France : retour au plein emploi ?

Edmond Malinvaud offers us here a masterly economics lecture on the subject of employment. It is in three parts: the first concentrates on the lessons of the past, the second looks at the prospects and issues between now and 2010, and the third examines the priorities that should govern French economic policy.
First of all he surveys the developments observed in the course of recent decades, stressing in particular the increasing levels of unemployment up to 1996, which he blames not so much on the frequently cited rigidities of French society as on rapid wage increases which were halted belatedly by a strong economic policy.
Then, observing that the French economy managed to generate 1.6 million jobs in the last four years as a result of a more favourable economic climate and an interventionist public policy, Malinvaud reflects on the prospects for economic growth, including those caused by the boom in new technologies and, above all, on the future increases in productivity -the factors boosting and holding it back- and the likelihood of a new situation of full employment, including the possible level of structural unemployment.
Along the way he stresses the risks of inflation and argues the need both for a “carefully judged macroeconomic policy” and for a reform of the welfare state so as to avoid, in particular, the traps of unemployment and low activity rates.
In the end, Edmond Malinvaud highlights the priorities that French economic policy ought to adopt if it is to achieve a better balance henceforth between economic and social concerns, and between efficiency and fairness.