Les origines statisticiennes de l’économie des conventions : réflexivité et expertise

• Main Author: Alain Desrosières
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Association Œconomia 2011-03-01
• Series: Œconomia
• Subjects: history of economic thought; convention; statistics; quantified knowledge; reflexivity; economics of conventions
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/1770

The line of heterodox economic thinking named “the economics of conventions” (l’économie des conventions) emerged in the 1980s in France. Four among its six founding fathers had a strong background in statistics and were working at INSEE (the French national statistical institute). However, the numerous and fruitful researches in the line of this new paradigm have only slightly used the quantitative methods (above all econometrics) that are widely spread in mainstream economics as well as in other heterodox movements, e.g. the School of Regulation (L’École de la Régulation). In order to provide a rationale for this paradox, we are lead to set the development of the economics of conventions within a broader history of economics and social sciences. Indeed, from the 1980s onwards, social sciences have gone through a movement of bifurcation that brought about a deep change in the scientific and political status of quantification. Monitoring this movement leads to address the issue of the relationships between the search for theoretical reflexivity and the social demand for quantified knowledge addressed to economics.