Le football comme religion populaire et comme culture mondialisée : brèves notations en vue d'une interprétation critique d'une quasi-religion contemporaine

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) Le présent recueil d'hommages veut témoigner de l'importance de l'oeuvre théologique de Jean Richard, professeur à la Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses de l'Université Laval. Désireux de signifier leur reconnaissance au père Richard, les auteurs de ce livre ont proposé des textes s'inscrivant dans l'un ou l'autre de ses champs de recherche privilégiés. Le tableau des contributeurs à ces mélanges regroupe des théologiens de tous les âges, hommes et femmes, provenant du Canada, mais aussi des États-Unis et de l'Europe, de langue française, anglaise ou allemande, de confession catholique ou protestante, oeuvrant dans des champs disciplinaires aussi divers que la théologie systématique, la théologie fondamentale, l'éthique théologique, l'exégèse ou encore la philosophie. Cette diversité est révélatrice de la personnalité théologique du père Richard, du caractère international de son réseau d'amitiés et de recherche et de l'ampleur de son influence. Elle témoigne aussi de l'audace d'une oeuvre qui, entreprise dans les années 1960, a dès le départ relevé le défi de l'aggiornamento que venait de poser en toute urgence son Église et qui a très vite conduit son auteur « aux confins », pour reprendre - et pour cause - une expression de son mentor Paul Tillich qui lui sied à merveille. Les contributions réunies dans ce volume ne résultent pas d'un plan concerté. D'autant plus significatifs sont les recoupements thématiques qu'on y observe, qui, par un hasard seulement apparent, restituent les principaux axes de la production théologique du père Jean Richard. L'ouverture au présent et a ses problématiques propres, ainsi que les défis conceptuels par là posés à l'effort théologique constituent les deux constantes de ces contributions, comme de l'oeuvre qui les a inspirées.

How Wages and Employment Adjust to Trade Liberalization: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Austria

We study the response of regional employment and nominal wages to trade liberalization, exploiting the natural experiment provided by the opening of Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. Using data for Austrian municipalities, we examine differential pre- and post-1990 wage and employment growth rates between regions bordering the formerly communist economies and interior regions. If the "border regions" are defined narrowly, within a band of less than 50 kilometers, we can identify statistically significant liberalization effects on both employment and wages. While wages responded earlier than employment, the employment effect over the entire adjustment period is estimated to be around three times as large as the wage effect. The implied slope of the regional labor supply curve can be replicated in an economic geography model that features obstacles to labor migration due to immobile housing and to heterogeneous locational preferences.

A quasi-randomized group trial of a brief alcohol intervention on risky single occasion drinking among secondary school students.

OBJECTIVES: To show the effectiveness of a brief group alcohol intervention. Aims of the intervention were to reduce the frequency of heavy drinking occasions, maximum number of drinks on an occasion and overall weekly consumption. METHODS: A cluster quasi-randomized control trial (intervention n = 338; control n = 330) among 16- to 18-year-old secondary school students in the Swiss Canton of Zürich. Groups homogeneous for heavy drinking occasions (5+/4+ drinks for men/women) consisted of those having medium risk (3-4) or high risk (5+) occasions in the past 30 days. Groups of 8-10 individuals received two 45-min sessions based on motivational interviewing techniques. RESULTS: Borderline significant beneficial effects (p < 0.10) on heavy drinking occasions and alcohol volume were found 6 months later for the medium-risk group only, but not for the high-risk group. None of the effects remained significant after Bonferroni corrections. CONCLUSIONS: Group intervention was ineffective for all at-risk users. The heaviest drinkers may need more intensive treatment. Alternative explanations were iatrogenic effects among the heaviest drinkers, assessment reactivity, or reduction of social desirability bias at follow-up through peer feedback.

Contracts, Reference Points, and Competition - Behavioral Effects of the Fundamental Transformation

In this paper we study the role of incomplete ex ante contracts for ex post trade. Previous experimental evidence indicates that a contract provides a reference point for entitlements when the terms are negotiated in a competitive market. We show that this finding no longer holds when the terms are determined in a non-competitive way. Our results imply that the presence of a "fundamental transformation" (i.e., the transition from a competitive market to a bilateral relationship) is important for a contract to become a reference point. To the best of our knowledge this behavioral aspect of the fundamental transformation has not been shown before.

Less Risk, More Effort : Demand Risk Allocation in Incomplete Contracts

This article investigates the allocation of demand risk within an incomplete contract framework. We consider an incomplete contractual relationship between a public authority and a private provider (i.e. a public-private partnership), in which the latter invests in non-verifiable cost-reducing efforts and the former invests in non-verifiable adaptation efforts to respond to changing consumer demand over time. We show that the party that bears the demand risk has fewer hold-up opportunities and that this leads the other contracting party to make more effort. Thus, in our model, bearing less risk can lead to more effort, which we describe as a new example of âeuro~counter-incentivesâeuro?. We further show that when the benefits of adaptation are important, it is socially preferable to design a contract in which the demand risk remains with the private provider, whereas when the benefits of cost-reducing efforts are important, it is socially preferable to place the demand risk on the public authority. We then apply these results to explain two well-known case studies.

How Wages and Employment Adjust to Trade Liberalization: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Austria

We study the response of regional employment and nominal wages to trade liberalization, exploiting the natural experiment provided by the opening of Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. Using data for Austrian municipalities, we examine di¤erential pre- and post-1990 wage and employment growth rates between regions bordering the formerly communist economies and interior regions. If the 'border regions'are de...ned narrowly, within a band of less than 50 kilometers, we can identify statistically signi...cant liberalization e¤ects on both employment and wages. While wages responded earlier than employment, the employment e¤ect over the entire adjustment period is estimated to be around three times as large as the wage e¤ect. The implied slope of the regional labor supply curve can be replicated in an economic geography model that features obstacles to labor migration due to immobile housing and to heterogeneous locational preferences.

Three essays in incomplete contracts

General Introduction These three chapters, while fairly independent from each other, study economic situations in incomplete contract settings. They are the product of both the academic freedom my advisors granted me, and in this sense reflect my personal interests, and of their interested feedback. The content of each chapter can be summarized as follows: Chapter 1: Inefficient durable-goods monopolies In this chapter we study the efficiency of an infinite-horizon durable-goods monopoly model with a fmite number of buyers. We find that, while all pure-strategy Markov Perfect Equilibria (MPE) are efficient, there also exist previously unstudied inefficient MPE where high valuation buyers randomize their purchase decision while trying to benefit from low prices which are offered once a critical mass has purchased. Real time delay, an unusual monopoly distortion, is the result of this attrition behavior. We conclude that neither technological constraints nor concern for reputation are necessary to explain inefficiency in monopolized durable-goods markets. Chapter 2: Downstream mergers and producer's capacity choice: why bake a larger pie when getting a smaller slice? In this chapter we study the effect of downstream horizontal mergers on the upstream producer's capacity choice. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find anon-monotonic relationship: horizontal mergers induce a higher upstream capacity if the cost of capacity is low, and a lower upstream capacity if this cost is high. We explain this result by decomposing the total effect into two competing effects: a change in hold-up and a change in bargaining erosion. Chapter 3: Contract bargaining with multiple agents In this chapter we study a bargaining game between a principal and N agents when the utility of each agent depends on all agents' trades with the principal. We show, using the Potential, that equilibria payoffs coincide with the Shapley value of the underlying coalitional game with an appropriately defined characteristic function, which under common assumptions coincides with the principal's equilibrium profit in the offer game. Since the problem accounts for differences in information and agents' conjectures, the outcome can be either efficient (e.g. public contracting) or inefficient (e.g. passive beliefs).