There is increasing empirical evidence that creative destruction, driven by experimentation and the adoption of new products and processes when investment is sunk, is a core mechanism of development. Obstacles to this process are likely to be obstacles to the progress in standards of living....

In a prevailing climate of increasing uncertainty (rising risk of unemployment, pension funding problems and unstable family structures), French households have adopted new saving behavior reflected during the nineties, primarily by considerable investment in life insurance and its derivative...

The dual motives of housing behavior, consumption and investment make the analysis of housing purchases quite difficult. Nevertheless, it is better to refer to a model that keeps the two dimensional aspect of housing (Henderson and Ioannides [16]). In the absence of institutional considerations,...