Acknowledgments xi
Introduction Whatever Happened to the Common Good? 1
Itinerary 5
The Relationship between Society and Economics 7
The Economist’s Profession 8
Institutions 10
A Window on Our World 11
The Common Thread 12
I Economics And Society
1 Do You Like Economics? 17
What Prevents Our Understanding Economics 17
The Market and Other Ways of Managing Scarcity 24
How to Make Economics Better Understood 29
2 The Moral Limits of the Market 33
The Moral Limits of the Market or Market Failure? 36
The Noncommercial and the Sacred 40
The Market, a Threat to Social Cohesion? 47
Inequality 50
II The Economist’s Profession
3 The Economist in Civil Society 65
The Economist as Public Intellectual 66
The Pitfalls of Involvement in Society 70
A Few Safeguards for an Essential Relationship 76
From Theory to Economic Policy 78
4 The Everyday Life of a Researcher 80
The Interplay between Theory and Empirical Evidence 80
The Microcosm of Academic Economics 91
Economists: Foxes or Hedgehogs? 101
The Role of Mathematics 104
Game Theory and Information Theory 109
An Economist at Work: Methodological Contributions 118
5 Economics on the Move 122
An Agent Who Is Not Always Rational: Homo psychologicus 123
Homo socialis 137
Homo incitatus: The Counterproductive Effects of Rewards 141
Homo juridicus: Law and Social Norms 147
More Unexpected Lines of Inquiry 149
III An Institutional Framework For The Economy
6 Toward a Modern State 155
The Market Has Many Defects That Must Be Corrected 157
The Complementarity between the Market and the State and the Foundations of Liberalism 160
Politicians or Technocrats? 163
Reforming the State: The Example of France 169
7 The Governance and Social Responsibility of Business 174
Many Possible Organizations … but Few Are Chosen 175
And What Is Business’s Social Responsibility? 185
IV The Great Macroeconomic Challenges
8 The Climate Challenge 195
What Is at Stake in Climate Change? 195
Reasons for the Standstill 199
Negotiations That Fall Short of the Stakes Involved 206
Making Everyone Accountable for GHG Emissions 213
Inequality and the Pricing of Carbon 222
The Credibility of an International Agreement 226
In Conclusion: Putting Negotiations Back on Track 228
9 Labor Market Challenges 231
The Labor Market in France 233
An Economic Analysis of Labor Contracts 242
Perverse Institutional Incentives 245
What Can Reform Achieve and How Can It Be Implemented Successfully? 251
The Other Great Debates about Employment 255
The Urgency 261
10 Europe at the Crossroads 265
The European Project: From Hope to Doubt 265
The Origins of the Euro Crisis 267
Greece: Much Bitterness on Both Sides 282
What Options Do the EU and the Eurozone Have Today? 289
11 What Use Is Finance? 296
What Use Is Finance? 296
How to Transform Useful Products into Toxic Products 298
Are Markets Efficient? 306
Why Regulate in Fact? 321
12 The Financial Crisis of 2008 326
The Financial Crisis 327
The New Postcrisis Environment 335
Who Is to Blame? Economists and the Prevention of Crises 350
V The Industrial Challenge
13 Competition Policy and Industrial Policy 355
What Is the Purpose of Competition? 357
Where Does Industrial Policy Fit In? 365
14 How Digitization Is Changing Everything 378
Platforms: Guardians of the Digital Economy 379
Two-Sided Markets 382
A Different Business Model: Platforms as Regulators 389
The Challenges Two-Sided Markets Pose for Competition Policy 392
15 Digital Economies: The Challenges for Society 401
Trust 402