L'A. etudie le lien entre capital social et developpement economique. Il analyse la notion de capital social et souligne que cette notion caracterise un reseau de relations sociales jouissant d'une certaine autonomie et d'un relatif enracinement dans la vie sociale. Il examine la place du capital social dans le cadre des politiques de developpement economique et met en lumiere un certain nombre de contraintes et de possibilites inherentes aux dilemmes propres aux strategies de developpement «bas-haut» et «haut-bas». Il envisage de facon critique les theories et les politiques concues en matiere de developpement

Social capital and economic development: Toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework

Selection of efficient institutions or policies in politics requires constituents to estimate the net benefits of political reforms. Political competition fails to inform constituents of the costs of forgone political alternatives. Ignorance of ‘political opportunity costs’ prevents the adoption of welfare enhancing reforms of public institutions and policies. The empirical record supports this contention.

The use of knowledge about society

The paper provides a road map to the burgeoning literature on two-sided markets and presents new results. It identifies two-sided markets with markets in which the structure, and not only the level of prices charged by platforms matters. The failure of the Coase theorem is necessary but not sufficient for two-sidedness. The paper builds a model integrating usage and membership externalities, that unifies two hitherto disparate strands of the literature emphasizing either form of externality, and obtains new results on the mix of membership and usage charges when price setting or bargaining determine payments between end-users.

/pdf/two-sided-markets-a-progress-report-40yp4ugn2p.pdf

Two-sided markets: a progress report

In the past decade, microfinance programs have demonstrated that it is possible to lend to low-income households while maintaining high repayment rates--even without requiring collateral. The programs promise a revolution in approaches to alleviating poverty and spreading financial services, and millions of poor households are served globally. A growing body of economic theory demonstrates how new contractual forms offer a key to microfinance success--particularly the use of group-lending contracts with joint liability. For the most part, however, high repayment rates have not translated into profits, and studies of impacts on poverty yield a mixed picture. In describing emerging tensions, the paper highlights the diversity of innovative mechanisms beyond group-lending contracts, the measurement of financial sustainability, the estimation of economic and social impacts, the costs and benefits of subsidization, and the potential to reduce poverty through savings programs rather than just credit. The promise of microfinance has pushed far ahead of the evidence, and an agenda is put forward for addressing critical empirical gaps and sharpening the terms of policy discussion.

/pdf/the-microfinance-promise-2e7oe4nvse.pdf

The microfinance promise

There are many examples of markets involving two groups of participants who need to interact via intermediaries. Moreover, these intermediaries usually have to compete for business from both groups. Examples include academic publishing (where journals facilitate the interaction between authors and readers), advertising in media markets (where newspapers or TV channels enable adverts from producers to reach consumers), payment systems (where credit cards can be a convenient method of transaction between consumers and retailers), and telecommunications networks (where networks are used to provide links between callers and those who receive calls). The paper surveys recent theoretical work on these two-sided markets. The main questions are (i) what determines which side of the market is subsidized (if either) in order to attract the other side, and (ii) is the resulting outcome socially e¢cient?

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/42863/1/MPRA_paper_42863.pdf

Competition in Two-Sided Markets ¤

This paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy-making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office. The approach has a number of attractive features. First, it is a conceptualization of a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by, as well as of, the people. Second, the model is analytically tractable, being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally. Third, it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions about the performance of representative democracy.

/pdf/an-economic-model-of-representative-democracy-3jdlaq0x9u.pdf

An Economic Model of Representative Democracy

Group lending, repayment incentives and social collateral

A key question concerning affirmative action is whether the labor-market gains it brings to minorities can continue without it becoming a permanent fixture in the labor market. The authors argue that this depends on how the policy affects employers' beliefs about the productivity of minority workers. They study the joint determination of employer beliefs and worker productivity in a model of statistical discrimination in job assignments. The authors prove that, even when identifiable groups are equally endowed ex ante, affirmative action can bring about a situation in which employers (correctly) perceive the groups to be unequally productive, ex post. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.

Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?

https://web.stanford.edu/~jrodden/besley_coate.pdf

Stephen Coate

Papers

An Economic Model of Representative Democracy

Group lending, repayment incentives and social collateral

Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?

Centralized versus decentralized provision of local public goods: a political economy approach

Reciprocity without commitment: Characterization and performance of informal insurance arrangements