Cette étude a pour but d'examiner la position compétitive des industries belges dans les secteurs les plus concernés par l'achèvement du marché intérieur. Trois principales conclusions émergent de cette analyse. Tout d'abord, les enjeux du marché intérieur sont particulièrement importants pour l'industrie belge puisque les secteurs les plus sensibles à 1992 y représentent 63% de la valeur ajoutée industrielle, contre 49% en moyenne dans la communauté européenne. Ensuite, la situation de l'industrie belge dans ces secteurs est globalement favorable puisque le poids des points forts en termes de valeur ajoutée et d'emploi industriels l'emporte sur celui des points faibles. Toutefois, ces dernières occupent près de 20% de l'emploi industriel. Finalement, il faut déplorer que les points forts appartiennent plutôt à des secteurs traditionnels et que, par contre, les performances belges sur le marché communautaire soient médiocres dans des secteurs en développement, comme l'informatique et les télécommunications.

I was still a student when I first read some of Amartya Sen’s work. I had come across by chance his little book On Economic Inequality, which I read at once from start to finish. It was for me what we call in French a coup de foudre — love at first sight, or at least at first reading. Never before had I encountered such a combination of a comprehensive and lucid survey of the literature; a sober and effective use of formal tools; a delightfully clear presentation of mathematical results; an unflinching critical attention to the presuppositions of what was being claimed; and a pervasive concern with the victims of the economic inequalities which the book sought to conceptualize.

Since reading Amartya Sen’s little book, I have had some time to read widely. And for each of the features I just mentioned, I have probably come across some other writing by some other author that matched or came close to matching On Economic Inequality. But with one major exception, I have never since encountered anything like the same combination of features I had found so extraordinary in that book. I have to say “with one major exception”, because I was unable to resist the temptation to read much more of Professor Sen’s work, and thus underwent again and again the same gratifying experience I had gone through the first time I read him.

The author investigates the reasons why the Soviet reform programme is running into increasing difficulties. He argues that the budget deficit is the central characteristic of the new crisis of stagnation. On the one hand, it represents a direct reflection of the severe structural problems of the Soviet economy, the deep-seated tendency to loss-making, the tradition of giving budgetary support to unprofitable economic activities. On the other, the inflationary pressure the deficit generates represents the biggest single obstacle to effective reform of the planning system, since it makes it impossible to liberalise and rationalise the price system without running the risk of hyper-inflation. At present the prospects for effective perestroïka are not good.

Cet article est un survey «orienté» de la littérature sur la théorie de l'intermédiation financière et sur la sécuritisation, qui tente d'identifier dans quelle mesure la sécuritisation (au sens large) peut reproduire les fonctions implicites à l'intermédiation financière de dépôt. Comme ces fonctions sont la raison d'être de cette intermédiation, le financement sécuritisé va, sous certaines conditions, dominer la solution bancaire. Des arguments développés ici, il ressort que, quand le financement est sécuritisé, il sera également désintermédié, puisque les fonctions de l'intermédiation seront (presque toutes) déjà remplies. Parmi ces fonctions, l'accent est particulièrement mis sur la production d'information.

This article presents a proof of Arrow’s Theorem which highlights the theorem’s relationship to welfarism and which emphasizes its underlying geometric structure. In addition, this method of proof is adapted to provide a proof of a single-preference-profile version of Arrow’s Theorem. The relationship between Arrovian social choice theory and Bergson-Samuelson welfare economics is also considered.

Exchange rate theory has recently been concerned with versions of the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) condition, as an alternative to purchasing power parity. The UIP condition is examined, for the U.S. Dollar, the Deutschemark, the Yen, and the Swiss Franc all against the Pound Sterling, using dynamic specification tests based on residual from the LUS and OLS classes, and selected error orthogonality tests. Market errors for one currency may have an information role for other currencies, this also is tested. It is suggested that spot rates are determined by the same underlying process which requires a considerable amount of past information on market errors for efficient spot rate determination. A role for time varying risk premia is suggested.

Along with the domestic economic reforms going on in the Eastern European countries and in the USSR, a reform of the socialist economic integration framework, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) has been on the agenda for already many years. It has proved impossible to achieve integration through plan coordination. A unified socialist market has been contemplated since 1988. But after the Eastern European “revolution” of 1989 the prerequisites for such a market are politically not feasible. Prom the economic point of view, the domestic bases of market-type economic relations within the CMEA region are not yet created. Yet, it is argued, there is a need for some organization of these relations, as integration within Western Europe cannot be the solution.

This paper reviews the progress of Soviet economic reform and investigates the reasons for its apparent lack of success. It is argued that Soviet economic reform has failed to complete itself, on a large enough scale and in the correct sequence. The missing steps are: economic stabilisation; the severance of enterprise links with central government bodies, the abolition of the monopoly power of large enterprises and their associations, the guarantee of the strictly residual nature of enterprise income. The paper proposes a tentative sequencing of policies and institutional changes, giving primacy to domestic stabilisation.

Consider the domain of economic environments E whose typical element is ξ = (U1, U2, Ω, ω*), where ui are Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions, Ω is a set of lotteries on a fixed finite set of alternatives, and ω* ∈ Ω. A mechanism f associates to each ξ a lottery f(ξ) in Ω. Formulate the natural version of Nash’s axioms, from his bargaining solution, for mechanisms on this domain. (e.g., IIA says that if ξ′ = (U1, U2, Δ, ω′), Δ ⊂ Ω, and f ∈ Δ then f(ξ′) = f(ξ).) It is shown that the Nash axioms (Pareto, symmetry, IIA, invariance w.r.t. cardinal transformations of the utility functions) hardly restrict the behavior of the mechanism at all. In particular, for any integer M, choose M environments ξi, i = 1, … , M, and choose a Pareto optimal lottery ωi ∈ Ωi, restricted only so that no axiom is directly contradicted by these choices. Then there is a mechanism f for which f(ξi) = ωi, which satisfies all the axioms, and is continuous on E.

Cet article présente une analyse coûts-bénéfices des travaux du canal du Centre. Les coûts des expropriations, de construction et d'opération du canal sont comparés aux économies de coûts de transport. Leur calcul est basé sur une estimation des trafics futurs du canal et sur une analyse détaillée des coûts d'opération des bateaux. Divers scénarios d'évolution des coûts et du trafic sont examinés. L'article conclut que ces investissements ne sont pas rentables. Il serait même plus économique de ne pas terminer les travaux et de fermer l'ancien canal existant.

The paper surveys, without proofs, recent axiomatic results on the utilization of common property resources, by this author and some others. Problems discussed include the division of unproduced commodities (the traditional fair division problem), and the cooperative production of a private or public good.

Axioms contrast No Envy with two monotonicity properties, respectively when the population owning the resources in common increases, and when these resources themselves grow.

The eastern European systems, Hungary included, need complete restructuring. Radical political reform needs take precedence over the economic reforms: no genuine economic reform is possible without a legitimate, democratically elected parliament and government. The transformation of the planned into a market economy has started before the elections. Marketization and privatisation have been pressed in the fields where resistance has been the smallest, i.e. where the losses hit the weaker groups — i.e. in case of health, social security, and such like. Also, inflation and unemployment are accepted as inevitable. The result of neoliberal measures introduced in a totalitarian way is the rapid impoverishment of the population and the increase of inequalities. The mounting tensions may become an obstacle to genuine reforms.

People vary in both tastes and talents. What is the most sensible formulation of the egalitarian ideal once this fact is fully taken into account? The paper examines a number of answers that have been offered to this question, in particular Ronald Dworkin’s counterfactual insurance schemes, and argues against them. It then presents an alternative proposal. The latter generalizes Bruce Ackerman’s notion of undominated genetic diversity, it can be interpreted as a condition of potential envy-freedom, and it is consistent with, though more specific than, Amartya Sen’s capability-based approach.

Policy approach towards employment has changed under perestroïka. The emphasis is falling on the release of labour from the material branches and on its partial redeployment in the service sector in general and in the cooperative sphere in particular.The pattern of labour redeployment, however, does not suggest that under perestroïka the labour market has become less taut. Since cooperative and individual activities draw out of the state sphere the best cadres, the inefficiency of the state economy could increase. Recurrent criticism against cooperatives and price control measures indicate that political and ideological barriers against private enterprise are still considerable.

In his Tanner Lecture of 1979 called Equality of What? Amartya Sen asked what metric egalitarians should use to establish the extent to which their ideal is realised in a given society. In this study I comment on answers to Sen’s question in recent philosophical literature. I describe and criticize what a number of authors (and notably Rawls and Sen) of egalitarian persuasion have said about the dimension(s) or respect(s) in which people should be made more equal, when the price in other values of moving towards greater equality is not intolerable.

It is well known that in the traditional Soviet-type economies, there is a spontaneous tendency of enterprise and ministries to integrate vertically, as a response to the supply uncertainty typical of a chronic shortage economy.

The main purpose of the paper is to analyze the link between the vertical integration issue and economic reform. It is argued that, in an institutional context with fixed prices, when there is shortage of inputs, enterprises consuming these inputs will generally not be able to agree on a rationing scheme, in the absence of vertical integration. This decisional vacuum entails the functional necessity of a central planner who will decide on the rationing scheme. It is shown that this result may help to highlight some of the key theoretical and empirical issues of economic reform. One of its main implications is that, in an economy where vertical integration is weak, the abolition of imperative planning can hardly be successful if shortages are not suppressed at the same time. On the other hand, it is much easier to abolish imperative planning if the economy is highly vertically integrated but, because vertical integration destroys the competitive nature of markets, the main goals of economic reform cannot be fulfilled unless additional structural changes are introduced in order to create a competitive environment.