Contenu du sommaire : Le financement du développement

Profitability and development's financing failures. The case of CEMAC Countries. Developing countries, especially African countries, are characterised by economic underdevelopment linked to financial underdevelopment. Financial policies were liberalized after voluntarist policies but their results are limited. Financial sector was reformed and overcashed banks are benefit but financial system is segmented and cannot finance development. This article presents debate about financial liberalization and linkages between economic and financial underdevelopment with special reference to CEMAC, six central African states member of zone franc.

An alternative approach of debt sustainability. Since the beginning of the debt crisis, the problem of developing countries external debt is systematically dealt from creditors' point of view. The authors' objective is to enrich the sustainability-based approach of the debt problem by considering the impact of refunding on concerned populations well-being. Accordingly, they compute a multidimensional indicator of debt sustainability. The comparison of this indicator with « official » debt indicators shows the need for a joint consideration of creditors' and debtors' points of view, in order to avoid targeting errors in the struggle against indebtness.

Do foreign direct investment and foreign aid complement or substitute in Africa ? In this paper the authors analyze whether the allocations of aid and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Africa complement or substitute for each other. More specifically, they try to identify if countries receiving less international private investment tend to receive more official development aid or if, on the contrary, these two external flows reinforce each other. Concentration curves analysis and econometric tests indicate that, since the end of the 90's, aid has been less allocated to countries receiving high amounts of FDI, suggesting that aid tends to compensate countries with restricted access to international private investment.

Economics of gift by François PERROUX. Actuality and relevance of PERROUX's model of official development assistance for the third millennium. The article shows that the objective of the development, « to cover the costs of the Man », as well as the principles of economics of gift recommended by F. PERROUX in his work L'économie du XXe siècle meet themselves in the Millennium Development Goals and in the propositions of the Millennium Project. Gift, which is wished by F. PERROUX, is presented by the international experts as the most effective modality of official development assistance to reach the objectives of reduction of poverty that has been settled by the international community.

The international financing of sustainable development. The mobilization against climate changes. After the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the discussions focus on the future commitments to be subscribed after 2012. The aim is both the setting up of a coalition as large as possible for the inclusion of the developing countries, and the financing of a general reorientation of the world energetic structure. In this prospect, this paper explores the respective advantages of a regulation by quantities or by prices. Taking into account the inherent weaknesses of the Clean Development Mechanism, we argue in favour of an international carbon tax which appears more relevant for the future of the international cooperation against climate change.

Coordination of budget policies in monetary union. Recent experience from the CEMAC member states. Since 2001, CEMAC has introduced a program for the coordination of national fiscal policies. The paper provides a theoretical and empirical evaluation of this program. It seems that, while fully justified, the application of coordination is weakened by various factors and that corrective actions are necessary. Some of the limitations arise from domestic factors and result in excessively restrictive, but badly enforced, norms. Other limitations pertain to external factors and determine an inadequate policy mix to address broad development issues such as poverty reduction and unemployment.

Towards a typology of regional processes. The case of East Asia. This paper proposes an analytical framework exposing all kinds of regional processes in the context of globalization. These latter may cover either economic factors, institutional factors, or both. Thus, regional economic integration can only be defined as the combination of these two aspects. This integration presents various degrees of intensity, directly related to the level of coordination between states. Indeed, it can range from shallow integration to what we consider as « sovereign » integration. This typology is then applied to the East-Asian process. Finally, it enables us to identify different geographic areas where regionalisation (as the concentration of economic flows) and regionalism (as the implementation of an institutionalized cooperation between states) combine or not.

Usage capacities of the information and communication technologies in the emerging economies. This contribution to the study of the factors' allocation modes of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by firms of emerging economies gets over the dual approach concentrated on the lack of uses of equipment and on their consequences. Authors focus on the dynamics of use, as opposed to the dynamics of adoption. The main assumption of this contribution is that the differentials of competitiveness related to ICT are less dependant on the level of the investments than on the level of their use. This approach introduces notions like individual learning, cooperation dynamics, general purpose technologies, information and coordination levels.