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To analyse governance structures between banks and firms, the authors test the relevance of the concept of « quasi-integration » use in industrial economics to indicate an intermediate transaction between market and hierarchy. The criterion of information is here essential to study the relation between firms and banks. In a quasi-integration relationship, first information is shared and generates sunk costs, second the relation is a long term one, and last such a relation allow the firm to invest in innovative projects. Whereas in a market relationship, incentive is the principal form of coordination, in a hierarchy relationship, it is in fact authority. In the second part of the paper, we show that in a quasi-integration relationship, three forms of coordination are combined together : authority, incentive and trust. Because of this plurality, such governance structure leads to efficiency, by reducing internal uncertainty that burdens the transaction between banks and firms, and by promoting adaptability and flexibility when the environment is changing.

This article develops elements of interpretation of the Great Depression of the thirties within the United Sates. We argue that, all along the nineteen century, agriculture played in this country an important role as a stabilisator of business cycles. We examine, in particular, the role of farm production for self use, wether that this production was used for personal consumption or used for investments. Under such conditions, the relative erosion of the share of farm production, and its counterpart represented by the development of wage earning class, created a deep déstabilisation effect. The combination of those two movements will dramatically speed up at the edge of the XIX-XXth centuries as a consequence of the end of the Frontier and its secular trend for exploiting new lands. Our argument proposes that this capital event will have long lasting effects and explains in part the Great Depression of the thirties.

In our societies, the amount of the wages of some professional sportsmen is higher and higher. In order to explain this evolution two argue-ments are generally put forward : the briefness of the profession and the « scarcity of competence ». After examination, it's visible that these two justifications are not really satisfactory. So, in this article we wonder if the remuneration of professional team sportsmen is not a privileged application of the efficiency wage model. In the sociological version, this theory doesn't supply a satisfactory analytical frame- work. In its economical version, it permits to analyse the club's chairmen beha- viour. Moreover, two others points must be noted. Applied to sport, the efficiency wage model fits in with the segmented labour market analysis. Indirectly, the generalization of « attractive salaries » seems one of the causes of professional sportsmen unemployment.

The article deals with the relationship between the bonds created by the integration process with economic policy and to wath extent it can be politically maintained. The first of the two models shows that an inflexible exchange system adopted by the countries wich do not share a monetary and fiscal policy is frail in itself. The exchange system can be politically maintained if it is consistent with a certain growth rate, thus setting a maximum limit to the rate of interest. In an inflexible exchange system every country (except the country leader wich as determined the monetary policy) has to reduce the relative risk premium to act on internal rate of interest : importation has to be squeezed and consequently the growth rate as well. The recessive phase in Europe makes the bond with the growth rate stiff ; a vicious circle is activated and a glaring contradiction within the system itself emerges. The model indicates two possible strategies to make the bond loose : one, is a non cooperative strategy of competitive disinflation (as it corresponds to a zero amount game), the other is a cooperative one consisting in a reinforced reliability on the exchange parities, in a development of the budget policy and in co-determining the interest rate within the EC. These three measures interact in a process of reciprocal reinforcement and the result is a positive amount game. The competitive disinflation policy is the only one possible if we consider the institutional situation peculiar to the present integration process. A second model concerning the process of reunification in Germany, shows how difficult it is to reach cooperation through negotiation among various national organisms. The model indicates that German restrictive monetary policy doesn't necessarily depend on the Bundesbank's specific attitude : it can be interpreted as the most appropriate policy for German aims in a non cooperative situation. Were there communitarian organismes endowed with real managing powers in an economic policy, the answer to the German reunification would consist in the common financing of its costs and in a monetary expansive policy involving Europe.

This paper studies the economic growth of the french overseas departments and territories from 1971 to 1992. It appears that the GNP growth was due almost only to domestic absorption, fuelled by a rapid increase of public transfers from metropolitan France. Import substitution has had negative or nul effects on growth in most cases, and small positive effects in one case (French Polynesia). Exports have had very small effects on growth, except for New Caledonia, due to Nickel exports. Since the french overseas departments and territories have consistently lowed import substitution policies (that is, protectionist policies to promote local production of imported goods), it appears that this development strategy has failed to bring about self-sustained economic growth.