This article reviews the epistemological debates about functionalism in ecology. While identifying current area of scientific validity, t emphasizes, in particular, that functionalism depends on the system examined and remains inapplicable wherever singularity prevails.
How the increased trade openness and correspondingly higher marginal propensity to import explains the lower efficiency of economic policy in the context of economic openness. Using an empirical stock-flow consistent model for the French economy (SFC FR), we analyze the macroeconomic impacts of these policies through a series of macroeconomic shocks.
The economic agent was previously assumed to be distinct from its environment and that nothing was forcing him to act on it. With the ecological crisis, every agent appears to be inserted into an environment, which he modifies in an irreversible way without even having decided to do so. This changes in depth the way in which economics can represent the agent and the optimal action: it is rationality itself that is modified in what we call “ecological rationality”.
We analyse the current and possible ways forward in this consideration of climate and biodiversity by finance, highlighting the extent to which they may either contribute to and/or suffer from those environmental changes.
We examine the efficiency of a subsidy to cattle farmers for setting aside land for natural ecosystem regeneration. We develop a partial equilibrium model of the cattle sector that integrates land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and animal feeding. We identify conditions under which the subsidy is the best alternative to these other second-best policies.
We study the macroeconomic impact of climate action policy that would allow France to reach its net zero objective by 2050. Contrary to the findings of a report commissioned by the French Prime Minister, our simulations show that these investments are likely to generate economic growth and reduce public debt.
The distribution of the footprint within a country is regularly computed using consumption data, and with the assumption that the footprint from a product category is proportional to the spending on that product. Here, we explore the limitations of this proportionality assumption.
In September 2020, the city of Bogotá introduced a major market-based reform to its odd-even driving restriction. The big winners of the reform are middle-income individuals who now use their cars more often, whereas the big losers are high-income individuals who now spend more time in traffic.
Adopting disruptive technologies for decarbonizing hard-to-abate industrial sectors requires experimentation through demonstration (pilot) projects. However, from an economic perspective, the potential long-term benefits and the difficulties in designing relevant public policies are not addressed in the standard valuations of those projects.
