Les marchés financiers anticipent-ils les retournements conjoncturels?

This article aims at estimating leading indicators of the American economy with financial variables. We use two types of hidden Markov chains models, a quantitative one (Krolzig (1997)) and a qualitative one (Gregoir and Lenglart (2000)). These models provide a robust and reliable framework to build with financial variables a qualitative probabilistic indicator with a 3- to 6-month lead on business and growth cycle. During the last forty years, the financial market rarely proved false signals and identified all recessions -which are dated by the NBER- and slowdowns periods of the American economy.Business cycles ; Qualitative multivariate Markov switching models ; MS-VAR models ; Leading indicators

Consumption and biodiversity conservation: insights from behavioral science using the MINDSPACE approach

Consumption is defined as purchase and use of all goods and services by individuals, households, and social groups. MINDSPACE is a mnemonic that is used to set out nine robust influences on human behavior (messenger, incentives, norms, defaults, salience, priming, affect, commitment, ego). Nudges are easy and cheap changes to some aspect of the choice architecture to alter human behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives