Gravel
Nicolas Gravel
Publications
At an abstract level, one can view the various theories of justice that have been discussed in economics and philosophy in the last 50 years or so, including of course that of Serge-Christophe Kolm (2005), as attempts at providing criteria for comparing alternative societies on the basis of their “ethical goodness.” The compared societies can be truly distinct societies, such as India and China. They can also be the same society examined at two different points of time (say India today and India 20 years ago) or, more counterfactually, before and after a tax reform or demographic shock.
This paper contrasts conventional real GDP and price indicators of living standard, interpreted as revealing information on welfare, with others, that aim at reflecting individual freedom. It is argued that freedom-based indices are easier to use and interpret than traditional real GDP ones. Illustrations of the differences between the two classes of indices are provided for international comparisons, as well as for the evaluation of growth and inflation in France.
Journal: Economie et statistique
No abstract is available for this item.
This paper provides a robust normative evaluation of the spectacular growth episode that India has experienced in the last 15 years. Specifically, the paper compares the evolution, between 1988, 1996 and 2001 of the distribution of several individual attributes on the basis of ethically robust dominance criteria. [CSH Occassional Paper No. 20]
The Handbook of Economics and Ethics portrays an understanding of economic methodology in which facts and values, though distinct, are closely interconnected in a variety of ways. From theory building to data collection, and from modelling to policy evaluation, this encyclopaedic Handbook is at the intersection of economics and ethics.
The paper provides robust normative comparisons of 12 OECD countries based on their distributions of disposable income and access to two regional public goods: infant mortality and pupil-teacher ratios at public schools. Comparisons are performed using two and three-dimensional dominance criteria that coincide with the unanimity of utilitarian judgments taken over specific classes of utility functions. The criteria succeed in ranking conclusively about 30% of all possible comparisons in the two-dimensional case, compared with 67% for one-dimensional income-based comparisons and 6% for three-dimensional ones. Introducing local public goods seems to worsen the relative standing of Anglo-Saxon countries. Copyright (c) The London School of Economics and Political Science 2008.
Cet article met en oeuvre une méthode d’identification empirique de la contribution agrégée des aménités d’une zone urbaine qui fait abstraction de ses caractéristiques de localisation.Une fonction hédonique est estimée sur un échantillon de 29 000 ventes de logements en habitat collectif réalisées à Marseille, entre 1995 et 2000. Les variables mesurant les caractéristiques de localisation (proximité du Vieux-Port et de la mer, accessibilité au réseau routier) définies au niveau des 950 sections cadastrales de la ville de Marseille sont capitalisées de façon significative dans le prix du logement. L’intégration de ces variables de localisation dans la fonction hédonique affecte significativement le pouvoir explicatif des quartiers, tel que mesuré par un effet fixe. La carte de la valorisation foncière des différents quartiers de Marseille, nette de leur localisation dessine un nouveau visage de la ville, où seuls les quartiers situés derrière le port de commerce apparaissent nettement dévalorisés.
Purpose:
The purpose of this paper is to provide a robust normative evaluation of the recent evolution of Indians' exposures to health-related risks.
Design/methodology/approach:
The paper compares empirically the distributions of individuals' risks of death in India on the basis of new ethically robust criteria in 1995 and 2002. Probabilities of death are assigned individuals as an estimated probit function of several explanatory variables, including the individual's district of residence. The criteria used ranks distributions of individual risks in the same way as would all Von Neumann–Morgenstern (VNM) social planners who respect, in the usual Pareto sense – individuals VNM preferences over individual risks of death. Two criteria are considered in turn. The first criterion assumes that individuals' VNM utilities are increasing in money and value more a unit of money received in the bad state than one received in the good one. The second criterion makes the extra assumption that individuals are risk averse and have VNM utility functions that are more concave in the bad state than in the good one.
Findings:
It is found that there is unanimity among all VNM social planners who respect individual VNM preference for considering that the distribution of risks of death in India was better in 2002 than in 1995. This is at least so if individuals can be assumed to prefer more money to less, to be risk averse, and to be more risk averse in the bad state than in the good one.
Research limitations/implications:
A limitation of the empirical research of the paper is that it concerns only one kind of risk. Future research would apply the tools of this paper to other kinds of risks like risks of crime or risks of unemployment.
Practical implications:
A practical implication of the paper is to illustrate the usefulness of robust dominance methodology to evaluate the outcome of various policies.
Originality/value: The novelty of the paper is to be one of the
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