Integrating the weight of history into the alignment framework: the case of distributed generation technologies

Whereas a centralized energy supply system is still dominant today, the energy sector is currently witnessing the development of small-scale and more geographically dispersed generation units, so-called distributed generation technologies. So-called "alignment framework" proposes a very useful approach to look at this evolution. Yet, we argue in this paper that this framework does not fully take into account the inertia associated with past technological and institutional choices that may hinder future changes. Relying on the concept of socio-technical lock-in, we illustrate this point with the case of the diffusion of distributed generation technologies. Based on this analysis, we propose an adaptation of the alignment framework to integrate these elements

A Behavioral Account of the Labor Market: The Role of Fairness Concerns

In this paper, we argue that important labor market phenomena can be betternunderstood if one takes (i) the inherent incompleteness and relational nature of mostnemployment contracts and (ii) the existence of reference-dependent fairness concerns among a substantial share of the population into account. Theory shows and experiments confirm, that even if fairness concerns were only to exert weak effects in one-shot interactions, repeated interactions greatly magnify the relevance of such concerns on economic outcomes. We alsonreview evidence from laboratory and field experiments examining the role of wages and fairness on effort, derive predictions from our approach for entry-level wages and incumbentnworkers’ wages, confront these predictions with the evidence, and show that referencedependentnfairness concerns may have important consequences for the effects of economic policies such as minimum wage laws