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The year 2021 marked the 200th anniversary of the 1821 Revolution against the Ottomans, which eventually led to the formation of the modern Greek state. In order to celebrate the momentous occasion, a special committee called Greece 2021 was formed to organize the national festivities of the bicentenary commemoration in March 2021. Greek businesswoman Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, best known as the president of the bidding and organizing committees for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, served as the head of Greece 2021. Many prominent business people, mainstream academics, cultural figures, and historians participated in the committee. For the right-wing government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis that organized the celebration, as well as for the economic elite connected to it, this was a great opportunity to stage a series of events that would boost its popularity and occupy the news agenda. But things didn't go as expected because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the social, economic and political tensions that it triggered. The majority of the planned events were cancelled, leaving plenty of room for the dissemination of controversies around the 1821 bicentenary in social media that largely countered the official agenda. In this paper we propose an original method combining large scale network and lexicometric analysis in order to link identifiable communities of Twitter users with the main discursive themes they used around the 1821 revolution bicentenary. This in order to distinguish the political and cultural issues and cleavages within Greek society that were made visible on Twitter on the occasion of this event.

This paper questions whether firms’ internet connectivity and adoption helped them cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on 31,387 firms from 39 developing and developed economies, our results stress that businesses using website before the crisis showed higher absorption capacities than other firms during the crisis. The positive role of website use was mainly through the adoption of coping strategies, in particular home-delivery services, online sales or remote work. In contrast, the positive effect played by the prior use of internet is not explained by better access to external public (government support) or private (bank loan) financial resources. If prior internet use had a role on the resilience of firms, this is not the case for internet access. A negative effect of firm survival and labour adjustments is indeed found, but further analysis shows that this finding is explained by the mediating effect of 4G coverage on COVID policies’ stringency, suggesting that these policies were more effective in places with better internet coverage.

The article introduces the approach of economics and sociology of conventions (in short EC) as a neopragmatist institutionalism in the field of economics and sociology of health. For EC, conventions are regarded as institutional logics of valuation, valorization and coordination, and EC emphasizes the empirical plurality of orders of worth and values, actors rely on and institutions are built on. Especially health, health care and its institutions are closely linked to value issues and norms. Because of the pluralism of possible value systems and orders of worth, tensions and critiques are an important empirical phenomenon to be addressed in the health care system. The contribution sketches main positions and perspectives of EC in the analysis of values, medical professions and ethics, of datafication, quantification and classification (related to health and health care institutions), of social inequalities, as well as in the analysis of health policies and health capitalism. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences are discussed from the standpoint of EC, finally social trends and perspectives in times of the pandemic are outlined.; Cet article est l’introduction du numéro spécial de la revue Historical Social Research (46, 2021) consacré aux apports du courant de l’Economie des conventions dans le domaine de la santé. L’article présente l'approche de l'économie et de la sociologie des conventions (en abrégé EC) comme un institutionnalisme néopragmatiste dans le domaine de l'économie et de la sociologie de la santé. Pour l’EC, les conventions sont considérées comme des logiques institutionnelles d'évaluation, de valorisation et de coordination et l’EC met l'accent sur la pluralité empirique des ordres de valeur sur lesquels les acteurs s'appuient et sur lesquels les institutions sont construites. En particulier, les soins de santé et leurs institutions sont étroitement liés aux questions de valeurs et aux normes. En raison du pluralisme des systèmes de valeurs et des ordres de valeur possibles, les tensions et les critiques sont un phénomène empirique important à prendre en compte dans le système de soins de santé. La contribution esquisse les principales positions et perspectives de l’EC dans l'analyse des valeurs, des professions médicales et de l'éthique, de la quantification et de la classification des données, des inégalités sociales, ainsi que dans l'analyse des politiques de santé et du capitalisme sanitaire. De plus, la pandémie COVID-19 et ses conséquences sont discutées du point de vue de l’EC.

AIMS. To determine the contribution of social distancing and face mask wearing in the prevention of COVID-19 infections in Argentina. METHODS. Attendance to the funeral of ex-soccer star Diego Maradona was estimated by the area occupied by the mourners and their density. The people congregated to celebrate the America's Cup victory was deduced mainly from TV ratings. The proportion of individuals wearing or not face masks was calculated from photographs taken at both events. The COVID-19 epidemiological data used was released by the Argentinean Ministry of Health from March 3 rd 2020 to August 31 st 2021. RESULTS. We estimated that Maradona's funeral was attended by approximately 250,000 mourners. Approximately 5.083.958 followed by television the America's cup final in Buenos Aires alone. Extrapolating to the whole country suggests that over 4 million individuals congregated in person to celebrate the victory. The percentage of individuals not wearing face masks at the funeral was 54.0% ± 5.2 % and at the soccer victory celebrations 84.5 % ± 6.9 %, both estimates with a confidence of 99%. Daily COVID-19 infections in Buenos Aires remained at less than 5,000 per day during 30 days before-as well as during 24 days following-the funeral. New infections in Argentina remained less than 21,000 during 10 days before as well as 30 days following the soccer cup celebrations. CONCLUSIONS. Considering that SARS-CoV-2 median incubation is 5.1 days, the time periods following Maradona's funeral and the America Soccer Cup celebrations provided ample time for COVID-19 to flare up if significant contagion would have proliferated amongst the crowds. The lack of an increase in COVID-19 infections after two independent and large gatherings with people in close proximity and limited wearing of face masks, raises questions about any beneficial effect of social distancing and of mask wearing during the pandemic.

This paper examines whether environmental and social (ES) activities affect the resiliency of firms during the COVID-19 crisis. We study a sample of 330 firms operating in five developed countries: Canada, France, Japan, the UK and the US. Our analysis shows that US firms with a high ES ranking experienced a significantly lower stock price range volatility during the Covid stock market rundown of February-March 2020. Such findings also hold for Japanese firms but only later on after the introduction of government support. In terms of returns, compared to their peers with a low ES ranking, Japanese and UK stock prices with a high ES ranking suffered more during and after the market rundown. For other countries, we do not find significant differences in stock price behavior based on ES ratings. Our findings suggest that engaging with ES activities is not associated with a better or worse performance during crisis times, which has important implications for investors and managers.

ObjectivesIn the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, chloroquine and its derivatives such as hydroxychloroquine (HC) were widely commented upon both within the scientific community and in the media. This paper explores the different factors that influenced public perceptions in France of the efficacy of HC as well as their evolution between April 2020 and June 2021.MethodsThis article draws on 5 surveys conducted among representative samples of the French population (projects COCONEL and TRACTRUST ; quota method, N=1006 ; 1004 ; 2006 ; 1014 and 1005). We asked questions on the effectiveness of chloroquine against COVID-19. We also collected sociodemographic variables and attitudes toward politics and science.ResultsBetween April and June 2021, the proportion of respondents who believed in the efficacy of HC decreased rapidly from 35% to 14%. The proportion of respondents who believed that HC is ineffective rose gradually from 6% to 21%. After adjusting for the temporal effect, the logistic regression showed a very strong association between political orientation and the belief in the efficacy of HC. Respondents who felt closest to the more radical parties (far right and far left) were more likely to believe in the efficacy of HC than those who felt closest to the political center (O.R. 2.48 [1.95-3.15] and 1.87 [1.44-2.43]).The role of trust in the government and in science and of the degree of political engagement were investigated in the two waves conducted after the scientific consensus was established during the summer of 2020. High levels of trust in the government and in science and of politicization are associated with belief of HC proven inefficacy. Across the whole period, a majority of respondents were uncertain. Even in 2021, 41.5% stated that the data were insufficient to decide whether or not HC is effective and 25.2% stating that they did not know.ConclusionBecause media coverage of scientific controversies is higher in times of uncertainty than after these controversies have died down, the publicization of therapeutic promises can have lasting consequences on attitudes towards science and medicine.

After having carried out the analysis of numerous intercultural comparative studies and my theoretical-empirical studies on the state of mental health in the academic spheres of different countries, the purpose of my article is to describe the major causes and consequences of the mental health of students, teachers and researchers in recent years and in particular during the Covid 19 epidemic, then synthesize the main reflections on the effectiveness of medicalpsychological centers for their optimization.; Après avoir réalisé l’analyse de nombreuses études comparatives interculturelles et mes études théoriques-empiriques sur l’état de santé mentale dans les sphères académiques de différents pays, le but de mon article est de décrire les causes et conséquences majeures de la santé mentale des étudiants, enseignants et chercheurs ces dernières années et en particulier pendant l’épidémie de Covid 19, puis synthétiser les principales réflexions sur l’efficacité des centres médico-psychologiques pour leur optimisation. Mots-clés : santé mentale, dépression, anxiété, stress, burn-out, épidémie de coronavirus (Covid 19), soins médico-psychologiques.

Working Paper du LAET, n° 2022/01. ISSN : 2741-8103; In this paper we explore the effect of COVID 19 on the long-distance transport services in France. These services have been strongly impacted by the different lockdowns imposed. The research question has for objective to characterize the market before COVID 19 to understand its adaptation and the strategies of the stakeholders faced with sanitary regulations. The empirical research is based on a large panel of data collected on four routes in France from 2019 to 2021 for four modes. The first finding is the severe crisis in terms of supply during the first lockdown in March 2020. During the rest of the year 2020 and 2021, services increased slowly until recovering a similar level to that of 2019 for rail and carpooling. This is not yet the case for coach and air services. The second finding is the market concentration to the advantage of the dominant mode, train, especially in comparison to air, still subject to difficulty because of the reduction of the business market. The last finding highlights the persistence of conventional services during the different lockdowns and the high variability of low cost services. Finally, low-cost services were recovering services faster in autumn 2021 than conventional services, thereby increasing their market share.

By using panel data of 15 Chinese manufacturing industries over the 2005-2014 period from OECD TiVA and WIOD databases, the impact of China's GVCs participation on labor productivity is estimated. We find that while the productivity elasticity of the share of sector's foreign value added relative to sector's exports known as sector backward linkages is negative, that relative to China's gross exports named structure backward linkage is positive. As the annual average growth rates of both backward linkages are negative, China's backward linkages have contributed to productivity growth of 6.41% per year on average. We find that the positive productivity elasticity of the share of domestic intermediate goods embodied in exports of third countries relative to sector's exports, named sector forward linages together with a positive annual average growth rate, and that relative to China's exports named structure forward linkages together with a negative annual average growth rate, have increased productivity of 1.97% per year on average. We find finally that GVCs position is improved from 0.3 in 2005 to 0.7 in 2014. China's GVCs participation exerted positive productivity effects via optimizing resource allocation inside sectors towards more efficiency ones, via moving up from low productivity backward linkages to higher productivity forward linkages and via improving its position. This diminished the risk to be entrenched in low-profitability low productivity growth GVCs activities in China. However, the productivity contribution of backward linkages 3 times higher than that of forward linkage suggests that the future positive productivity impact of GVCs moving up may be much more difficult in a less favorable context (trade war between China and USA, reindustrialization and trade protection related to Covid-19 for example).