(March 2020) 5 papers...in 5 minutes !
Can Indian democracy tackle social inequalities?
Abhijit Banerjee, Amory Gethin, Thomas Piketty*
Mass social movements have always been crucial to the reduction of inequalities. In Europe and the United States, the strong mobilisation of the working classes played a major role in the building of the welfare state, from social security to progressive taxation. But so-called class divisions are not specific to the West: in Brazil, after the election of Lula in 2002, a comparable polarisation of the political space between “rich” and “poor” emerged, partly as a result of new social policies that benefited the least well-off. Analysing the historical contexts in which such configurations occur is therefore key to understanding …
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How to evaluate the importance of decision-making criteria?
Michel Grabisch*, Christophe Labreuche and Mustapha Ridaoui
Most problems in decision-making and evaluation involve several criteria or attributes: the selection of a candidate or a project, choice of a renewable energy (solar, wind, etc.), comfort rating, etc. Insofar as the decision rests on the evaluation of a number of attributes, how should we measure the relative importance of each in the final decision? More precisely, in a given numerical decision-making or evaluation model which, on the basis of the value of an object’s attributes gives that object an overall score, how do we quantify the weight of each attribute in that general score?...
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How does diversity impact employment at the local level?
Camille Hémet*, Clément Malgouyres*
Western economies are facing intensified flows of people and consequently have to cope with increasingly mixed populations. Following the European Union enlargement process and the current massive immigrant inflows, this feature is particularly salient in European Union countries, where the economic and social implications of higher heterogeneity in terms of culture and national origins are becoming central issues. In this article, Camille Hémet and Clément Malgouyres investigate the role of local diversity on individuals’ employment prospects: do people living in heterogeneous neighborhoods have different employment probabilities than those living in more homogeneous areas?...
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What are fair prices in the presence of market imperfections?
Jean-Marc Bonnisseau*, Matías Fuentes
An essential aim of the economy is to offer mechanisms for the allocation of limited resources among heterogeneous economic agents. A good mechanism should lead, at the very least, to a final allocation that cannot be unanimously contested by all actors. The most widely used decentralised mechanism is a market with posted prices around which buyers and sellers bargain. The market is efficient only under certain strong conditions. Several phenomena, called market imperfections, prevent the achievement of an optimal allocation: externalities, when the actions of agents have an impact on others, such as when pollution or greenhouse gas emitted …
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