Cette thèse propose une histoire intellectuelle de l’ordolibéralisme (1932-1950), centrée sur les travaux de Walter Eucken et Wilhelm Röpke, incluant également des références à Franz Böhm, Alexander Rüstow, Leonhard Miksch et Friedrich Lutz. Il s’agit de répondre à la question suivante : comment expliquer que la pensée ordolibérale ait eu les ressources intellectuelles pour peser sur la reconstruction allemande de l’après-guerre Seconde Guerre mondiale ? Répondre à cette interrogation exige, dans un premier temps, de définir clairement ce qu’est l’ordolibéralisme dans son contexte discursif d’apparition. La thèse établit d’abord que l’ordolibéralisme, dans ses composantes épistémologique (Chap. 1), théorique (Chap. 2), idéologique (Chap. 3) ou politique (Chap. 4), peut être défini comme une économie politique du pouvoir : c’est-à-dire une forme de savoir économique, plutôt qu’une sous variété de (néo)libéralisme. L’objectif premier de cette économie politique est de conduire une analyse des sources, des manifestations et des conséquences du pouvoir dans la sphère sociale. Dans un deuxième temps, la thèse montre en quoi cette identité a pu jouer positivement dans la fondation d’une rationalité politique dans les années d’après-guerre en Allemagne de l’Ouest (Chap. 5), et négativement comme rempart aux programmes concurrents, et en particulier face à celui de John Maynard Keynes (Chap. 6). En définitive, la thèse interroge le discours ordolibéral dans sa capacité à servir de référence à des politiques économiques allemandes, puis européennes : une pérennité accompagnée d’une profonde transformation d’une économie politique du pouvoir initial à la forme contemporaine de l’orthodoxie ordolibérale. / This thesis retraces the intellectual history of ordoliberalism, focusing in particular on the works of Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke, with references to the contributions of Franz Böhm, Alexander Rüstow, Leonhard Miksch and Friedrich Lutz. The main question it addresses is the following: how can we explain the fact that ordoliberal thought had the intellectual resources to weight on German post-war reconstruction? In order to answer it, it is necessary to provide a clear definition of ordoliberalism in its discursive context. First the thesis shows that ordoliberalism, in its epistemological (Chap. 1 ), theoretical (Chap. 2), ideological (Chap. 3) and political (Chap. 4) components, can be defined as a political economy of power, i. e. a form of economic knowledge, whose primary objective is to analyse the sources, the action and the impact of power within society; in other words, as a specific doctrine rather than a sub-species of (neo) liberalism. Secondly, the thesis illustrates how this identity played a positive role in promoting a form of political rationality in the post-war years in West Germany (Chap. 5), but also a negative one by excluding rival political programs, such as that of John Maynard Keynes (Chap. 6). Finally, the thesis investigates the ordoliberal discourse as a benchmark for German, and then European, economic policies: a persistence that went together with its radical transformation from the initial political economy of power, to the contemporary form of ordoliberal orthodoxy.

Cette thèse propose une analyse de l'incapacité du gouvernement des Etats-Unis à modifier en profondeur sa politique d'immigration. Elle montre que son principal facteur explicatif est institutionnel : la résilience du régime d'immigration, entendu comme mode de régulation de l'admission d'immigrants, s'explique par sa capacité à s'appuyer sur une structuration de l'économie politique de l'immigration favorable au blocage des réformes. Pour démontrer cette proposition, notre étude est donc articulée en deux blocs : les facteurs engendrant une crise du régime, et ceux permettant son statu quo. Dans un premier temps, les facteurs structurels et conjoncturels de la crise du régime sont étudiés. Une analyse empirique de la régulation de l'immigration met en évidence ses deux dysfonctionnements structurels : d'une part un déséquilibre croissant entre le nombre de candidats à l'immigration et l'offre de visas et, d'autre part, la formation d'un stock de résidents en situation irrégulière. Néanmoins, l'analyse des représentations de la population américaine concernant cette régulation démontre que la volonté de réformer les conditions d'admission de l'immigration relève aussi de facteurs subjectifs. Une conjoncture économique dégradée intensifie la perception d'une crise du régime, et la préférence pour sa fermeture. Dans un second temps, les facteurs explicatifs de l'absence de fermeture du régime sont analysés. La validité de deux hypothèses explicatives de sa résilience est démontrée par une analyse des épisodes de réforme de 1994 à 2010. En premier lieu, la mise en œuvre politique d'une réforme donne la primauté aux préférences des groupes d'intérêts organisés (communautés immigrées, employeurs, syndicats, nativistes) par rapport à celles de l'opinion publique. En second lieu, les préférences antagonistes de ces groupes d'intérêts les rendent incapables de coopérer : malgré sa non-optimalité, le régime d'immigration correspond donc à une issue stable des négociations législatives, car il limite les pertes de l'ensemble des acteurs en présence. / This PhD dissertation deals with the inability of the United States government to adopt an overhaul of its immigration policy. We show that the main factor accounting for this situation is institutional: the structure of the political economy of immigration explains why reforms attempts fail, and therefore helps to stabilize the regulation of immigrant admissions in the United States. To demonstrate this proposal, we firstly review the roots of the immigration crisis and then analyze why it is not overcome. The immigration crisis in the United States is produced by a set of trends. Some of them are structural. As a fact, the immigration system in the United States is deeply dysfunctional for two reasons. It is firstly very inefficient at properly organizing legal immigration by balancing an increasing demand for immigration visas with an offer bound through quotas. It is secondly unable to dissuade the settlement of a growing undocumented immigrant population. Still, the perception of this immigration crisis and the demand for reform are linked to cyclical factors. Nativist demands for a tightening of immigration legislation are notably greater during times of economic recession. We then explain the absence of immigration restriction in the United States through the demonstration of two complementary factors. Firstly, the political process through which immigration reform is defined give more influence to organized interest groups (such as immigrant communities, employers, unions and nativists) than to public opinion. Secondly, these groups are unable to cooperate for an immigration reform compromise, due to their competing preferences. In another words, the current statu quo prevailing in immigration reform may be suboptimal in terms of regulation of immigrant admissions. It is nevertheless stable, because it allows losses which would inevitably result from a successful immigration reform.

Cette thèse cherche à savoir si la méthode décentralisée, officiellement mise en avant dans la gestion des crises de la dette souveraine depuis leur origine, est non seulement réalisable, mais également efficace en termes de répartition équitable du fardeau de la dette. Nous définissons en effet un processus de restructuration efficace comme une procédure de courte durée (inférieure à un an) et qui respecte les besoins des deux parties prenantes au contrat. Si du côté des créanciers, la décote ne doit pas être abusive, du côté du débiteur, la dette doit redevenir soutenable, au sens à la fois économique et social du terme. Le terrain d'analyse des processus de renégociation de la dette se concentre exclusivement sur les économies d'Amérique Latine, dans la mesure où elles représentent les débiteurs ayant enregistré le plus grand nombre de défauts au cours de l'histoire. À travers une méthode pluridisciplinaire, nous défendons finalement la thèse selon laquelle l'échec des différents processus de restructuration est directement subordonné à l'iniquité du partage du fardeau de la dette, laquelle fait suite à un déséquilibre des pouvoirs de négociation inhérente au cadre de gestion décentralisée. Notre posture macroéconomique et notre démarche inductive induisent un cadre d'analyse socio-économique, lequel fait appel à un approfondissement historique, en termes d'économie politique, mais également à une étude basée sur la psychologie sociale. La thèse est structurée autour de deux parties, elles-mêmes subdivisées en deux chapitres. La première partie s'attache à comprendre les origines et les modalités de prévention et de gestion des crises, ainsi que leurs échecs. Elle conjugue de fait l'observation empirique et les soubassements théoriques de la décentralisation. De fait, le premier chapitre fait état, au vu de la double responsabilité à l'œuvre dans le déclenchement et l'enlisement dans la crise, de l'échec de la méthode décentralisée sur le long terme. En effet, non seulement la décentralisation apparaît inapplicable, puisqu'une tierce partie est systématiquement contrainte d'intervenir, mais elle ne permet pas non de plus de répartir équitablement les coûts de la crise. Le second chapitre cherche consécutivement à comprendre pourquoi ce processus de restructuration est néanmoins maintenu. L'économie politique de la décentralisation montre alors que le choix entre la régulation et le « laissez-faire » ne tient pas tant à des critères d'efficacité économique qu'à des considérations idéologiques et politiques. La deuxième partie de cette thèse propose symétriquement des pistes de réflexion afin de pallier les principaux écueils relevés lors des différents épisodes de défaut et de restructuration. Ainsi, si le troisième chapitre répond au second, le quatrième fait écho au premier. En effet, le troisième chapitre montre que la décentralisation ne peut aboutir en raison non seulement de ses écueils techniques, mais surtout de la nature des deux parties au contrat. L'immunité souveraine ayant été relativisée dans les deux premiers chapitres, il s'agit ici d'analyser le fonctionnement des marchés selon une méthode alternative au concept d'efficience. C'est la raison pour laquelle nous faisons appel aux préceptes de Keynes (1936) et de son analyse en termes psychosociaux, que nous approfondissons au travers du courant de la finance comportementale. Une telle étude révèle ainsi l'incapacité des créanciers à s'organiser de bonne foi, laquelle représente pourtant la condition sine qua non de la réalisation et de l'efficacité de la méthode décentralisée. Par conséquent, le dernier chapitre de ce travail conclue sur la nécessité d'un revirement en faveur d'une approche plus centralisée, laquelle inclut une tierce partie neutre, compétente et institutionnalisée. / The aim of this dissertation is to know whether the decentralized approach, officially put forward in the management of sovereign debt crises since their origin, is not only feasible but also efficient in terms of equity of the debt burden sharing. We define indeed an efficient restructuring process as a procedure of short duration (less than one year) and that meets the needs of both parties. If, in the side of creditors, the discount should not be abusive, towards the debtor, the debt must become sustainable, in both economic and social terms. Field analysis process of renegotiating debt focuses exclusively on Latin American economies, insofar as they represent debtors who historically recorded the highest number of defaults. Through a multidisciplinary approach, we finally defend the thesis that the failure of the various restructuring process is directly subordinate to the iniquity of sharing the debt burden, which is due to an imbalance of bargaining power, as an inherent part of decentralized management. Our macroeconomic and inductive approaches built the framework for socio-economic analysis, which uses history, political economy, but also a study based on social psychology. This dissertation is structured in two parts, themselves divided into two chapters. The first part focuses on understanding the origins of crises, their prevention and crisis management, and then their failures. It combines empirical observation and theoretical underpinnings of the decentralization. Specifically, the first chapter outlines, given the dual responsibility in the onset and sinking into the crisis, the failure of the decentralized approach in the long term. It concludes that not only decentralization is inapplicable, since a third party is always forced to intervene, but nor it does allow an fair sharing of the crisis costs. The second chapter consecutively seeks to understand why such a restructuring process is still maintained. The political economy of decentralization then shows that the choice between regulation and "laissez-faire" is not so much linked to economic efficiency criteria, but rather to ideological and political considerations. The second part of this work symmetrically proposes lines of thought to overcome the main obstacles identified in most cases of defaults and restructurings. Thus, if the third chapter addresses the second, fourth echoes the first. Indeed, the third chapter shows that decentralization can't be efficient, not only because of its technical pitfalls, but also because of the nature of the both contractual parties. Sovereign immunity having been put into perspective in the first two chapters, the point here is to analyze the functioning of financial markets in an alternative way, compared with the efficiency hypothesis. That is why we go into the Keynes psychosocial analysis (1936) in depth with the behavioral finance. Such a study reveals the inability of creditors to organize themselves in good faith, while it is the sine qua non condition of the decentralized approach implementation and efficiency. Therefore, the final chapter concludes on the need for a shift towards a more centralized approach, which includes a neutral, competent and institutionalized third party. Here, if multilateralism must prevail as a model of collaborative thinking, in regard to the management of the current debt crisis in Europe, such a possibility remains unlikely in the short term. This is why debtor countries may have to take some unilateral decisions, including potentially legitimate and transparent debt repudiation in case of sinking into the crisis, in order to compel the international community to make that needed shift. Keywords: Sovereign debt, Restructuration, Decentralized approach, Dependency theories, Political Economy, Behavioral Finance.

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The advent of experimental methodologies have led to decisive progress in the study of corrupt behaviour in the last two decades. Since they can complement survey data and perception indexes with controlled experimental data, scholars and policy makers have reached a better understanding of decision-making in bribery situations and are able to design innovative anticorruption policies.In this thesis, I use experimental and empirical data to contribute to the field of the economics of corruption. The first two chapters of this PhD dissertation use experimental methodologies to study decision-making in a bribery scenario. The first chapter tests an anti-corruption strategy with a lab in the field experiment in Burundi. The second chapter studies the fairness concerns that might arise when dealing with redistribution in a bribery situation. The third chapter uses an empirical analysis to explore the controversial issue of political moonlighting, i.e. having outside activities while holding public office. It investigates "double-hat politicians", who combine mayor and parliamentary positions in Wallonia.In a first chapter, written with Jean-Benoit Falisse, we explore the effect of anti- corruption messages on corrupt behavior and public service delivery. In a novel lab-in-the-field experiment, 527 public servants from Burundi were asked to allocate rationed vouchers between anonymous citizens; some of these citizens attempted to bribe the public servants to obtain more vouchers than they were entitled to. Two groups of public servants were randomly exposed to short messages about good governance or professional identity reminders. Participants in these two groups behaved in a fairer manner than those of a third group who were not exposed to any message. The result is more robust in the case of the group exposed to the professional identity reminder. The underlying mechanisms seem to be that when a public servant reflects upon governance values and her professional identity, the moral cost increases, prompting more equal service delivery. Bribe-taking was not impacted by the messages. The experiment provides new insights into the design of anti-corruption strategies.The second chapter, written with Lena Epp, investigates the impact of a public officials’ fairness considerations towards citizens in a petty corruption situation. Other-regarding preferences, and, more particularly, fairness concerns are widely acknowledged as crucial elements of individual economic decision-making. In petty corruption contexts, public officials are to a large extent aware of differences between citizens. Here, we experimentally investigate how fairness considerations may impact on corrupt behaviour. Our novel bribery game reveals that bribes are less frequently accepted when bribers are unequal in terms of endowments. These results suggest that fairness considerations can influence corrupt behaviour.In the last chapter, I focus on political moonlighting in Wallonia. Activities outside of public office or combining specific public offices simultaneously is a topic of ongoing heated debates. An element crucial to these discussions is whether moonlighting is detrimental for politicians’ performance. In Belgium, the combination of local executive and regional legislative offices, i.e. double hat politicians, is a frequent habit for a majority of politicians. This accumulation of activities might lead to (un-)desirable outcomes in terms of political achievements. This chapter investigates the impact of holding several remunerated and honorary positions on regional MPs parliamentary activities and mayor’s municipality performance in Wallonia. I use a database of all public and private positions held by Belgian politicians in Wallonia since the disclosure of positions became compulsory for those holding at least one public position, i.e. from 2004 to 2016. For members of Parliament, wearing a double hat reduces global parliamentary activity. For mayors, it seems that holding more remunerated positions is associated with less efficient municipality management. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Scale invariance, collective behaviours and structural reorganization are crucial for portfolio management (portfolio composition, hedging, alternative definition of risk, etc.). This lack of any characteristic scale and such elaborated behaviours find their origin in the theory of complex systems. There are several mechanisms which generate scale invariance but maximum entropy models are able to explain both scale invariance and collective behaviours.<p>The study of the structure and collective modes of financial markets attracts more and more attention. It has been shown that some agent based models are able to reproduce some stylized facts. Despite their partial success, there is still the problem of rules design. In this work, we used a statistical inverse approach to model the structure and co-movements in financial markets. Inverse models restrict the number of assumptions. We found that a pairwise maximum entropy model is consistent with the data and is able to describe the complex structure of financial systems. We considered the existence of a critical state which is linked to how the market processes information, how it responds to exogenous inputs and how its structure changes. The considered data sets did not reveal a persistent critical state but rather oscillations between order and disorder.<p>In this framework, we also showed that the collective modes are mostly dominated by pairwise co-movements and that univariate models are not good candidates to model crashes. The analysis also suggests a genuine adaptive process since both the maximum variance of the log-likelihood and the accuracy of the predictive scheme vary through time. This approach may provide some clue to crash precursors and may provide highlights on how a shock spreads in a financial network and if it will lead to a crash. The natural continuation of the present work could be the study of such a mechanism. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In this thesis I apply the concepts of Behavioral Economics to the analysis of the individual health care behavior. In the first chapter I provide a theoretical explanation of the link between loss aversion and health anxiety leading to infrequent preventive testing. In the second chapter I analyze this link empirically based on the general population questionnaire study. In the third chapter I theoretically explore the effects of motivational crowding-in and crowding-out induced by external or self-rewards for the self-control involving tasks such as weight loss or smoking cessation.<p><p>Understanding psychological factors behind the reluctance to use preventive testing is a significant step towards a more efficient health care policy. Some people visit doctors very rarely because of a fear to receive negative results of medical inspection, others prefer to resort to medical services in order to prevent any diseases. Recent research in the field of Behavioral Economics suggests that human's preferences may be significantly influenced by the choice of a reference point. In the first chapter I study the link between loss aversion and the frequently observed tendency to avoid useful but negative information (the ostrich effect) in the context of preventive health care choices. I consider a model with reference-dependent utility that allows to characterize how people choose their health care strategy, namely, the frequency of preventive checkups. In this model an individual lives for two periods and faces a trade-off. She makes a choice between delaying testing until the second period with the risk of a more costly treatment in the future, or learning a possibly unpleasant diagnosis today, that implies an emotional loss but prevents an illness from further development. The model shows that high loss aversion decreases the frequency of preventive testing due to the fear of a bad diagnosis. Moreover, I show that under certain conditions increasing risk of illness discourages testing.<p><p>In the second chapter I provide empirical support for the model predictions. I use a questionnaire study of a representative sample of the Dutch population to measure variables such as loss aversion, testing frequency and subjective risk. I consider the undiagnosed non-symptomatic population and concentrate on medical tests for four illnesses that include hypertension, diabetes, chronic lung disease and cancer. To measure loss aversion I employ a sequence of lottery questions formulated in terms of gains and losses of life years with respect to the current subjective life expectancy. To relate this measure of loss aversion to the testing frequency I use a two-part modeling approach. This approach distinguishes between the likelihood of participation in testing and the frequency of tests for those who decided to participate. The main findings confirm that loss aversion, as measured by lottery choices in terms of life expectancy, is significantly and negatively associated with the decision to participate in preventive testing for hypertension, diabetes and lung disease. Higher loss aversion also leads to lower frequency of self-tests for cancer among women. The effect is more pronounced in magnitude for people with higher subjective risk of illness.<p><p>In the third chapter I explore the phenomena of crowding-out and crowding-in of motivation to exercise self-control. Various health care choices, such as keeping a diet, reducing sugar consumption (e.g. in case of diabetes) or abstaining from smoking, require costly self-control efforts. I study the long-run and short-run influence of external and self-rewards offered to stimulate self-control. In particular, I develop a theoretical model based on the combination of the dual-self approach to the analysis of the time-inconsistency problem with the principal-agent framework. I show that the psychological property of disappointment aversion (represented as loss aversion with respect to the expected outcome) helps to explain the differences in the effects of rewards when a person does not perfectly know her self-control costs. The model is based on two main assumptions. First, a person learns her abstention costs only if she exerts effort. Second, observing high abstention costs brings disutility due to disappointment (loss) aversion. The model shows that in the absence of external reward an individual will exercise self-control only when her confidence in successful abstention is high enough. However, observing high abstention costs will discourage the individual from exerting effort in the second period, i.e. will lead to the crowding-out of motivation. On the contrary, choosing zero effort in period 1 does not reveal the self-control costs. Hence, this preserves the person's self-confidence helping her to abstain in the second period. Such crowding-in of motivation is observed for the intermediate level of self-confidence. I compare this situation to the case when an external reward is offered in the first period. The model shows that given a sufficiently low self-confidence external reward may lead to abstention in both periods. At the same time, without it a person would not abstain in any period. However, for an intermediate self-confidence, external reward may lead to the crowding-out of motivation. For the same level of self-confidence, the absence of such reward may cause crowding-in. Overall, the model generates testable predictions and helps to explain contradictory empirical findings on the motivational effects of different types of rewards. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In today’s globalised world, everyday life becomes increasingly “liquid” - changing and fragile - as individuals continuously adapt their lifestyle and behaviour to global influences (Bauman 2000). To provide a general framework for understanding this world, Appadurai (1996) introduces five “dimensions” of global flows in his seminal work Modernity At Large: ethnoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, and technoscapes. One of them, the ethnoscapes, refers to the increased mobility of individuals and peoples, impacting their cultural affiliations and social networks. <p>The focus of this thesis lies on international, cross-border migrants, the primary representatives of these uprooted individuals. Studying migrants’ consumption behaviour provides a better understanding of the issues faced by all members of liquid life in terms of consumption behaviour, whether they are migrants or not, by referring to its most extreme cases.<p>The present dissertation addresses migrant consumer research through an original angle. It suggests that international migrants position themselves in the global mediascapes of cosmopolitanism and transmigrant communities by activating different consumption discourses. This approach offers a solution to previous ambiguous categorisations of international migrants by relying on self-categorisation across national and cultural boundaries instead of outside-defined sociodemographic or geopolitical criteria. In addition to providing a typology based on the migrants’ strategies of positioning that explains global consumer acculturation, the results allow for a disambiguation of the notions of immigrants, globals and cosmopolitans.<p>The contribution of the dissertation lies in its contrast to existing research, and is therefore more adapted to the liquidity of our modern world. Indeed, the field of consumer research as much as political discourse or companies tend to categorise international migrants according to socioeconomic or geopolitical criteria, such as education, duration of stay or ethnic origin. While consumer research often views low-skilled immigrants in light of specific ethnic groups (Peñaloza 1994, Oswald 1999, Üçok 2007), cross-cultural samples represent the preferred approach to highly-skilled expatriates (Thompson and Tambyah 1999). Consumer research addresses and considers these categories of migrants differently, a questionable postulation in light of global flows which render movement across nations more complex and lead to mixed and multiple cultural affiliations. <p>The main research question to answer in the present thesis is: How do international migrants use consumption behaviour to make sense of their experience? Its broad character allows for new insights and approaches to emerge, both on the side of existing literature and on the empirical side. <p>The dissertation initiates the answer by a first review of the literature. The review highlights gaps and contradictions which can be found in the literature centred on international migrants and their consumption behaviour. The explanation of the context of this research encompasses the definition of consumer culture as well as of globalisation. Indeed, consumption as a discourse plays a role especially in terms of the subscription to a particular group; individuals use consumption to communicate, to express their affiliation with a family, or a place, to situate their identity in their universe (Douglas and Isherwood 1979). These issues change in the global context, and therefore need review. Migration research constitutes the second chapter of the literature review. It presents on the one hand the people endeavouring migration, and on the other, illustrates the various models explaining migration as a process. <p>Based on this review, the research question transforms, splitting it into three elements, each focusing on one element: cultural affiliations, migrant networks and consumer acculturation. The consequent empirical part aims at answering these three questions through three separate, though complementary, research phases, which rely on in-depth interviews, focus groups and observations. Each phase predominantly addressed one research question, though all three elements remain present in all phases. <p>Different types of consumption discourses emerge; in the case of a focus on products of home and/or host culture, three locality discourses develop. Seven globality discourses integrate global and other foreign products in the equation. International migrants seem to use these locality and globality discourses to position themselves in today’s liquid world. They can consequently be compared to the twelve worlds that are presented by Rosenau (2004) as positioning strategies resulting from global “fragmegration”, that is, the difficulty of integrating fragmented and contradictory elements of global societies. <p>The contribution of this dissertation lies in the integration of more diversity in the concepts of cultural affiliations, migrant networks and consumer acculturation. Consequently, the locality and globality discourses provide indications as to the acculturation strategies possible for its members.<p>Doing so, this thesis integrates debates of the local and the global, immigrants versus expatriates, integration versus acculturation, a comparison of interest to both researchers and marketers. On a theoretical level, the thesis provides thus a more generalised view on international migrants, incorporating previous categories. It provides practical solutions, both on a political and on a managerial level. The provided typology enables policy-makers and managers to better understand the new tendencies and problematics inherent to international migration and to address migrants in a way taking into account their actual affiliations and networks. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

L'objet de la thèse est d'étudier les processus de densification des tissus à dominante pavillonnaire des espaces suburbains et périurbains encore peu étudiés sous l'angle de leurs transformations morphologiques. Nous adoptons pour cela une approche qui relève d'une économie politique de la production urbaine, qui s'attache à étudier de manière conjointe les aspects politiques, économiques, sociaux mais aussi réglementaires et techniques qui peuvent expliquer la matérialité des transformations urbaines observées. A ce titre, nous articulons deux courants de travaux : des travaux d'économie politique territoriale et des travaux d'économie de l'aménagement. Plus précisément, la notion de post-suburbanisation, entendue comme un processus généralisé de développement intensif affectant de manière différenciée les espaces de banlieue et conduisant à une autonomisation progressive de ces banlieues par rapport à la ville centre de l'agglomération, est au centre de notre approche. La post-suburbanisation se distingue de la suburbanisation qui reposait plutôt sur un développement urbain extensif. Elle pose donc la question de la densification des espaces pavillonnaires peu denses hérités de l'ère suburbaine. Mais dans ce processus, toutes les communes ne cherchent pas à se densifier, certaines empêchent délibérément la densification, d'autres cherchent au contraire à la favoriser. Ceci nous amène alors à formuler l'hypothèse centrale de notre travail, à savoir qu'il existe un lien entre la stratégie post-suburbaine d'une commune et la forme de densification privilégiée. Nous avons étudié des processus de densification de tissus à dominante pavillonnaire, dans des contextes entre autres caractérisés par l'existence de politiques locales explicites de densification, dans deux municipalités de la région urbaine de Toronto au Canada(Guelph et Markham) et dans deux municipalités de la région parisienne en France(Magny-les-Hameaux et Noisy-le-Grand). La mise en regard des quatre études de cas fait apparaître deux grands types de processus de densification : les processus de densification douce (Guelph et Magny-les-Hameaux) qui se caractérisent par une densification sans changement de forme urbaine et les processus de densification forte (Markham et Noisy-le-Grand) qui se caractérisent par une modification importante de la forme urbaine pouvant conduire au remplacement de tout ou partie du tissu pavillonnaire préexistant par des immeubles. C'est notre premier résultat. L'analyse fine des processus en contexte et des différentes politiques visant spécifiquement la densification, fait apparaître un second résultat : dans les quatre municipalités, les politiques de densification affichées sont explicitement articulées à une recherche de centralité relative. La forme de la densification observée au sein des tissus à dominante pavillonnaire apparaît alors à la fois comme un moyen et comme un résultat du degré de centralité visé d'une municipalité donnée dans la hiérarchie post-suburbaine. Plus précisément, dans les cas étudiés, des politiques incitatives de densification douce sont mises en œuvre dans les municipalités qui adoptent une stratégie de centralité de portée plutôt locale, ce qui se traduit par une politique de croissance modérée, principalement résidentielle. Tandis que les politiques (incitative ou interventionniste) de densification forte sont l'apanage des municipalités adoptant une stratégie de centralité sub-régionale, ce qui se traduit par des politiques de type entrepreneurial visant à attirer des ménages et des emplois sur leur territoire. Cette recherche montre également que si les processus de densification résultent majoritairement de mécanismes de marché qui s'expriment de façon différente en fonction du contexte urbain et culturel national, les politiques mises en place jouent un rôle important dans la création de ces marchés fonciers et immobiliers (...) / The purpose of this thesis is to analyze densification processes at work in low rise residential spaces of suburban and periurban areas that have rarely been studied in terms of their morphological changes. I adopt an urban political economy approach which is sensitive to the political, economic, social, regulatory and technical aspects of the materiality of the urban transformations observed.The thesis articulates two strands of existing work on territorial political economy and land use planning. The concept of post-suburbanisation, understood as a generalized process of intensive development affecting suburban areas in a differentiated manner and leading to a gradual autonomy of these suburbs in relation to the center of the agglomeration, is at the heart of the approach. As such, it raises the question of the densification of the sparse low rise areas inherited from the suburban era. But in this process, some municipalities are not looking to densify and deliberately obstruct densification, while others are, on the contrary, promoting it. This leads us to come up with our main hypothesis, namely that there is a link between the post-suburban strategy adopted and the privileged way to regulate densification. I study the densification processes in low rise areas in different contexts characterized by the existence of an explicit local policy of densification in two municipalities of the Toronto Region in Canada (Guelph and Markham) and in two municipalities of the Paris-City Region in France (Magny-les-Hameaux and Noisy-le-Grand). The analysis of the four case studies reveals two main types of densification processes: soft densification processes (Guelph and Magny-les-Hameaux) characterized by a densification that does not change the urban form, and hard densification processes (Markham and Noisy-le-Grand), which are characterized by a significant change in the urban form that can lead to the replacement of all or a part of the existing low rise areas by multistory buildings. The in-depth analysis of the densification processes and of the different measures that regulate them shows that, in the four municipalities, the densification policies are explicitly articulated with a search for a relative centrality in the urban region. The nature of the densification observed in the low rise areas appears both as a means and as an outcome of the degree of centrality aimed for by a given municipality within the post-suburban hierarchy. The cases illustrate that incentive-based policies of soft densification are implemented in municipalities that adopt a strategy aiming for local centrality, which leads to a moderate, mainly residential, growth policy. Hard densification policies (that can be incentive-based or interventionist) are the prerogative of municipalities adopting a strategy of sub-regional centrality, which is reflected in entrepreneurial policies aiming at attracting households and jobs to their territory. The research also shows that if the densification processes mainly result from market mechanisms that are expressed differently depending on the national urban and cultural contexts, the implemented public policies play an important role in the creation of these local land and property markets. Finally, we identified four types of local densification policies in the low rise areas. These different types of policies determine in a differentiated manner the nature (the urban forms produced) and the configuration (actors involved, actors affected, distribution of capital gains) of the densification processes

The main idea of this thesis is to study three different issues, economic, political, or financial, related to three different public infrastructure sectors, transport, water and sewerage, and electricity, by using three different methodological approaches. In the first chapter, I make creative use of a non-parametric technique traditionally used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of similar firms, data envelopment analysis, to identify the most likely objective, economic vs. political, behind a specific policy. In the second chapter I empirically investigate the effects of the increasing private financial ownership of the water and sewerage utilities in England and Wales on key outcome variables such as leverage levels and consumer bills. Finally, in the third chapter, I evaluate an equity-aimed policy introduced in the electricity sector in Spain in 2009 by measuring the effect of its introduction on the probability of a household of being energy poor.Chapter One – Unbundling political and economic rationality: a non-parametric approach tested on transport infrastructure in SpainThis paper suggests a simple quantitative method to assess the extent to which public investment decisions are dominated by political or economic motivations. The true motivation can be identified by modeling each policy goal as the focus of the optimization anchoring a data envelopment analysis of the efficiency of the observed implementation. In other words, we rank performance based on how far observed behavior is under each possible goal, and the goal for which the distance is smaller reveals the specific motivation of the investment or any policy decision for that matter. Traditionally, data envelopment analysis is used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of firms having a similar productive structure. In this case, each firm corresponds to a different policy year, the policy being the determinant of the investment made.The approach is tested on Spain’s land transport infrastructure policy since it is argued by many observers to be driven more by political than economic concerns, resulting in a mismatch between capacity investment and traffic demand. History has shown that when the source of financing has been private, the network has been developed in areas with high demand, i.e. the Northern and Mediterranean corridors. When the source has been public, the network has been developed following a radial pattern, converging from a to Madrid. The method clearly shows that public investments in land transport infrastructure have generally been more consistent with a political objective – the centralization of economic power – than with an economic objective – maximizing mobility –.Chapter Two – On the effects of the private financial ownership of regulated utilities: lessons from the UK water sectorThis paper analyzes the quantitative impact of the growing role of non-traditional financial actors in the financing structure and consumer pricing of regulated private utilities. The focus is on the water sector in England and Wales, where the effect of the firms’ corporate financing and ownership strategies on key outcome variables may have been underestimated. The sector was privatized in 1989, year in which the 10 regional monopolies became 10 water and sewerage companies, listed and publicly traded on UK Stock Exchanges. Since then, six of the ten have been de-listed, bought-out by private equity – investment and infrastructure funds. I make use of this variation in ownership to measure the effect on leverage levels and consumer bills.I develop a theoretical framework allowing me to derive two hypotheses: first, the buyout of a company increases its leverage level, and second, the buyout of a company increases the consumer bill through higher leverage levels. The empirical analysis is based on two sequential steps: a staggered difference-in-differences estimation shows that private equity buyouts increase the leverage levels of water utilities. An instrumental variable and two-stage least squares estimation then show that these higher leverage levels increase the average consumer bills of bought-out utilities more than if they had not been bought-out. The estimated impact of the private equity buyouts in the sector in England and Wales on the annual average consumer bill ranges from 13.5 to 32.6 GBP, for a sample average bill of about 427 GBP.Chapter Three – Understanding the effectiveness of the electricity social rate in reducing energy poverty in SpainThis paper analyzes the causal impact of the introduction of a social subsidy, the bono social de electricidad, in Spain's electricity market in 2009. The measure was introduced following the surge in energy poverty, increasing particularly after the financial crisis. Using data from the family budget survey from 2006 to 2017, we evaluate the social policy in its fight against energy poverty.We proceed in two steps. First, we use a difference-in-differences approach to measure such a causal impact and to analyze how the introduction of the measure directly affected eligible households. We find that the introduction of the subsidy has reduced the likelihood of energy poverty for the eligible households. Therefore, the bono social de electricidad has reached its equity objective of increasing affordability of electricity. The second step aims at understanding how specifically the introduction of the subsidy affects consumers. We find that, in reaction to lower effective prices, households do not increase their consumption of electricity, resulting in lower total electricity expenditure. We are therefore able to show that this policy did not induce a change in the consumption behavior and that the increased affordability entirely resulted in a decrease of expenditure in electricity / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished