The financial crisis has turned into a real economic crisis and then into a public finance crisis: its political and social implications show very obviously, even to the most unaware people, how much economic matters are a social and political phenomenon. Is political economy going to be more...

In his chapter 13 of the Capital, Marx shows that cooperation involves coordination whatever the mode of production is. In his opinion, command in capitalist production has two sides: coordination and exploitation. The main features of command in a democratic organization of production are...

Are scientific arguments used for analysing "sustainable development" ? This issue is at the core of the EBP-biosoc research project of which we present a few aspects on the use of scientific knowledge through "Evidence Based Policy" method. The use of such a framework in social sciences...

This article deals with public debt dynamics in France. It also analyses several contemporary debates such as Ricardian equivalence, sustainability and budget balance decomposition. Public deficit is not necessarily the result of a Keynesian type of expansionary fiscal policy. It can also stem...

This paper sums up the Marxian analysis of the capitalist exploitation process. The double aspect of direction is emphasized. Notions of formal and real exploitation are used to show that division of labor is less the way to improve productivity than to increase the capital's share of the...

This paper sums up the Marxian analysis of the capitalist exploitation process. The double aspect of direction is emphasized. Notions of formal and real exploitation are used to show that division of labor is less the way to improve productivity than to increase the capital's share of the...

Il peut sembler aujourd'hui quelque peu déplacé de se demander, comme le faisait Stephen Marglin au début des années 1970 : mais au juste, à quoi servent les patrons ? Pourquoi, dans les entreprises, le travail est-il divisé entre certains individus spécialisés dans la décision et le...

This paper discuss the theories of crisis of the Social State. It examines the transformations of the norms of social control on production and distribution of income in France since thirty years. It show that Social State is no more the framework of french institutions. As consequence, the «...

This article highlights the importance of power relations in inter-firm relations and analyses their impact on firms' employment management practices. We show, firstly, that the use of subcontracting creates a chain of inter-firm economic dependency because it leads the principal contractor to...

What does remain from Alchian and Demsetz' contribution to the theory of the firm ? This paper appraises, from the point of view of the history of economic thought, Alchian and Demsetz' contribution on the theory of the firm. This celebrated contribution can be considered partly as a reply to...