François Claveau
Thesis
Micro-Macro Relationship and Policy Hypotheses in Economics: Causal Evidence for Effective Employment Policy
Supervisors
Julian Reiss and Kevin Hoover
Description of the project
This PhD project lies at the juncture between the microfoundation debate in economics and the recent literature in the philosophy of causality. It focuses on policy analysis as a main aim of the social sciences and takes as a starting point that the difficult task of causal inference can be facilitated by methodological guidelines. The research question is: In the quest for reliable policy
hypotheses, under which conditions is it appropriate to search for a mechanistic causal model to causally relate macro variables? The goal of the project is both (1) to delineate conditions
pertaining to the target system making it more or less likely that mechanism-based enquiry will be helpful―i.e., will make causal inference more reliable―in our quest for reliable policy hypotheses and (2) to specify the roles played by mechanistic evidence in policy inference when such evidence is drawn on.
The methodological discussion will go hand-in-hand with an in-depth case study: policies to fight unemployment understood both as a structural and a cyclical problem.
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Publications
Claveau, François (2010), Review of ‘Conversations on Ethics’ by Alex Voorhoeve, Éthique et Économique / Ethics and Economics 7 (2).
Claveau, François (summer 2009), Interdependent Preferences and Policy Stances in Mainstream Economics, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 2 (1) : 1-28.
Dietsch, Peter and François Claveau (June 2008), Concurrence fiscale et responsabilité étatique, Éthique publique 10 (1) : 34-44.
Claveau, François (September 2006), Review of ‘Revenu minimum garanti : comparaison internationale, analyses et débats’ by Lionel-Henri Groulx, Canadian Journal of Political Science 39 (3) : 695-698.
Claveau, François (March 2006), L’abondance chez Locke, Arguments 1 (1) : 64-79.
Curriculum Vitae
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Research interests
Policy contributions of new approaches in economics; social mechanisms, macroeconomics and causal inference for policy use.
E-mail: claveau@fwb.eur.nl
