Decentralization as an incentive scheme when regional differences are large

It has been suggested that large regional differences could be an obstacle to that part of the political accountability of office-holders which is based on yardstick competition among governments. The paper addresses that question and concludes that the obstacle is not too serious in general. The second part of the paper is devoted to the persistent economic underperformance of some regions in countries such as Germany, Italy and (with regard to regions overseas) France. How is it that the mechanism of yardstick competition induces a convergence of economic performance among European Union member countries, even those particularly poor initially, but fails to induce all the underperforming regions of these countries to catch up? A small model is used to explore that question. In the case of the persistently underperforming regions, it turns out that the degree of regional differentiation is not sufficient for yardstick competition to work and bring about an improvement in performance. The yardstick competition framework remains useful if it helps to understand more clearly why this is so.yardstick competition;political competition;regional development

Neighborhood Effects in Spatial Housing Value Models The Case of the Metropolitan Area of Paris (1999).

In hedonic housing models, the spatial dimension of housing values are traditionally processed by the impact of neighborhood variables and accessibility variables. In this paper we show that spatial effects might remain once neighborhood effects and accessibility have been controlled for. We notably stress on three sides of neighborhood effects: social capital, social status and social externalities and consider the accessibility to the primary economic center as describing the urban spatial trend. Using spatial econometrics specifications of the hedonic equation, we estimate whether spatial effects impact the housing values. Our empirical case concerns the Metropolitan Area (MA) of Paris in France which is divided in 2 636 neighborhood areas. We estimate the housing price distribution from a sample of 21,000 apartments sold in 1999. Our empirical results highlight the lumpy distribution of unit price along the general decreasing spatial trend from the Central Business District once neighborhood effects have been introduced. More precisely, a spatial error model is estimated revealing a positive and significance spatial effects across housing values which extend beyond their neighborhood area. Social capital, social status and social externalities play local role and may positively or negatively impact the housing prices. We showed a positive impact of diversified building patterns but a negative impact of social mixity which is somewhat conflictual but which is in fact in line with many current questions about social segregation and spatial segregation in urban areas.Hedonic model, housing value, neighborhood effects, spatial econometrics

"On Hochberg et al.'s, the tragedy of the reviewers commons"

We discuss each of the recommendations made by Hochberg et al. (2009) to prevent the “tragedy of the reviewer commons”. Having scientific journals share a common database of reviewers would be to recreate a bureaucratic organization, where extra-scientific considerations prevailed. Pre-reviewing of papers by colleagues is a widespread practice but raises problems of coordination. Revising manuscripts in line with all reviewers’ recommendations presupposes that recommendations converge, which is acrobatic. Signing an undertaking that authors have taken into accounts all reviewers’ comments is both authoritarian and sterilizing. Sending previous comments with subsequent submissions to other journals amounts to creating a cartel and a single all-encompassing journal, which again is sterilizing. Using young scientists as reviewers is highly risky: they might prove very severe; and if they have not yet published themselves, the recommendation violates the principle of peer review. Asking reviewers to be more severe would only create a crisis in the publishing houses and actually increase reviewers’ workloads. The criticisms of the behavior of authors looking to publish in the best journals are unfair: it is natural for scholars to try to publish in the best journals and not to resign themselves to being second rate. Punishing lazy reviewers would only lower the quality of reports: instead, we favor the idea of paying reviewers “in kind” with, say, complimentary books or papers.Reviewer;Referee;Editor;Publisher;Publishing;Tragedy of the Commons;Hochberg

Don’t tell us: the demand for secretive behaviour

The matter studied here is how, and with what implications, people may decide that they do not want to be let into secrets that concern them. They could get the information at no cost but they refuse to know. The reasoning is framed in terms of principals and agents, with the principals assumed not to want to know the agents’ secrets. For convenience, the context chosen for the exposition is mainly that of voters as principals and the government or the office-holders as agents. After some exploration of the motivations underlying the attitude of the principals, the paper focuses on the case when neither total secrecy nor total disclosure prevails. The demand for partial secrecy is analysed with the help of two models, one devoted to ongoing processes and the other to past events. Finally the paper discusses some of the ways the “don’t tell us mechanism” may interact with two others: “thinking about something else” and “low issue salience”.secrets, transparency, asymmetric information, voluntary ignorance, voting

Le territoire viticole en France : de la destruction à la valorisation

The surfaces devoted to the vine were reduced with the passing years. Under the effect of several phenomena that lead to lower consumption of wine, the decrease in vineyard area has led to a disintegration of rural and peri-urban area and reallocation of land released. Simultaneously from several French and European legislations, the wine territories have several means of protection and recovery through the heritage (natural, material), the concept of terroir, the nature and quality of products.Heritage;landscape;protection;wine territories;terroir;development

Exploring the finance-real economy link in U.S.: Empirical evidence from Panel Unit Root and Co-integration Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationships between common shocks affecting the real economy and those underlying co-fluctuations in U.S. financial markets. In order to do this, we test for links between these common factors and also use the econometric theory of non-stationary panel data to estimate the relationships. The estimates prove the existence of significant relationships between financial and macroeconomic factors. It is also shown that there are forces pulling U.S. financial markets to move.Panic analysis;Panel Data;Common factors;Financial Crises;U.S

Convergence test in the presence of structural changes: an empirical procedure based on panel data with cross-sectional dependence

This paper presents an essay on empirical testing procedure for economic convergence. Referring to the unit root test proposed by Moon and Perron (2004), we proposed a modified Evans (1996) testing procedure of the convergence hypothesis. The advantage of this modified procedure is that it makes possible to take into account cross-sectional dependences that affect GDP per capita. It also allows to take into account structural instabilities in these aggregates. The application of the procedure on OECD member countries and CFA zone member countries leads to accept the hypothesis of economic convergence for these two groups of countries, and it shows that the convergence rate is significantly lower in the OECD sample. However, the results of the tests applied to the Global sample composed by all countries in these two samples conclude a rejection of the convergence hypothesis.beta-convergence;Unit root;Panel data;Factor model;Cross-sectional dependence;Structural change

Quelle relation entre l’écrit académique et l’écrit professionnel? Une étude de cas dans le domaine du travail social [What is the relationship between academic writing and professional writing? A case study in the field of social work]

Beaucoup d'étudiants, dans l'enseignement supérieur, suivent des cours à orientation professionnelle. Cet article se focalise sur un projet d’« ethnographie de texte », concernant l’écriture des assistants sociaux pendant leur formation et sur leur terrain professionnel, avec cinq assistants sociaux comme co-chercheurs. L’article examine les ressemblances et les différences entre l’écriture pratiquée dans les cours universitaires et dans le travail quotidien. Une conclusion importante de la recherche est qu’en général on ne prête pas suffisamment d’attention pédagogique à l’écriture – tant aux textes qu’aux pratiques – que les assistants sociaux doivent produire dans les contextes professionnels

Good work, little soldier: Text and pretext

This article reads the relation between Denis's Beau Travail and Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film Le Petit Soldat as a film-on-film variant of film-on-book adaptation. The model informing this reading is not so much intertextual as pretextual. The principal points of contact between the two films discussed are 'actor' (Michel Subor), 'character' (Bruno Forestier) and 'narrator' (Forestier/Galoup). The use in Beau Travail of Le Petit Soldat is compared with and differentiated from the use of Melville's 'Billy Budd, Sailor'. The conclusion arrived at is that the film-on-film relation can be read as a development of the mirror motif borrowed from Godard by Denis, in order to replace abyssal models of intertextual infinity with the finitudes of abyssal reflexivity. This is to offer a model of pretextuality that is not dependent on privileging the pretext: implicit is the suggestion that Beau Travail and Le Petit Soldat may be read as a single, if hybrid, text