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International audience; The 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, then the 2008 crisis and the euro crisis have seen a major monetary innovation in the form of large-scale exchanges of liquidity swaps between core central banks. For instance, the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank exchanged for a few days or weeks equivalent amounts of their respective currencies, so that the ECB could lend dollars to eurozone commercial banks, and vice versa. At maturity, the swaps were either extended over time or reimbursed. This utterly simple operation thus allows central banks to act collectively as a Fed-led, network-based international lender of last resort. A significant corollary is that the action of the IMF, which used to be the main international crisis manager, now extends only to the developing countries and the (smaller) emerging countries. Conditionality, with its strongly asymmetric dimension, is limited to this latter group, while unconditional swaps are now the key liquidity channel for supporting the rich and powerful countries.

This chapter analyzes the succession of two sharply contrasted regimes for sovereign debt restructuring. The first one, which reached maturity during the 1980s, was marked by the central role of the IMF, with multilateral negotiations involving political settlements between debtor governments, creditor banks and their national governments. Today, however, this regime has been succeeded by the central role of national judges with jurisdiction over the main capital markets (especially New York) as the final interpreters of disputes over debt contracts. This chapter shows that the consequences are a “re-territorialization” of public debt restructuring, in spite of the globalization of markets; the domination of a discursive regime based on the language of private contract law; and a major strengthening of the rights of private investors, especially minority ones.

From the 1880s till 1930, the global grain trade was regulated primarily by the London Corn Trade Association, a private body entirely controlled by core market insiders. It had three defining contributions: it produced grain standards, which transformed cereals into commodities; it arbitrated disputes between traders; and it drafted some sixty standard contracts that were minutely adjusted to both the trading rules in exporting countries and to standard contracts for shipping, insurance, and trade credit. These transnational contractual vehicles drastically simplified the successive operations of international trade along the whole value chain. Critically, while the contracts were governed by English law and protected by the London courts, they entirely avoided any relations with other national legal orders or jurisdictions. Conflicts of laws, a perennial source of transaction costs in a global economy, were by and large eschewed by means of a private market order that was both local and global.

French mercantilism is generally associated with absolutist policy-making subject to capture by rent-seeking interests. This article investigates how the Bureau du Commerce, a small state agency in charge of commerce and the supply side, handed out rents and privileges to private entrepreneurs. We coded how the Bureau investigated and decided all 267 voluntary submissions received between 1724 and 1744. It is shown that the Bureau’s formal, rule-based decision-making process could actually differentiate between alternate policy aims and target them consistently over time, with more or less powerful sets of rents. From this, a hierarchy of revealed policy preferences is derived. First comes technical innovation and diffusion, then local economic development; import substitution is only in the third position, followed by consumers’ welfare. Lastly, and in contrast to a long line of authors, it is shown that the production of luxury goods was not a significant or valued objective.

Contracting for profit typically asks that sophisticated institutions help merchants and entrepreneurs as they bargain, invest and serve their obligations. Prime concerns include the processing of information, payments and dispute resolution, which in principle should be provided in an altogether efficient, predictable and flexible manner. In practice however, well-tested, ready-made institutions rarely emerge spontaneously or converge naturally toward a rational solution. Experimentation in market institutions is typically long, competing rules may coexist over time and cause uncertainty, or, for instance, an institution that emerged early on and was endowed with substantial legitimacy by its patrons may eventually prove inadequate, because it was designed for the needs of a previous time. Technological change or evolving market structures can debase old institutions and those who control them...

In distancing itself from polemics between orthodox and heterodox economists, the present article offers a rereading of the works of Albert Hirschman on the basis of Adelman’s recently published biography of him (2013). Three main lines are identified: the economy of development, the political history of economic ideas and collective action. However, more than a convergence among these themes, which would have resulted in a project for a new political economy, I discuss their weak articulation and the cosnequently fragmented character of this body of work. Hirschman’s complex relationship to economic thought – a matter at once of adherence and avoidance – certainly influenced this observation. Hirschman’s most influential contributions have more to do with the conduct of reform and development projects. They are thus alive to the unanticipated consequences of intentional action and the possibility for collective projects in an unpredictable world in which adherence and renegotiation are always threatened by abandonment and opportunism.; En se mettant à distance des polémiques entre économistes orthodoxes et hétérodoxes, cette étude propose une relecture des travaux de Albert Hirschman, qui s’appuie sur la biographie récemment publiée par Adelman (2013). Trois axes principaux sont identifiés : l’économie du développement, l’histoire politique des idées économiques et l’action collective. Or, plus qu’une convergence entre ces thèmes, qui aurait abouti au projet d’une nouvelle Économie politique, ce sont leur faible articulation et ainsi le caractère fragmenté de cette œuvre qui sont ici discutés. Le rapport complexe de Hirschman à la pensée économique, fait d’adhésion et d’évitement, a certainement pesé sur ce constat. Ses contributions les plus marquantes portent davantage sur la conduite de la réforme ou du projet de développement. Donc sur les conséquences non anticipées de l’action intentionnelle et sur la possibilité d’un projet collectif dans un monde imprévisible où l’adhésion et la renégociation sont toujours menacées par l’abandon et l’opportunisme.

International audience; We ask to what extent early modern bureaucracies could work as policy tools, and take the case of a small French agency, the Bureau du Commerce, which allocated rights and rents to private entrepreneurs via a mix of hierarchical decision-making and peer-based collegial deliberation. This set-up reflected an attempt to maximize information and expertise, but also allowed for the recognition of existing private rights and social interests. We show that the decisions rendered on nearly all applications submitted over a period of twenty years are consistent with an objective of impersonal, rational and informed decision-making process. The final judgment of the key participants (for or against each demand), and the qualitative arguments they brought forward during the procedure, are robust predictors of eventual decisions. This result suggests that progress towards impersonal governance did not derive only from broad realignments within the elites: early modern bureaucracies were more innovative than often assumed and they could follow principles of impersonality, consistency and open access. However, this situation held true only as long as major rent-seeking interests that structured the social and political order were not affected by these early policies.

Rather than evolving as a platform for renegotiation and debt discharge, as on the Continent, English bankruptcy emerged as a liquidation-only procedure after majority arrangements among creditors were banned in 1621. Over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, the courts then developed an alternate, private-law set of rules on the basis of the old English trust and the Composition agreement, which belonged of the medieval cross-European Law Merchant. The main advantage of this little-known institution was its perpetual character and the flexibility of its governance, and its main drawback was obviously the requirement of voluntary initial adhesion. Symmetrically, under the Continental model, collective action was easier to obtain but it did not extend beyond the doors of the court. The discussion brings forward two further themes: the symmetry between adjudication and voluntary adhesion to a collective contract; and the capacity of judges to invent new legal concepts out of diverse set of existing rules, rather than through the simple, bottom-up approach usually emphasised by the literature on the Common Law tradition.

The symposium brings together case studies that are all about reasonably successful experiments in institution building and policy making by interactions between public and private spheres. The cases deal with the provision of information enabling market to perform, law making, and the control of political discretion and public bureaus. Each in its own way, they show how agents have room for some reasoned choice, although eventually this room for choice is narrowed by the emergence of stabilized institutions that come to shape in a rather permanent way the environment within which they later operate. The common characteristic across these case studies is the non-Parliamentarian process through which process of experimentation, rationalization and institutionalization takes place.

The word contract carries different weight in different contexts. Bankers and politicians, diplomats and economists, lawyers and judges all have complex understandings of what a contract is and what it means for them. In the recent sovereign debt negotiations with the Euro group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the newly elected radical left government of Alexis Tsipras asked their European peers to substitute for the previous “program” of structural reforms a new “contract” – a “social contract” – between the Greek government and its creditors (Quatremer 2015). The Greek leaders also inscribed their negotiation in a longer temporality than their European counterparts: arguing for a partial cancellation of the debt that Greece owed to Germany, Tsipras (2015) reminded his fellow Europeans that Germany had itself failed to compensate Greece for the costs of reconstruction after World War II (WWII) – including money directly borrowed by Germany from Greece during the war. This proposal was not at all what the European leaders expected to hear: for them, the only “contracts” in play were those of Greece's debt and related agreements with the European Union (EU) and other International Financial Institutions (IFIs) entered into as part of a stabilization program...

The process of development is linked to the rise of an integrated and competitive economy and polity that allow a maximal division of labor and innovation. This process relies on two intertwined dynamics. First, in the establishment of the rule of law, legal instruments are appropriated by those who call for more autonomy, resulting in a progressive equalization of rights. Second, development of a capable and impartial state is a prerequisite to implementation of rights, including their translation into services delivered to citizens. The mutual expansion of these dynamics relies on a vertical negotiation between the elite and the governed. The governed call for rights that are more firmly established and more extended. The ruling elite can grant these rights to maintain its legitimacy and hence its recognized authority. This model allows discussing the sustainability of various paths of institutional change in processes of development by identifying the potential virtuous dynamics and hindering factors.

Between 1982 and 1989, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acted as a third-party in a total of 109 debt restructurings between 41 debtor states and their creditor banks. At the core of these restructurings was the old Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), ie the standard IMF instrument for conditional lending to member-countries. The SBA was thus transformed into a three-way, voluntary arrangement that de facto rested on a rule of mutual veto. This self-sustained, though largely ad hoc procedure depended on the systematic ignoring of all hard-law or contract-based rules that could have shaped the debt restructurings. This article analyses: (i) how this regime emerged through trial and error during the 1970s; and (ii) how it was implemented, accounted for and justified after the 1982 Mexican crisis.

This article reviews the history literature on the Champagne fairs and argues that their unique success rested on the close approximation of a limited-access, extra-territorial jurisdiction, with a de facto global (cross-jurisdictional) reach: contracts and judgments issued at the Fairs were expected to be enforceable across Europe, via a mix of agreements and power struggles with distant, municipal or territorial authorities. The threat of reprisals worked merely as a reflection of (i) the geopolitical leverage of the French King, and (ii) the specific market power first accumulated by the Fairs, and then lost. The paper argues however that with no substantial local community of merchants in Champagne, Greif's (2006) model of inter-city mutual dissuasion and reprisals may not apply to this experience. Guarantees against extortion had to be bargained over by the merchants with the Fairs’ feudal rulers. An equilibrium-based analytical framework is thus proposed, that accounts for the development, growth and eventual demise of the Fairs. Insolvency, rather than pure moral hazard, is used as the reference case for market indiscipline, calling for formal interaction between jurisdictions.

Apres cinq annees de crises recurrentes dans les economies emergentes, des pays asiatiques en 1997-1998 a l’Argentine en 2002, en passant par la Russie, l’ouvrage de Jerome Sgard arrive a point pour tenter de nous aider a en comprendre, en particulier, les causes et les dynamiques, mais aussi les consequences pour « l’architecture financiere internationale ». (Premier paragraphe)

International audience; In September of 2011, a conference was held in Florence under the auspices of the European University Institute (Global Governance Program) and the University Paris-Dauphine (European School for New-Institutional Economics) on the relationships between legal orders, the organization of states, and economic development. The three following papers draw from this meeting, and though their respective empirical subjects present few obvious links, they indeed explore the interaction between state policies and capabilities, and the legal infrastructures of markets from different perspectives.

Under high inflation, money's dual function as a unit of account and a unit of payment are split and transferred on alternate supports--either a foreign currency (as in Argentina) or domestic indices (as in Brazil). This paper compares the 1994 Brazilian Plano Real, which rebuilt a working, national monetary order, and the bimonetary Argentine Currency Board regime, whose 2001 collapse caused a major dislocation of both the real economy and the financial sector. "Pesification" is analyzed as an improvised attempt to rebuild a single, national money. Whereas returning to peso pricing on domestic markets proved to be surprisingly easy, the conversion of financial contracts (deposits, credits, bonds, etc.) was a disaster: state intervention into existing private contracts opened the way for a large-scale but opaque redistribution of private wealth. The experience of monetary destruction and reconstruction sheds light on how policy or regulatory intervention interacts with private choices. Policy efficiency is conditional on the willingness of agents to continue using the national money. Yet states that use money as a policy instrument may affect the agents perception that its stability is a condition for their own continuing private capacity to calculate and optimize. The effects of hyperinflation suggest that this constitutive ambiguity may actually result in the destruction of money. Keywords: Argentina, Brazil, hyperinflation, monetary reform, monetary theory JEL classification: E31, E42, E65

The Bulgarian transition since 1991 was marked by two huge "financial pyramids" which erupted into the 1996-1997 crisis. From January to September 1996, there was an open banking panic, followed by a fiscal and public debt crisis due to ever rising interest payments, the sudden drop in the real value of tax revenues, and widespread expectations that the country would default on its foreign debt. This led to a quasi- hyperinflation in January and February 1997, followed by a remarkably fast stabilization. These different phases are analyzed, including from a political economy viewpoint; an assessment is then made of the Currency Board set up on July,l 1997. Attention is drawn to the importance of quantitative and expectational factors, which mark this period as "monetarist", in contrast with the inertia of inflation in Latin America, for example, where individual and collective mechanisms of defence against inflation are much stronger. This situation is evidence that the Bulgarian economy has weak social and institutional underpinnings, a situation typical of the undisciplined transitions in the Balkans and former USSR., On présente les principaux caractères de la transition en Bulgarie depuis 1991, en soulignant la formation de deux larges "pyramides financières" qui ont conduit à la crise de 1996-1997. Une première phase, de janvier à septembre 1996, a été dominée par une crise bancaire ouverte ; puis, une crise des finances publiques a suivi, due au gonflement des paiements d'intérêts, à la chute de la valeur réelle des prélèvements fiscaux et à l'anticipation d'un défaut prochain sur la dette extérieure. Ceci a débouché sur une phase de type hyperinflationniste, en janvier et février 1997, suivie d'une stabilisation rapide. On analyse ces différentes périodes, y compris sous l'angle de l'économie politique, et on présente un bilan du régime de Currency Board établi le 1er juillet 1997. Enfin, on souligne le rôle des effets quantitatifs et anticipatifs, qui donne à cet épisode un caractère nettement monétariste, en opposition avec les inflations de type inertiel, marquées par les mécanismes individuels et collectifs d'indexation ou de re-coordination. En ce sens, cet épisode reflète le cadre institutionnel et social faible, caractéristique des transitions indisciplinées observées dans les Balkans et en CEI., Sgard Jerome. Crise financière, inflation et Currency Board en Bulgarie (1991-1998) : les leçons d'une transition indisciplinée. In: Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest, vol. 30, 1999, n°2-3. Les économies post-socialistes: une décennie de transformation, sous la direction de Éric Magnin et Ramine Motamed-Nejad. pp. 215-235.

Le 17 août 1998, les autorités russes ont annoncé un défaut sur la dette publique en roubles, un moratoire sur les transactions en devises des banques et un élargissement du «corridor» dans lequel évoluait le taux de change depuis mi-1995 (...).

Inflation, stabilisation and relative prices in Argentina and Brazil, the experience of the 1990's This papers analyses the stabilisation programes which brought to an end twenty years of high or hyper-inflation, first in Argentina (1991), then in Brazil (1994). Rather than a full disindexation of the economy, as was aimed by the heteredox strategies of the mid-1980's, this new generation of programes aimed at stabilising nominal evolution via the full indexation of the price structure. In Argentina, this took the form of a rigid bimonetary regime, under the form of a rather classic Currency Board. In Brazil, the Piano Real has reconstructed in two steps a fully-fledged, single national currency : first the unit of account function was stabilised, then the unit of payment was exchanged through a standard monetary reform. A remarquable aspect of these two experiences is that, however the con­trast between their respective institutionnal arrangements, the actual constraints bearing on policy makers are very close : most of all, the strength of underlying indexation mechanisms, as the low level of monetisation imply that foreign exchange policy is extremely difficult to manage. In both countries, a sudden, dis­crete devaluation may rapidly cause a sharp acceleration of inflation. This should remain as a long-term sequel of past high inflation, which already imposes heavy constraints on micro-level, real adjustment., Inflation, stabilisation et prix relatifs en Argentine et au Brésil. L'expérience des années quatre-vingt-dix On analyse les programmes de stabilisation qui ont mis un terme à plus de vingt ans de haute inflation en Argentine (1991), puis au Brésil (1994). Plutôt qu'une désindexation de l'économie, ils ont visé la stabilisation par une stratégie d'indexation totale. Celle-ci a pris la forme en Argentine d'un régime bimonétaire rigide de Currency Board, imposant des ajustements microéconomiques profonds. Au Brésil, le Plan Real a reconstruit une monnaie entière, en stabilisant d'abord la fonction d'unité de compte puis en échangeant le numéraire. Toutefois, au-delà de dispositifs institutionnels opposés, la puissance des mécanismes d'indexation, comme la faible remonétisation, rend a priori délicate dans les deux pays tout politique de change active. Ceci devrait être une des séquelles les plus durables de la haute inflation., Sgard Jérôme. Inflation, stabilisation et prix relatifs en Argentine et au Brésil : l'expérience des années quatre-vingt-dix. In: Revue économique, volume 49, n°1, 1998. pp. 239-256.

La discussion des rapports entre marché et politique est le plus souvent posée dans des termes caricaturaux: à la fin, l'un est censé l'emporter sur l'autre. A moins, par exemple, qu'on interprète les problèmes de gouvernance économique globale en termes de " guerre économique " : une métaphore particulièrement stérile, qui opacifie les problèmes au lieu de les éclairer. La présente contribution cherche à reproblématiser la question en insistant notamment sur deux points : d'une part les différences riches et significatives existant entre la première mondialisation (1870-1914) et la phase actuelle (post-1990) ; de l'autre l'idée qu'aujourd'hui, l'engagement des souverains sur la scène internationale est contingente, ou optionnelle, alors qu'au plan local, leur obligation de défendre de la société et la division du travail est imparable. Les souverains agissent plus que jamais localement et sont sanctionnés par leurs citoyens et leur société civile.

A New York, dans les heures qui ont suivi les attaques terroristes du 11 septembre 2001, les principales banques centrales du monde ont annoncé une mesure inédite, à bien des égards révolutionnaire mais qui, dans la confusion du moment, est passée entièrement inaperçue. Ces banques allaient échanger immédiatement entre elles des lignes de crédits libellées dans leurs monnaies respectives : la BCE allait ainsi recevoir des dizaines de milliards de dollars émis par la Réserve Fédérale américaine (Fed), en échange d’euros qu’elle livrerait à la banque centrale américaine (...).

Political and economic rights are envisaged as the outcome of an ongoing bargain between citizens and their rulers. Over the long run, this constitutive process shapes the development of both the economy and the state. Globalization, however, corresponds to a period where both the market and civil society extend far beyond the borders of the initial political compact. Hence, citizens may not only ask that cross-border transactions be made easier; they may also challenge the institutional cohesion and integrity of the classical, Westphalian state, i.e., its legal and judicial order, and its bureaucratic capabilities. We are proposing a schematic description of how this political process may gradually exit the national perimeter and deliver four possible models of international or global governance, depending upon the potential structuring of coalitions between the potential winners of the globalization both in the elite and in society, and the losers; national games being ultimately arbitrated by the international competition among elites, but also by the possible formation of global coalitions of citizens and merchants.

Cette contribution à l'édition 2012 du "Ceriscope" propose une visite guidée simple des principaux concepts et des principaux axes de la recherche économique sur les liens entre éducation et inégalités. Elle est centrée principalement sur l'expérience des pays en développement et inclue une bibliographie qui permet de poursuivre l'exploration de ce thème. Il s'agit donc avant tout d'un texte informatif et pédagogique.

Just as medieval municipal republics surrendered to national sovereigns in the past, incumbent states may be replaced in the future by an alternate, global public order. Citizens and merchants would obtain more equal rights, better market infrastructures, and a more efficient provision of public goods at all levels of government, from the local to the global. This proposition is supported by an agentbased, incentive-compatible model where individual rights—economic and political—are established within an ongoing bargain with rulers. Enfranchisement then shapes the autonomous dynamics of civil society and markets and, over time, allows for feedback of preferences into the core bargain on rights. Globalization results from a capacity to trade and associate that extends far beyond home jurisdictions, yet on the basis of differentiated franchises. In this representation, the world is anarchic, pluralistic, unequal, and growing. Although it is no longer state-centered, long-term change is driven by the attempts and failures of states to establish a more coherent normative infrastructure and to respond to new social demands. From this account, we derive four scenarios of global reordering, among which maximal integration would see the classical nation-state split into two parts: a decentralized, federal structure of government; and a unified legal order that would warrant equal rights and generalized open access throughout the world.

Après avoir illustré comment la science économique envisage l'enjeu spatial, on analyse l'innovation majeure apportée par la globalisation : là où le commerce international se heurtait à un " effet-frontière " relativement identifiable et linéaire (un tarif douanier), il est avant tout confronté aujourd'hui à des obstacles territoriaux. Ainsi, accroître les échanges internationaux demande de négocier sur les règles du jeu internes à chaque économie : droit de la concurrence, du travail, de la consommation, de l'environnement, etc. De fait, ceci met en question la construction progressive de ces économies et de leur armature institutionnelle, sur les décennies et parfois les siècles passés. C'est la rencontre de l'histoire et de la géographie. Et parce que redessiner les frontières demande donc de renégocier la constitution civile des marchés, au plan interne, l'économie politique de la libéralisation devient elle-même beaucoup plus complexe. Après avoir analysé la réponse européenne à ce dilemme régulation interne / ouverture externe, on identifie trois principes génériques de coordination par lesquels envisager la renégociation des frontières : le traité international, la reconnaissance mutuelle des normes, et l'hégémonie.

La chose est connue : depuis des siècles, les Etats se mettent en défaut de paiement sur leur dette. Charles Quint en 1559 en est un exemple classique mais la monarchie française a vécu sous la menace d'une banqueroute pendant au moins cent cinquante ans, jusqu'à la Révolution. De même, le Mexique, indépendant en 1821, s'est endetté pour la première fois à Londres en 1824 et a cessé ses paiements trois ans plus tard. Plus près de nous, les années 1930 ou encore la décennie 1980 en Amérique latine offrent des exemples similaires, où la crise est venue le plus souvent avec une grosse récession, des tensions sociales intenses et l'hyperinflation. Aujourd'hui, alors que de nombreux Etats européens sont surendettés, la question se pose à nouveau : des défauts de paiements par des Etats souverains sont-ils encore possible? Et pourquoi sont-ils si dangereux ? (...).

Just as medieval municipal republics surrendered to national sovereigns in the past, incumbent states may be replaced in the future by an alternate, global public order. Citizens and merchants would obtain more equal rights, better market infrastructures, and a more efficient provision of public goods at all levels of government, from the local to the global. This proposition is supported by an agentbased, incentive-compatible model where individual rights—economic and political—are established within an ongoing bargain with rulers. Enfranchisement then shapes the autonomous dynamics of civil society and markets and, over time, allows for feedback of preferences into the core bargain on rights. Globalization results from a capacity to trade and associate that extends far beyond home jurisdictions, yet on the basis of differentiated franchises. In this representation, the world is anarchic, pluralistic, unequal, and growing. Although it is no longer state-centered, long-term change is driven by the attempts and failures of states to establish a more coherent normative infrastructure and to respond to new social demands. From this account, we derive four scenarios of global reordering, among which maximal integration would see the classical nation-state split into two parts: a decentralized, federal structure of government; and a unified legal order that would warrant equal rights and generalized open access throughout the world.

L'historiographie de la justice a connu un développement important depuis deux décennies, attaché principalement aux dimensions politiques et sociales de l'institution. En tendance, elle a toutefois laissé de côté la source statistique. Produit typique de l'Etat français, les Comptes de l'Administration de la Justice publiés en deux volumes annuels à partir des années 1830 offrent pourtant une source exceptionnelle par sa qualité et son extension temporelle. Utilisés ponctuellement par Gabriel de Tarde, Emile Durkheim ou Michel Foucault, ces données n'ont été reconstituées en séries temporelles que sur quelques chapitres précis en matière criminelle, ou bien sur les divorces ou les suicides. On a entrepris avec le soutien financier de l'Institut CDC pour la Recherche de saisir d'une part les séries de niveau national décrivant la régulation d'ensemble de la hiérarchie judiciaire (jugements rendus par juridictions, appels, cassation, arbitrage et transactions à l'amiable, etc). Une seconde priorité a été de mieux cerner l'évolution de la régulation judiciaire de l'économie : contentieux commercial, faillites, jurisprudence commerciale, etc (...).

Coordination of cross-border bankruptcies between 1870 and World War II offers a puzzling image. On the one hand, diplomats, academic lawyers, and private lobbies repeatedly tried to bring regulations closer to the ideal of unity and universality of proceedings: all parties and assets should be assembled in a single forum, governed by a single law. On the other hand, these demands were matched by repeated failures, so that territoriality, fragmentation, and thus relative economic inefficiency dominated. For example, many states adopted bankruptcy laws that were universal in design yet opposed any symmetric endeavor of their neighbors. This institutional stalemate cannot be easily traced to the resistance of shielded interest groups, such as senior creditors. I argue that the problem actually resulted from the interaction of two dimensions of sovereignty: the domestic dimension, whereby (under a liberal constitution) courts protect property rights and possibly reallocate them, as in a bankruptcy procedure; and the international dimension (i.e., the interstate political order), which determines the extent to which states will compromise their domestic prerogatives in order to commit themselves to stronger rules of cross-border cooperation. Between 1870 and 1840 it then seems that the constraints proper to the operation of coherent and trusted legal orders, at the national level, far outweigh the potential benefits more mutual opening. In contrast, the international regime that emerged after 1990 shows how greater international enfranchisement of economic agents was matched by much more fluid coordination and recognition between national jurisdictions.

On analyse la réaction de la "profession économique" à la crise financière en soulignant notamment le contraste entre l'énorme légitimité de cette science dans le débat public et le fait que ses règles de fonctionnement internes sont entièrement opaques à ce même public. Ainsi la fabrication de consensus interne (par exemple sur la libéralisation financière) tout comme les conditions sous lesquelles on sera ou non autorisé à parler "au nom des économistes" reflètent-elles une politique interne à la fois parfaitement perçue de tous et non dénuée d'arbitraire. On insiste ensuite sur le lien fort qui lie cette politique de la science économique et une construction épistémique qui exclue toute démarche trans-disciplinaire en se concevant comme "seule science possible du social". A contrario l'oeuvre d'Elinor Oström, qui a reçu le Prix Nobel d'Economie 2009, ouvre des voies d'une approche de l'économie qui préserve ses exceptionnels acquis théoriques tout en l'inscrivant dans une économie politique qui ne soit pas exclusivement naturaliste. Ce texte est disponible sur le site de la revue: http://www.esprit.presse.fr

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This contribution first presents a brief outline of the economic logic of bankruptcy laws as of their historical development in Europe since the Middle-Ages. This experience is then compared with what an economy without a bankruptcy law would like, and three specific, intermediary examples are then discussed : in Ancient Rome, in pre-Meiji Japan and in the traditional Muslim world patterns of bankruptcy laws were developed, although the fully-fledged institution did not emerge. It is then hypothesised that the strong, direct interaction between core state institutions (a court, a judge) and private agents with valuable assets calls for a specific and rather demanding institutionnal set-up: a strong public authority should be mobilised in support of the collective action of creditors, albeit without invading their assembly and pre-empting assets. This specifically liberal rule emerged only in the medieval, European trading cities and was then interrestingly protected by the ulterior, absolutist monarchies. From there on and in the following centuries, it continued its worldwide expansion.

Since the early 1998 paper by LLSV, a growing body of research has argued that “legal origins” have a country-specific, time-invariant effect on property rights and economic development. Following the methodology of LLSV, an original data-base of 51 bankruptcy laws has been built: it ranges over fifteen European countries and more than a hundred years (1808-1914), and summarises how the rights and incentives of the parties were defined as the procedure unfold. The first conclusion is that, over the entire period, all legal traditions strongly protected creditors’ rights; only English law comes out prima facie as less protective. Second, evidences suggests that the evolution of these laws was influenced less by their past than by continent-wide trends, arguably linked to capitalist development. An early 19th century model thus saw heavy repression of failed debtors and highly regulated judicial procedures. After a transition period from the late 1860s to the late 1880s, prison for debt was abandoned, rehabilitation became easier, and the parties were given much more room to re-contract on property rights.

Since the early 1997 paper by La Porta et al., a growing body of research has argued that ‘legal origins’ have a country-specific, time-invariant effect on property rights and economic development. Following the methodology of La Porta et al., an original database of 51 bankruptcy laws has been built: it ranges over 15 European countries and more than a hundred years (1808–1914), and summarises how the rights and incentives of the parties were defined as the procedures unfolded. The first conclusion is that, over the entire period, all legal traditions strongly protected creditors' rights; only English law comes out prima facie as less protective. Second, evidence suggests that the evolution of these laws was influenced less by their past than by continent-wide trends, arguably linked to capitalist development. An early nineteenth century model thus saw heavy repression of failed debtors and highly regulated judicial procedures. After a transition period from the late 1860s to the late 1880s, prison for debt was abandoned, rehabilitation became easier, and the parties were given much more room to recontract on property rights. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006 doi:10.1017/S1361491606001808 Published online by Cambridge University Press 19 Dec 2006

L’économie marocaine s’est comportée de manière satisfaisante au cours des dernières années et ne présente pas de risque d’investissement majeur à échéance de 3 à 5 ans. Les comptes extérieurs, le taux de change et la dette publique totale (66 % du PIB) ne montrent pas de tension sérieuse. Ce constat reflète aussi l’absence de dette extérieure nette et l’absorption réussie, en 2005, de chocs exogènes non-négligeables (pétrole, textile, sécheresse). En outre, cette économie volatile, à l’insertion internationale fragile, conserve des marges de manoeuvre pour répondre efficacement à d’éventuels nouveaux chocs (commerce extérieur, risque climatique, terrorisme, etc.). Le double excès d’offre observé sur les marchés de facteurs (chômage et surplus d’épargne) témoigne cependant d’obstacles structurels à l’initiative privée, à l’investissement et à la croissance. Les institutions publiques et notamment la régulation juridique des échanges semblent en particulier poser problème. Audelà, ces facteurs suggèrent que le rapport entre l’Etat et les acteurs économiques reste peu propice à l’émergence d’une dynamique de rattrapage économique rapide. Il est donc peu probable que le Maroc puisse prendre à moyen terme le statut d’économie émergente, caractérisée par une règle capitaliste dure et une capacité à absorber les fortes tensions sociales . L’action des pouvoirs publics devrait rester centrée sur la recherche, pas à pas, de compromis viables entre trois objectifs principaux : un ajustement toujours difficile à la concurrence internationale, la préservation d’un degré élevé de stabilité macroéconomique, et la défense d’une société qui n’est pas, a priori, la mieux armée pour répondre aux risques et aux opportunités de la globalisation.