The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is supposed to help regulated installations to cover their CO 2 emissions by trading in allowances. In practice, the EU ETS is mainly a financial market used for hedging and speculation. This financial feature is regarded as a solution (hedging and liquidity) to a problem (the price risk and volatility imposed on installations) which the market has actually created itself. This paper provides an estimation of the real underpinning of the scheme, i.e. the needs of installations for allowances transfers to achieve compliance in the two first exchange periods. This estimation, which was singularly lacking in the literature, shows that compliance transactions become more and more marginal as market activity grows and that they are drowned in a whirlpool of speculation. This challenges the role of the carbon price whose financial and self-referential evaluation can obviously not reveal installations' marginal abatement costs, the condition of cost-effectiveness expected from carbon trading.

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The usual internalization of externality 'by the market' can be thought of through two different exchange modes: competitive markets, with Kenneth J. Arrow ( 1969 ); or bargaining, with Ronald H. Coase ( 1960 ). Although, in both cases, 'externality' refers to a non-exchanged effect that produces suboptimalities, these authors are working with two different, implicit conceptions of externality, rooted in different analytical worlds and calling for different institutions-parametric prices for the former but not for the latter. Moreover, while both start out with different theoretical frameworks, the authors share a concern for realism and unite when they introduce transaction costs, both advocating a policy design that calls for taking into account the costs of the different solutions. Nevertheless, this introduction of transaction costs does not itself escape consistency problems, since they do both maintain a reference to their respective ideal worlds.

International audienceCet article a pour objet de mettre au jour les processus d'ajustement des établisse-ments face à la crise, les caractériser et, conjointement, analyser la manière dont ils ont été discutés, négociés ou au contraire imposés par les directions. Sur le plan méthodologique, il s'appuie sur 15 monographies d'établissements réalisées dans le cadre des post-enquêtes à l'enquête Relations professionnelles et négociations d'entreprises (REPONSE) 2010-2011. Il montre que les établissements ne subissent pas une crise mais des crises : la dégradation de la conjoncture économique n'est pas la seule cause aux ajustements observés, même si elle peut servir de justification. Il rend également compte de la pluralité des ajustements, de leur séquençage et de leur polarisation. Entre négociation défensive et concession, la crise apparaît comme un contexte propice à imposer des compromis aux salariés

In the late 1960s, new environmental policies emerged which attempted to reach predetermined pollution standards in a cost-effective way: i.e., the ‘standard-and-tax’ approach proposed by William J. Baumol and Wallace E. Oates and the permits market approach proposed by John Dales. This paper describes the early history of the two approaches, and compares them. Although they flow from different traditions, namely Pigovian versus Coasean, and are often contrasted in the literature, these cost-effective solutions emerged at the same time and for the same reasons. First, they both tried to promote incentives-based policies against traditional regulations; second, they criticized the optimal Pigovian tax, which raised the contentious issue of measuring pollution damage. More broadly, they emerged as a kind of pragmatic compromise, fed by a common attempt to move toward more practical policies: reaching efficiency without optimality, while relying on standards whose setting is a matter for political decision.

The 'conventional cancelation' is a way for employer and employee to mutually agree for ending the labor contract. Officially, it will permit to raise mutually beneficial agreements and to reduce the judge role. First, what is at stake here is the bargaining capacity of the employee and the nature of his agreement since he is in a relation of subordination. Second, the meaning of the eviction of the judge will be also questioned.

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Cet article est une introduction au numéro spécial « Economics and the environment since the 1950s: history, methodology, philosophy ». Il fait un tour d’horizon des grandes questions et thématiques qui ont structuré le champ de l’économie de l’environnement depuis son origine (débats sur les limites de la croissance, le développement soutenable, les services écosystémiques, l’évaluation monétaire de la nature…). Il présente aussi la manière dont ce champ académique s’est construit grâce à des contributions pionnières originales (Boulding, Georgescu-Roegen, Schumacher, Passet, Sachs…) et au déploiement de différents écoles et courants de pensée (économie standard de l’environnement, économie écologique, bioéconomie) qui sont, aujourd’hui encore, en concurrence. Cet article rappelle enfin que la politisation de l’environnement que l’on observe depuis les années 1950 s’est accompagnée de sa mise en économie, grâce au travail analytique opéré par les économistes pour traduire ses problématiques complexes en théories, concepts et recommandations aux décideurs. Classification JEL : B29, N50, Q50, Q57