Search results

Résumé

The monthly Industrial Trend Survey provides, with a very short lag, information on past and future industrial production and when used with the official index of industrial production, it can be an important tool for the analysis of short-term economic prospects. These two sources of information are complementary, but they must be put together with care : business people are not asked in this Survey to give a precise figure ; but rather « whether the trend will be " up ", " down ", or " the same " ». Replies from the respondent are usually summarized by the « balance » statistic — a weight average of the percentage replying « up » minus a weighted average of the percentage replying « down ». A weakness of this statistic is that it takes no account of those answering « the same », a response which can reveal a degree of uncertainty on the part of the respondents. An alternative method is to quantify the replies, thereby obtaining an indicator which uses all the Survey information and makes possible a direct comparison between the Survey and the index of industrial production. In this paper we present a model of the second kind using monthly data on French industrial production for the period November 1969 - May 1983. Our analysis reveals that answering practices, in respect of current production, give a good guide to growth of the industrial production index which is only published later. We also consider an assessment of various characteristics of the series measuring expectations about the future.

The increase in European unemployment in the 1970's is often attributed to the « crisis » in the world economy. But has the common « crisis » given rise to similar unemployment experiences in different countries ? of course, aggregate unemployment rates vary between countries, but is its structure becoming more similar? the analysis addresses this question by providing a detailed description of unemployment in the member states of the EEC between 1973 and 1979. An answer to the question has, of course, significant policy implications since the possibility of a European response to unemployment may be limited by the extent to which it is the same problem for each country. In more detail, the discussion deals first with the problems of comparability and looks then at the evolution of national unemployment rates, paying particular attention to lags between countries and to developments in the latest period (1977-1979). We examine next wether, as unemployment has increased, the demograhic characteristics of the unemployed have become more similar across countries. This is followed by a discussion of the processes by which people enter unemployment (dismissal, resignation, voluntary spell away from work, seeking a first job) and we also examine the duration of unemployment. Then, using all these criteria, we look for a typology of the structures of unemployment of the member states of the EEC. One of the conclusions of the paper is that the « crisis » doesn't seem to have led to the emergence of more similar structures of unemployment in the various countries and, in this limited sense, it is difficult therefore to speak of an international « crisis ». An important consequence is that any common European policy must take into account the differing socio- economic characteristics of each country.

Des études récentes d'organismes internationaux, tels que la Communauté européenne et l'OCDE, présentent l'accroissement de la part des salaires dans la valeur ajoutée comme un facteur déterminant de la dégradation de la situation de l'emploi au cours des années 1970 dans les principaux pays industrialisés. L'objet de cet article est de placer les concepts de part salariale ou d'écart de salaires réels dans un cadre théorique approprié et d'en examiner la pertinence empirique. Les équations testées pour les États-Unis, la France, le Japon, la RFA et le Royaume-Uni, sur la période 1960-1981, ne font apparaître aucune corrélation significative entre l'écart de salaire réel et l'emploi, contrairement aux résultats des études précédentes. Ce résultat négatif provient probablement de la difficulté d'isoler les effets d'un facteur dans un phénomène dont les déterminants sont multiples.

That the reduction in the length of the working-week seems to be the preferred mean of combatting unemployment is symptomatic of an evolution which has lead European governments to an acceptance of a permanently lower level of economic activity, and to formulate policies most aptly described at an international level as « competition by deflation ». The logic of work sharing is the adaptation of the supply of labour to the existing amount of employement. It is therefore a redistribution of a given amount of unemployment. If it is to be a genuine social advance, the reduction in the working week should be accompanied by a change in the distribution of income between all social groups. But when seen as an employment policy, it clearly implies only a redistribution of the existing wage bill between the employed and unemployed. In this article, we investigate the conditions necessary for the success of such a policy and its probable effects on employment. The results of the simulations of econometric models which have been performed for a number of European countries — similar for the most part — are then analysed. But despite these efforts of quantification, a great uncertainty remains as to the effects of such a policy on both production processes and the behaviour of agents. Moreover a further theoretical and empirical analysis of these effects leads us to doubt that the reduction in the length of the working week provides any answer to the problem of unemployment.