Contenu du sommaire : Les crises économiques du 20e siècle

Economic growth and trend reversais in the 20th c : a look at the present "crisis", Jean-Charles Asselain. The first thing necessary to do in the present crisis is to define the very notion of crisis. But even more it is necessary to compare it with the past dysfunctions. One immediately sees the atypical character of a crisis that today couples poor records (such as unemployment levels) with healthy economic results (increase of foreign trade, increases in productivity). It's a curious disjunction, especially since prior to 1973, all the indicators were on green. The crisis, therefore, results first and foremost from the oil shocks whose effect must not be minimized. By lowering the profitability of investment, by forcing entrepreneurs to increase productivity at the expense of employment, this brutal shock — that at the beginning barely weighed on salaries — did not, however, resuit in the reduction of international trade that the Third World, because of its debts, continues to support. But the financial (the Third World's getting out of debt) as well as the mental (the salaried workers' resistance to the loss of purchasing power is diminishing) adjustments explain the continuation of a crisis that the austerity policies set up by some authorities are making worse. The strong French franc policy, for example, limits the entrepreneurs' recourse to capital markets, characterized by, it is true, high interest rates.

The stars of the crisis. French companies in the 1930s' depression, Daniel Lefeuvre. The study of companies' financial results in the 1930s mitigates the overly black image of the French economy during the depression: The assets of most big firms grew ; for 92 % of these firms, profitability was also up. This period was also rich in promising changes: on the horizon were the consumption habits of the "Trente Glorieuses" and the growth of a gribusiness. At the same time, the modernization of distribution and new thinking on management ans sales methods were occurring, and technological choices were being made for the future.

The specifîty of French structural mass unemployment, 1930-1990, Nicolas Baverez. Structural unemployment seems to apply specifically to France in the 1930s as well as today. But production System archaisms can not be the only explanation of the persistance of this plague. Disastrous national policies - obstinate defense of the franc, high interest rates, pressure from the farmers' lobby, the savers' lobby or, concerning the present time, the retired people's lobby - explain the high rates recorded by this country.

French automobile industry from one crisis to another, Jean-Louis Loubet. The car industry has gone through the deepest changes in its history in the last 20 years. The crisis from the oil shock in 1973 brought about the concentration of this sector in one fell swoop. This transformation had begun during the 1930s crisis, but at that time only the disappearance of small manufacturers had been speeded up. While the collapse of the automobile industry can be explained by a series of reasons whose effects are interlaced with the end of growth, its most visible consequences can be seen in the reductions of the work force. The present crisis is no longer just limited to taking into account the economic necessities of the various social partners. It forces manufacturers, unlike what happened in the 1930s, to pay constant attention to a more and more irregular and unpredictable market. Nevertheless, regardless of the period, the crises point out that the car industry only finds success in its ability to adapt to new conditions.

Psychoanalysis of market shocks, Anthony Rowley. From a reading of the analyses following the two stock market crashes of 1929 and 1987, it would seem that the literature produced on the shock shows the difficulty of analyzing them with the methodological apparatus available. Thus, one enters an area in which it is no longer a question of proving but of understanding why people believe what they believe.

French banks in the major crises of the 20th century, Alain Plessis. In the 1930s as in the 1980s, French banks were seriously hit by the effects of the economic crisis. But the development of the monetary System during this half-century, in particular the increase of credit circulation, brought about changes in banking. Accused in the two periods of contri-buting to the beginning or the deepening of the crisis, they didn't suffer from the same effects. In the 1980s, there were no massive withdrawal demands whereas the increase of bad risks led to a reduction of banking establishments' resources. Necessitating considerable provisions, this increase reduced their profitability considerably. The adaptation of French banks to a competitive, hight risk market is even more delicate in that they are not totally free from State influence.

The "Vingt Glorieuses". The growth of the French economy from 1970 to today, Jacques Marseille. Since 1970, the French average annual GDP has been 2 % ; household consumption has grown more quickly than production in spite of the increase of prices ; the discrepancy in purchasing power between socio-professional categories has decreased; the rate of households purchasing appliances has leaped ; the French economy increased its trade with foreign countries from 17.5 % in 1973 to 22.8 % in 1994. Signs that, despite the virtual stagnation in investment volume, show these last 20 years as a period of exceptional economic dynamism and challenge the current reading of the crisis. Sectorial analyses indicate a deep change in the French economy, the emergence of the tertiary as the main producer of wealth contrasting with a relative decline of the secondary sector whose more detailed analysis illustrates its selective character. Growth, however, proves unable to deal with the increase of unemployment. The massive irruption of underemployment shows that the relationship of French society to work has changed at the same time as its consumption habits. Because officials talk about an imaginary crisis instead of grasping the change, they prevent themselves from understanding the basic causes of unemployment and solving it.

Major European companies in the 20th century, Youssef Cassis. It is difficult to avoid the temptation of ranking the major companies when making a comparative analysis. While such an approach can be useful by pointing out the differences and simplifying the comparative work, it accentuates the divergences to the detriment of convergences observable over the long term, nationally as well as world wide. The example of the behavior of French, English and German companies facing 20th-century crises shows that global explanatory factors give different effects to the same causes. The comparative approach has thus to take into account divergences and convergences so as to deepen the analysis rather than simplify it by general categories and rankings.

Economists and the "crises" of the 1929 and 1974, Jacques Wolff. In spite of different methodological presuppositions, the analysis of the "1929 crisis" by the British orthodox economist Lionel Robbins (The Great Depression, 1929-1934, 1934) often agrees with the synthetic approach of the French economist Bertrand Nogaro (La crise économique en France et dans le monde, 1936) : both reject the idea of a single cause interpretation of the recession and condemn any policy that questions market laws and claims to break with the market economy. Faced with the 1974 recession, Otto Eckstein (The Great Recession, 1978) proposes an analysis of the American crisis based on an econometric model using many simulations, which opposes, point by point, the Marxist Ernst Mandel's point of view (La crise, 1974-1978, 1978). Far from being a weakness, the difference between the approaches illustrates the richness of economic analysis. In this field, improvement of the representations can come only from the confrontation of models and ideas.