Postmining Management in France: Situation and Perspectives

Even if most French mines are definitively closed, potential risks remain above the abandoned sites. In addition to surface instability, some mining sites may be affected by dangerous gas emissions, flooding events, or environmental impacts. Those kinds of disorders strongly influence the land-use management of the concerned areas. The present article presents the French mining historical context and identifies the major kinds of residual risks and harmful effects that may affect abandoned mine sites. The prevention policy applied on the national territory is then discussed and prospects for further developments are proposed.     

Mini-Remnants of Three Empires: Governing West Indian Dependencies

The remnants of three almost forgotten empires (British, French and Dutch) in the North Eastern Caribbean provide some remarkable contrasts in styles of governing, notwithstanding a good deal of common ground among the resident communities. Two of these remnants actually share a single island, and the third, on another small island, is not far away. Problems and issues are identified, and a solution suggested for overcoming some of them.     

Societal Risk as Seen by the French Public

Mean risk magnitude judgments expressed by French students on 90 hazardous activities are reported and compared with findings on American, Hungarian, and Norwegian samples. In many respects, rating of perceived risk in the French sample is highly comparable to rating in American subjects. American and French people tend to share the same preoccupations to the same extent. The only major differences concern hallucinatory drugs and oral contraceptives. The Norwegians and French ratings differ much more. Norwegians and French people generally have the same preoccupations (which make Norwegian ratings the best predictor of French ratings) but not to the same extent. The French are much more concerned with a whole series of activities connected to violence, the implementation of high technology or agricultural technology. However, like the Norwegians, the French are extremely concerned about the spread of hallucinogenic drugs. The Hungarian and French ratings differ on practically all instances, except on basic activities or substances in all industrialized nations (caffeine, motorcycles, …). Differences were observed within the French sample itself. Women more than men consider that home appliances in general and large-scale public transportation are potentially dangerous. Science students more than art students tend to fear a certain number of medical techniques and a certain number of toxic substances (e.g., smoking).     

A Quantitative Risk Assessment of Waterborne Cryptosporidiosis in France Using Second-Order Monte Carlo Simulation

A pragmatic quantitative risk assessment (QRA) of the risks of waterborne Cryptosporidium parvum infection and cryptosporidiosis in immunocompetent and immunodeficient French populations is proposed. The model takes into account French specificities such as the French technique for oocyst enumeration performance and tap water consumption. The proportion of infective oocysts is based on literature review and expert knowledge. The probability of infection for a given number of ingested viable oocysts is modeled using the exponential dose-response model applied on published data from experimental infections in immunocompetent human volunteers challenged with the IOWA strain. Second-order Monte Carlo simulations are used to characterize the uncertainty and variability of the risk estimates. Daily risk of infection and illness for the immunocompetent and the immunodeficient populations are estimated according to the number of oocysts observed in a single storage reservoir water sample. As an example, the mean daily risk of infection in the immunocompetent population is estimated to be 1.08 x 10(-4) (95% confidence interval: [0.20 x 10(-4); 6.83 x 10(-4)]) when five oocysts are observed in a 100 L storage reservoir water sample. Annual risks of infection and disease are estimated from a set of oocyst enumeration results from distributed water samples, assuming a negative binomial distribution of day-to-day contamination variation. The model and various assumptions used in the model are fully explained and discussed. While caveats of this model are well recognized, this pragmatic QRA could represent a useful tool for the French Food Safety Agency (AFSSA) to define recommendations in case of water resource contamination by C. parvum whose infectivity is comparable to the IOWA strain.     

German,French and British manufacturing strategies compared: A growth towards each other

Manufacturing has gained over the last years in attention as a tool to create competitive advantage. For fou years now a survey has been carried out by a research team at Insead to build a database on the manufacturing strategies as they are defined and implemented by large European companies. In this paper some of the 1987 data are presented, and a comparison of manufacturing strategies of large companies in the three most important European countries is made. Though the most important conclusion is that there are only slight differences between the three countries, one can see some difference in emphasis. The French companies seem to invest heavily to catch up with respect to quality, the German manufacturers invest heavily in technology, and the British seem to pay more attention to the improvement of the labour/management relations. The data on the manufacturing strategies of these groups of companies is also analysed in function of an increased need for flexibility, as it was perceived in previous surveys.     

Do Teacher Strikes Harm Educational Attainment of Students?

This paper investigates the effects of a teacher strike on student achievement. From May 1990 until November 1990 teachers in the French community of Belgium stroked to obtain a salary increase. We exploit the political division of Belgium in a French community and a Flemish community, with similar educational institutions, for estimating the long‐term effects of the strikes. Based on a difference‐in‐differences approach, using data from two different surveys, we find some evidence that the strikes reduced educational attainment and increased class repetition. We also find that the strikes led to a significant reallocation of students to a lower level of higher education. Overall, the results suggest that teacher strikes can lead to substantial costs for those not involved in the conflict.     

An Anatomy of International Trade: Evidence From French Firms

We examine the sales of French manufacturing firms in 113 destinations, including France itself. Several regularities stand out: (i) the number of French firms selling to a market, relative to French market share, increases systematically with market size; (ii) sales distributions are similar across markets of very different size and extent of French participation; (iii) average sales in France rise systematically with selling to less popular markets and to more markets. We adopt a model of firm heterogeneity and export participation which we estimate to match moments of the French data using the method of simulated moments. The results imply that over half the variation across firms in market entry can be attributed to a single dimension of underlying firm heterogeneity: efficiency. Conditional on entry, underlying efficiency accounts for much less of the variation in sales in any given market. We use our results to simulate the effects of a 10 percent counterfactual decline in bilateral trade barriers on French firms. While total French sales rise by around $16 billion (U.S.), sales by the top decile of firms rise by nearly $23 billion (U.S.). Every lower decile experiences a drop in sales, due to selling less at home or exiting altogether.     

What motivates internal whistleblowing? A typology adapted to the French context

Transparency and ethics are nowadays often cited as a way to remedy various difficulties faced by companies. However, whistleblowing employees who are an example of this are potentially confronted with silence or reprisals. The researchers have sought to apprehend the reasons pushing to whistleblow but the motivations are complex. Although some studies have tried to create profiles of whistleblowers, they have been led in cultural and legislative contexts where the whistleblower may be internal or external to the company, act out of revenge, or be financially rewarded for the information reported, none of which the Sapin II law in France permits. Using a qualitative method based on ten life narratives from French employees who have whistleblown, our article seeks to understand their primary motivations for taking this action. The research will first present the French definition of a whistleblower and the motivations identified in the Anglo-Saxon context from which most studies originate. Following the detailed presentation of the methodology, we will explain the typology of four profiles obtained from the analysis of our results and discuss similarities/differences with the Anglo-Saxon work. In a context where many organizations are promoting the establishment of a genuine ethical and democratic spirit, this typology will aim to identify the arguments that can be used upstream to encourage the process. It can also be used as a tool for training managers and employees to better understand whistleblowing, explaining to them that it is part of a predominantly positive approach, thereby limiting reprisals and stimulating the feedback on dysfunctions within the organization.     

International acquisition performance and experience: A resource-based view. Evidence from French acquisitions in the United States (1988–2004)

Does an acquirer with extensive acquisition experience outperform an acquirer with little or no acquisition experience? Does an acquirer with varied growth mode experience (i.e. a company undertaking not only acquisitions but also joint ventures) outperform a company that has very homogeneous experience (i.e. a company growing exclusively through acquisitions)? The main purpose of our article is to examine these two questions in-depth and to attempt to provide some answers. The questions led us to analyze the valuation effect of the acquirer's experience for 291 French acquisitions in the United States. The results were mixed with regard to the relationship between acquisition performance, acquisition experience and heterogeneous experience. On the one hand we found no relationship between the acquisition performance and heterogeneous experience of French acquirers, which is not consistent with the literature on stock market valuation of homogeneous “experience trajectories” [Singh, H., Zollo, M., 1998. The impact of knowledge codification, experience trajectories and integration strategies on the performance of corporate acquisitions. Working Paper INSEAD, 98,62,SM.]. On the other hand, our findings indicate that the relationship between the acquisition performance and acquisition experience of French acquirers follows a curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) distribution.     

Successful strategies in French high technology companies

This paper is based on an exploratory study of six major French firms in four new high technology industries, the objective is to identify logics, strategies, organization and culture of some of the best competitors in ‘middle-level’ nations like France, in this kind of risky business.     

French ‘savoir-faire’ in selling arms: A new way of doing business?

In this remarkable article the authors analyse the reasons for the success of the French arms industry. In particular they note the financial and technological support given by the French Government, the independent foreign policy which the government pursues and the technological innovation which French arms producers have consistently developed. They build a picture of close collaboration between the French Government and the arms industry and demonstrate how the French arms business has been able to create a virtual monopoly of certain market segments.     

Knocking on Academia's Doors: An Inquiry into the Early Careers of Doctors in Life Sciences

The early careers of French doctors in life sciences are characterized by the importance of temporary jobs. While most young Ph.D. researchers wish to obtain a job in the French academic sector (which grants them, among other things, lifetime employment), few of them manage to achieve this objective immediately after completing their Ph.D. A majority of young doctors have to wait for a period of time before they find stable employment in the academic sector. In the meantime, they usually find temporary research jobs. Two main types of short–term jobs can be distinguished: fixed–term research contracts (in most cases in a French public laboratory) and post–doctoral positions (temporary research jobs in a foreign country). The aim of this paper is to determine whether these different types of temporary jobs have different consequences on the careers of Ph.D. researchers. We first discuss from a theoretical perspective the impact of choosing ‘post–doc’ research rather than a job on a fixed–term contract. Then, after dealing with selection biases that affect the access to these temporary jobs, we will use survival data analysis to estimate the impact of both types of temporary positions on the probability of entering the academic sector. The analysis is based on a database on the early careers of 800 young French doctors in life sciences. The main results include the following findings: the probability of a Ph.D. researcher finding stable employment is higher if he has held a post–doc position than if he has held a fixed–term contract. This result holds for both the private and public sectors. However, careers in the private sector are also affected by long–term choices, such as the decision to undertake Ph.D. research in partnership with a firm.     

A Monte Carlo Risk Assessment Model for Acrylamide Formation in French Fries

The objective of this study is to estimate the likely human exposure to the group 2a carcinogen, acrylamide, from French fries by Irish consumers by developing a quantitative risk assessment model using Monte Carlo simulation techniques. Various stages in the French-fry-making process were modeled from initial potato harvest, storage, and processing procedures. The model was developed in Microsoft Excel with the @Risk add-on package. The model was run for 10,000 iterations using Latin hypercube sampling. The simulated mean acrylamide level in French fries was calculated to be 317 μg/kg. It was found that females are exposed to smaller levels of acrylamide than males (mean exposure of 0.20 μg/kg bw/day and 0.27 μg/kg bw/day, respectively). Although the carcinogenic potency of acrylamide is not well known, the simulated probability of exceeding the average chronic human dietary intake of 1 μg/kg bw/day (as suggested by WHO) was 0.054 and 0.029 for males and females, respectively. A sensitivity analysis highlighted the importance of the selection of appropriate cultivars with known low reducing sugar levels for French fry production. Strict control of cooking conditions (correlation coefficient of 0.42 and 0.35 for frying time and temperature, respectively) and blanching procedures (correlation coefficient −0.25) were also found to be important in ensuring minimal acrylamide formation.     

Temporary Employment in France: A Decade Statement

One of the more important aspects of French labour market changes since the mid-1970s is the growth of temporary work; fixed-term contracts and interim contracts. With a survey of French literature since the early 1980s, this article analyses explanatory factors of temporary work: macroeconomic factors: institutional framework, workforce supply to user firms, economic fluctuations; microeconomic factors: firm/ plant characteristics, economic and social firm strategies. Models of firms supplying temporary jobs are presented.     

汇率的非线性组合预测方法研究

近年来的经济统计研究表明,组合预测比单项预测具有更高的预测精度,但线性组合预测方法在汇率的组合建模与预测方面存在着较大的局限性。本文提出了一种基于模糊神经网络的汇率非线性组合建模与预测新方法,并给出了相应的混合学习算法。对于英镑、法朗、瑞士法朗、日本元对美元等汇率时间序列的组合建模与预测结果表明,该方法具有很强的学习与泛化能力,在处理外汇市场这种具有一定程度不确定性的非线性系统的组合建模与预测方面有很好的应用价值。     

Size, book-to-market, and momentum during the business cycle

The Fama–French-Methodology (1993–1998) offers cross-sectional explanations of returns by taking the specially designed portfolios SMB and HML as additional factors. It is acknowledged that these factors are related to some forms of risk (they bear premia) which, by researchers is often proposed to be related to the uncertainty with respect to macroeconomic production and aggregate consumption. In more recent research a momentum factor is included in order to improve the explanatory power of the Fama–French-Model. We use data from business cycles 1926–2007 to show that SMB represents the risks related to the very early phase of an upswing while HML may be related to the uncertainty whether a business cycle will continue to gain depth and strength (or shifts back into recession). In contrast to SMB and HML, we do not find momentum to be related to risks associated with particular phases of the business cycle.     

Societal Risk Perception and Media Coverage

The study compares societal risk ratings by inhabitants of two countries which differ markedly in terms of geography, economics, politics, and ethnic background, but which are similar as regards media coverage. The two populations were represented by a sample of French students and a sample of Burkina Faso intellectuals. The overall Burkinabè mean ratings appeared much closer to the mean observed in France (and in the United States–roughly 40 out of 100) than the means reported for other countries like Norway or Hungary. The correlation between Burkinabè and French ratings was very high:.852. The findings argue in favor of a practically totally determinant effect of the media in risk perception.     

Risk Perception and Social Acceptability of Technologies: The French Case

The authors present results of a February 1987 survey on judged frequency of mortality causes and risk perception of technologies in a representative sample of the French population. Although the French context is very different, and the impact of public controversies have been very limited on technological choices such as the nuclear energy program, strong similarities in risk perception of technologies are observed with results from U.S. surveys. Results, which could be worthwhile for other countries, suggest that risk perception is influenced by two different types of components. The first influence is the global feeling of "security" that society procures to its members. Such feeling depends on the individual's socioeconomic status, subjective state of health, and personal discomfort in daily life, and explains individual aversion to risk independently of the mortality causes or technologies involved. The second influence is the degree of perceived social legitimization of the activities involving risks. Risks of medical and transportation activities are strongly opposed to illegitimate risky behaviors (smoking, drugs, alcohol); technologies which have been an object of public debate (nuclear plants, the chemical industry, lead in gasoline) have an intermediate position reflecting the remaining uncertainties of public opinion about their risk–benefit balancing. Tentative conclusions for risk communication are proposed.     

The Bayesian Microbial Subtyping Attribution Model: Robustness to Prior Information and a Proposition

Attributing foodborne illnesses to food sources is essential to conceive, prioritize, and assess the impact of public health policy measures. The Bayesian microbial subtyping attribution model by Hald et al. is one of the most advanced approaches to attribute sporadic cases; it namely allows taking into account the level of exposure to the sources and the differences between bacterial types and between sources. This step forward requires introducing type and source‐dependent parameters, and generates overparameterization, which was addressed in Hald's paper by setting some parameters to constant values. We question the impact of the choices made for the parameterization (parameters set and values used) on model robustness and propose an alternative parameterization for the Hald model. We illustrate this analysis with the 2005 French data set of non‐typhi Salmonella. Mullner's modified Hald model and a simple deterministic model were used to compare the results and assess the accuracy of the estimates. Setting the parameters for bacterial types specific to a unique source instead of the most frequent one and using data‐based values instead of arbitrary values enhanced the convergence and adequacy of the estimates and led to attribution estimates consistent with the other models’ results. The type and source parameters estimates were also coherent with Mullner's model estimates. The model appeared to be highly sensitive to parameterization. The proposed solution based on specific types and data‐based values improved the robustness of estimates and enabled the use of this highly valuable tool successfully with the French data set.     

The 2003 Heat Wave in France: Dangerous Climate Change Here and Now

In an analysis of the French episode of heat wave in 2003, this article highlights how heat wave dangers result from the intricate association of natural and social factors. Unusually high temperatures, as well as socioeconomic vulnerability, along with social attenuation of hazards, in a general context where the anthropogenic contribution to climate change is becoming more plausible, led to an excess of 14,947 deaths in France, between August 4 and 18, 2003. The greatest increase in mortality was due to causes directly attributable to heat: dehydration, hyperthermia, heat stroke. In addition to age and gender, combinatorial factors included preexisting disease, medication, urban residence, isolation, poverty, and, probably, air pollution. Although diversely impacted or reported, many parts of Europe suffered human and other losses, such as farming and forestry through drought and fires. Summer 2003 was the hottest in Europe since 1500, very likely due in part to anthropogenic climate change. The French experience confirms research establishing that heat waves are a major mortal risk, number one among so-called natural hazards in postindustrial societies. Yet France had no policy in place, as if dangerous climate were restricted to a distant or uncertain future of climate change, or to preindustrial countries. We analyze the heat wave's profile as a strongly attenuated risk in the French context, as well as the causes and the effects of its sudden shift into amplification. Research and preparedness needs are highlighted.