Pessimistic views among French economist, political and scholar opinion givers have often prevailed about the assessment of French economic competitiveness ; that might be explained by negative surveys of the ability of economic elites to adapt themselves to the changes of the environment of competition and of the productive and technological systems. Breakdowns of enterprise spirit could thus explain that periods of sluggishness be imposed to French growth and, globally, that backwardness had been endured when factors of progress were at stake. Our text reconstitutes the overall issues and, then, proceeds, alongside chronological periods, to a large scrutinizing of the validity of these assertions, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Groupement de Recherches Economiques et Sociales in its series Cahiers du GRES with number
2005-15.
Find related papers by JEL classification: N8 - Economic History - - Micro-Business History N83 - Economic History - - Micro-Business History - - - Europe: Pre-1913 N84 - Economic History - - Micro-Business History - - - Europe: 1913- N6 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: