IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/spmain/hal-03398934.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

France in the Middle

Author

Listed:
  • Jacques Le Cacheux

    (OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po, CATT - Centre d'Analyse Théorique et de Traitement des données économiques - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour)

  • Georges Ross

Abstract

France has been an "in between" case, neither prosperous nor declining, with a generous welfare state, strong employment protection, and modest income inequality. Elite values, the high political risks of large changes, and a political system that makes governments vulnerable to small shifts in opinion are among the causes. There has been no shortage of reforms, including supply-side policies and quests for new revenues, but without either harsh neo-liberalism or corporatist adaptability. France's economy has been comparatively successful, but success has become harder, mainly because EMU has narrowed macroeconomic room for maneuver. High unemployment and dualism have tested the social contract while recent economic crises have tested EMU limits. Low growth reduces revenues and expands unemployment, and new taxation is politically disruptive. Governing political parties and the political system itself may be losing credibility because of deindustrialization, stagnant productivity, and losses in market share. Is France an unexploded ticking bomb?

Suggested Citation

  • Jacques Le Cacheux & Georges Ross, 2014. "France in the Middle," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03398934, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03398934
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03398934
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03398934. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.