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This paper analyses the determinants of wealth inequality, measured as the share of wealth owned by the top 1 percent wealthiest individuals. We find that labor's bargaining power is a significant and important determinant of top wealth shares. Using a semi‐structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model for the period 1970–2019, we estimate that shocks to labor's bargaining power explain 32 percent, 8 percent and 32 percent of the variation around the long‐term trend in wealth inequality in the UK, USA and France, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In discussing the lifestyle and practices of the Paris group of the contemporary surrealist movement, this paper contributes to debates within economic and political geography that seek to develop the imagining of alternatives to neoliberal globalisation through practices of resistance, and spaces of political and policy engagement. The everyday life of the surrealist movement, in combining creativity with progressive choices and radical economic practices that oppose capitalism, while intellectually investigating ideas of revolution, a different society and utopia, suggests a perspective that contributes to the imagining of such alternatives. This paper outlines the deeply embedded nature of surrealist activity in opposing capitalism and illustrates, as one member of the surrealist group suggests, in quoting Baudelaire, surrealism's insistence for a world in which“action is the sister of dream”. The paper further contributes to discussion on the role of academics in facilitating spaces of political engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the link between the local availability of services in a home country and a firm's decision to become a multinational. This is a highly topical issue, given that many industrialized countries are increasingly becoming service economies and firms become increasingly more globalized. In an analysis of rich firm level data for France we find evidence that the availability of services in the home country indeed has a positive impact on firms' decisions to become multinationals. This is robust to endogeneity concerns. The result can be interpreted in a simple set-up where the local availability of business services improves firm efficiency and, hence, allows firms to overcome sunk costs of investing abroad more easily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of contemporary pressures on industrial districts and analyses the changes that are taking place in an industrial district confronted with disembedding and globalisation. We discuss the following questions: What are the processes and consequences of disembedding for the changing shape and form of inter-firm trust, contract and network forms? Is there an evolution in subcontracting and trade interdependency? What is the role of institutional infrastructures? We performed a longitudinal qualitative study using a number of different data sources to analyse the evolution of one French industrial district, particularly how new pressures of internationalisation and disembedding work to reconfigure inter-firm relations in this district. While the recent literature is dominated by notions about industrial districts that concern only the trend towards increased competition or disembeddedness, this article shows that there is no unilinear trend. In contrast with the findings of certain recent studies, we argue that economic logic does not fully account for recent developments because the adjustment that are being made by the district are characterised rather by re-embeddedness, increased cooperation, and institutionalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the internationalisation process of cooperatives in an economic environment determined by economic globalisation. The analysis is focused on the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC) in the Basque Country which is a point of reference for participatory enterprises all over the world. MCC is currently adapting to changing market conditions and pursuing a strategy of direct investment (joint ventures, greenfield investment and acquisitions) in priority international markets. Thus, the first part of the study is about the current situation: the problems and consequences related to the internationalisation process of the MCC. In the second part, we consider an analytical framework for developing measures and strategies which could facilitate international expansion but in a manner which is more in line with cooperative values. The third part focuses on the presentation and discussion, based on this analytical framework, of a number of proposals made within the MCC on international social-economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also profound – France, for example – and where it has been more muted – such as Germany. In both the United States and France, gross Gini coefficients have increased sharply during the past thirty or so years. The French state has, however, delivered a net, after‐tax, after‐transfer distribution of income that is more equal than it was thirty years ago. And yet: France is still in the midst of an anti‐systemic populist revolt. There is only one inescapable conclusion: it is not just about the money. Those who feel left behind in both countries feel that they have lost respect and dignity. We cannot redistribute our way out of the crisis of global capitalism. The German experience holds lessons. We must value and valorize the many ways in which people contribute. We must also pursue policies that create patterns of employment that confer dignity, meaning, and purpose. I argue for dignity as a tool of policy, beyond its normative desirability as a goal. If governments and firms do not act decisively now to make the models of capitalism in America and Europe more friendly to small‐ and medium‐sized firms, more equal in opportunity, and more meritocratic, then we will suffer the fate of our parents and grandparents in the 1930s and 1940s: a destruction of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In France, in 2009-2010, on several occasions, managers announcing redundancies were held hostage by workers. Public opinion polls show widespread support for the 'bossnappers', while the State did not taken action against them. Employing the insights of new institutionalism and social movement theory, this article explains the legitimization of such radical, illegal action through the notion of a permissive ideational environment resulting from a tradition of trade union militancy, pre-existing concerns over globalization and more recent fears of, and government and trade union responses to, globalization and the current economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the anthropological investigation of Burgundian viticulture, my article examines the major issues attached to the territorial construction of the French wine industry around the concept of terroir. It discusses the diverse strategic deployments of terroir encountered in Burgundian viticulture since the 1990s by arguing that a paradigm shift has occurred from the geological argument to the recognition of the wine-grower as the mediator in the expression of terroir. Moreover, there is a tendency to use terroir as a local governance tool leading to homogeneity and rootedness, while supplying a means for individuals in localities to respond to globalization. Résumé À partir de l'étude anthropologique de la viticulture en Bourgogne, l'auteure examine les principales questions liées à la construction territoriale de l'industrie viticole française autour de la notion de terroir. Elle présente les différents déploiements stratégiques de cette notion rencontrés dans la viticulture bourguignonne depuis les années 1990, et avance l'idée d'un changement paradigmatique avec le passage de l'argument géologique à la reconnaissance du viticulteur comme médiateur de l'expression du terroir. On observe en outre une tendance à utiliser le terroir comme outil de gouvernance locale, aboutissant à une homogénéité et à un enracinement tout en donnant aux villageois locaux les moyens de répliquer à la mondialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article starts from the assumption that the current process of globalization or denationalization leads to the formation of a new structural conflict in Western European countries, opposing those who benefit from this process against those who tend to lose in the course of the events. The structural opposition between globalization ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The results indicate that in all the countries, the new cleavage has become embedded into existing two-dimensional national political spaces, that the meaning of the original dimensions has been transformed, and that the configuration of the main parties has become triangular even in a country like France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the cultural context of the new transdisciplinary field of molecular biology in the three countries that did the most to establish it - Great Britain, the United States, and France. It inquires into three aspects of each of these national cultures that may help explain its prominence as a cradle of molecular biology: (1) Political culture, especially science policy, as an area that impinges most directly on the production of scientific knowledge; (2) Intellectual culture, especially the role of scientists in the national tradition of "public intellectuals"; (3) Institutional culture, or the social and material cultures prevailing in major laboratories and research institutes. The article also examines the convergence of these three national traditions in the 1960s, due to the rise of international collaborations and international institutions. It is suggested that this trend will continue in the twenty-first century, as molecular biology increasingly faces the challenge of a new cultural context - transnational globalisation and multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the origins of the first French plan for reconstructing and modernizing the economy, which was referred to as the Monnet Plan. The plan was one of national reconstruction to prepare the French economy for participation in the open international economy envisaged at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. The plan has been studied exclusively in terms of its domestic economic objectives, yet by thawing upon a wide range of hitherto unused archival material it is clear that the plan also had very definite foreign economic objectives. Indeed, through the plan the French government hoped to shape the international environment, or more specifically the European environment in accordance with its political and economic objectives. These were to reconstruct and modernize French heavy industry in order to increase its strength relative to that of Germany. In fact, economist Jean Monnet succeeded in winning widespread support for his plan within the French Administration in 1946, support which had been lacking for all previous plans, owing to the backing and initial suggestion of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.