Photo Alexandre Chirat

ALEXANDRE CHIRAT

MAÎTRE DE CONFÉRENCES

Research interests

  • arrow_right Histoire de la pensée économique au xxe siècle
  • arrow_right Economie politique
  • arrow_right Théories de l'entreprise

Research group

    Transitions, Environnement, Énergie, Institutions, Territoires

Contact

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2024-31

Three views on economic power

Alexandre Chirat, Ulysse Lojkine

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Abstract
We investigate the concept of economic power in the three main paradigms of economic thinking in the 20th century: neoclassical, marxist and institutionalist. We propose a reconstruction, based on a new taxonomy, of the various forms of power conceptualized by each of them. In particular, we claim that the neoclassical paradigm contains a consistent although often implicit theory of power. We then show that many controversies between these paradigms were debates on power and that some shifts in mainstream economics in the 1970s and 1980s are a reaction to the criticisms leveled against the neoclassical conceptualization of power.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Power – Markets – Consumer sovereignty – History of economics
2024-25

Democracy, Epistocracy and Hybrid decision-making: Information specificity and costs of political governance

Alexandre Chirat, Cyril Hédoin

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Abstract
This paper contributes to the Democracy versus Epistocracy debate (Brennan and Landemore 2022) by providing a theoretical framework and a criterion to choose between democratic, hybrid and epistocratic modes of political governance. From a normative perspective, we claim that the specificity of information should (at least partially) guide the choice between these modes of political governance because of its impact on costs of political governance. The main logic of the model is the following: an issue has a degree of information specificity that determines costs of political governance combined in a Social Costs Function. Therefore, the model helps to assess the relative efficiency between democratic, hybrid and epistocratic decision-making procedures to reach collective choices.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Democracy – Epistocracy – Social Choice – Information – Social Costs Function
2024-8

Économie de guerre climatique : de quoi parle-t-on ?

Alexandre Chirat, Basile Clerc

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Abstract
The concept of a necessary transition to a "war economy" in response to the ecological crisis is gaining traction. However, this discussion often overlooks the fact that a war economy primarily relies on policies such as price controls and rationing, as exemplified by the United States' economy during World War II. Whether it's for wartime efforts or addressing climate urgency, both scenarios seem justifying the suspension of market mechanisms in key sectors to achieve production goals while mitigating the social costs of transition. Nonetheless, a significant disparity lies in the social acceptability of such political measures, which proves to be considerably more challenging to establish within the context of the climate and ecological crisis.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Ecological transition - war economy - price controls
2023-16

Toward an economic theory of populism: Uncertainty, Information, and Public Interest in Downs’s Political Economy

Alexandre Chirat, Cyril Hédoin

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Abstract
In this paper, we claim that Downs’s theory of democracy provides a framework to build an economic and positive theory of populism. Our purpose in this paper is threefold. First, we highlight systematically overlooked aspects of Downs’s work. In particular, we demonstrate that Downs is a thinker of political polarization and that his focus on uncertainty is relevant to build an economic theory of populism. Second, we take the issue of populism as an opportunity to test the explanatory power of Downs’s political economy. Third, our reconstruction of Downs’s political economy enables a comparative analysis with the theoretical political science literature on populism to achieve a wide reflexive equilibrium on the understanding of both the nature and the causes of populism. In accordance with such a method, we conclude that populism is, in essence, a political force in a democracy, always present in a latent state, and rationally promoted by political platforms when the minimum consensus required for democratic stability is in crisis. That is why populism is likely to regenerate as much as to sound the death knell of a democratic political system.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Democracy - Populism - Rationality - Public interest - Information
2023-11

Trust in the fight against political corruption: A survey experiment among citizens and experts

Alexandre Chirat, Benjamin Monnery

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Abstract
In Western democracies, the last decades are characterized by a transformation of the relationship between citizens and their representatives, towards greater accountability, transparency and anti-corruption efforts. However, such evolutions are sometimes suspected of paradoxically fueling populism and reducing political trust. In this article, we investigate to what extent a new public institution in charge of monitoring the integrity of elected officials is likely to attract popular support and restore citizens' trust in democracy. We focus on France and its main anti-corruption agency, the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), launched in 2013. We run a survey among 3,000 representative citizens and 33 experts, and augment it with an experimental treatment where we randomly provide simple, concise information on the activity and record of the HATVP. Our results first show a large divergence between the opinions of the average citizen and the much more optimistic views of experts about the state and dynamics of political integrity in France. Second, we find that citizens have highly heterogeneous beliefs and those with high political distrust are not only more likely to vote for populist candidates or abstain, but also the least informed about the anti-corruption agency. Third, our information provision experiment has meaningful, positive impacts on citizens’ perceptions of HATVP, political transparency and representative democracy. Moreover, we show that some of the largest impacts are found among initially distrustful and poorly informed citizens, stressing the potential for communication and information to change the political perceptions and attitudes of disillusioned citizens.
Mot(s) clé(s)
integrity ; corruption ; political trust ; populism ; survey experiment
2023-4

Convergence on inflation and divergence on price-control among Post-Keynesian pioneers: insights from Galbraith and Lerner

Alexandre Chirat, Basile Clerc

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Abstract
This article proposes a historical and analytical reconstruction of a debate that never happened between John Kenneth Galbraith and Abba Lerner over the issue of price controls. While they adopted a similar analysis of underemployment inflation, shared by many post Keynesians, Lerner and Galbraith remained fundamentally opposed as to the effectiveness of price controls. Indeed, while both agreed on the relevance of price controls in the specific context of World War II, they disagreed over including price controls within the conventional framework of economic policies, as illustrated by their respective stances in the debate surrounding the stagflation of the 1970s. Throughout the paper, we provide the rationales behind their divergence on price controls by investigating its theoretical, epistemological, and normative roots. Finally, we put into perspective the contemporary debates about price control in the context of resurgent inflationary pressures with some salient points drawn from our reconstruction of the debate that opposed these two pioneering post Keynesians economists.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Price control - Wage control - Inflation - Unemployment - Stagflation
2022-25

Consumer sovereignty in the digital society

Alexandre Chirat

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Abstract
Do uses of digital technologies in the framework of early 21st century capitalism promote or reduce the expression of consumer sovereignty ? This paper addresses this question through the lens of John Kenneth Galbraith’s theory of consumption. First, I recall the main stakes of his theory. Second, I highlight the main differences between traditional advertising and online behavioral advertising. Third, I explain how online behavioral advertising strengthens the “dependence effect” and “revised sequence” depicted by Galbraith within the context of the industrial society. Fourth, I discuss some normative challenges raised by digital platform corporations to individual sovereignty. Lastly, I argue that platform capitalism appear as a mature form of the “new industrial state”, one important difference being that digital platform corporations, rather than traditional industrial corporations, largely preside over the allocation of resources in the economy.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Consumer sovereignty – online behavioral advertising - digital economics – platform capitalism
2022-11

Herbert Simon’s experience at the Cowles Commission (1947–1954)

Michaël Assous, Olivier Brette, Alexandre Chirat, Judith Favereau

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Abstract
Surprisingly Simon’s activities at the Cowles commission remain largely unexplored; while Simon and the Cowles shared a twofold wish to operationalize economics and to formalize human decision making. This is also during his time at the Cowles commission that Simon produces his emblematic paper formalizing bounded rationality. Furthermore, Simon claims that his participation at the Cowles was decisive in his awarding of the Nobel Prize. The aim of the paper is to produce such scrutiny. As such the claim of the paper is that Simon’s relationship with the Cowles commission and its members was a bittersweet one. Indeed, such a collaboration started enthusiastically from both sides and ended surrounded by indifferences. We offer three explanations to this bittersweet relationship. First, both the Cowles and Simon shared a wish to formalize decision making problems; although, they had different conceptions about mathematical tools and the articulation between theory and empirics. Second, the irreconcilability of their conception of optimality threatened their common interest in operational research. Third, and more globally, Simon’s and the Cowles’s research agendas were not stabilized during this period explaining the enthusiastic phase as well as the cold one, once these two research agendas stabilized, but in different directions. The paper distinguishes four periods from 1947 to 1954 during Simon’s time at the Cowles. Each section of the paper deals in turn with one of these four periods.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Simon – Cowles Commission – Rationality – Optimization – Models
2021-35

The correspondence between Baumol and Galbraith (1957–1958) An unsuspected source of managerial theories of the firm.

Alexandre Chirat

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Abstract
Baumol’s impact on the development of managerial theories of the firm is investigated here through material found in Galbraith’s archives. In 1957 Galbraith published a paper claiming that the impact of macroeconomic policies varies with market structures (competitive versus oligopolistic). That publication prompted Baumol (1958b) to send Galbraith a manuscript dealing extensively with a crucial question of managerial theories of the firm, namely, the trade-off between sales and profits. I argue that Baumol’s critiques and Galbraith’s answers largely explain the way Baumol (1958a, 1959) framed his alternative model of the behavior of corporations. He reasoned in terms of maximization of sales with a profit constraint as their main objective. In return, Business Behavior, Value and Growth fostered the development of Marris’ (1964) and Galbraith’s (1967) theories of the corporation. While Tullock (1978) provides a narrative in which the sales maximization hypothesis has two main branches – Baumol for the one and Galbraith-Marris for the other – the paper demonstrates that these branches are intimately connected.
Mot(s) clé(s)
Baumol – Galbraith – Theory of the firm – Managerialism – Marginalisme
2021-27

When Berle and Galbraith brought political economy back to life : Study of a cross-fertilization (1933-1967)

Alexandre Chirat

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Abstract
This paper provides a reconstruction of the intellectual cross-fertilization between Adolf Berle and John Kenneth Galbraith to account for their institutionalist challenge against “conventional economics” so as to bring political economy back to life. To do so, I go back to the genesis of Modern Corporation and Private Property before analyzing Berle and Galbraith’s answers to a set of fundamentals questions. What is the nature of modern competition ? What is the nature of the modern corporation ? What is the role of the State ? Lastly, how should American liberalism be reinvented to cope with the social issues of an affluent society ? Their answers to these questions reveal the deep affinities between the theoretical and political dimensions of their works, so that this work lies at the crossroads of the history of economic thought and the history of American liberalism in the postwar period.
Mot(s) clé(s)
institutionalism - managerialism - liberalism - political economy.
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