L'auteur décrit l'évolution du concept de probabilité mathématique de Pascal à Laplace, en insistant sur l'épisode crucial que fut le théorème de Bernoulli. Il apparaît que les théoriciens ont constamment monopolisé les considérations probabilistes. Ce qui s'explique...

L'hypothèse d'efficience des marchés n'a pas toujours été (et n'est toujours pas) admise facilement par les praticiens de la finance dont la pertinence du conseil en placements se trouve menacée au profit de stratégies indicielles passives. La littérature académique s'est donc attelée...

This paper explores the effects of the interventions of the Bank of Japan on the level and volatility of the yen/dollar exchange rate. A special attention is devoted to the prominent features affecting the signal conveyed by these interventions. The results show a clear duality: small unilateral...

This paper presents a new multivariate test for the detection of unit roots. Use is made of the possible correlations between the disturbances of different series, and constrained and unconstrained SURE estimators are employed. The corresponding asymptotic distributions are obtained and a table...

This paper studies labour market discriminations as an agency problem. It sets up a principal-agent model of a firm, where the manager is a taste discriminator and has to make unobservable hiring decisions that determine the shareholder’s profits because workers differ in skills. The paper...

This paper offers a new representation of discrimination on the job market based on the most recent findings in the socio-psychological academic literature about human behaviour. Put it simply, it is assumed that the agents prefer working with people like themselves. This "affinity" principle is...

Most of the customers of microfinance institutions are female. But do men and women benefit from the same credit conditions? We investigate this issue by presenting an original model and testing its predictions on an exceptional database comprising 34,000 loan applications from a Brazilian...

This paper is the first to draw a global picture of worldwide microfinance equity by taking full advantage of daily quoted prices. We revisit previous findings showing that investors should consider microfinance as a self-standing sector. Our results are threefold. First, microfinance has become...

Using data from Bangladesh, this paper finds that the liquidity premium—the difference between the interest paid on illiquid and liquid savings accounts—is higher in commercial banks than in microfinance institutions. One possible interpretation lies in the higher prevalence of...

This paper compares the loans granted to male and female entrepreneurs by a French microfinance institution (MFI). The sample period is split in two: before and after the MFI implemented France's regulatory EUR 10,000 loan ceiling. In the first period, the MFI does not co-finance projects with...