Programmes budgets, fifteen years later,
by Robert Poinsard.
Programmes budgets were designed to provide a permanent synthesis of public information on the activities of the State as a whole. They have not, however, completely fulfilled the expectations of those who devised them .They are indeed a remarkable, albeit imperfect, source of information but they have failed to bring about any fundamental change to the conditions in which public decisions, particularly budget decisions, are made.
The present lull in the development of programmes budgets now poses a threat to the progress which has already been achieved and to their hitherto unexploited potential ; the tell-tale signs of decline are already perceptible. It need not be an irreversible process, however, if their capacity to inform can be enhanced and if experiments are carried out to demonstrate the possibility of using them to prepare budgetary decisions.
First of all, programmes budgets are described as we know them today. After this, the author goes on to describe the expectations they aroused as possible aids to decision-making, with a few examples of results achieved in this field. Finally, suggestions are made as to how they can be made more informative and what can be done to study the real problems they pose.
Capitalization and pension schemes, by Jean-Pierre Cendron. The author questions two arguments put forward by the supporters of capitalized pension schemes. Firstly, he shows that this solution would probably not help pension schemes face up to payment difficulties encountered in times of economic or demographic turbulence of the sort which looms on the horizon of the 21st century. He also discusses the link between pensions by capitalization and the development of savings. Current theretical literature and empirical studies do not prove beyond doubt that such pension schemes would result in an increase in household savings. By way of a conclusion, he tackles the concrete question of whether or not, m the light of the above arguments, the State should grant fiscal advantages to optional individual retirement schemes by capitalization.
