We have seen in the previous chapter that one of the purposes of the postwar reforms was to democratize economic policy-making in France in order to provide a wider range of groups with the economic security that governments of the Third Republic had failed to deliver. This was to be achieved by changing the structure of the economy according to a national economic plan. While the new postwar state was committed to intervening in the economy rather than continuing the combination of economic liberalism and protectionism that had failed to guarantee the living standards even of the agricultural sector under the Third Republic, the instruments and objectives of such an intervention changed over time.

What is clear is that there was nothing automatic about the way in which the French economy caught up with the more technologically advanced economies after the Second World War. The aim of this chapter is to analyse and, based on national accounts, measure how well the French economy performed over the whole period 1945–2018, before focusing on the performance in each of the four sub-periods identified in Chapter 2.

OVERVIEW OF THE PERFORMANCE OF THE FRENCH ECONOMY, 1945–2018

Growth

In contrast to the behaviour of the French economy in the nineteenth century and in the interwar period that had led historians to conclude that for better or worse France was following its own path to economic development, after 1945 it participated fully in the boom experienced across western Europe. Growth rates averaged 5 per cent per annum over the period 1950–73 compared with 1.5 per cent in the period 1870–1913. By 1973 per capita GDP was above that of the United Kingdom and was closing the gap with the United States, the technological leader (up from 48 per cent in 1950 to 73 per cent in 1973).

The postwar boom came to a sudden end in the international recession of 1973–75 but it hit the French economy later and was of shorter duration than the OECD average. Along with the rest of the developed world, the French economy suffered a second recession in 1992–93 and a third in 2008–09.