Contenu du sommaire : L'économie du développement

Seasonality and Consumption Behaviour, by François Bourguignon, Frédéric Gagey. This article uses a sample by monthly waves of a survey on household budgets taken in Tunisia in 1980 to determine how seasonal the consumption of different goods can be. Deseasonalization is carried out by using a consumption model common to all the waves of the survey, based on latent variables of "permanent" income and consumption. The correction resulting therefrom for income-elasticities of various goods and for assessing household's welfare is important.

Estimates on a Household Demand System on the Basis of Pooled Cross-Section Budget Surveys in Tunisia, by Mohamed Goaïed. Studies dealing with price and income elasticities estimated on the basis of complete systems of demand functions derived directly from consumer theory now cover the majority of developed countries. Every appropriate consumption policy should be based on this type of estimates. Unfortunately, such estimates are rarely available for developing countries. This paper gives an account of the estimate results of a demographic specification of the demand system developed by Deaton and Muellbauer (1980) AIDS ("Almost Ideal Demand System") on pooled cross-section data from household budget surveys taken inTunisia. Estimates of income and price elasticities provide satisfactory orders of importance and encouraging results, in any case, for an application of a comprehensive demand function system (SCFD) on pooled household data in Tunisia.

Economic Analysis of the Increase in the Women's Jobs Supply : Application to Columbian Data, by Thierry Magnac. This paper sets out the findings of the micro-economic models on jobs occupied by women applied to surveys taken over the 1980-1985 period in an urban enyironment in Columbia. This set of explanatory variables includes the usual human capital variables as well as a complete set of family make-up variables in an attempt to capture substitutions between members of one family. The model is used to show that 30 % of the increase in jobs occupied by women over the 1980-1985 period is due to the lower fertility rate and the higher level of education of the average woman.

Education and Productivity in Traditional Sectors: an Empirical Analysis, by Tnéopiste Butare. This study is an attempt to determine the effects of formal and non-formal education on the growth of the so-called low-technology production sectors. The findings of our analysis tend to corroborate the hypothesis that education is one of the most important factors affecting the production function of these sectors. Another important finding which confirms similar results obtained for the high-technology sector is that there is overall complementarity between education and capital inputs. This complementarity is very important in developing educational investment policies: when activities in any given sector begin to be modernized, skills acquired from primary and non-formal education are likely to be more beneficial. So that modern techniques are used to their fullest advantage, our labour must be better trained.

Profitability, Substitution and Technical Progress in Tunisian Public Service Telecommunications, by Siwar Damak-Bahloul. Our objective was to analyze the productive structure of the telecommunications sector in Tunisia using an econometric approach based on a Translog cost function. To shed some light on discussions on the subject of deregulation in many developed countries, we basically tried to determine whether or not the sector under study is a natural monopoly by using measurements based on cost function estimates. We then attempted to assess substitutions between factors and to examine the effect of technical progress on the combined inputs. Lastly, we tested some of the structural properties of technology.

The Government's Behaviour Functions in Determining Producer Prices for Export Crops, by Patrick Guillaumont, Catherine Bonjean. This paper presents and tests several models characteristic of the government's behaviour in determining the real producer prices for export crops, assuming that the country is a price-taker on the world market. Depending on whether or not there are marketing boards or similar price-stabilization schemes: total, dampered or partial stabilization or total pass-through of international price fluctuations, to what extent producer prices are on a par with international ones varies a great deal. A few hypotheses are then introduced on the use the government will make of the stabilization schemes, the rate of exchange depreciations, as well as the impact of these depreciations on the real exchange rate. The models are tested to describe the policies that are implemented by the Ivory Coast, Kenya and Madagascar in setting up real producer prices for coffee .

Computable General Equilibrium Models, by Akiko Suwa. Computable general equilibrium models were developed in the seventies and used widely both in industrialized and developing countries. These models were disaggregated, coherent and complete and they result from applying a Walrasian general equilibrium model- the resources and uses matrix - to a multisectorial, numerical basis. A number of different methods were introduced to be in keeping with the realities of developing countries: imperfect competition, imperfect substitutability of exchanged products. Both macroeconomic extensions and recent developments (financial sector included, dynamics studies) are discussed in the closing part.

A General Equilibrium Model Applied to the Ivory Coast, by Sylvie Lambert, Akiko Suwa. The Ivory Coasfs economy was long considered to be outstanding and an example of its kind. However, the crisis in the eighties showed both how vulnerable this economy could be with regard to external crises and how limited the economic authorities' margin for manoeuvre could prove to be. This paper applies a numerical model to assess the impact of three adjustment policies: a wage drop in the public sector, a rise in the quasi-tax levied on coffee and cocoa exports revenues and devaluation in the Franc zone. The model places a particular emphasis on income distribution.

A Modelized Approach of the Consequences of the Oil Crises and Counter-Crises in Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan, by Alain Charmant, Jean-Guy Devezeaux de Lavergne, Norbert Ladoux. One of the most important questions arising in the Developing Countries with regard to energy policies is that of domestic final energy prices. Every time there is a change in the price of the oil barrel or whenever pressure is brought to bear on the international oil markets, this question comes up again. By using a modelling approach, we have attempted to clarify the underlying issues of this question in Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan.

Determining Parallel Exchange Rates in Africa: a Macro-Economic Model and an Econometric Test (Nigeria, Zaïre, Ghana), by Jean-Paul Azam, Cécile Daubrée. A small macro-economic model for determining parallel exchange rates with a view of applying them to African economies is examined in this paper. In doing so, the positive effect of the quantity of currency and the producer price of the exportable goods on the development of the parallel exchange rate is pointed out as is the negative effect of the world price of the exported goods and import quotas, and an effect which is neither fully positive or fully negative, ie the world price of imported goods. The econometric applications calculated for Nigeria, Zaire and Ghana show that the model's hypotheses were not rejected, all the explanatory variables appearing highly significant except for one of them in one of the cases.

The Foreign Exchange Shortage and Commercial Agriculture Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Jean-Claude Berthélemy, Christian Morrisson. This article provides a simple macroeconomic analysis offering an explanation for the self-maintained foreign exchange shortage in African countries whose mainstay is agriculture. The initial rationing of foreign exchange, which is often induced by errors in economic policy, causes a shortage of manufactured goods in rural areas. Under these circumstances, farmers no longer have any impetus to produce marketable goods, the result of which is a drop in foreign exchange receipts and an even more serious crisis in the balance of payments. A numerical illustration is provided in the article for a sample of about ten African countries.

Adjustment Plans and Availability of Imported Inputs, by Sébastien Dessus. Could it not be said that external balance readjustment policies have had a detrimental effect on firms' performance because they reduce volumes of imported inputs ? Part of the answer to this question can be found by modelling import demand of inputs and capital goods using disequilibrium econometrics to account for the dichotomy there can be between decisions taken at the governmental level and those taken at the private-sector level, which is why rationing exists. This specification, estimated by pooling 26 developing countries over the 1980-1984 period, shows that the average probability that firms faced constraints regarding their notional demand grew markedly from 1982, when the first adjustment plans were developed.