Rank A HCERES
François Perroux's forgottten contribution to the theory of price control, History of Political Economy, 2026 (accepted for publication, forthcoming).
This paper examines François Perroux’s previously unknown contribution to the theory of price control. Whereas the intellectual history of price control has traditionally centered on John Kenneth Galbraith, we demonstrate that, as early as the 1930s, Perroux developed a distinct theoretical framework rooted in his corporatist economics. At its core lies the idea that economic equilibrium is neither stable nor unique but marked by indeterminacy arising from rigidities, indivisibilities, and power relations. From this premise, Perroux derived the notion of the “arbitrated price” which legitimizes state intervention within the “zone of indeterminacy” of equilibrium. In contrast to other contemporary theories, his framework offers a rationale for price control even under atomistic competition. These microeconomic foundations sustained Perroux’s postwar involvement in macroeconomic debates on planning and price policy, despite his subsequent abandonment of the corporatist vocabulary discredited by its association with Vichy. Yet the paper shows that the logic underlying his theory of arbitrated prices continued to permeate his later work and shaped the thinking of numerous French economists engaged in postwar discussions on planning and incomes policy.
Price controls against profit-led inflation: lessons from the incomes policy debate, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2026 (accepted for publication, forthcoming).
Why do some economists support price controls in the face of inflation during peacetime? Our thesis is that, in the history of economic thought, understanding the role of profits in inflationary dynamics is the crucial variable. To demonstrate this, we investigate the extensive literature on incomes policy, insofar as much of the thinking on macroeconomic price controls in peacetime is part of this literature. This corpus is crossed by a major schism: some advocate price and wage controls while others limit control to wages alone. We show that the defense of price controls is always based on the thesis that profits play an autonomous role in inflationary dynamics. Conversely, the advocates of an incomes policy reduced to wage controls see margins as mere transmission belts for excessive wage increases into prices. Price controls are thus rejected ex ante, even before any criticism of the consequences of their application.
Convergence on inflation and divergence on price control among post Keynesian pioneers: insights from Galbraith and Lerner, with Alexandre Chirat, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 2023, 47(1), 189-235.
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.
Rank C HCERES
L’encadrement des prix en France pendant les « Trente Glorieuses » : un modèle corporatiste ?, Histoire, économie & société, 2025, 254(4), 92-114
This article contributes to the analysis of the role of corporatism in France's post-Second World War interventionist economic policies. By focusing on the National Price Committee (CNP), within which trade unions and employers' organisations debate major decisions on price control, we show that, despite appearances, this institution and, consequently, price policy cannot be considered as a form of corporatism. Two factors support this thesis. First, price freeze decisions, which were particularly frequent in the 1950s, were systematically adopted despite joint opposition from the two main trade unions: the CGT and the CNPF. Secondly, the ‘contractual shift’ in pricing policy in the 1960s, inspired by corporatist thinking and reflections on ‘income policy’, actually took place despite structural opposition between the trade unions and employers' organisations. The ambition for a ‘corporatist shift’ in planning in the 1960s was thus thwarted by the persistence of significant trade union antagonisms, as well as by the vertical nature of decision-making on prices.
The social consequences of inflation and unemployment and their remedies, with Alexandre Chirat and Richard Holt, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 2024.
In 1979, Galbraith wrote a manuscript titled “The Social Consequences of Inflation and Unemployment and Their Remedies.” The manuscript was found in the John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers at the John F. Kennedy Library. The reasons for Galbraith to write the article might appear at first glance to be purely contextual. At the macroeconomic level, the United States was experiencing stagflation, a situation unseen since 1945, resulting in double-digit inflation rates and high unemployment. A policy debate was going on about the Phillips curve and whether there is a trade-off between inflation and unemployment. Milton Friedman challenged the Keynesian analyses of the Phillips curve in the mid-1960s (Friedman, 1977). Galbraith’s 16-page draft manuscript provides us an incisive summary of Galbraith’s views about the causes of stagflation and what can be done about it. He provides us with an alternative to the neoclassical synthesis of Samuelson and Solow and the neoliberal thinking of Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek.
Retour sur la politique des revenus : une réponse abandonnée face à la « crise du fordisme » en France, EconomiX working paper, 2025-26
This article examines the relevance of Claude Gruson's income policy in the 1960s as a response to the inflationary pressures characteristic of the crisis of the Fordist system in France. To do so, we draw on an unpublished study of the report that Gruson submitted to Georges Pompidou in 1964. Despite its theoretical coherence, this policy was rejected by Pompidou, who ordered the physical destruction of all copies of the report due to its ‘sensitive’ nature. This study shows how Gruson's proposal, based on a ‘proto-regulationist’ analysis of inflation, could have served as an institutional stabiliser by limiting distributive conflicts at the heart of the crisis. Pompidou's decision, characteristic of the restructuring that took place in the 1960s, marked a step in the shift towards a neoliberal regulatory framework. Rooted in a perspective informed by regulation theory and neo-realist political economy, the article highlights the interactions between structural transformations and political decisions, emphasising how the abandonment of income policy reflects the recompositions of the ‘dominant social bloc’ in France in the 1960s.
A “Climate War Economy”? Medium-run Macroeconomic Disequilibrium of the Green Transition, with Alexandre Chirat, CRESE working paper, 2025-10
Drawing on the historical analogy with War Economy, this article investigates the concept of a “Climate War Economy” (CWE) to address the medium run macroeconomic imbalances inherent in the green transition. We argue that, as in war economies, the green transition is likely to generate a structural disequilibrium between constrained supply and rising demand, leading to medium-run inflationary pressures. This article uses the CWE analogy to open a broader discussion on the economic and political relevance of revisiting the macroeconomic stabilization tools deployed during World War II. It first examines how, in response to wartime constraints, governments suspended market mechanisms through price and quantity controls. Then, it explores the parallels with today’s green transition. By tracing the reasoning behind these interventions, the article shows how this historical experience can inform climate policy-makers and enriched ecological macroeconomics. Finally, the paper addresses the limitations of the war economy analogy, while arguing that price and quantity controls can be used to manage the macroeconomic imbalances of the green transition without undermining liberal democratic principles.
Research promotion
« L’effort climatique, comme l’effort de guerre, requiert une réallocation rapide et massive des ressources », avec Alexandre Chirat, Le Monde, 22 novembre 2024.
L'économie de guerre climatique: de quoi parle-t-on ?, avec Alexandre Chirat, L'économie politique, n°102, p.90-103.