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The main narrative about the Japanese fiscal situation is about the unsustainable debt trajectory. On the public expenditure side however, Japan is relatively more efficient that its peers: using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology over a range of public policies, this paper finds that Japan has high efficiency score in health care, intermediate scores in education and non-pension social expenditures, but lower scores for administrative or infrastructure expenditures. Overall the input efficiency score of Japan is of 0.78 percent against 0.71 for the OECD on average and 0.64 percent for advanced G20 countries. We conservatively estimate that the scope for efficiency savings is of the order of 2.5 percentage points of GDP or 8 percent of non-pension public expenditures. Adding additional sectors were Japan overspends relative to its peer (such as agriculture or waste management), the overall saving could be of around 3.4 points of GDP, a significant contribution to the consolidation of public finance. There are however two caveats to the main results: Japan has comparatively less scope to consolidate its public finance through enhancing efficiency that its peers in the OECD, where efficiency savings are of the order of 4.1 points of GDP, or advanced G20 economies with savings of 4.7 points of GDP; aging pressures will contribute to further increase social expenditures, no matter how efficient they might be.

[Traduit de l'anglais par Corentin Debailleul et Vincent Guillin] Les théories conventionnelles du capitalisme sont embourbées dans une crise profonde : après des siècles de débat, elles sont toujours incapables de nous dire ce qu'est le capital. Les libéraux et les marxistes conçoivent le capital comme une entité économique qu'ils mesurent à l'aide de deux grandeurs universelles : l'utilité ou le travail abstrait, respectivement. Mais ces unités sont totalement fictives : elles ne peuvent être ni observées ni mesurées. Elles n'existent pas. Et puisque le libéralisme et le marxisme ont besoin de ces unités qui pourtant n'existent pas, leurs théories flottent dans le vide. Elles ne peuvent pas expliquer le processus qui importe le plus – l'accumulation du capital. Cet échec n'est pas accidentel. Chaque mode de pouvoir évolue de concert avec ses théories et ses idéologies dominantes. Dans le capitalisme, ces théories et idéologies appartenaient initialement à l'étude de l'économie politique – la première science mécanique de la société. Mais le mode de pouvoir capitaliste n'a cessé de changer, et à mesure que le pouvoir au fondement du capital est devenu de plus en plus visible, la science de l'économie politique s'est désintégrée. À la fin du XIXe siècle, le capital dominant s'étant imposé, l'économie politique s'est scindée en deux sphères distinctes : l'économie et la politique. Et au XXe siècle, alors que la logique de pouvoir du capital avait déjà pénétré tous les recoins de la société, les différentes sciences sociales se sont arraché ce qui restait de l'économie politique. Aujourd'hui, le capital règne en maître – mais les théoriciens manquent d'un cadre cohérent pour en rendre compte. La théorie du capital comme pouvoir offre une alternative unifiée à cette dispersion. Elle soutient que le capital n'est pas une simple entité économique, mais une quantification symbolique du pouvoir. Le capital a peu à voir avec l'utilité ou le travail abstrait, et il s'étend bien au-delà des machines et des lignes de production. De façon plus générale, il représente le pouvoir organisé des groupes de capital dominant pour remodeler – ou créordonner – leur société. Cette conception conduit à une autre cosmologie du capitalisme. Elle offre un nouveau cadre théorique pour le capital, fondé sur les notions jumelles de capital dominant et d'accumulation différentielle, une nouvelle conception de l'État du capital et une nouvelle histoire du mode de pouvoir capitaliste. Elle introduit également de nouvelles méthodes de recherche empiriques – y compris de nouvelles catégories ; de nouvelles façons de concevoir, de lier et de présenter les données ; de nouvelles estimations et de nouvelles mesures ; et, enfin, les prémisses d'une nouvelle comptabilité désagrégée (disaggragate accounting) qui révèle la dynamique conflictuelle de la société.

In this article,we use a history of economic thought perspective to analyze the process by which the Chicago School of Antitrust emerged in the 1950s and became dominant in the US. We show the extent to which economic objectives and theoretical views shaped antitrust laws in their inception. After establishing the minor influence of economics in the promulgation of US competition laws, we then highlight US economists' very cautious views about antitrust until the Second New Deal. We analyze the process by which the Chicago School developed a general and coherent framework for competition policy. We rely mainly on the seminal and programmatic work of Director and Levi (1956) and trace how this theoretical paradigm was made collective, i.e. the "economization" process took place in US antitrust. Finally, we discuss the implications, if not the possible pitfalls, of such a conversion to economics - led competition law enforcement.

In this article,we use a history of economic thought perspective to analyze the process by which the Chicago School of Antitrust emerged in the 1950s and became dominant in the US. We show the extent to which economic objectives and theoretical views shaped antitrust laws in their inception. After establishing the minor influence of economics in the promulgation of US competition laws, we then highlight US economists' very cautious views about antitrust until the Second New Deal. We analyze the process by which the Chicago School developed a general and coherent framework for competition policy. We rely mainly on the seminal and programmatic work of Director and Levi (1956) and trace how this theoretical paradigm was made collective, i.e. the "economization" process took place in US antitrust. Finally, we discuss the implications, if not the possible pitfalls, of such a conversion to economics - led competition law enforcement.

In this article,we use a history of economic thought perspective to analyze the process by which the Chicago School of Antitrust emerged in the 1950s and became dominant in the US. We show the extent to which economic objectives and theoretical views shaped antitrust laws in their inception. After establishing the minor influence of economics in the promulgation of US competition laws, we then highlight US economists' very cautious views about antitrust until the Second New Deal. We analyze the process by which the Chicago School developed a general and coherent framework for competition policy. We rely mainly on the seminal and programmatic work of Director and Levi (1956) and trace how this theoretical paradigm was made collective, i.e. the "economization" process took place in US antitrust. Finally, we discuss the implications, if not the possible pitfalls, of such a conversion to economics - led competition law enforcement.

Recent multiethnic Lebanese history has been characterised by a high degree of tension between sectarian groups and the state. In a number of cases, minority groups' resistance to localised majority groups developed into a manifest attempt to limit the action of the central authority by embracing alternative loyalties, both transnational and interreligious. Makdisi (2000) argues that in a multiconfessional Lebanon the old-fashioned idea of longstanding violence between competing sects is unsustainable. However, political microanalysis based on empirical material collected in South Lebanon during and after the 2006 war shows that in situations where state and ethno-religious groups fail to establish a dialogue, tension leads citizens to view the state as alien and other groups as enemies.With reference to Christian minority group responses, this paper looks at the ways Hizbullah post-conflict strategies of reconstruction have been legitimated. Considering the Weberian notion of the state's sole power and Prato's (2000) analysis of citizen loyalties to the state as a welfare provider, and reassessing this notion with empirical data collected in conflictual loci, this paper examines the rise of a religion-driven movement in a scenario marked by dramatic economic transformation. The analysis suggests that group denial of the state's role is most evident at a local level, where sectarian attitudes (e.g. concerning land or property issues) take precedence over nationally based loyalties and where this denial is the only perceptible means of survival for both the individual and his or her group.

The spread of cell phone technology across Africa has transforming effects on the economic and political sphere of the continent. In this paper, we investigate the impact of cell phone technology on violent collective action. We contend that the availability of cell phones as a communication technology allows political groups to overcome collective action problems more easily and improve in-group cooperation, and coordination. Utilizing novel, spatially disaggregated data on cell phone coverage and the location of organized violent events in Africa, we are able to show that the availability of cell phone coverage significantly and substantially increases the probability of violent conflict. Our findings hold across numerous different model specifications and robustness checks, including cross-sectional models, instrumental variable techniques, and panel data methods.

[THIS ARTICLE APPEARED PREVIOUSLY AS TWO SEPARATE PAPERS: "CAPITAL AS POWER: TOWARD A NEW COSMOLOGY OF CAPITALISM" (2010) AND "DIFFERENTIAL ACCUMULATION" (2011)] Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists think of capital as an economic entity that they count in universal units of utils and abstract labor, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious: they can be neither observed nor measured. They don't exist. And since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This breakdown is no accident. Every mode of power evolves together with its dominant theories and ideologies. In capitalism, these theories and ideologies originally belonged to the study of political economy -- the first mechanical science of society. But the capitalist mode of power kept changing, and as the power underpinnings of capital became increasingly visible, the science of political economy disintegrated. By the late nineteenth century, with dominant capital having taken command, political economy was bifurcated into two distinct spheres: economics and politics. And in the twentieth century, when the power logic of capital had already penetrated every corner of society, the remnants of political economy were further fractured into mutually distinct social sciences. Nowadays, capital reigns supreme – yet social scientists have been left with no coherent framework to account for it. The theory of Capital as Power offers a unified alternative to this fracture. It argues that capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. Capital has little to do with utility or abstract labor, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Most broadly, it represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape -- or creorder -- their society. This view leads to a different cosmology of capitalism. It offers a new theoretical framework for capital based on the twin notions of dominant capital and differential accumulation, a new conception of the state of capital and a new history of the capitalist mode of power. It also introduces new empirical research methods – including new categories; new ways of thinking about, relating and presenting data; new estimates and measurements; and, finally, the beginning of a new, disaggregate accounting that reveals the conflictual dynamics of society.