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Cover -- Contents -- 1. Services: problem or solution? -- I: The spectre of unemployment -- II: Industrial crisis and the development of the service economy -- III: The United States: an example of a tertiary economy -- IV: Service and services -- V: Measuring the volume of services -- VI: Services in the crisis: a macroeconomic perspective -- 2. Growth and the division of labour by sector -- I: Theories of the stages of growth: the problems of transitional phases -- II: The division of labour and the role of manufacturing industry as a leading sector -- III: The forms of the division of labour and productive systems -- IV: Relaxing the constraints on growth -- 3. Stagnation and de-industrialization: the developed countries -- I: Clear signs of a slowing down of industrial growth -- II: Two general approaches to an explanation of deindustrialization -- III: The balance of payments and the balance of trade in manufactures -- IV: The fall in productivity and changes in the conditions of production -- V: Declining and expanding sectors -- VI: Renaissance or decline of industrial policies? -- 4. The demand for services: the extension of foreign markets -- I: The expansion of trade in services: from the visible to the invisible -- II: Market shares and the orientation of trade -- III: The liberalization of trade in services and comparative advantages -- IV: Towards balanced development of trade in services -- 5. The domestic demand for services -- I: The different uses of services -- II: Services to firms and changes in the productive system -- III: Final domestic demand for services -- 6. Developments in the production of services -- I: The determinants of employment in the tertiary sector -- II: Information technology and the future of the service sector -- III: The advent of the information economy?.

This book explains the way in which information and knowledge are treated in contemporary economic theories and, therefore, contributes to our understanding of the importance of the strategic organisation of information and the acquisition of know-how to the behaviour of modern economies. It gathers together contributions of experts on the role of information in the various theories covered: specifically, in system analysis, in game theory, in the 'statistical theory of information', in theories of market pricing, of financial speculation and of bounded rationality decision making, in the evolutionary theory of the firm, in the 'new industrial economics' and in the 'economics of codification'. Economics and Information is divided into three parts. Part One deals with general theories of information. Part Two addresses the role of information in the functioning of markets. Part Three considers the importance of information to the operation of organisations. Conclusions are drawn in Part Four on the implications for the process of economic growth and for economic policies. It, therefore, provides new insights into some of the puzzling features of recent developments in the so called New Economy

Is finance-led capitalism politically sustainable? Finance-led growth regimes have been identified as unstable regimes of accumulation, and the question of whether they can be monitored by modes of regulation and thus be politically sustainable is highly debatable. This paper lists the pros and cons of arguments for their sustainability, and considers alternatives beyond the present situation of transition.

Nuclear energy policy should have been a major area of cooperation for France
and Germany, playing a lead role in the energy policy of the EU. Yet they
have retained different options, especially regarding nuclear energy while
the EU energy policy remained very indicative. These two ?coordinated
economies? should have been able to cooperate more closely on this issue.
While the reasons for this difference in behavior have much to do with the
specificities of the nuclear energy, they are more precisely related to the
continuously rising level of security requirements, a learning process in
which the magnitude of risks and time lengths appeared, even before
Fukushima, to go beyond rational boundaries on which cooperation (as well as
market) ventures could be based. This raises the issue in the present state
of the technologies of the possibility of an international governance of this
nuclear industry.

L'auteur fait ressortir le jeu des contraintes pesant sur les politiques de plein emploi depuis les années 1980. Partant de là, les champs nouveaux qui s'ouvrent aux « régulations politiques » sont identifiés. L'enjeu se découpe avec précision. Soit le blocage des politiques de plein emploi est « fatal », ce qui rend l'érosion des anciens compromis inévitables. Soit les marges laissées à une revitalisation des compromis en faveur de l'emploi permettent une restructuration du rapport salarial plus efficace et plus équitable. En tout état de cause, ce n'est qu'en tirant profit des évolutions structurelles du marché du travail qu'il sera possible d'intensifier et d'avoir une certaine maîtrise sur les processus d'ajustement présentement à l'oeuvre.

Résumé La capacité de la science économique à traiter de questions de plus en plus diverses va de pair avec une montée des contestations à son encontre. L'article se propose d'analyser quatre aspects de l'évolution de cette discipline, dans des sociétés contemporaines particulièrement attachées à la valorisation des informations et connaissances. La première ligne d'interrogation porte sur le caractère plus ou moins cumulatif de la discipline. Un autre questionnement connexe s'intéresse à la façon dont les développements de la discipline tiennent compte de son histoire. La troisième perspective concerne les méthodes et les relations entre empirie et théorie. Enfin, une quatrième approche de l'évolution de la discipline considère la nature et l'importance des rapports avec les autres disciplines, principalement de sciences sociales. Ce rapide bilan, même si la lecture en reste très ouverte, invite sur les quatre plans à certains réajustements pour améliorer l'unité et la pertinence de la discipline.

Currently, developed economies, with their different institutional settings and capabilities, are having to adjust to a similar set of structural changes. This article examines these major structural changes affecting developed economies and analyses how they are altering forms of competition for the various types of capitalism. It refutes the thesis according to which these changes will lead to a full convergence of countries' institutional settings. Consequently, countries have to draw on their own specific characteristics to adapt to the challenges of internationalisation and the new competitive state of affairs.