Les fondements utilitaristes d'un gouvernement limité sont instables, dans la mesure où ils supposent des individus rationnels et cohérents. L'hypothèse d'agent rationnel faite par les économistes a récemment été l'objet d'attaques soutenues. L'économie comportementale a suggéré que...

When policymakers and private agents use models, the economists who design the model have an incentive to alter it in order infuence outcomes in a fashion consistent with their own preferences. I discuss some consequences of the existence of such ideological bias. In particular, I analyze the...

We use a French firm-level data set containing 13,000 firms over the period 1993-2004 to analyze the relationship between credit constraints and firms' R&D behavior over the business cycle. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) the share of R&D investment over total investment is...

In a cross-section of countries, government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with social capital. We document this correlation, and present a model explaining it. In the model, distrust creates public demand for regulation, while regulation in turn discourages social capital...