Description
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Research Report on International Finance
My research focuses on contemporary economic history and international finance. I have been especially interested in the study of external economic policies, notably foreign exchange control, and development policies, notably rent-seeking processes, primarily concerning France. I also worked on business history, notably in the French oil sector as well as the beverages sector.
This research statement is organized as follow : the first section discusses my work on external economic policies and quantitative restrictions, which is my primary research area. The second discusses my research on business history. In the third section, I uncover my ongoing research and plans for future work.
1. External economic policies
My research on external economic policies has focused on quantitative restrictions of commercial and financial flows, notably through measuring the efficiency of quantitative controls of balances of payments and the rent capture and decomposition it induces between different agents, companies, administrations and consumers. My thesis dealt with the general subject of the international transactions of France from the 1920's to the 1970's. It is divided in four papers.
My job market paper deals with quantitative restrictions and quotas rent in France from the 1920's to the 1970's. It re-asseses the efficiency of import substitution and quantitative restrictions of commercial flows and foreign exchange controls through the case-study of France, the main country to have used these economic policies in the 20th century, and especially of French oil products, which accounted for roughly 10 % of its imports. A complete historical narrative and a first long-term quantitative analysis of import-substitution 1
policy in a developed country leads to a critic of the classic Anne Krueger and Jagdish Bagwhati argument about the innefficiency of quantitative restrictions. Based on a unique archival dataset of 1700 oil import quotas from 1928 to 1977, with detailed prices, quantities, firm-level informations, quota jurys composition as well as macroeconomic data, it proves that import subsitution, in this case, worked. The problem with quantitative restrictions was not the global rent, which tended to diminish over time, but the disequilibrium of rent capture between agents within the foreign exchange control system.
The second paper drawn from my thesis deals with French foreign exchange control since 1945. This first complete analysis of French foreign exchange control since the Second World War provides a full long-term narrative and details the institutional operating of the system, bringing forward new archival measures of the efficiency of the policy. Official and black market exchange rates archival data allows to quantify the gains of foreign exchange control for the State, notably in terms of public debt. Detailed firm-level balance of payments data, European monetary union data lead to new measures of rent-capture by various economic agents. It shows that, directly born out of the war and Vichy policies, the centralizion of the Foreign Exchange Office was at the basis of the French Statism of the "Trente Glorieuses".
The third paper drawn from my thesis deals with the role of professional associations and of rentseeking in French foreign exchange control during the interwar period. This case-study allows a first in-depth analysis of the birth of a foreign exchange control system during the 1930's. The existent literature describes a foreign exchange control system emerging after the war as a centralized expression of State administration. This paper shows that it is not born out of a State policy, but rather out of the actions of the professional associations. Running the foreign exchange licences by delegation of the Parliament, the Chamber of commerce of Paris came to hold a firm grip on French clearing accounts and on a large sector of French economic policy, which played a key role in the commercial disintegration of Europe throughout the period. This paper explains the characteristics of modern, centralized, state- controlled quantitative restrictions which were created after the war, notably in emerging countries, through this historical trauma.
The fourth paper drawn from my thesis deals with the rent capture decomposition in the French oil sector from the 1920's to the 1970's. The Oil "Buddhas" were the name given to the French business and administrative tycoons organised around the group of the "corps des Mines". This paper details how they came to capture the rent of the oil business and oil policy in France. A unique archival dataset of oil import quotas is crossed with a new dataset of oil companies and administration personnel to provide a detailed social graph of power relations in the entire oil industry during the period. It hence allows a detailed rent decomposition analaysis between agent, which accounts for the emergence of French oil majors and the rise and fall of quantitative restrictions policies.
2
2. Business history
I have written the history of two major European companies. My interest lied on the microeconomic logics of economic and technical catch-up, and on their role in the development of mass production. The liquid industry, mainly oil and beverages, played a key- role in these economic mutations. I focused my research on Technip, the French national oil engineering champion, and the "La Lorraine" brewery, former biggest French brewery, and wrote two entire history books for the companies.
The researches on the history of Technip from 1958 to 2008 took place amid the celebration of the half-century of the company. The theoretical contribution of Technip's history lies in the confrontation between inheritances and mutations which contributed to form an independant economic entity with an original growth path. A unique archival dataset allowed for a long-term measurement of innovation and catch-up processes inside the company, which confirmed traditional innovation cycles theory, but shed a new nuanced light on the traditional view of Europe catch-up vis-à-vis the United States in the second half of the 20th century. The achievement of the multidivisional integration of Technip in the sense of Alfred Chandler seems strongly linked to a moment of rupture of Schumpeterian innovation cycles and to the internalization of technical progress as a production factor in the sense of Oliver Williamson, the shift to a new growth model, the historical moment of detachment from the State and the real apparition of a private and multinational company.
The history of the "La Lorraine" brewery from 1865 to 1958, biggest French brewery at the end of the 19th century, was also born out of a celebration, of the centenary of its disparition. This brewery was set in the Vosges region, just behind the trenches of the First World War, and Pasteur led his seminal researches on fermentation in its laboratory, which led to the discovery of microbes and the later invention of vaccine. Access to the archives of the company allowed to show how French companies provided an original industrial research and development pattern, and how this led to the beginnings of mass production in the beverages industry, which later happened in the oil industry. A thorough analysis of the management and of the social organization of the company led to conclude to a conservative family management which prevented the birth of a modern class of managers. European convergences as well as divergences with the American Chandlerian model of the development of the modern firm are hence unveiled.
3
3. Ongoing projects
My ongoing projects focus on the role and efficiency of quantitative controls in economic policies, and on rent-seeking processes, notably in the banking sector. I also interest myself in the role of trade in war or semi-war situation.
3.1. Role and efficiency of quantitative controls
My research on quantitative controls aims at confronting past experiences, notably in Europe, to contemporary issues, notably in China.
My first project consists in enlarging my thesis research to other aspects of economic policies and to other countries, notably in Europe. At the European-level, several States used quantitative controls as a key-part of their economic policies, notably the United Kingdom. Comparisons with countries which tried to suppress them early, like Germany, may also provide rich insights into the stakes of such choices. At the State-level, quantitative controls also played an important role in credit policies. We attempt to build a thorough model uniting quantitative restrictions of credit, trade and financial flows, together with detailed, fim-level data on money loans and quota allocations, in order to provide a new analysis of French and European monetary and trade expansion during the 20th century.
My second project deals with Chinese foreign exchange control, which, considered as central in the exchange rate management of the renminbi, remains largely unexplored. Using the conceptual framework developped by Anne Krueger and Jagdish Bagwhati, together with new empirical insights on the long run history of foreign exchange control, we try to provide a new narrative of contemporary Chinese quantitative restrictions and import-substitution strategy.
3.2. Rent-seeking in the banking sector
My third project attempts to use new measurement tools developed through the study of quantitative restrictions in order to assess the rent-seeking processes in the banking sector, and their links with reforms of the regulation. Following the seminal research by Igan, Misra and Tressel about the link between bank deregulation lobbying and bankruptcy rates, we want to create new accurate ways to measure the costs and rents of banking regulations. Rent measurement, built for development policies analysis, may be used in order to quantify the 4
benefits drawn out of specific banking regulations by particular agents, banking companies, shareholders, managers, traders, employees, political leaders and civil servants. Quantification of current costs and benefits created by regulations will also provide quantifications of how new regulations will change the power relationships between the different agents involved.
3.3. The role of trade in war and semi-war situation
My fourth project deals with the role of trade flows, trade controls and trading networks in war and semi-war situation. As a case-study, I will focus on the role of trade in Resistance/Collaboration choices in Europe and the European colonial empires during the Second World War, notably in Asia. Studies about the British war operations and the French resistance have focused on ideological, political and military long-term motivations of the different types of agents involved. This projet asks wether short-term economic, and especially trade interests, may have played a major role in the birth and development of French and British actions against the Axis during the course of the war. In that scope, the effects of differentiated disruptions of trade flows on different parts of the administration of metropolitan France were ambivalent. Disruption of trade was felt by part of the agents involved as a long-term indication of the defeat of Germany-occupied Europe. Control of foreign trade was, on the other hand, embodying the last grasp of sovereignty of the Vichy collaborating government. In the British and French colonial Empires, new archival evidence suggests traders' networks played a major role in the emergence and success of the Allies against the Axis forces.
5
doc_786384620.docx
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Research Report on International Finance
My research focuses on contemporary economic history and international finance. I have been especially interested in the study of external economic policies, notably foreign exchange control, and development policies, notably rent-seeking processes, primarily concerning France. I also worked on business history, notably in the French oil sector as well as the beverages sector.
This research statement is organized as follow : the first section discusses my work on external economic policies and quantitative restrictions, which is my primary research area. The second discusses my research on business history. In the third section, I uncover my ongoing research and plans for future work.
1. External economic policies
My research on external economic policies has focused on quantitative restrictions of commercial and financial flows, notably through measuring the efficiency of quantitative controls of balances of payments and the rent capture and decomposition it induces between different agents, companies, administrations and consumers. My thesis dealt with the general subject of the international transactions of France from the 1920's to the 1970's. It is divided in four papers.
My job market paper deals with quantitative restrictions and quotas rent in France from the 1920's to the 1970's. It re-asseses the efficiency of import substitution and quantitative restrictions of commercial flows and foreign exchange controls through the case-study of France, the main country to have used these economic policies in the 20th century, and especially of French oil products, which accounted for roughly 10 % of its imports. A complete historical narrative and a first long-term quantitative analysis of import-substitution 1
policy in a developed country leads to a critic of the classic Anne Krueger and Jagdish Bagwhati argument about the innefficiency of quantitative restrictions. Based on a unique archival dataset of 1700 oil import quotas from 1928 to 1977, with detailed prices, quantities, firm-level informations, quota jurys composition as well as macroeconomic data, it proves that import subsitution, in this case, worked. The problem with quantitative restrictions was not the global rent, which tended to diminish over time, but the disequilibrium of rent capture between agents within the foreign exchange control system.
The second paper drawn from my thesis deals with French foreign exchange control since 1945. This first complete analysis of French foreign exchange control since the Second World War provides a full long-term narrative and details the institutional operating of the system, bringing forward new archival measures of the efficiency of the policy. Official and black market exchange rates archival data allows to quantify the gains of foreign exchange control for the State, notably in terms of public debt. Detailed firm-level balance of payments data, European monetary union data lead to new measures of rent-capture by various economic agents. It shows that, directly born out of the war and Vichy policies, the centralizion of the Foreign Exchange Office was at the basis of the French Statism of the "Trente Glorieuses".
The third paper drawn from my thesis deals with the role of professional associations and of rentseeking in French foreign exchange control during the interwar period. This case-study allows a first in-depth analysis of the birth of a foreign exchange control system during the 1930's. The existent literature describes a foreign exchange control system emerging after the war as a centralized expression of State administration. This paper shows that it is not born out of a State policy, but rather out of the actions of the professional associations. Running the foreign exchange licences by delegation of the Parliament, the Chamber of commerce of Paris came to hold a firm grip on French clearing accounts and on a large sector of French economic policy, which played a key role in the commercial disintegration of Europe throughout the period. This paper explains the characteristics of modern, centralized, state- controlled quantitative restrictions which were created after the war, notably in emerging countries, through this historical trauma.
The fourth paper drawn from my thesis deals with the rent capture decomposition in the French oil sector from the 1920's to the 1970's. The Oil "Buddhas" were the name given to the French business and administrative tycoons organised around the group of the "corps des Mines". This paper details how they came to capture the rent of the oil business and oil policy in France. A unique archival dataset of oil import quotas is crossed with a new dataset of oil companies and administration personnel to provide a detailed social graph of power relations in the entire oil industry during the period. It hence allows a detailed rent decomposition analaysis between agent, which accounts for the emergence of French oil majors and the rise and fall of quantitative restrictions policies.
2
2. Business history
I have written the history of two major European companies. My interest lied on the microeconomic logics of economic and technical catch-up, and on their role in the development of mass production. The liquid industry, mainly oil and beverages, played a key- role in these economic mutations. I focused my research on Technip, the French national oil engineering champion, and the "La Lorraine" brewery, former biggest French brewery, and wrote two entire history books for the companies.
The researches on the history of Technip from 1958 to 2008 took place amid the celebration of the half-century of the company. The theoretical contribution of Technip's history lies in the confrontation between inheritances and mutations which contributed to form an independant economic entity with an original growth path. A unique archival dataset allowed for a long-term measurement of innovation and catch-up processes inside the company, which confirmed traditional innovation cycles theory, but shed a new nuanced light on the traditional view of Europe catch-up vis-à-vis the United States in the second half of the 20th century. The achievement of the multidivisional integration of Technip in the sense of Alfred Chandler seems strongly linked to a moment of rupture of Schumpeterian innovation cycles and to the internalization of technical progress as a production factor in the sense of Oliver Williamson, the shift to a new growth model, the historical moment of detachment from the State and the real apparition of a private and multinational company.
The history of the "La Lorraine" brewery from 1865 to 1958, biggest French brewery at the end of the 19th century, was also born out of a celebration, of the centenary of its disparition. This brewery was set in the Vosges region, just behind the trenches of the First World War, and Pasteur led his seminal researches on fermentation in its laboratory, which led to the discovery of microbes and the later invention of vaccine. Access to the archives of the company allowed to show how French companies provided an original industrial research and development pattern, and how this led to the beginnings of mass production in the beverages industry, which later happened in the oil industry. A thorough analysis of the management and of the social organization of the company led to conclude to a conservative family management which prevented the birth of a modern class of managers. European convergences as well as divergences with the American Chandlerian model of the development of the modern firm are hence unveiled.
3
3. Ongoing projects
My ongoing projects focus on the role and efficiency of quantitative controls in economic policies, and on rent-seeking processes, notably in the banking sector. I also interest myself in the role of trade in war or semi-war situation.
3.1. Role and efficiency of quantitative controls
My research on quantitative controls aims at confronting past experiences, notably in Europe, to contemporary issues, notably in China.
My first project consists in enlarging my thesis research to other aspects of economic policies and to other countries, notably in Europe. At the European-level, several States used quantitative controls as a key-part of their economic policies, notably the United Kingdom. Comparisons with countries which tried to suppress them early, like Germany, may also provide rich insights into the stakes of such choices. At the State-level, quantitative controls also played an important role in credit policies. We attempt to build a thorough model uniting quantitative restrictions of credit, trade and financial flows, together with detailed, fim-level data on money loans and quota allocations, in order to provide a new analysis of French and European monetary and trade expansion during the 20th century.
My second project deals with Chinese foreign exchange control, which, considered as central in the exchange rate management of the renminbi, remains largely unexplored. Using the conceptual framework developped by Anne Krueger and Jagdish Bagwhati, together with new empirical insights on the long run history of foreign exchange control, we try to provide a new narrative of contemporary Chinese quantitative restrictions and import-substitution strategy.
3.2. Rent-seeking in the banking sector
My third project attempts to use new measurement tools developed through the study of quantitative restrictions in order to assess the rent-seeking processes in the banking sector, and their links with reforms of the regulation. Following the seminal research by Igan, Misra and Tressel about the link between bank deregulation lobbying and bankruptcy rates, we want to create new accurate ways to measure the costs and rents of banking regulations. Rent measurement, built for development policies analysis, may be used in order to quantify the 4
benefits drawn out of specific banking regulations by particular agents, banking companies, shareholders, managers, traders, employees, political leaders and civil servants. Quantification of current costs and benefits created by regulations will also provide quantifications of how new regulations will change the power relationships between the different agents involved.
3.3. The role of trade in war and semi-war situation
My fourth project deals with the role of trade flows, trade controls and trading networks in war and semi-war situation. As a case-study, I will focus on the role of trade in Resistance/Collaboration choices in Europe and the European colonial empires during the Second World War, notably in Asia. Studies about the British war operations and the French resistance have focused on ideological, political and military long-term motivations of the different types of agents involved. This projet asks wether short-term economic, and especially trade interests, may have played a major role in the birth and development of French and British actions against the Axis during the course of the war. In that scope, the effects of differentiated disruptions of trade flows on different parts of the administration of metropolitan France were ambivalent. Disruption of trade was felt by part of the agents involved as a long-term indication of the defeat of Germany-occupied Europe. Control of foreign trade was, on the other hand, embodying the last grasp of sovereignty of the Vichy collaborating government. In the British and French colonial Empires, new archival evidence suggests traders' networks played a major role in the emergence and success of the Allies against the Axis forces.
5
doc_786384620.docx