Philippe Aghion
Biographic Data
| ID | 956193 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Philippe Aghion |
| GIVEN NAMES | Philippe |
| FAMILY NAME | Aghion |
| SIGNATURE | AGHION P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Collège de France |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9019-1677 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 125 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 290 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 124 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Économie des institutions, de l’innovation et de la croissance
International audience
Économie des institutions, de l’innovation et de la croissance
Cours – Destruction créatrice et richesse des nationsCours 1 – Covid et économie (6 octobre 2020)Cours 2 – Faut-il taxer les robots ? (13 octobre 2020)Cours 3 – Expliquer le déclin de la croissance et la montée des rentes (20 octobre 2020)Cours 4 – Le débat sur l’environnement (27 octobre 2020)Cours 5 – Quels leviers pour une croissance plus inclusive ? (3 novembre 2020)Cours 6 – Repenser la mondialisation (10 novembre 2020)Colloque – The economi…
A Year Older, A Year Wiser (and Farther from Frontier): Invention Rents and Human Capital Depreciation
We look at how the arrival of an invention affects wage returns and the probability of moving out of employment for white- and blue-collar co-workers of the inventor. First results suggest that older workers are hurt by the arrival of an invention. This negative effect disappears when we control for education and, in particular, for the time since obtaining the last formal degree, that is, distance to human capital frontier. If anything, this eff…
The Heterogeneous Impact of Market Size on Innovation: Evidence from French Firm-Level Exports
We analyze how demand conditions faced by a firm in its export markets affect its innovation decisions. We exploit exogenous firm-level export demand shocks and find that firms respond by patenting more; furthermore, this response is driven by the subset of initially more productive firms. The patent response arises two to five years after the shock, highlighting the time required to innovate. In contrast, the demand shock raises contemporaneous …
Fair and inclusive markets: Why dynamism matters
We argue that the economies that achieved inclusive growth, or high sustained and broad‐based growth while keeping a lid on the increase in market income inequality, are characterised by dynamism—a drive towards the acquisition of new capabilities in sophisticated products and processes. What a country produces and how much it competes domestically and internationally are important for achieving fair and inclusive markets. We show empirical evide…
Économie des institutions, de l’innovation et de la croissance
Cours – Histoire de la croissance (suite) Cours 1 – Pourquoi a-t-on besoin de l’État ? L’approche pigouvienne (8 octobre 2019) Cours 2 – Échecs et défaillances des gouvernements (22 octobre 2019) Cours 3 – Les contre-pouvoirs (1/2, 29 octobre 2019) Cours 4 – Les contre-pouvoirs (2/2, 5 novembre 2019) Cours 5 – Histoire de la formation de l’État et piliers de la prospérité (12 novembre 2019) Cours 6 – Rôle de la démocratie et transition démocratiq…
Social Skills and the Individual Wage Growth of Less Educated Workers
Klein Lecture Parental Education and Invention: The Finnish Enigma
Why is invention strongly positively correlated with parental income not only in the United States but also in Finland, which displays low income inequality and high social mobility? Using data on 1.45 M Finnish individuals and their parents, we find the following: (i) the positive association between parental income and off‐spring probability of inventing is greatly reduced when controlling for parental education; (ii) instrumenting for the pare…
The Creative Destruction Approach to Growth Economics
In this article we introduce the Schumpeterian growth paradigm, where growth results from innovations that render previous innovations obsolete. We show how this paradigm can be used to elucidate enigmas in recent growth history, such as the growth take-off, secular stagnation, and the middle-income trap. We then illustrate how the Schumpeterian paradigm can be tested using rich micro data, focusing on the relationship between product market comp…
Économie des institutions, de l’innovation, et de la croissance
Enseignement Cours – Histoire de la croissance Cours 1 – Introduction à l’histoire de la croissance 1. Énigmes et paradigmes 2. Grandes tendances historiques : Maddison et le décollage 3. Grandes tendances historiques : vagues technologiques Cours 2 – Le décollage 1. Tendances historiques : la croissance de 1300 à 1800 en Europe 2. Malthus et le décollage 3. Mokyr et le décollage 4. L’importance des institutions Cours 3 – General purpose technolo…
Opposing Firm Level Responses to the China Shock: Output Competition versus Input Supply
The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations
Fair and Inclusive Markets: Why Dynamism Matters
The Impact of Regulation on Innovation
Does regulation affect the pace and nature of innovation and if so, by how much? We build a tractable and quantifiable endogenous growth model with size-contingent regulations. We apply this to population administrative firm panel data from France, where many labor regulations apply to firms with 50 or more employees. Nonparametrically, we find that there is a sharp fall in the fraction of innovating firms just to the left of the regulatory thres…
The Impact of Regulation on Innovation
Innovation Networks and Business-Stealing
Chaebols and Firm Dynamics in Korea
The Impact of Regulation on Innovation
Fair and Inclusive Markets
We show empirical evidence that there may not be a tradeoff between market income inequality and high sustained growth, which is key for poverty alleviation. We argue that the economies that achieved high sustained growth and low market income inequality are characterized by dynamism—a drive toward sophisticated export industries, innovation, and creative destruction and a high level of competition. What a country produces and how much it compete…
Covid-19: Le Faux Dilemme Entre Santé, Économie Et Libertés
Pour un optimisme de combat
Économie des institutions, de l’innovation et de la croissance
dynamique des firmes
Environmental Preferences and Technological Choices: Is Market Competition Clean or Dirty
A Theory of Falling Growth and Rising Rents
The Innovation Premium to Soft Skills in Low-Skilled Occupations
Formal and Real Authority in Organizations
This paper develops a theory of the allocation of formal and real authority within organizations. Real authority is determined by the structure of information, which in turn depends on the allocation of formal authority. An increase in an agent's real authority promotes initiative but results in a loss of control for the principal. The paper analyzes the allocation of formal authority as well as some determinants of the subordinates' real authori…
Carbon Taxes, Path Dependency, and Directed Technical Change: Evidence from the Auto Industry
Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between “dirty” (internal combustion engine) and “clean” (e.g., electric, hybrid, and hydrogen) patents across 80 countries over several decades. We show that firms tend to innovate more in clean (and less in dirty) technologies when they face higher tax-inclusive fuel prices. Furthermore, there is path…
Knowledge Spillovers, Innovation and Growth
Cohen and Levinthal (1989) introduced the notion of absorptive capacity and demonstrated that knowledge spillovers can induce complementarities in R&D efforts. We show that this idea has rich implications when analysing important aspects of the growth process such as cross‐country convergence and divergence, the international co‐ordination of climate change policies, and the role of openness in the production of ideas. We also show that the notio…
The Economics of Bankruptcy Reform
We propose a new bankruptcy procedure.Initially, a firm's debts are cancelled, and cash and non-cash bids are solicited for the 'new" (all-equity) firm.Former claimants are given shares, or options to buy shares, in the new firm on the basis of absolute priority.Options are exercised once the bids are in.Finally, a shareholder vote is taken to select one of the bids.In essence, our procedure is a variant on the U.S. Chapter 7, in which non-cash b…
An Agenda for a Growing Europe: The Sapir Report
This book presents the report on the European economic system, which was submitted to the President of the European Commission in July 2003. The report is divided into three parts. The first contains an assessment of the economic performance in terms of growth, stability, and cohesion. The second explores the challenges facing the European Union. The third presents a series of policy recommendations for the future.
Incomplete Contracts and the Theory of the Firm: What Have We Learned over the Past 25 Years
Sanford Grossman and Oliver Hart used the theory of incomplete contracts to develop answers to the question "What is a firm, and what determines its boundaries?" in their path-breaking paper on "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration" (Journal of Political Economy, 1986, vol. 94, no. 4). Perhaps the central issue is that economic actors are only boundedly rational and cannot anticipate all possible conti…
On the Welfare Effects and Political Economy of Competition‐Enhancing Policies
We analyse the welfare effects of policies that intensify product market competition, and the channels through which they operate. Using a circular model of horizontal product differentiation with asymmetric costs, we study the effects of increased price competition on market selection among incumbent firms, cost reduction effort, and entry of new firms. The model also generates an endogenous demand for competition-enhancing or retarding policies…
Artificial Intelligence, Growth and Employment: The Role of Policy
Aghion Philippe, Antonin Céline, Bunel Simon. Artificial Intelligence, Growth and Employment: The Role of Policy. In: Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, n°510-512, Special Issue 50th Anniversary. pp. 149-164
Coase Lecture ‐ The Inverted‐U Relationship Between Credit Access and Productivity Growth
We identify two counteracting effects of credit access on productivity growth: on the one hand, better access to credit makes it easier for entrepreneurs to innovate; on the other hand, better credit access allows less efficient incumbent firms to remain longer on the market, thereby discouraging entry of new and potentially more efficient innovators. We first develop a simple model of firm dynamics and innovation‐based growth with credit constra…
Monetary Policy, Product Market Competition and Growth
In this paper we argue that monetary easing fosters growth more in more credit‐constrained environments, and the more so the higher the degree of product market competition. Indeed, when competition is low, large rents allow firms to stay on the market and reinvest optimally, no matter how funding conditions change with aggregate conditions. To test this prediction, we use industry‐level and firm‐level data from the euro area to look at the effec…
An Incomplete Contracts Approach to Financial Contracting
We analyze incomplete long-term financial contracts between an entrepreneur with no initial wealth and a wealthy investor. Both agents have potentially conflicting objectives since the entrepreneur cares about both pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns from the project while the investor is only concerned about monetary returns. We address the questions of (i) whether and how the initial contract can be structured in such a way as to bring about a …
A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction
This paper develops a model based on Schumpeter's process of creative destruction. It departs from existing models of endogenous growth in emphasizing obsolescence of old technologies induced by the accumulation of knowledge and the resulting process or industrial innovations. This has both positive and normative implications for growth. In positive terms, the prospect of a high level of research in the future can deter research today by threaten…
The Economics of Bankruptcy Reform
We propose a new bankruptcy procedure.Initially, a firm's debts are cancelled, and cash and non-cash bids are solicited for the 'new" (all-equity) firm.Former claimants are given shares, or options to buy shares, in the new firm on the basis of absolute priority.Options are exercised once the bids are in.Finally, a shareholder vote is taken to select one of the bids.In essence, our procedure is a variant on the U.S. Chapter 7, in which non-cash b…
Uncovering Some Causal Relationships between Productivity Growth and the Structure of Economic Fluctuations: A Tentative Survey
This paper discusses recent theoretical and empirical work on the interactions between growth and business cycles. One may distinguish two very different types of approaches to the problem of the influence of macroeconomic fluctuations on long-run growth. In the first type of approach, which relies on learning by doing mechanisms or aggregate demand externalities, productivity growth and direct production activities are complements. An expansion …
Growth and Unemployment
This paper analyses the effects of growth on long-run unemployment using a search model of equilibrium unemployment where growth arises explicitly from the introduction of new technologies that require labour reallocation for their implementation. The analysis uncovers and compares between two competing effects of growth on unemployment. The first is a capitalisation effect, whereby an increase in growth raises the capitalised returns from creati…
On the Speed of Transition Central Europe
Transition in Central Europe is four years old. State firms which dominated the economy are struggling with market forces. A new private sector quickly emerged and has taken hold. Unemployment, which did not exist, is high and still increasing. Will this process of transition accelerate, or slow down? Will unemployment keep increasing? Can things go wrong and how? Our paper represents a first pass at answering those questions. The basic structure…
A Theory of Trickle-Down Growth and Development
This paper develops a model of growth and income inequalities in the presence of imperfect capital markets, and it analyses the trickle-down effect of capital accumulation. Moral hazard with limited wealth constraints on the part of the borrowers is the source of both capital market imperfections and the emergence of persistent income inequalities. Three main conclusions are obtained from this model. First, when the rate of capital accumulation i…
Formal and Real Authority in Organizations
This paper develops a theory of the allocation of formal and real authority within organizations. Real authority is determined by the structure of information, which in turn depends on the allocation of formal authority. An increase in an agent's real authority promotes initiative but results in a loss of control for the principal. The paper analyzes the allocation of formal authority as well as some determinants of the subordinates' real authori…
Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories
We analyze the relationship between inequality and economic growth from two directions. The first part of the survey examines the effect of inequality on growth, showing that when capital markets are imperfect, there is not necessarily a trade-off between equity and efficiency. It therefore provides an explanation for two recent empirical findings, namely, the negative impact of inequality and the positive effect of redistribution upon growth. Th…
Currency Crises and Monetary Policy in an Economy with Credit Constraints
Competition, Imitation and Growth with Step-by-Step Innovation
Is more intense product market competition and imitation good or bad for growth? This question is addressed in the context of an endogenous growth model with “step-by-step” innovations, in which technological laggards must first catch up with the leading-edge technology before battling for technological leadership in the future. In contrast to earlier Schumpeterian models in which innovations are always made by outsider firms who earn no rents if…
Competition, Innovation and Growth in Transition: Exploring the Interactions between Policies
Distance to Frontier, Selection, and Economic Growth
Endogenous Political Institutions
Vertical Integration and Distance to Frontier
We construct a model where the equilibrium organization of firms changes as an economy approaches the world technology frontier. In vertically integrated firms, owners (managers) have to spend time both on production and innovation activities, and this creates managerial overload, and discourages innovation. Outsourcing of some production activities mitigates the managerial overload, but creates a holdup problem, causing some of the rents of the …
Knowledge, Information, and Expectations in Modern Macroeconomics: In Honor of Edmund S. Phelps
Macroeconomics would not be what it is today without Edmund Phelps. This book assembles the field's leading figures to highlight the continuing influence of his ideas from the past four decades. Addressing the most important current debates in macroeconomic theory, it focuses on the rates at which new technologies arise and information about markets is dispersed, information imperfections, and the heterogeneity of beliefs as determinants of an ec…
On the Welfare Effects and Political Economy of Competition-Enhancing Policies
A corporate balance-sheet approach to currency crises
An Agenda for a Growing Europe: The Sapir Report
This book presents the report on the European economic system, which was submitted to the President of the European Commission in July 2003. The report is divided into three parts. The first contains an assessment of the economic performance in terms of growth, stability, and cohesion. The second explores the challenges facing the European Union. The third presents a series of policy recommendations for the future.
Endogenous Political Institutions
A fundamental aspect of institutional design is how much society chooses to delegate unchecked power to its leaders. If, once elected, a leader cannot be restrained, society runs the risk of a tyranny of the majority, if not the tyranny of a dictator. If a leader faces too many ex post checks and balances, legislative action is too often blocked. As our critical constitutional choice, we focus upon the size of the minority needed to block legisla…
Negotiating Free Trade
We develop a dynamic bargaining model in which a leading country endogenously decides whether to sequentially negotiate free trade agreements with subsets of countries or engage in simultaneous multilateral bargaining with all countries at once. We show how the structure of coalition externalities shapes the choice between sequential and multilateral bargaining, and we identify circumstances in which the grand coalition is the equilibrium outcome…
Growth vs. Margins: Destabilizing Consequences of Giving the Stock Market What it Wants
Competition and Innovation: An Inverted U Relationship
Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital
We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled labor has a higher growth-enhancing effect closer to the technological frontier under the reasonable assumption that innovation is a relatively more skill-intensive activity than imitation. Also, we provide evidence in favor of this prediction using a pane…
Éducation et croissance: Entretien avec Philippe Aghion et Élie Cohen, réalisé par Jean-Frédéric Vergnies
Comment passer d'une croissance reposant sur l'imitation et le rattrapage technologique à une croissance créatrice d'emploi fondée sur l'innovation et les hautes technologies ? Philippe Aghion et Elie Cohen proposent d'investir dans l'enseignement supérieur et de faire évoluer graduellement le système français d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche. Ils fondent leurs propositions sur une analyse macroéconomique des moteurs de la croissance
Economics (98 works) · Business (50 works) · Economic Growth and Productivity (47 works) · Political science (39 works) · Macroeconomics (31 works) · Market economy (28 works) · Firm Innovation and Growth (27 works) · Industrial organization (22 works) · Microeconomics (21 works) · Monetary economics (21 works)