Politique économique aux Etats-Unis et croissance du chômage en Europe
In: Revue de l'OFCE, Band 18, Heft 1, S. 123-147
Why the American recovery of the years 1983 and 1984 did not produce recovery in Europe ? Why unemployment on this side of the Ocean has continued rising to reach in 1985 levels that have not been seen since the Great Depression ? Why finally the prospect of recovery which follows the fall of the dollar and the price of oil is so mediocre ?
Conventional macroeconomic theory does not allow to answer those questions. The reasons could be that the variations of exchange rates and real rates of interest were in the eighties so important that they had no equivalent since world war two. The article provides a reconstruction of open macroeconomics to cope with the unusual features of recent developments. It is then possible to explain how and why the shifts in the beginning of the eighties in the US monetary-fiscal stance have operated to contract employment in Europe. This result comes from the consideration of the many supply side transmission mechanisms, heretofore unnoticed, that must have been actuated by the american policy mix mainly through the channel of the real interest rates but also through the unprecedent real depreciation of European currencies. The remaining part of the rise of unemployment in Europe is explained by a reexamination of Europe's own policies.