quota trading

L’autonomie gouvernementale autochtone, le droit et le politique, ou la difficulté d’établir des normes en la matière

Cet article traite des rapports étroits qu’entretiennent le droit et le politique dans le débat entourant l’autonomie gouvernementale autochtone au Canada. Il propose, à l’aide d’une revue des écrits et des événements récents, une discussion sur la place des tribunaux canadiens dans ce champ politique et sur les limites de leurs interventions. Le texte présente une relecture de l’opposition usuelle entre droit et politique, par le biais d’une réflexion plus générale sur les différents types et enjeux de pouvoir qui sont au coeur du débat. Selon l’auteur, la judiciarisation des débats sur l’autonomie gouvernementale s’intègre dans des discussions plus vastes sur les normes et les valeurs fondatrices de la société. Plus concrètement, cette judiciarisation serait symptomatique de la complexité d’une gestion de l’autonomie gouvernementale à un niveau plus politique.This article addresses the close relationship between law and politics in the debate on Aboriginal self-government in Canada. Through a review of the literature and an examination of recent events, it proposes to assess the place of Canadian courts in the political sphere and the limitations on their involvement. This essay proceeds to offer a new interpretation of the traditional tension between law and politics, through a broader reflection on the different types and manifestations of power that lie at the centre of the debate. According to the author, the judicialization of the discourse on self-government can be placed within the broader concerns over the founding values and standards of society. In more concrete terms, this judicialization is symptomatic of the inherent complexity of managing self-government at the political level

Anticipation et prise en compte des impacts cumulatifs. À propos du développement touristique en milieu urbain.

Pour aborder la problématique du tourisme en milieu urbain, il convient de considérer le milieu d'accueil de façon globale plutôt que sectorielle, d'envisager le tourisme comme un phénomène continu dans le temps et de tenir compte des impacts des projets touristiques au stade même de leur planification. Les auteurs réfléchissent sur ces aspects en fonction du concept d'impact cumulatif et élaborent un cadre de référence dans lequel la détermination des capacités portantes paraît moins indiquée que le recours à un indicateur de changement global apparenté au concept d'effets structurants des spécialistes en infrastructures des transports. Pour surmonter les problèmes conceptuels et méthodologiques liés à ce choix, ils proposent d'analyser les impacts cumulatifs du tourisme en appliquant le concept de congruence aux relations entre le développement touristique et la dynamique urbaine. Ainsi, la prise en compte des impacts cumulatifs du tourisme s'inscrit davantage dans une structure de suivi des impacts que dans un processus d'évaluation a priori.Tourism in urban environment has to be considered in a global way that transcend the disjointed sectorial studies, it has to be observed as a continuous phenomenon in time and space and it raises issues about the integration of the tourism impacts assessment in the planning process. We tackle those three reflexion paths through the notion of cumulative impacts; this approach leads to the definition of a framework based on the search for global change rather than on the definition of sectorial carrying capacities. The search for global change has been developed in the transportation planning field as the notion of induced effects. Because of theoretical and methodological problems that appeared, the notion of induced effects deserves an approach that consider the mutual adaptation between tourism and urban environment