Benoist Lombard: “We don’t provide the same advice to an heir as we do to an entrepreneur”
Wealth management is not about numbers—it’s about people. That’s the message from Benoist Lombard, Deputy CEO of the Crystal Group and Chairman of Maison Laplace. To practice it is to embrace society in all its complexity, and to remain agile…
Kraft Heinz: Breakup with benefits?
Love stories can sometimes end badly… After 10 years together, Kraft and Heinz have just announced their split. A blessing in disguise? Or perhaps an opportunity to analyze the strategic consequences of such a breakup. When Kraft Heinz announced in…
Are sustainable neobanks really banks?
Green Got, Helios, La Nef… they have great names and give their customers an indication of how their money is being used. Sustainable neobanks, as they call themselves, do not fund polluting activities; instead, they invest in environmentally or socially…
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The unexpected relationship between religion and economic development
Why do ex-French Sub-Saharan colonies fare better economically than ex-British ones?
A business model analysis of Kmart’s downfall
Instability, a challenge for economic theory and policy
Are immigrants really taking the jobs of the French (and Americans)?
Football: Are Club Takeovers Driving the Inflation of Player Prices?
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The rise of international mergers and acquisitions in football
Football has entered a new era. Mergers and acquisitions’ one. It offers new opportunities for big clubs and smaller ones, but this represents a new challenge for the sport: what about equity in a business world? The examples of Strasbourg…
An excess profits tax may compensate the Covid crisis losers
The Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath have allowed companies to make excess profits. Our study shows that a tax on these excess profits could compensate those who have suffered most from the crisis. Recent geopolitical events have demonstrated that a…
Forecasting the present: The role of Google data in assessing real-time economic conditions
What if we could forecast the present? If you are not an economist, this question may seem silly. For example, if you want to know the weather today, all you have to do is to open the window and to…
The American prison system or the business of incarceration
The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world with 655 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants – nearly six times more than China – and is home to a quarter of the world’s convicts. Might the land of the free also be the land of freedom deprivation? Undoubtedly, but it is also the land of business opportunity, where half of inmates work in prison, sometimes for the private sector. A business that generates several billion dollars in profit each year…
Corporate political connections: how do they affect corporate transparency?
Government interacts with private businesses in a number of ways: it regulates them, it taxes them but it also purchases goods and services from them and it provides financial help to them – which in particular in times of pandemic can be substantial. There is hence clearly an incentive for firms to establish close connections to politicians. What are the economic effects of such connections? And how do they affect corporate transparency?
Digital money, private and public: is this the face of the future?
The simultaneous and in some cases competing development of new payment methods, the rise of cryptoassets and the emergence of private and/or central bank digital money. These new solutions pose numerous questions and will have fundamental macroeconomic, political and ecological impacts...
Is Facebook’s Diem the future of cryptocurrency or a financial pipe dream?
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg took everyone by surprise on 29 October last year when he announced not only the parent company’s change of name to “Meta”, but also the imminent creation of a virtual world, the “Metaverse”, to exist beyond…
Is Warren Buffett the exception that proves the rule?
Warren Buffett is generally considered to be one of the world’s most talented investors. His recurrent impressive performances over a forty-year period have made him a legend, contradicting the efficient market hypothesis.
Does his performance demonstrate a special talent, or is it all down to luck?
MARKET EFFICIENCY: LET’S SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT!
In the book "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy" Raghuram Rajan asks why, during the 2006 crisis, the banks whose share prices had risen the furthest were in fact the worst performers. Given that all public information is reflected into the stock prices, shouldn’t they reflect the quality of the balance sheet and the potential for profit? Is this proof of market inefficiency?
INNOVATION IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS OUT OF THE DRIVING SEAT
The pharmaceutical industry, faces a paradox: the Covid-19 vaccine was created in just one year, compared to the usual ten years, even though the financialisation of the pharmaceutical industry has caused R&D spend as a proportion of turnover to dip in many countries....
Instability, a challenge for economic theory and policy
Faced with the conjunction of the financial, health and ecological crises, economic thought is in disarray. A deep-rooted idea remains that these crises are mere digressions, from which we should be able to return at the previous state. However, there are grounds for believing the hypothesis that our economic model is undergoing a profound transformation....
Biden’s plan: an American stimulus package with global consequences
After a $900bn package approved in late December 2020, in March 2021 the Biden administration launched a second stimulus worth $1,900 billion, mainly to support households and increase public spending. Shortly afterwards, President Biden announced an investment plan aiming to boost economic growth, together with a plan for families and education.
Economists then asked the effects of such an enormous stimulus on the US economy, wondering whether it would cause it to overheat. They also began to question the global consequences of these two plans.
Does Fintech improve access to finance?
Many claims are made for fintech as a potentially disruptive force – but does it really help firms raise funds and provide new opportunities for investors?
Public investments: why a reread of Keynes is a must
Last March, Joe Biden's first economic recovery plan was adopted by Congress. With a budget of 1900 billion dollars, it is intended to directly help millions of American households. A second $2.3 trillion "Build Back Better" investment plan will invest in infrastructure, education and health care to create millions of jobs and combat climate change. These plans contain fiscal provisions that bring them closer to Keynesian policies.
M&As and Activist Investors Campaigns: do they overlap?
It is relatively understudied what happens if a Merger and Acquisition (M&A) deal combines with an activist investor campaign on the deal itself. In theory, there could be situations where activist investors aim to change the outcome of a M&A through a campaign. Do we observe such cases in reality?
Financial institutions and developing countries’ debt cancellations: How to get rid of moral hazard?
In the recent article published by Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, we observe that the pandemic crisis has revived the issue of debt cancellation for developing countries, placing debt relief on the front burner of multinational institutions and OECD governments. Most often the argument is that social justice should lead to forgiving debts to break the subordination of poor countries with the purpose to ‘reset the counters’....
