French Planning: How to cope with Business Cycles?[Le Plan - la risposte française aux cycles économiques]

In the 20th century, economic planning has begun during the First World War, with the creation of a Ministry of Production under the responsibility of Clémentel. He drafted a Plan aiming to organize exchanges, to harmonize interests, to improve techniques. After the 1929 krach, the impetus towards planning increased dramatically and remained overwhelming while France underwent several changes of regimes. Eventually a Plan Commission responsible for defining the economic planning of the country, particularly through Five Year Plans was implemented by General Charles de Gaulle in 1946. During the early 1960s many people in France and outside came to believe they had found in this French invention the perfect compromise, that is, a system which gave the presumed benefits of overall central planning without sacrificing either the advantages of the de-centralization of investment and production decisions, market mechanisms and competition. With the hindsight performances of the French economy were not so outstanding but for an illusion, the « modèle social français » fare not too badly across the 20th century crises… but there is no guarantee it can survives.