The fertility of Adam Smith’s work stems from a paradoxical structure where the pursuit of economic self-interest and wealth accumulation serve wider social objectives. The incentive for this wealth accumulation comes from a desire for social recognition or "sympathy" – the need to recognise...

J.S. Mill is generally considered to be the theorist who gave birth to the concept of natural monopoly in its modern sense. Yet, no author has specified that Mill distinguishes two types of monopoly, the “natural monopoly” and the “practical monopoly”. I show that Mill's notion of...

Are institutionalism and structuralism compatible or do they confront each other? This article suggests an answer to this question, starting from an analysis of the structuration of these two paradigmatic fields of social sciences. It observes the existence in economies of both structuralist...

The French egalitarian law of bequests is a social device for distributing wealth from one generation to the other. The law of bequest is the result of a political debate within the Conseil d’État in which political considerations (the new democratic social state) are of considerable...

Utilitarianism represents a major reference to which Sen's writings refer back when it comes to the ethics of collective choices. Which utilitarianism is it; Sentham and Sidgwick's historical utilitarianism, the utilitarianism impregnated with marginal calculation a la Edgeworth, or the...

As the workshop’s fourth session will concentrate on the subject of rules and regulations in organizations. In the context of global competition and the global crisis experienced by most countries all over the world, one of the question raised is how linking materiality with discourse,...