CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	xi
INTRODUCTION WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE COMMON GOOD?	1
Itinerary	5
The Relationship between Society and Economics	7
The Economist’s Profession	8
Institutions	10
A Window on Our World	11
The Common Thread	12
PART I ECONOMICS AND SOCIETY
ONE DO YOU LIKE ECONOMICS?	17
What Prevents Our Understanding Economics	17
The Market and Other Ways of Managing Scarcity	24
How to Make Economics Better Understood	29
TWO THE MORAL LIMITS OF THE MARKET	33
The Moral Limits of the Market or Market Failure?	36
The Noncommercial and the Sacred	40
The Market, a Threat to Social Cohesion?	47
Inequality	50
PART II THE ECONOMIST’S PROFESSION
THREE THE ECONOMIST IN CIVIL SOCIETY	65
The Economist as Public Intellectual	66
The Pitfalls of Involvement in Society	70
A Few Safeguards for an Essential Relationship	76
From Theory to Economic Policy	78
FOUR THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF A RESEARCHER	80
The Interplay between Theory and Empirical Evidence	80
The Microcosm of Academic Economics	91
Economists: Foxes or Hedgehogs?	101
The Role of Mathematics	104
Game Theory and Information Theory	109
An Economist at Work: Methodological Contributions	118
FIVE ECONOMICS ON THE MOVE	122
An Agent Who Is Not Always Rational: Homo psychologicus	123
Homo socialis	137
Homo incitatus: The Counterproductive Effects of Rewards	141
Homo juridicus: Law and Social Norms	147
More Unexpected Lines of Inquiry	149
PART III AN INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ECONOMY
SIX TOWARD A MODERN STATE	155
The Market Has Many Defects That Must Be Corrected	157
The Complementarity between the Market and the State and the Foundations of Liberalism	160
Politicians or Technocrats?	163
Reforming the State: The Example of France	169
SEVEN THE GOVERNANCE AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF BUSINESS	174
Many Possible Organizations … but Few Are Chosen	175
And What Is Business’s Social Responsibility?	185
PART IV THE GREAT MACROECONOMIC CHALLENGES
EIGHT THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE	195
What Is at Stake in Climate Change?	195
Reasons for the Standstill	199
Negotiations That Fall Short of the Stakes Involved	206
Making Everyone Accountable for GHG Emissions	213
Inequality and the Pricing of Carbon	222
The Credibility of an International Agreement	226
In Conclusion: Putting Negotiations Back on Track	228
NINE LABOR MARKET CHALLENGES	231
The Labor Market in France	233
An Economic Analysis of Labor Contracts	242
Perverse Institutional Incentives	245
What Can Reform Achieve and How Can It Be Implemented Successfully?	251
The Other Great Debates about Employment	255
The Urgency	261
TEN EUROPE AT THE CROSSROADS	265
The European Project: From Hope to Doubt	265
The Origins of the Euro Crisis	267
Greece: Much Bitterness on Both Sides	282
What Options Do the EU and the Eurozone Have Today?	289
ELEVEN WHAT USE IS FINANCE?	296
What Use Is Finance?	296
How to Transform Useful Products into Toxic Products	298
Are Markets Efficient?	306
Why Regulate in Fact?	321
TWELVE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 2008	326
The Financial Crisis	327
The New Postcrisis Environment	335
Who Is to Blame? Economists and the Prevention of Crises	350
PART V THE INDUSTRIAL CHALLENGE
THIRTEEN COMPETITION POLICY AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY	355
What Is the Purpose of Competition?	357
Where Does Industrial Policy Fit In?	365
FOURTEEN HOW DIGITIZATION IS CHANGING EVERYTHING	378
Platforms: Guardians of the Digital Economy	379
Two-Sided Markets	382
A Different Business Model: Platforms as Regulators	389
The Challenges Two-Sided Markets Pose for Competition Policy	392
FIFTEEN DIGITAL ECONOMIES: THE CHALLENGES FOR SOCIETY	401
Trust	402
Who Owns Data?	405
Health Care and Risk	408
The New Forms of Employment in the Twenty-First Century	414
The Digital Economy and Employment	423
The Tax System	427
SIXTEEN INNOVATION AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY	430
The Imperative of Innovation	430
Intellectual Property	431
Managing Royalty Stacking	435
The Institutions of Innovation	443
Cooperative Development and Open Source Software	447
And Many Other Debates …	453
SEVENTEEN SECTOR REGULATION	455
What’s at Stake	455
A Fourfold Reform and Its Rationale	456
Incentive Regulation	460
Prices of Regulated Companies	466
Regulation of Access to the Network	471
Competition and Universal Service	478
EPILOGUE	481
NOTES	485
INDEX	551