School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences

About: School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a facility organization based out in Villejuif, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Context (language use). The organization has 1230 authors who have published 2084 publications receiving 57740 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales & EHESS.

Attaching Workers through In-Kind Payments: Theory and Evidence from Russia

Abstract: External shocks may cause a decline in the productivity of fixed capital in certain regions of an economy. Exogenous obstacles to migration make it hard for workers in those regions to reallocate to more prosperous regions. In addition, firms may devise 'attachment' strategies to keep workers from moving out of a local labor market. When workers are compensated in kind, they find it difficult to raise the cash needed for migration. This endogenous obstacle to migration has not yet been considered in the literature. The article shows that the feasibility of attachment depends on the inherited structure of local labor markets: attachment can exist in equilibrium only if the labor market is sufficiently concentrated. Attachment is beneficial for both employers and employees but hurts the unemployed and the self-employed. An analysis of matched household-firm data from the Russian Federation corroborates the theory.

Roads and cities of 18th century France

Abstract: The evolution of infrastructure networks such as roads and streets are of utmost importance to understand the evolution of urban systems. However, datasets describing these spatial objects are rare and sparse. The database presented here represents the road network at the french national level described in the historical map of Cassini in the 18th century. The digitization of this historical map is based on a collaborative methodology that we describe in detail. This dataset can be used for a variety of interdisciplinary studies, covering multiple spatial resolutions and ranging from history, geography, urban economics to network science.

Combinatorial optimization and hierarchical classifications

Abstract: This paper is devoted to some selected topics relating Combinatorial Optimization and Hierarchical Classification. It is oriented toward extensions of the standard classification schemes (the hierarchies): pyramids, quasi-hierarchies, circular clustering, rigid clustering and others. Bijection theorems between these models and dissimilarity models allow to state some clustering problems as optimization problems. Within the galaxy of optimization we have especially discussed the following: NP-completeness results and search for polynomial instances; problems solved in a polynomial time (e.g. subdominant theory); design, analysis and applications of algorithms. In contrast with the orientation to “new” clustering problems, the last part discusses some standard algorithmic approaches.

Grappling with the Economy of Enrichment

Abstract: In a conversation with Fabian Muniesa from the board of editors of Valuation Studies, Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre unravelled a few of the distinguishing features of their new work on the sociology of valuation. Combining an updated view on the pragmatics of justification and a more recent preoccupation with the problem of prices, their proposal appears as both a suitable contribution and a timely challenge to current threads in valuation studies. It also interacts in a stimulating fashion with their concomitant analysis of the political atmosphere in France, and more widely of the shift to identity that so vividly informs the critique of capitalism today.