Contenu du sommaire

Labour Supply and Taxation: A Survey, by Richard Blundell. This review shows how important the behaviour of the labour supply is in the economic evaluation of tax reforms. An evaluation of agents' reactions can be made by looking at the radical measures taken by the United Kingdom in the 1980s. The behaviour of married women is most sensitive to changes in taxation. However, several other groups are also marked by considerable variations in family income and by sizeable marginal changes in income. Certain reforms encourage those already in employment to work longer hours, while others prompt participation in the job market.

The Creation and Axing of Jobs and Unemployment : The Belgian Case, by Benoît Mulkay and Marc A. Van Audenrode. This article uses a sample of over one thousand firms to present a number of results concerning the creation and axing of jobs in Belgium. These levels are lower than those observed in the United States. Actions take place mainly within the company and are barely influenced by aggregate or sectorial aspects. Theories traditionally produced to explain the differences in unemployment rates between European countries and the United States are tested.

Will the Expansion of the Modern Sector Reduce Unemployment in Developing Countries? by Pierre Cahuc and Fred Célimène. This article shows that the adverse conclusions by Lewis (1954) and Harris and Todaro (1970) concerning the relationship between the expansion of the modem sector and unemployment in a dual economy can be explained by the specific structural aspects of the different economies. The development of a general balance model with two endogenous sectors and wages reveals that the relationship between the expansion of the modern sector and unemployment depends to a great extent on each sector's returns to scale. Tests on a sample of 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries confirm the pertinence of such a result.

Micro-econometric Analysis of the Demand for Urban Transport in Tunis, by Samir Ghazouani and Mohamed Goaïed. This article presents an analysis of the demand for urban transport in Tunis by using carefully chosen models resulting from a optimization of random utility. To this end, two distinctive versions of these models are applied: the independent Probit and the multinomial Logit.

A Contribution to the Study of Imbalance in the Algerian Consumer Goods Market, by Salima Hamouche. The estimation of a model concerning the imbalance on the Algerian consumer goods market enables the possible existence of surplus demand to be tested using macro-economic data. Moreover, the mtroduction of micro-markets means that the hypothesis of the perfection of the aggregate market may be dismissed and the possible coexistence of surplus supply and demand thereby considered. The results are such that it is probably not possible to characterize the market in question by the existence of a constant surplus demand.

The Pricing of Motor Vehicle Insurance, by Claude Bressand. Motor vehicle insurance pricing devices are examined in the light of the theory of optimal contracts in different situations: What is the nature of the information available? Is it incomplete? Do moral hazard and adverse selection come into play separately or simultaneously? The deductive rating of insured parties and pricing from experience are discussed.

The Macro-economic Forecast: Relative Precision and Consensus, by Karine Bouthevillain. This article starts with a study of the relative precision of forecasts based on French and international variables made by nine bodies. It confirms the main results shown by the literature on this subject. The article goes on to compare the performances of the different bodies in order to extract any elements specific to them: none of the bodies seems to perform steadily better than the others. Finally, the question of a consensus derived from combining the forecasts is examined.

A Note on Rationality Tests, by Catherine Doz. This paper lays out the principle of and problem with forecast bias tests. The results of these tests are often to be considered with care given the small number of points studied.

Ex Ante and Ex Post Forecast Errors, by Pierre Malgrange and Silvia Mira d'Ercole. The object of this paper is to review the ex post forecasts provided by the Metric model. Can the result normally found, by which the ex ante forecasts made with an incomplete knowledge of the value of the exogenous variables are of a better quality than the ex post forecasts, be applied to the French case?