Contenu du sommaire

Imvs: a tool for the macroeconomic analysis of sectoral policies, by Dominique Bureau and Béatrice Laury. Macroeconomic considerations such as employment or the trade balance must always be taken into account when analysing public projects and sectoral policies. However, mersly quantifying the corresponding effects is a difficult process which the Imvs is designed to clarify at a lower cost than the development of specific models. First of all, the operating principles of this type of tool are described, based on the study of a theoretical case which illustrates the possibilities of using the elementary multipliers of a traditional macroeconomic model for this purpose. A summary application to the analysis of export aids is then presented to illustrate the approach the user should adopt.

An Assessment of the law of 10 August 198 1 on the Price of Books, by François Ecalle. Until end 1981, shopkeepers were free to fix themselves the public selling price of books. The law of 10 August 1981 then forced them to apply the same "single price" determined by the publishers of given works. The intermediary objective of this law was to maintain a sufficiently dense network of traditional bookshops —previously threatened by large stores — the final objective being to develop book purchases and favour the production of high quality works. The economic reasoning justifying this regulation and the results indeed obtained are analyzed in this study. Despite the insufficiencies, and sometimes the contradictions of the statistical data, some conclusions can be drawn. The law has led to a rise in distribution margins and public selling prices. Despite the development of the services offered by shopkeepers, it has apparently also led to a reduction in consumption affecting all books regardless of their cultural quality. Traditional bookshops have at the very best only gained two years of respite in the decline of their market shares. Book clubs have doubtlessly been favoured by dispensatory measures.

Tax deductions for home ownership : the Défis model, by Michel Mouillait. In France and in most Eec Member States tax deductions occupy a central place in the system of aids for home ownership. The Défis model proposes a medium term analysis and projection structure of this system of tax aids. This article begins by a presentation of tax measures for home ownership and their role in the recovery of housing construction which has been observed for three years. In a second part, the structure and the characteristics of the Defis model are detailed: of relatively simple design, it is an analytical mesosimulation model which uses an original statistical model reconstituted on the basis of the Crep (Centre de Recherche Economique sur l'Epargne) "housing financing Observatory" and a very precise representation of the tax measures considered. Finally, in the third part, the model is used in order to illustrate some of the properties of the tax aid system. The article annexes give a complementary description of all the tax measures and present detailed results of the model.