The paper is a brief account of Georges-Théodule Guilbaud?s (1912-2006) contributions to contemporary aggregative theories. An unnoticed precursor, Guilbaud anticipated on the algebraic conception of aggregation and on the more recent judgment aggregation theory, which generalizes social...

Few problems in decision theory have raised more persisting interest than the Allais paradox. It appears that sufficiently many brilliant works have addressed it from within decision theory proper for history and philosophy of science now to enter the stage. In its historical side, the paper...

This text compares Roy?s theory of the scale of needs (1943) to Dupuit?s theory of dearth (1859). It sets first Roy?s modelling of the scale of needs, his criticism by Marschak (1943) and the analysis of dearth by Dupuit. It shows that the hypotheses raised by Roy are exactly those posed by...

Keynes and Simon traverse all two, fifty year from distance, an epistemologically similar way. Both work out a theory of the rational action presenting very closed characteristics (intuitive, empirical and in a non calculative form). This theory leads them to become aware of the role of the...

For about twenty years, the notion of authority has been put forward again into the analysis of employment relationship, especially concerning contracts incompleteness. This article has two purposes. First, it aims at giving an assessment of the famous controversy between Coase and...

The efficiency claim of the ?Coase theorem?? harshly criticises welfare economics: it asserts that an optimal result will be reached, even in the presence of externalities. However, the precise meaning of this criticism depends on the nature of the exchange. If the ?theorem?? assumes perfect...

This paper analyzes how economic history and cliometrics can improve our understanding of the financial crises. We discuss the contributions of authors like Reinhart and Rogoff, Bordo and Eichengreen. According to Reinhart and Rogoff the recent crisis is similar in many aspects to former...

Hayek regards complexity as specific to spontaneous orders or self-organizing structures. These orders are characterized by the phenomena of irreducible ignorance and emergence (of new properties of the whole which its separate parts do not possess) and by the incapacity to handle them. Their...

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 ?practical...

In this article, we study the motives which drive an entrepreneur to innovate according to Jeremy Bentham [1748-1832]. We show that the innovator, called at this time the projector, can be considered through the prism of the theory of expected utility, but not as a risk-lover: it is not the game...