Past Events

https://my.unil.ch/actualite-evenement 

Conférence et débat, jeudi 30 mai 2013

A l'occasion des 30 ans
du Département d'Econométrie et Economie Politique
et de son Master en économie politique

Surveillance financière et régulation
macro-prudentielle :
qu'a-t-on appris de la crise ?

Conférence donnée par  Jean Tirole, Docteur Honoris Causa 2013 de l’Université de Lausanne.
Table ronde avec la participation de Philippe Bacchetta, Jean-Pierre Danthine et Michel Girardin.
Modération par Frédéric Lelièvre (chef de la rubrique Economie & Finance, Le Temps)

Jean Tirole
Jean Tirole est président de l’Ecole d’Economie de Toulouse (TSE), et affilié à l’IDEI, à l’IAST et au MIT. Auteur de 200 articles et de 11 livres, il reçut le prix inaugural Yrjö Jahnsson (1993), la médaille d’or du CNRS (2007), le prix inaugural BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge (2008), le prix Lévi-Strauss (2010), le prix MSRI-CMI (2010) et le Ross prize (2013). Il est Docteur Honoris Causa de six universités et fut président de l’Econometric Society (1998) et de l’European Economic Association (2001).

Philippe Bacchetta
Philippe Bacchetta est professeur à la Faculté des HEC de l’Université de Lausanne et au Swiss Finance Institute, ainsi que président de la Société suisse d’économie et de statistique. De 1998 à 2007, il a été directeur du Centre d’études de Gerzensee, une fondation de la Banque Nationale Suisse. Il a obtenu un doctorat en économie de l’Université de Harvard, ainsi qu’une licence et un master en économie politique de HEC Lausanne.

Jean-Pierre Danthine
Jean-Pierre Danthine est vice-président de la Direction générale et chef du 2e département de la Banque Nationale Suisse. Jusqu’à janvier 2010, il était professeur d’économie et de finances à la Faculté des HEC de l’Université de Lausanne et directeur du Swiss Finance Institute. Il a d’abord enseigné à la Columbia University à New York après avoir obtenu un master en économie de l’Université de Louvain (Belgique), puis un doctorat en sciences économiques de la Carnegie-Mellon University. Il est l’auteur de nombreuses publications scientifiques en macroéconomie et en finance.

Michel Girardin
Economiste et responsable de la stratégie d’investissement dans le monde bancaire suisse depuis plus de 20 ans, Michel Girardin est également chargé de cours à la Faculté des HEC de l’Université de Lausanne. Le magazine Bilan a classé Michel Girardin en juin 2012 parmi les trois cents personnalités les plus influentes du monde économique suisse.

Frédéric Lelièvre
Frédéric Lelièvre dirige la rubrique Economie & Finance du quotidien Le Temps depuis octobre 2008. Diplômé de Sciences Po Paris, il a rejoint Le Temps en 2001, pour couvrir l’actualité des fonds de placements. Il avait auparavant travaillé pour un hebdomadaire français spécialisé en économie. Frédéric Lelièvre vient de coécrire « Krach Machine » publié chez Calmann-Lévy.
 

L'événement a été couvert par notre partenaire média Le Temps.

•    Interview de Jean Tirole, par Frédéric Lelièvre
"L'Europe du Sud n'aurait pas besoin d'austérité si elle menait des
réformes redonnant confiance"
Suivi de "Les taux bas sont regrettables mais nécessaires"

•    Interview de Philippe Bacchetta, par Mathilde Farine 
"Les économistes ne se trompent pas plus qu'avant c'est déjà bien"
Le Temps, rubrique "Conjoncture", 29 mai 2013

•    Mémorial de Jean-Christian Lambelet
"Les trente ans du DEEP, Mémorial personnel d'un émérite"
Février 2016

15ème Conférence Walras-Pareto
21, 22 et 23 mai 2008, Dorigny

1ère Conférence
Comprendre la réglementation
Cette présentation tentera de répondre à la question: pourquoi a-t-on besoin d'une réglementation gouvernementale? En particulier, cet exposé explorera la raison pour laquelle des externalités ou d'autres préjudices ne peuvent pas se résoudre simplement par le biais d'indemnités, tel que le suggère le théorème de Coase. Selon ce dernier, indépendamment des actions des agents et des entreprises, une partie lésée a la possibilité de poursuivre en justice celle qui lui a porté atteinte. L'approche de ces problèmes à travers le théorème de Coase clarifie les modèles de réglementation et de litige.
 

2ème Conférence
La théorie de l'application de la réglementation
Cet exposé présentera un modèle théorique de choix efficace entre réglementation et procédure légale lorsque le régulateur et les tribunaux font des erreurs. Il montrera dans quelle mesure les caractéristiques comparatives des juges et des régulateurs déterminent la forme optimale du contrôle social de l'activité économique.

See the paper "Regulation versus Litigation"

3ème Conférence
La réglementation dans un contexte élargi
Cette présentation passera en revue le domaine croissant des faits liés aux modèles de réglementation à travers les pays. Cet exposé discutera également la relation entre réglementation et forces institutionnelles élargies telles que la culture et les coutumes.

See the paper "Regulation and Distrust"

Andrei SHLEIFER : brief biography

Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Andrei Shleifer holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from MIT.
Before coming to Harvard in 1991, he has taught at Princeton and the Chicago Business School. Shleifer has worked in the areas of comparative corporate governance, law and finance, behavioral finance, as well as institutional economics.

He has published four books, including The Grabbing Hand (with Robert Vishny), and Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance, as well as over a hundred articles.

Shleifer has served as the Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics between 1989 and 1999, and as an Associate Editor of both the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Financial Economics.
He is currently the Editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives and an Advisory Editor of the JFE.

Shleifer is a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1999, Shleifer won the John Bates Clark medal of the American Economic Association.

14ème Conférence Walras-Pareto
21, 22 et 23 mai 2007, Dorigny

Lecture 1
The Rise of Offshoring: It's Not Wine for Cloth Anymore
Since David Ricardo penned his celebrated treatise on The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, the core of international trade theory has been dominated by thinking about production and exchange of complete goods. But revolutionary progress in communication and information technologies has enabled an historic and ongoing breakdown of the global production process. Countries still produce some goods from start to finish, but increasingly they participate in global supply chains in which the many task required to produce modern goods and services are performed in several, disparate locations. In this lecture, I will document the changing nature of international trade and discuss how our conceptualization of international trade must be modified to capture the recent trends. I will describe the various channels through which the offshoring of certain types of jobs affects the domestic labor market. A simple empirical exercise suggests that offshoring may have bolstered the productivity of low-skilled workers in the United States in recent years and thereby cushioned the impact of globalization on their wages.

See the paper

Lecture 2
A Simple Theory of Offshoring
In this lecture, I will develop a simple, formal theory of offshoring. The theory builds on a conceptualization of the production process in which goods result from the completion of many tasks. The tasks needed to produce a good can be performed in disparate locations, although separation of a task from the headquarters imposes a cost on the firm. Tasks differ in terms of the size of these costs. I will use this model of tradable tasks to study how improvements in the possibilities for offshoring affect domestic factor prices. I will highlight a previously overlooked productivity effect of improved opportunities for offshoring. The productivity effect works like factor-augmenting technological progress for the factor whose tasks become easier to move offshore. As a result of the productivity effect, reductions in the cost of trading tasks can generate shared gains for all domestic factors, in contrast to the distributional conflict that typically results from reductions in the cost of trading goods.

See the paper

Lecture 3
Task Trade between Similar Countries 
In this lecture, I will construct a model to explain and investigate the seemingly high volume of task trade between countries with similar factor endowments, similar income levels, and similar factor prices. The model features scale economies that generate benefits from geographic specialization at the task level. I will discuss the scope for multiple equilibria in such an environment and propose several refinements of Nash equilibrium that might narrow the range of such multiplicity. Then I will examine how reductions in the costs of offshoring affect the organization of production, labor productivity and factor prices. Finally, I will discuss the determinants of the pattern of task trade, and show that a fall in offshoring costs can have surprising effects on national output levels, on net exports of sevices, and on national income.

Gene M. GROSSMAN: biography

Gene Grossman is the Jacob Viner Professor of International Economics at Princeton University and the Director of the International Economics Section. He received his B.A. in Economics from Yale University in 1976 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. Professor Grossman joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1980 and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Economics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. 
Professor Grossman has received numerous professional honors and awards including the Harry G. Johnson Prize from the Canadian Economic Association and fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1992 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997. Professor Grossman recently served a three-year term on the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and of the Center for Economic Policy Research, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Economic Growth, the Review of International Economics, the German Economic Review, and several other professional journals. 
Professor Grossman has written extensively on international trade. He is well known for his work on the determinants of international competitiveness in dynamic, research-intensive industries, and in particular for his book with Elhanan Helpman entitled Innovation and Growth in the Global Economy. He has also written (with colleague Alan Krueger) a widely-cited paper on the likely environmental impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as many other papers on U.S. and developing countries' trade policies. His most recent writings examine the political forces that shape modern trade policy. Professor Grossman and Elhanan Helpman collaborated on Special Interest Politics, which was published by the MIT Press in 2001 and on Interest Groups and Trade Policy, which was published by Princeton University Press in 2002. Their current research focuses on the causes and consequences of offshore outsourcing.
Professor Grossman is married to Jean Baldwin Grossman, a Senior Vice President for Research at Public/Private Ventures and a Lecturer in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The Grossman's have two daughters, Shari (age 20) and Dina (age 19).

13ème Conférence Walras-Pareto
15, 16 et 17 mai 2006, Internef, Dorigny

Lecture 1: Oil and the Global Economy
This paper will look at the controversies over how oil affects global growth in both developed and developing economies and what steps countries (including producers) can take to deal with oil shocks. Previous oil shocks have only involved supply reductions of 10% or less, what would happen in the event of a larger shock?

See the paper

Lecture 2: Oil Recycling Redux
This lecture will look at how the latest oil shock has affected global imbalances and vulnerabilities, and policy measures both countries -- and international financial institutions -- can take. I will cast the issues in the context of the larger debate on global imbalances and sustainability of the US current account.

Lecture 3: Oil, Commodity Prices and Exchange Rates
This lecture will both look at the effect of commodity and oil price shocks on exchange rates and alternative policy prescriptions for dealing with shocks. How does the level of country's financial development matter.

12ème Conférence Walras-Pareto
29, 30 et 31 octobre 2003, Dorigny

The lectures present a theory of boundedly rational reasoning about dynamic economic systems. The theory is inspired by the literature on qualitative physics (Bobrow 1984) but it adds new developments. The aim is a formal reconstruction of verbal qualitative reasoning about economic dynamics. Hume's specie flow machanism and Hawtrey's monetary business cycle provide illustrative examples.

A formal definition of a qualitative dynamic system is given. It involves variables with only finitely many values like "high" or "low". The movement of variables in time is described by "tendencies" with only three possible values, + (increasing), 0 (steady), and - (decreasing). Algebraic relationships connect tendencies to variables and other tendencies. Another system part is the "priority assignment" which ranks causal reasons for a transition to a new state.

A qualitative dynamic system permits only finitely many states. A transition from one state to the next involves a chain of causal reasoning formalized as a "readjustment process". The properties of this centrally important algorithm are discussed in detail.

A definition of stability in a qualitative dynamic system is presented. The stationary state is stable in Hume's specie flow mechanism and unstable in Hawtrey's business cycle.

11ème Conférence Walras-Pareto
22, 23 et 24 octobre 2002, Dorigny

Lecture 1
Some Empirical Problems in the Economics of Job Training and the Economics of Education - The Challenges of LaLonde and Griliches
This Lecture sets the stage for the other two. It introduces some main issues in the economics of evaluating human capital policies and focuses on two influential papers by Griliches(1977) and by LaLonde(1986). Griliches' paper discusses major econometric questions in estimating the returns to education. He finds that instrumental variables estimates of returns to schooling are higher than OLS estimates and raises a serious problem that seems to question the importance of ability bias as a major factor. LaLonde's paper demonstrated to the satisfaction of many that nonexperimental econometric methods could not satisfactorily answer important economic questions. This lecture presents this evidence and sets up a framework for thinking about these questions.

Lecture 2
A Unified Approach to the Estimation of Treatment Effects: Means and Distributions
This Lecture discusses a framework for analyzing treatment effects of the type studied by Griliches and LaLonde. It presents a general framework for placing the treatment effect framework within well defined economic models and considers which decision problems the various treatment effects offered up in the literature solve. In this framework I present identifying assumptions that underlie various econometric approaches.

Lecture 3
Evidence from these Approaches
Lecture 3 completes the task of Lecture 2 and uses the tools to address the problems raised by Griliches and Lalonde on original data sets.

10ème Conférence Walras-Pareto
18, 19 et 20 décembre 2000, Dorigny

Les progrès récents de la médecine ont conduit au développement de techniques prédictives. Il est à présent possible, dans de nombreux cas, soit de prévoir exactement la survenance d'une maladie (exemple de certaines maladies monogéniques), soit au moins de détecter une prédisposition accroissant le risque de survenance. Cette évolution devrait permettre, à terme, de nombreux progrès tant dans la prévention de ces maladies que dans leur traitement. Dans l'immédiat, elle pose néanmoins la question de l'utilisation de ces prédictions, notamment dans le cadre de contrats d'assurance. La certitude de la survenance d'une maladie peut en effet rendre celle-ci inassurable, ce qui représente une perte de bien-être potentielle (effet 'Hirschleifer'). En réponse à ce danger, il a parfois été suggéré d'interdire aux assureurs l'utilisation d'informations de ce type dans leur politique d'acceptation ou tarification des risques. Cependant, une telle réglementation soulève des problèmes d'un autre ordre ; elle revient en effet à créer une situation d'anti-sélection sur les marchés d'assurance, dont les travaux théoriques ont montré les dangers.

La conférence se propose de discuter ces problèmes selon une perspective propre-ment économique. Divers aspects seront envisagés, parmi lesquels :

l'évaluation quantitative (même approximative) de la perte de bien-être due à l'absence ou à la disparition de possibilités d'assurance (effet 'Hirschleifer');

la forme et l'importance des effets d'anti-sélection sur les marchés d'assurance, selon la forme de ceux-ci (en insistant notamment sur la notion théorique fondamentale d'exclusivité des contrats), ainsi que leurs implications en termes de réglementation;

plus généralement, les problèmes liés à la dynamique des marchés d'assurance dans un contexte de révélation graduelle de l'information.

9ème Conférence Walras-Pareto
16, 17 et 18 novembre 1999, Dorigny

Lecture 1 : INSTITUTIONS AS EQUILIBRIUM PHENOMENA

Political economy events in the last decade, such as the demise of the communist regimes, the East Asian miracle and crisis, and European integration, remind economists of the fact that 'institutions matter" in conditioning the performance of an economy. However, there is no clear-cut agreement among economists yet regarding such fundamental issues as what are institutions, what role they play, or how they change. In particular, a crucial question of great practical relevance is whether institutions can be identified with, and thus created by, law. In this opening lecture, I adopt a view originally dated as far back as Adam Smith that makes an analogy of the economy as a game, and regards laws as defining the rules of the game while institutions emerge as equilibrium phenomena within the game. From this perspective, I discuss the relevance of Walras' deep insight into the information systemic nature of price mechanism, as well as his general equilibrium concept, for understanding the nature of the over-all institutional arrangements of the present day economy.
 

Lecture 2 : COMPARATIVE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Based on the fundamental conceptual framework developed in the first lecture, this second lecture focuses on one of the currently most-talked-about institutions of the present day economy: corporate governance. A conventional view of corporate governance is to regard it as dealing with ways to secure stockholders' interests. In opposition to this conventional view, I conceptualize it as endogenous (equilibrium) rules governing the action choices of stakeholders in the organizational domain (investors, workers, and managers). From this perspective, I show that there exist a variety of corporate governance structures, such as investors' control, co-determination, contingent governance (the Japanese model), and the Silicon Valley model, as multiple equilibria conditioned by corresponding institutional environments, such as organizational architecture and political economy structure.

Lecture 3 : THE MECHANISM OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE : ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SILICON VALLEY AND JAPAN

Extending the notion of the over-all institutional arrangements as equilibrium phenomena to the situation where agents can have only an incomplete, subjective view of the game they play, this lecture discusses the mechanism of institutional change. In particular, I am concerned with the so-called "crisis" of the Japanese economy in the ending decade of this century as contrasted to the emergence of the Silicon Valley model. It interprets the "crisis" as a symptom of the process of institutional change in response to the on-going information technology revolution and globalization of financial markets. It suggests reasons why institutional changes in Japan and elsewhere can only be path-dependent and may not converge uniformly to the Anglo-American model.

- Joseph P. Newhouse, Pricing the Priceless - A Health Care Conundrum,

The Walras-Pareto Lectures, MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, September 2002, édition reliée (cloth)

- idem September 2004, édition brochée, livre de poche (paper)

- Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole & Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America - The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches,

The Walras-Pareto Lectures, MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, June 2006, édition reliée (cloth)

- David Newberry, Privatization, Restructuring and Regulation of Network Utilities,

The Walras-Pareto Lectures, MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, May 2000, édition reliée (cloth)

- idem, February 2002, édition brochée, livre de poche (paper)

- Stephen L. Parente & Edward Prescott, Barriers to Riches,

The Walras-Pareto Lectures, MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, August 2000, édition reliée (cloth)

idem, February 2002, édition brochée, livre de poche (paper)

- Stephen L. Parente & Edward Prescott, Les Richesses défendues,

Conférences Walras-Pareto, Editions Payot, Lausanne, 2002

- Mathias Dewatripont & Jean Tirole, La Réglementation prudentielle des banques,

Conférences Walras-Pareto, Editions Payot, Lausanne, 1993;

- Mathias Dewatripont & Jean Tirole, The Prudential Regulation of Banks,

The Walras-Pareto Lectures, MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, 1994

- Nicholas H. Stern, Le rôle de l'Etat dans le développement économique,

Conférences Walras-Pareto, Editions Payot, Lausanne, 1992