The principal topic of this article is the creation of money in primitive populations at the beginning of economic activity. This phenomenon was determined thanks to a particular social environment where interpersonal trust together with reciprocity and moral principles were prevalent. No other...

The paper discusses the possibility of behavioural change in accordance with the objectives of sustainable development considering the human behaviour through the needs. Using the concepts of fundamental human needs and satisfiers of Manfred Max-Neef, the attempt was made to determine the...

After sixty years of predominance in the western countries, both the objective of economic growth and its core measure, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), have been questioned. It no longer seems consistent to maintain growth as a societal goal and to keep GDP as the major reference for...

This paper begins by defining, and distinguishing between, money and finance, and addresses alternative ways of financing spending. We next examine the role played by financial institutions (e.g., banks) in the provision of finance. The role of government as both regulator of private...

This paper provides the text of the Gunnar Myrdal Lecture presented at the U.N. Palais des Nations in 2003. The lecture suggests that the gaps in income per capita between richer and poorer countries largely reflect the quality of their institutions. Institutions, by reducing uncertainty, are...

The paper is the second message (the first was called “Toward another economic science (and thus toward another institution of this science)”) of the author to the French heterodox economists (post-Keynesians, Marxists, regulationists, conventionalists, socio-economists) which has the aim to...