This contribution is highlighted the quite striking paradox between the dominant discourse over the last twenty years or so, calling on the State to reduce its role, and the stability or even inertia of the major macroeconomic aggregates (public spending to GDP, tax burden), the permanent budget deficits and the increase in public debt. Globalisation has not neutralised French budget policy and has not put the squeeze on the French fiscal system. The weak empirical foundation of the pro-market macroeconomic arguments (risk of seigniorage, crowding-out effects, Barro-Ricardo equivalence…) and the efficiency of the automatic stabilisers in particular, have been highlighted as contributing to explain this situation. Finally, several salient points have been shown concerning evolutions in the structure of government revenues, one consequence of which is the decreasingly redistributive character of the French tax system.
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Paper provided by Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales in its series Cahiers du GRES with number
2004-13.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy H60 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - General
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