Le redéploiement spatial des services publics est à l’étude dans plusieurs administrations tant en Belgique qu’à l’étranger. Les difficultés liées à la crise économique nous invitent en effet à repenser la manière dont on peut satisfaire les besoins des usagers tout en disposant de moyens plus limités : c’est le problème de la recherche d’une plus grande efficacité. Mais la crise nous incite également à accorder davantage d’attention aux plus défavorisés par une politique redistributive : c’est le problème de la recherche d’une meilleure équité. Ces deux problèmes présentent de nombreuses facettes. Ce numéro spécial des Recherches Economiques de Louvain s’attache à l’une d’entre elles: celle qui concerne la localisation géographique des services publics, c’est-à-dire la répartition des équipements collectifs sur un territoire donné. Plus concrètement, cela consiste à traiter les questions suivantes: Faut-il modifier les localisations actuelles? Si oui, quels équipements faut-il supprimer et où faut-il placer ceux qu’il serait nécessaire de créer? Si non, que peut-on gagner à redéfinir les zones desservies par les équipements existants?

De nombreuses études faites dans le cadre des travaux de l'Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales ont précisé l'évolution séculaire et les mouvements longs des prix. Notre but est d'y ajouter le résultat de recherches sur les mouvements des taux de fret et d'assurance maritimes. Ces deux facteurs revêtent, en effet, une importance considérable dans la formation des prix sur un marché international.

En Angleterre, en premier lieu, l'attention se porta sur les mouvements des frets maritimes. Le Board of Trade publia en 1904, un indice des frets de 1884 à 1903, que Hobson compléta plus tard, en couvrant la période de 1819 à 1912; cet indice est basé sur les frets de blé et de denrées alimentaires vers l'Angleterre et les frets de charbon et de fer au départ du Royaume-Uni, et porte sur 22 routes maritimes. En 1938, Isserlis établit un indice de 1869 à 1936, d'après les rapports annuels de la maison Angier, rapports donnant les frets les plus hauts et les plus bas pour 200 routes maritimes vers l'Angleterre et 100 vers l'extérieur. Enfin, pour la période postérieure à la première guerre mondiale, on dispose d'un indice de la Chamber of Shipping, publié dans le Statist, d'un indice de Macrosty, d'un nouvel indice pondéré d'Isserlis, etc.

New U.S. evidence from NIPA contradicts some of the well-known Kaldor stylized facts, and call for a reformulation of the modern theory of economic growth. Among these new facts, two must be stressed: A permanent decline in the relative price of durable goods, and a permanent increase in the real equipment to real GDP ratio. To be consistent with these new facts, growth models must include at least two sectors and address the problem of defining aggregate output. In this paper, the economic theory of index numbers is used to define the growth rate of real output in a growth model with embodied technical change. The main findings are: (i) NIPA’s methodology measures growth in accordance with the economic theory on index numbers, and (ii) when the growth rate is measured as in NIPA, the contribution of embodied technical change to per capital GDP growth in the U.S. is 69%, which reinforce the claim that embodied technical change is important for growth.

This paper intends to relate more closely corporate governance, industry dynamics and firms performance. In this perspective, it focuses on the impact of applying the normative, best practice, shareholder value model of corporate governance on industry dynamics and related performance measured by economic as well as financial indicators. At a theoretical level, the paper presents an integrated framework based on the connection between firms governance and industry dynamics issues. But the core of the paper is to advance that the combination of corporate governance and industry dynamics also requires important investigations into empirical aspects. At a case study level, our major finding is that the adoption of the best practice model of corporate governance in the telecoms equipment supplier industry contributed to create large ups and downs in the industry dynamics affecting both economic and financial performances. At a more general level, combining two different datasets Corporate governance Quotient (CGQ) and DATASTREAM, we show the variegated impact of the normative model on industry dynamics and confirm the observed phenomenon of ups and downs amplifications formerly emphasized, at least at the level of stock market performance.

Unemployment has risen steadily during the last five years in all of the major European economies. Although there have been some signs that the rate of increase may have slackened this is mainly due to the fiscal-led expansion in the United States. Recent evidence suggests that the growth rate in the United States is slackening, and the need to reduce the structural budget deficit means that the rest of the developed countries can no longer rely on the United States as the main source of demand growth in the world economy. In spite of this, European governments have been reluctant to undertake fiscal and monetary policy actions which might sustain the recovery. In part this reflects a pessimism about the efficacy of conventional stabilisation policies born of the experience of the mid-seventies. However, the current situation is arguably very different now. Whereas the recession of the mid-seventies was largely the result of a supply-side shock requiring a downward adjustment in real wages, the recession of the early eighties is largely a consequence of the contractionary fiscal and monetary policies pursued outside the United States. That the present high levels of unemployment are Keynesian rather than Classical in nature has been argued forcefully by e.g. Dornbusch et al. (1983) and Bruno (1985). A reversal of these contractionary policies could therefore be expected to increase employment. Thus Layard et al. (1984) have argued there is scope for a temporary, supply-side friendly, fiscal expansion concentrated in public investment, subsidies to private investment and measures to reduce the marginal cost of employment. This would be accompanied by a modest relaxation of monetary policy to prevent real interest rates rising. Because such an expansion would be temporary it need have no long-run implications for inflation or real interest rates.

This paper presents the results of an empirical study on the relationship between internal structural change and performance, in a sample of 138 large U.K. companies, 1959-1976. The paper considers the introduction of the multidivisional form (M-form) within the sample and addresses itself to three principal questions:

Firstly, whether re-organization to an M-form structure followed a significant decline in the performance of the firm?

Secondly, whether M-form adoption was followed by a significant improvement in performance?

Finally, was the performance impact, if any, of re-organization related in a systematic way to firm characteristics — e.g. size, diversification etc. — in a manner consistent with the M-form hypothesis?

Discussion of economics of exhaustible resource in its modern form stemmed from Hotellings 1931 paper. The principles of optimal resource utilisation are now fairly clearly understood in the context of centrally planned economies but it is only since Hotellings paper that there has been a limited amount of work done on the description of behaviour of resource extractors in a market economy and there has still been virtually no work done in this literature on government policy over natural resources and their extraction in a market economy with the exception of a brief cryptic passage in Hotellings paper. Since Hotellings paper is an obvious point of departure for the exercises of the present it is worth summarising his framework.

Cette note est consacrée à l’examen empirique des biais de distorsion en analyse transversale provenant d’une modification par cohorte du calendrier ou de l’intensité du phénomène étudié. Ces biais, liés à l’utilisation de l’artifice de la cohorte fictive, ont été bien décrits par N.B. Ryder notamment sous le nom de « distributional distortion ». L’intensité d’un phénomène (nombre moyen d’événements par tête), mesuré dans l’optique transversale d’analyse, ne dépend pas seulement de l’intensité du phénomène par cohorte mais également des variations du calendrier de ce phénomène d’une cohorte à l’autre; de même, la durée moyenne d’éventualité mesurée en analyse transversale ne dépend pas seulement du calendrier réel du phénomène par cohorte mais subit également l’influence d’une modification de l’intensité du phénomène d’une cohorte à l’autre. C’est ce dernier problème que nous analyserons ici en recourant à l’exemple de l’âge moyen au premier mariage calculé par la méthode élaborée par John Hajnal.

I. INTRODUCTION

Unemployment in Europe has risen during the 70s and early 80s to double digit rates, rates which are not considered likely to fall much in the remaining years of the 80s. This is so in enough countries to encourage some to speak of a ‘European disease’. Those of us who live in Britain have long been familiar with the ‘British disease’, as have the Dutch with their ‘Dutch disease’ (supposedly related to North Sea energy resources). This paper suggests that these earlier national ailments are precursors of the general European one to which attention has more recently been drawn — notably by Professor Giersch who has spoken of a ‘market sclerosis’ in Europe, especially in the labour market (Giersch, 1985). (Also see OECD (1985, p. 38)).

However, in spite of this provocative general opening we wish to focus in this paper on West Germany, and thus to highlight a specific case of what may well be a general phenomenon. Our motivation is fourfold: to widen the analysis of the possible disease to a country in which there is wide interest; to stimulate other European researchers to work along the lines of analysis portrayed here; to follow up the echoes sounded in the comments of authoritative national students (e.g. Giersch, op. cit., and de Grauwe, Fratianni and Nabli, 1985), and finally, to utilize a full macroeconomic model of the Federal Replublic of Germany in this direction of research.

The task of re-stating the theory of the true cost-of-living index when preferences are subject to taste change was undertaken by F. Fisher and K. Shell in their contribution to the Hicks' Festschrift [Fisher-Shell (1969)]. It was succeeded by a paper, co-authored by L. Phlips and R. Sanz-Ferrer (1972), that proposed an index different from the one elaborated by Fisher and Shell. They also expounded an algorithm for calculating the two indexes with the help of Phlips' dynamic linear expenditure system [Phlips (1972)].

The purpose of this paper is to extend the work of Fisher and Shell in three directions. First, taste change is parametrised in the utility function in such a way as to allow its application to Phlips' dynamic system. Secondly, a broader definition of the true cost-of-living index is provided. Thirdly, the influence of taste change on the index is less restrictive than in the Fisher-Shell case without, we believe, incurring the reproach of cardinality. It is patterned on the Phlips-Sanz-Ferrer approach.

1. INTRODUCTION

Since the mid-seventies vintage models have played an important role in the analysis of the Dutch economy. Although earlier vintages of these models were of a clay-clay nature, due to technical progress in economic analysis and in estimation methods, more recent vintages are of a putty-clay nature. Examples of the latter are Kuipers and van Zon (1982) and Gelauff, Wennekers and De Jong (1985). We shall further refer to them as KvZ and GWJ, respectively. Our model fits in with this putty-clay tradition. However, before highlighting several features of our model, some general remarks should be made.

In the period 1950-1970 employment in the private sector in the Netherlands increased from 3400 to 4130 thousand man-years. It remained at a more or less constant level of 4100 thousand man-years till 1980 and then decreased rapidly to a level of 3800 in 1983, at which it remained for the years 1984 and 1985. Likewise, unemployment increased slowly from 70 thousand man-years in 1970 to 325 thousand man-years in 1980. Then unemployment accelerated towards a level of 800 thousand man-years in 1983, at which it remained for the years 1984 and 1985. The unemployment rate is about 17 % nowadays. Muyskens and Meijers (1985) explain that the earlier developed clay-clay vintage models cannot adequately deal with these turbulent developments in the period 1980-1985.

Cet article est une introduction élémentaire à la littérature concernant l'analyse du concept d'une allocation «sans envie», c'est à dire une allocation telle que chaque personne préfère son panier de consommation au panier de toute autre personne. Nous présentons une liste des mérites de cette définition et une liste de ses limitations.

The primary purpose of this paper is to study the extent to which prices and markets can be employed as means towards efficient control of pollution. The model which is examined is, however, sufficiently general to apply to any sort of externalities among producers and consumers, including classical public goods. In the first section we consider the problem of efficient means of achieving a specified standard of environmental quality. We then briefly discuss the more difficult problem of choosing the environmental quality standards themselves.

Les mesures d'inégalité du revenu rassemblent deux types d'indicateurs décomposables : les indices décomposables en sous-populations et les indices décomposables en sources de revenu. Les premiers permettent de partager l'inégalité totale en une inégalité intragroupe et une inégalité intergroupe et les seconds d'attribuer à chaque facteur de revenu (revenu du travail, revenu du capital, taxes, etc.) une part de l'inégalité totale. Dans cet article, nous examinons d'une part la construction de ces techniques et d'autre part nous relatons les débats auxquels elles ont aboutis et plus particulièrement celui de la convergence vers un emploi simultané des deux types de décomposition.

Given the difficulties of utilitarian and egalitarian social welfare functions in the context of intergenerational equity, an analysis directly based on the potential transfers that can be made between generations is proposed. A consumption path may be rejected if some transfers with infinite returns can be made. It is shown that such potential transfers are unlikely in the short run in ordinary growth models, but that the returns to sacrifice are often unbounded when distant dates are considered, except in some particular cases. These concepts help select acceptable growth paths, and give some insight into the dilemmas of intergenerational justice.

Dans l'ouvrage que Van Parijs a consacré en 1995 aux fondements philosophiques et économiques du projet d'allocation universelle, le chapitre IV est dédié au problème du financement « soutenable » d'une telle mesure. Les « rentes d'emploi » y sont présentées comme un troisième type de ressources susceptibles d'élargir l'assiette fiscale du financement, à côté des « ressources externes » et des « ressources internes » des individus. Les difficultés d'exploitation de telles rentes légitiment l'exploration d'une stratégie alternative de financement fondée sur la flexibilité « walrassienne » des salaires, laquelle permet de réduire une certaine contradiction entre l'acceptation par Van Parijs de rentes de situation liées à l'emploi et sa volonté ultérieure (chapitre VI) d'« optimiser » le capitalisme. Incidemment, la différence réelle entre allocation universelle et impôt négatif sur le revenu est aussi réexaminée.

The duality between measures of economic and technical efficiency has been extensively studied in the productive efficiency analysis. This duality ensures a meaningful interpretation of technical efficiency as economic efficiency evaluated at the most favorable shadow prices. This paper concentrates on economic efficiency as short run profit efficiency. We first argue that a modified version of Varian's goodness-of-fit measure provides an appropriate economic efficiency measure in that context. Next, we show that a variant of the McFadden gauge function provides a natural dual efficiency measure for this short run profit efficiency measure. In particular, we establish two attractive properties of that technical efficiency measure: (i) it can be interpreted as Varian's profit efficiency measure evaluated at shadow prices; (ii) it provides an upper bound for profit efficiency

The paper discusses the relationship between two problems, namely: (i) assigning a value to reduction in death probabilities, i.e. defining a « value of life », and (ii) assigning a value to changes in population, i.e. defining guidelines for the ethics and economics of population. While, for Broome, “in one sense, prolonging a person’s life and adding a new person to the world are alternative ways of doing the same things”, this paper argues that the two problems are quite distinct, in the sense that a precise answer to the first provides no guide live at all for second, and conversely. There is no inconsinstency in providing safety according to a high “value of life” while giving population growth a negative value. But there is a methodological link: both problemes have a public choice dimension, and can therefore be approached along parallel methodological lines. With respect to the economics and ethics of population, the paper offers some defense of the Pareto criterion among the living, and comments on the practice and theory of social choise.

La présente étude traite de la question de I'union monétaire européenne é partir d'une approche empirique. L'objectif principal de l'étude est d'évaluer le degré d'asymétrie des chocs affectant un ensemble de huit pays européens stisceptibles de former le noyau d'une éventuelle union monétaire. Étant donné que la mesure qui importe le plus est le degré d'asymétrie des chocs réels, notre approche consiste à utiliser les fluctuations observées des taux de change réels comme un indicateur du degré d'asymétrie des chocs et d'en extraire les composantes réelles (qui sont permanentes) et nominales (qui sont transitoires) par le biais de l'information contenue dans le mouvement du taux de change nominal. La méthode de décomposition utilisée est celle recommendee par Blanchard et Quah [1989] et adapteé au cas des taux de change reels. De facon générate, les résultats démontrent que meme à court terme, les chocs réels constituent la principale source des fluctuations des taux de change réels. Les résultats suggérent également que l'Allemagne, les Pays-Bas et la Belgique pourraient former le noyau d'une union monétaire, alors que le Royaume-Uni et l'Espagne auraient à as-sumer des coûts d'ajustement importants. Quant aux autres pays inclus dans l'étude (la France, l'ltalie et la Suisse), ils représentent des cas intermédiaires.

A general conclusion of the theoretical literature on pensions is, confronted to an increased longevity, to encourage continued activity. This literature however assumes a perfect labour market. The central question addressed in this article is whether it is still desirable to increase the retirement age when individuals face the risk of being unemployed.

In this purpose, we study the design of the P ay-As-You-Go pension system, focusing on the determination of the retirement age, in a model where people differ according to age only and face in every period a given probability of becoming unemployed.

We first determine the optimal pension system, which consists in a payroll tax rate, a pension benefit level and a retirement age and study its comparative statics with respect to a change of the unemployment rate and the length of life. Our main findings are the following. First, it is optimal to postpone retirement when life expectancy increases. Second, when unemployment benefits are low the optimal retirement age may decrease with the unemployment rate.

We then characterize the issue-by-issue voting equilibrium and compare it to the optimal pension scheme. It is shown that the median voter in general chooses a retirement age lower than the optimal one as well as a higher payroll tax rate.