L'objet de cet article est d'analyser l'effet de la corruption sur la mobilisation des recettes publiques. Une analyse économétrique sur données de panel (125 pays et couvrant la période 1980-2002) permet de ne pas rejeter l'hypothèse d'un effet négatif de la corruption sur les recettes publiques. Cet effet négatif de la corruption n'affecte pas de manière identique les différentes composantes des recettes. En raison probablement des opportunités différentes de rente, la corruption modifie la structure du prélèvement public au profit des recettes tarifaires assises sur le commerce international et au détriment des impôts directs et indirects, dont en particulier la TVA. Il apparaît également qu'un canal de transmission important de la corruption sur le prélèvement public est celui transitant par un affaiblissement du civisme fiscal capté à travers des variables de l'action publique.

L’Institut de Recherches économiques poursuit, depuis plusieurs années, l’étude de l’évolution économique de la Belgique depuis 1830, particulièrement en vue d’élucider divers aspects de l’expansion fondamentale et des tendances de longue durée. Dans le cadre de ces travaux, une étude du commerce extérieur paraît trouver naturellement sa place.

En effet, si la phrase: « La Belgique doit exporter ou mourir » rappelle plutôt le langage de Monsieur Prudhomme que celui de la science, il n’en est pas moins vrai qué le commerce extérieur doit avoir joué dans notre économie et dans son développement historique un rôle important. D’autre part, il semble bien, a priori, que les variations relatives des différents éléments qui constituent le commerce international d’un pays comme la Belgique doivent influencer son équilibre économique général, et par là même, mais ceci dépasse déjà les cadres de la présente étude, sa structure sociale; de leur côté, que ces variations doivent subir l’influence du développement économique interne.

Or, dans le domaine du commerce extérieur, des statistiques relativement complètes sont à notre disposition; si elles ne sont pas toujours dignes d’une confiance aveugle, elles peuvent au moins servir de base à une étude assez fouillée des problèmes à résoudre. Toutefois la mise en œuvre de ces matériaux n’est pas aussi aisée qu’il pourrait paraître à première vue (2).

The non-stationarity of many macroeconomic time-series has lead to an increased demand for economic models that are able to generate fragile equilibria. For instance, the natural unemployment rate is allowed to shift over time depending on past unemployment. Actually, many European unemployment series seem to exhibit a unit root or persistence. This view is questioned in the paper using German data on unemployment. A new class of time-series models, the fractionally integrated ARMA model, that allows the difference parameter to take real values, enables the researcher to separate long memory and short memory in the data. It is shown that using this approach the unit root hypothesis is rejected but unemployment exhibits long memory.

The formulation of legal rules is a challenging issue for lawmakers. Tradeoffs are inevitable between providing more guidance by specific rules and enlarging the scope by general rules. Using real options theory we show that the degree of precision should be considered as a degree of flexibility which increases the value of the text. Thus, we derive a normative principle for a draftsman to choose between rules versus standards and to decide when the law should be enacted. In highly innovating environments, delaying the enactment allows lawmakers to obtain more information. Therefore, the lower the degree of precision of the law, the shorter the delay.

Les divers critères qui ont été mis de l’avant pour identifier la structure de substitution-complémentarité des biens de consommation forment, à priori, une littérature sans principe d’unité. Un économiste confronté pour la première fois avec le critère d’Allais (1943) risque fort de le rejeter–comme ont fait ses élèves–pour la simple raison qu’il parait en dehors du courant actuel et donc particulièrement obscur.

In this paper we consider the problem of evaluating the performance of production units in terms of their technical efficiency. Several attempts have been made to solve this problem and a number of different measures appear in the economic literature : the technical efficiency, here used, is defined to be the ability of a productive organization to operate close to, or on the boundary of its production set; the problem will be analyzed only in terms of physical input and output quantities, without any references to prices or costs structures. This concept of technical efficiency is inspired from the work by Koopmans (1951); it received a first empirical application in Farrel (1957). An interesting survey on this topic may be formed in Førsund, Lovell and Schmidt (1980). Measuring efficiency of this kind for any data set requires first to determine what the boundary of the unknown production set can be; and then, to measure the distance between any observed point and this boundary. In this paper, we concentrate on the Farrel method of estimating technical efficiencies. There the production set is typically a convex polyhedron generated from the observed data with small modifications in view of the assumptions on disposabilities of input and/or on disposibilities of outputs. The distances from the efficient frontier are then measured in a radial sense, i.e. with fixed technology.

Metropolization is not a new phenomenon: metropolises have been around for centuries. The prime and permanent function of a metropolis is the coordination of economic activities at a world scale. This function has been applied to different activities in history, depending on technological conditions and economic organization, and consequently it generated different forms of metropolises. The resulting continuities and discontinuities in the metropolises' evolution can be understood in terms of agglomeration economies. In the pre-industrial period, the trading metropolis coordinates long range trade. The industrial revolutions generate new needs for coordination of production and give rise to the manufacturing metropolis. Finally, the information revolution and the emergence of the post-industrial economy create the global metropolis.

The paper surveys, without proofs, recent axiomatic results on the utilization of common property resources, by this author and some others. Problems discussed include the division of unproduced commodities (the traditional fair division problem), and the cooperative production of a private or public good.

Axioms contrast No Envy with two monotonicity properties, respectively when the population owning the resources in common increases, and when these resources themselves grow.

As has been found in previous studies, the labor market performance of individuals is often affected by demographic determinants like cohort size, age, marriage status and family size. While most of this analysis was studied for earnings, the paper investigates the issue for labor mobility. Mobility is measured here by the number of new employers and the frequency of unemployment of an individual in a particular period. Given the discrete nature of the data, the ordinal probit model and the censored Poisson as the censored negative binomial model was estimated. Since the choice of the statistical model is not clear a priori, various model comparisons are carried out and some new pseudo-R2 measures are proposed and used in the analysis. Results indicate that demographic determinants matter for labor mobility.

Nous présentons dans cet article un modèle d'equilibre général intertemporel qui rend compte de l'influence de l'inflation dans le cycle en France et aux Etats-Unis. L'adoption d'une fonction d'utilité assez générate permet de degager l'importance des élasticités de substitution instantanée et intertemporelle dans la dynamique d'ajustement de l'économie et l'éventuelle présence d'un effet Tobin. La simulation stochastique du modèle et sa comparaison avec les données françaises et américaines montre qu'il permet une reproduction de la dimension réelle du cycle similaire à celle des modèles RBC traditionnels. La reproduction de la dimension nominale du cycle s'avère plus décevante, un étalonnage réaliste du modèle (en particulier de la valeur des élasticités intertemporelles de substitution) ne permet pas de reproduire conjointement les faits stylisés nominaux principaux et les profils de réponses des variables réelles à un choc monétaire.

Following up a number of previous exercises in spatial econometrics, this paper presents, after a short introduction to the characteristics of spatial models, some more results, specifically on

— the estimation of the complete spatial autocorrelation matrix of the random elements in the multiple linear regression case;

— the extension to an interdependent model, of which the identification problem is especially taken up.

Smith advanced a particular view of altruism that should prove to be relevant to the modern literature on the subject. It provided the backbone of his critique of three different theories. These three theories have been reincarnated in three modern approaches : Robert Axelrod’s “egoistic”, Gary Becker’s “egocentric”, and George Herbert Mead and Robert Frank’s ”altercentric” views. Axelrod’s approach repeats the failing, which Smith found in Mandeville’s. Becker’s theory echoes the shortcoming, which Smith identified in Hobbes’. Mead/Frank’s view duplicates the fault, which Smith uncovered in the approach of Francis Hutcheson and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.

This article contributes to the small literature on the relationship between the range of local public services and population size. Using new data on French local jurisdictions, we test the hypothesis that larger jurisdictions provide a broader range of public goods (the so-called “zoo effect”, Oates (1988)). We take advantage of the fact that, in France, many municipalities recently joined together, forming groups of municipalities (or communities) in order to achieve economies of scale. Using spatial econometrics, we find some evidence for the existence of a zoo effect in French communities. In other terms, larger communities provide a broader range of services than smaller ones. The intensity of the zoo effect is higher in urban than in rural areas.

The aim of this article is to assess the ability of Calvo (1983) type nominal wage contract to generate a positive and long-lasting hump-shaped response of output to a monetary stimulus, as suggested in empirical studies. To this end, we develop a simple cash-in-advance model, in which stochastic nominal wage contracts are introduced. This reduces the negative effect of the so-called inflation tax such that monetary shocks have a positive hump-shaped effect on output. The variance decomposition analysis suggests that monetary shocks explain up to 40% of the total variance of output in the first quarter and have a long lasting effect, in our calibrated economy (namely the German economy). Further, the model also mimics the correlation between output and inflation and real balances observed in Germany. We also propose an evaluation of the effects of variations in the mean duration of contracts on these indicators.

In this paper, we have distinguished three different conceptions of the budget constraint (BC). The first one, introduced by Clower, regards the BC as a universal (unconditional) rational planning postulate. This does not imply market equilibrium or optimality. The second one, advocated by Kornai, considers the BC as a conditional empirical fact regarding the specific behavioural regularity of agents that is determined by particular institutional setups. The third one is implicitly held by a number of endogenous explanations of the SBC notably by the Complete (optimal) Contracts Theory and the Public Choice Theory. It regards the BC as a matter of choice by rational agents. While Clower and Kornai try to understand the BC in the context of disequilibrium or at least independently of equilibrium or optimality conditions, the partisans of the third approach integrate the BC in the process of dynamic optimization. Although Kornai’s conception of the BC is irreconcilable with the third approach, it should be noted that Kornai’s standpoint is contradictory. In his appraisal of the hard budget constraint (HBC) in case of competitive market economy, Kornai contends that the application of the BC is equivalent to the realization of Walras’ Law. He then uses this ideal HBC as a normative reference in order to measure the inefficiencies of the soft budget constraint (SBC). In fact, Kornai’s standpoint with regard to the HBC and his efficiency analysis are in tune with the third approach.

The paper discusses the relation between the justly famous Hotelling’s [1929] paper on stability in competition and the corresponding passages of the often ignored Launhardt’s [1885] book, devoted to mathematical economics. Launhardt is sometimes credited for the anticipation of Hotelling’s spatial model and analysis of oligopolistic competition with product differentiation. The paper argues that Launhardt’s model is in fact significantly more general, in particular in introducing vertical along with horizontal differentiation, and that his analysis of strategic competition is correspondingly finer and more complete. Thus, the earlier author does not appear to be a forerunner of the later, rather the later a successor of the earlier. However, Hotelling did (objectively) innovate, in a significant way, by endogenizing locations as strategic variables, and principally by developing the concept of an abstract characteristics space, which transcends the geographical space.

In this article, we concern ourselves with the modelling of macroeconomic time series within the unit-roots framework. We apply two approaches which seem to be well suited to model business cycles and long-run growth phenomena. First, we apply the Markov-switching model which is built around the idea that a variable may be associated with different regimes. We extend this approach to allow for asymmetries in business cycles and find that with this modification the model identifies regimes which cannot be associated with notions of the business cycle. Second, in a cointegration analysis we examine common stochastic trends and international transmission of macroeconomic shocks. The results show that transient shocks do not vanish, but have long persistent effects. Furthermore, we supplement the cointegration approach with an impulse response analysis and find that there exists a transmission of shocks between countries which indicates great international dependencies in economic activity.