Contenu du sommaire : La pratique de l'indexation en France

From the jurist point of view the pratice of sliding scale clauses are opposed to the traditional nominalism of French monetary law Custom born of the jurisprudence of the last thirty years condemns the clauses of gold payment or gold value From analogy Courts of Justice cancel sliding scale clauses when they are bound to monetary phenomenous In fact all sliding scale clauses belong to monetary law Consequently is it certain that the imperative dispositions of law must lead to condemna tion of all sliding scale clauses Protection of national money is not tinal purpose in itself There is hierarchy of imperatives Some require ments of law and order can sometime be more powerful than those derived from customary monetary Notion of justice and economic necessities have led French legislators to interfere on several occasions to attest the validity of the clauses Such are the cases of some particular matters like contract of lease wages life annuities and more recently the allowance of indexation for national enterprises and local communities loans and for building-saving Thus there is tendency to set up juridical method authenticating sliding scale clauses when the imperatives of monetary law are not in keeping with necessities of economic life and necessities of credit Hence forth French jurisprudence has to go to this iway

The main purpose of indexation is to try to give stability to world which is more and more unstable It is an automatic insurance stratagem against the effects of price variations in most cases against rise of prices The first historic-ill applications twere called sliding scale regar ding to cereals and afterwards wages At iirst indexation has been partial With the progressing vanishing of money within an economy which is prey to inflation it has tendency to be generalized to every agree ment It is the practice of indexed loans indexed leases indexed taxes etc The author wonder if tlie effects of partial indexation are the same that tliose of generalized indexation After having outlined classification of the disparities iwhich call for indexation and tnken for pattern wages sliding scale his thesis is that partial indexation may correct the damage of indexation wit-h regard to the victims who benefit from thîs insurance process on condition that the surrounding on iwhich it is exerted will be secure Or to speak differently indexation when partial neutralizes more than it maintains inflationist pressure On the contrary if all economic subjects believe themselves to be victims of rise of prices if they all want to be insured so to speak if indexation gro universal the author seeks if surrounding may be able to bear the burden of insurance Here he outlines theory of incidence of indexation He does not believe that universal indexation is impossible But he dreads that we would delude ourselves on pretext of having found an apparent stability in boundlessly unstable world Do we go into world without fluctuation or growth by suppressing every disparity By generalizing indexation we turn money itself into sliding index Fundamentally the late French experiment brings us an optimistic conclusion It was good thing to set up indexation for the only fact to have instituted it has contributed to check inflation It could also be an happy opportunity to amend the structures

Sliding scale and indexed agreements CONVENTIONAL SLIDING SCALE From practice of sliding scale agreement to Its recommendation by law Some foreign experiments In France sliding scale clauses are always con nected with an era of monetary unstability They are limited geographi cally and economically II AVTOMATIC AND GENERAL SLIDING SCALE From general rise in wages to automatic sliding scale Automatic sliding scale Act of July 18th 1952 Final remarks full implications of the particular clauses of sliding scales

Indexation in the leases gives rise in French law to certain number of difficulties which assume different aspect when one considers on the one hand the fruit-bearing estates or on the other hand the non-fruit- bearing estates For the former we are in presence to day after rather unimated evolution of legal indexation resulting from the farming rent status as modified by certain number of recent laws The Authorities intervene in the assessment of tlie farming rent price upon the advice of lhe Advisory Commission in relation with particulars regarding the leased land the products serving as basis to the price sliding scale In the commercial and residential leases the question presents different aspect For the former the agreement freely provides the elements permitting to shift the price in one direction or the other However the I;iw had to interfere in order to restrain theses variations at the present time one even considers the blocking of the commercial leases As for the house rents they evolve according to rather complicated technique in order to reach in 1959 normal rental value the salary being taken in compliance with certain rules as the indexation standard

Issue of indexed loans has taken a certain expansion from 1952 after it has come up against juridical and administrative hindrances for several years. In practice, indexation of bonds has taken varied forms securing unequally adaptation of income and capital to variations of value of money. In order to reduce the risks they run because of indexation, issuers have, in fact, adopted bases of référence (index), more or less susceptible to prices variations, and generally non proportional process connecting their debts to this index. Besides, they have foreseen very short periods of amortization and inconvertibility allowing them to break away from their obligations. However some issues — and amoug them some are the most satisfactory for saving — are bound to the activity of the issuing enterprises. This fact joins indexed bonds to shares. Each bond must be carefully studied. As a matter of fact, investigation of a certain number of concrète cases shows that, next to interesting formula generally used by industrial public enterprises (electricity, railway), some are fallacious. Besides, none of the issues is safe from arbitrary State decision.

Monetary depreciation led France to recognize the validity of indexation broadly and to have recourse to it in very large way France is not the only one It is advisable to observe that if numerous countries admit the validity of indexation major part of them hardly practise it except in matter of wages because inflation has been of very little importance for fifteen years Such is especially the case of Anglo-Saxon countries Switzerland the Netherlands Uruguay On that account these countries cannot give us an useful exemple Finally among the countries which undervent an important inflation like France very few are tliose which validate an practise indexation Brazil Chilie Finland Austria Italy But we may at least ask ourselves to what extent the practice of indexa tion has not been one of the causes of inllation in those countries Actually the link between indexation and inflation seemed so real to some other countries that tendencies opposed to indexation have appeared recently Such are the cases of Greece Argentina and above all Germany It is even very symptomatic to point out that Germany is the country which had had the greatest experience of indexation after World War Indexation appeared there to be illusory and baneful and it is prohibited nowadays