Production factors and results of the public industrial groups in the period 1973-1981,
by J. Le Foll.
Based on the data published annually by the principal firms and the large industrial groups which are now public, this study analyzes the trend, since the first oil crisis, of the principal indicators concerning the production factors —investment and employment— and the operating results of those production units —sales and gross and net results. It takes an approach complementing the monographic studies and refined evaluations of the share of the enlarged public sector in the various national industrial segments and discusses the trend of those indicators in six relatively homogeneous categories of public groups the old public chemical, nuclear, steel and other groups, newly nationalized intermediate goods groups, old public and newly nationalized capital goods groups.
Despite the somewhat disparate nature of the basic data and the insufficiency of the information as to the external growth of the groups in the period 1973-1981, the study brings out notable differences among the groups, the decline of steel and the emergence of the very capital- intensive uranium processing segment are the most massive and doubtless the best known. Over the nine-year period, the differences in trends and behavior between the old public and newly nationalized groups are quite significant in the case of the former, the government s actions assisted in maintaining a counter-cyclical trend of the production factors despite low earnings throughout the period , in the case of the latter, hard hit by the recession, production and sales abroad coupled with external growth resulted in significant expansion in the capital goods sectors but failed to prevent a decline in intermediate goods.
The study does not go into the new departures of the government's policy vis-a-vis the industrial public sector. But the analysis of past developments demonstrates strong trends and certain structural characteristics which will hinder the future growth of this complex set of enterprises aging of the production factors in several sectors, employment downtrend, deterioration of earnings late in the period. It thus appears that the industrial public sector's contribution to economic and social development calls for material adaptation and international outreach on the part of these groups.
Methodology of evaluation of the macroeconomic effects of microeconomic projects or specific public interventions, by J.P. Gaudemet, B. Walliser. The article attempts to articulate the descriptive or normative microeconomic and macroeconomic instruments used in the study of public interventions or projects. It lists and compares the usual heterogeneous and incomplete practices and reposits them in a general methodological frame. The microeconomic insertion of public interventions concerns the behaviour's adaptation of one or more agents to changes in his immediate economic environment. The mesoeconomic insertion reflects the intra and intersector spreading effects of the projects in the productive system. The macroeconomic insertion is a mix of driving effects caused by the chaining up of behavious and crowding out effects resulting from constraints. The evaluation of projects and public interventions involves comparison or joint use of the microeconomic critérium —the discounted collective surplus— and the macroeconomic critérium —a public objective function —