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Do new growth theories adress traditional policy issues ? This article attacks this question from three perspectives: we discuss the role of industrial policy, the role of international trade, and the interaction between technical progress and employment. Recent work supports the idea that governments can enhance growth through public infrastructure policies, education, increased savings, and by providing a stable political environment. On the other hand, there is little support for protectionnism and sectorial policies.

In societies where laws govern relations between individuals, it is the duty of the authorities to enforce the law by punishing perpetrators of acts considered to be reprehensible. Nevertheless, there remains to be defined the notion of "breach of law". Criminolgists are far from agreeing on a definition. For some, violation of the law and the carrying out of the deed by an individual are one and the same; for others, there is no breach of law unless the incriminated act is labelled as such by a judge. Only this latter approach — the so-called Social Response — is satisfactory from a sociological point of view. The Human Capital theory advances an economic interpretation of criminal phenomena. The theoretical model, proposed by Becker and developed by Ehrlich, is in keeping with the first school of thought, i.e., that crime resides in the carrying out of the deed. However, as the available data is insufficient, Ehrlich is led to try an empirical model, based solely on crimes an misdemeanours against property. He thus obtains an optimum of the crimes and misdemeanours committed over a span of several years. The result is no longer the same when an attempt is made to adapt the model to the Social Response theory; it, in fact, becomes impossible — for lack of a consensus on the notion of "transgressing the norm" — to obtain results which might be considered significant.

Money is no longer the exclusive field of monetarists. Today, they are challenged on this ground by Post-Keynesians who emphasize the sequential nature of economic evolution, the uncertainty, the place of economic institutions and above all the importance of money and credit. Money is intimately associated with time and exists only because of uncertainty and its peculiarities come from this. Money is introduced and integrated in a monetary economy of production through the medium of credit and, more generally, as a part of the process of financing the economy. The supply of money is endogenous and the interest rate is exogenous. We can question the more or less "horizontal" pattern of the supply curve. The central bank is accommodating and conducts its monetary policy rather passively with only one instrument: the interest rate.

The notion of "equity", such as it's employed in the French public debate, testifies the necessity of a come back to Rawls's theory. A comparison with Sen's "capabilities" allows to expose the bases of a debate on equity which cannot neglect equality, in the name of liberty. To the egalitarianism of used measure instruments concerning distribution analysis, Sen and Rawls substitute, indeed, the priority of liberty to justify unequal distributions. If for Rawls, equity is compatible with inequalities on a social benefits set, for Sen, inequalities are bearable only if the aim is the equality of individual opportunities in social organization, and not solely on a set of "goods", material or immaterial, beforehand defined as "primary". The translation of this debate in terms of analysis instruments opens new perspectives for the measure of social and individual well-being.

This paper analyses the possible interactions between politics of the environment and international competitiveness. The implications on international competitiveness resulting from the manipulation of free-trade agreements are considered, with reference to several empirical cases. It is pointed out that even when countries follow the basic principles of international trade regulations, there is still a possibility for strategic environmental actions. The impacts of such actions on international competitiveness is differentiated according to whether the environmental politics concern products standards or process and production methods standards. The possibility for a country to establish trade barriers on imports by reinforcing its products standards is one of the main issues discussed.

Recycling can be defined as the transformation of goods or natural resources which have been used into other goods. The subject of recycling in relatively new for economists. It allows them to set out differently the problem of the relationship between consumption and resources. It challenges the notion of un-renewable resource. Recycling takes place otherwhise within the context of a new model of growth caring about environment. The first part of this paper considers the reasons why recycling is both an economic activity and an ecological activity and describes its aspects since the french example. Obstacles abled to slow down its growth are also analysed. After considering previous analyses, the second part viewes a classifica- tion of natural resources taken into account the possibility of recycling. Production costs are compared for production since virgin materials or since recycling materials, so as to be able to define an « optimum of ».

This note intends to attract attention on two main points of the recently published paper of V. Lelièvre [1995]. First, it concerns the author's assertion that the bell-shaped curve representing real inflation tax yield is due to a demand for money function instability. We show, on the contrary, that it is due to the particular functional form of the demand for real cash balances. Second, concerning the dynamic results of the model, we intend to show that no hyperinflationary process can be generated. This leads us to raise the more general issue of the monetary and fiscal theory of hyperinflation flaw.