Histoire et théorie du hasard à l'âge classique selon cournot

In a decisive article about the birth of the calculus of probabilities (1970), Ernest Coumet recalled Cournot's formula: the delay concerning the birth of the theory of chance is «a pure effect of chance». We suggest here submitting this judgement to the critical examination not of history but of Cournot's very thought; his philosophy of history and his representation of the history of science in the xvii^th century seems, at first, to denounce beforehand such a decisive judgement. To render an account of what can then appear on his part to be an inconsistency or even a blindness, we formulate the hypothesis that this statement constitutes an artefact of his internal conception of the history of science and scientific revolutions. In that sense, the article constitutes an illustration of theoretical necessity and of the difficulties of mathematical history as well.     

BUSINESS TAX INTERACTIONS AMONG LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FRENCH CASE

ABSTRACT.  We study the business tax ("taxe professionnelle") behavior of the intermediate level (department) of local government in France and test in the same model the two hypotheses that department tax rates are explained by upper tier (region) tax rates and by tax rates chosen by other departments. We first reject the hypothesis of tax interactions between departments and regions, the two upper levels of local governments. Second, we provide evidence that business tax interactions among departments are significant. Including the vertical dimension in the estimated model does not lead to a decrease in the horizontal tax interactions parameter, nor to its nonsignificance.