PLANNING AND INCOMES POLICY IN FRANCE
| Date | 01 June 1963 |
| Author | J. Dessau |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1963.tb00978.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1963 |
PLANNING AND
INCOMES
POLICY
IN
FRANCE
J.
DESSAU*
I
THIS
article seeks to analyse some of the effects which the emergence
of a national economic plan in France has had in the past, or may have
in the future, on existing rules of wage-fixing, and to examine some
of the problems connected with the formulation of a planned national
wages and incomes policy.
It must be emphasized at the outset that within the general frame-
work of the French or any other Western Europe pattern of institutions,
there is ample scope for a large variety of plans. It cannot even
be
said
that there is a general consensus of opinion on the nature
of
present
French planning.' The views expressed on this subject can be classified
into four main categories, which it will be useful to review in terms
of their implications for a national wages and incomes policy.
I1
1.
A first view is that the essential function of the Plan is to provide
decision-makers with an increasing amount of consistent information.
A number of industrialists, in particular, have stressed the fact that
the Plan provides market research data on a larger scale than ever
before, and
at
the lowest possible cost. The Plan according to this
interpretation, reduces uncertainty and eliminates some of the incom-
patibilities between economic decisions, thus increasing the over-all
efficiency of the economy.
Although the available tools of analysis are still much too imperfect
to enable
us
to
understand completely how information influences
economic decisions, it is true that this conception
of
the Plan opens
up extremely interesting perspectives in the field of both government
policy and the investment programmes
of
private firms. The fact that
aggregate forecasts (or at least projections at the national level) are
for the
first
time available, together with the knowledge that eventual
fluctuations will be adjusted, is certain to have far-reaching con-
sequences in the long run. An increased flow of information will, for
example, have considerable long-term effects on the degree and form
of competition.
However, the kind of global information provided by the Plan has,
as
yet, had few repercussions on wage policy. The views and behaviour
Research Director, Institut de Science Economique Appliqube, Paris.
For a detailed analysis, cf.
F.
Perroux,
Le
ZVihmc
PZan
Frangais,
Presses Universitaires
de France, Paris,
1962.
3'0
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