The French Economy In The Twentieth Century

Surveys the spectacular transformation that the French economy has undergone over the past century.

This new textbook examines the spectacular transformation that the French economy has undergone over the past century. Jean-Pierre Dormois offers a general introduction to the major trends as well as recent transformations of French society, and an overview of modern economic development. He tackles the key themes associated with the French 'path of economic development' - Malthusianism, exceptionalism and Colbertism. Other chapters address standard economic issues on the role of human capital formation, economic institutions and openness to the rest of the world. The author examines and interprets trends and features of the period as a whole, and sets them in a wider European framework. This book offers students a helpful and concise summary of recent research, and presents a uniquely synthetic view of the French economy in the twentieth century. It will have broad appeal for students and teachers of French and of European history and economics.

First published in 1978, Professor O’Brien’s Economic Growth in Britain and France 1780-1914 is an original and pioneering exercise in comparative and quantitative economic history. It finds a controversial place in the debate on the question of French retardation in the 19th century and as a brave and important contribution towards the understanding of economic growth in Western Europe. The author attempts to comprehend and evaluate the economic performance of France through explicit comparisons with Britain, while considering British economic history from a French perspective. Challenging the orthodox view that France lagged behind Britain in economic terms, the book argues that there were two paths of economic growth to the 20th century, with France’s path seen as a more humane and no less efficient transition to industrial society.

London and Paris, the world's two leading financial centres in the nineteenth century, experienced differing fortunes during the twentieth century. While London remained an international financial centre, Paris' influence declined. Yet over the last twenty years deregulation, internationalization, and the advent of the single currency have reactivated their competition in ways reminiscent of their old rivalry before the First World War. This book provides a long-term perspective on the development of each centre, with special attention devoted to the pre-1914 years and to the last decades of the twentieth century, in order to contrast these two eras of globalization. The chapters include both archive-based and synthetic surveys and are written by the leading specialists of the field. This comparison between Europe's two leading capital cities will also provide new insights into two important subjects: the political economy of Britain and France in the twentieth century, and the history of international financial centres. As much as a comparison between London and Paris as international financial centres, this book is an Anglo-French comparison; in other words, it considers, through the prism of finance, several aspects of the two countries' economic, business, social, and political histories. It includes contributions from leading banking, financial, and economic historians, and will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of Financial and Economic History, and the role of London and Paris in particular.

Few aspects of economic development have had such a widespread or profound impact on the reshaping of contemporary France as transportation. As a result, transport policy has brought many of the major social forces into conflict. Monopolistic railway companies, closely aligned with the banks, combated the defenders of the regions and small towns. The fiercely independent truckers and barge-haulers, proponents of the small family firm, collided with the forces of the state. Apostles of the transatlantic gospel of free enterprise and technical progress clashed with supporters of a planned, socialist society.

This book considers the evolution of economic thought in France from the sixteenth to twentieth century and explores the key economists, themes and controversies which are important in the context of recent research.

In the decades since the end of the Second World War, the unification of Europe has been a subject of enormous importance and tension to politicians, citizens, and scholars. Yet lacking the basic demographic, economic, and social data that would provide a fuller picture of what this integration will involve, the debate has produced more heat than light. This book, the most comprehensive single-volume source of information available on the social and economic transformations in Europe over the past hundred years, fills that critical gap in our knowledge. In its pages we find examinations of population trends (including growth, mortality, national and international migration, and fertility), social structures (work, income, lifestyle, consumer patterns, welfare programs), and economic structures (agriculture, industry, and services), and an integrative overview of changes in both the organization of the economy and the role of the state in economic management. Paying particular attention to the period since 1950, the authors summarize the developmental paths of the four socioeconomic regions of Europe.The data and analyses provided here make this book an invaluable resource to professionals and scholars in a wide range of fields, from history, politics, and economics to journalism and international business.

Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe at the verge of a new millennium. The result is mesmerising: Mak's rare double talent as a sharp-eyed journalist and a hugely imaginative historian makes In Europe a dazzling account of that journey, full of diaries, newspaper reports and memoirs, and the voices of prominent figures and unknown players; from the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Adriana Warno in Poland, with her holiday job at the gates of the camp at Birkenau. But Mak is above all an observer. He describes what he sees at places that have become Europe's well-springs of memory, where history is written into the landscape. At Ypres he hears the blast of munitions from the Great War that are still detonated twice a day. In Warsaw he finds the point where the tram rails that led to the Jewish ghetto come to a dead end in a city park. And in an abandoned crèche near Chernobyl, where tiny pairs of shoes still stand in neat rows, he is transported back to the moment time stood still in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Mak combines the larger story of twentieth-century Europe with details that suddenly give it a face, a taste and a smell. His unique approach makes the reader an eyewitness to his own half-forgotten past, full of unknown peculiarities, sudden insights and touching encounters. In Europe is a masterpiece; it reads like the epic novel of the continent's most extraordinary century.

This text challenges the traditional view of the history of econometrics and provides a more complete story. In doing so, the book sheds light on the hitherto under-researched contribution of French thinkers to econometrics. Fascinating and authoritative, it is a comprehensive overview of what went on to be one of the defining subsets within the economics profession. Le Gall explains how econometric ideas developed from, and were inspired by philosophical worldviews and scientific paradigms from the nineteenth century. Exploring the methodology of French authors like Cournot, Briaune and Regnault he demonstrates how they were influenced by the natural sciences of their time, rooted as they were in a worldview where natural order and laws played a central role and how, when an organized discipline emerged at the start of the Twentieth century, these econometric ideas intermingled with new worldviews associated with the complexity of the economy. This book is essential reading for postgraduate students and researchers in the history of economic thought, economic methodology and the history of science as well as econometricians at all levels.

An accessible introduction to the nature of French society at the end of the 20th century. The book examines the transition of France and French life as the nation moves from an industrial to a post-industrial economy, and the cultural and social dislocations that such an evolution implies. Sociological concepts and categories of class, race, gender, age and region are discussed in relation to a range of issues such as work, politics, education, health, religion and leisure. The book reveals the nature of French society at a critical moment in the country's evolution. It demonstrates how a member of the European Union reflects distinctiveness and commonality in the development of Europe as a whole.

The main driver of inequality—returns on capital that exceed the rate of economic growth—is again threatening to generate extreme discontent and undermine democratic values. Thomas Piketty’s findings in this ambitious, original, rigorous work will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

An account of the rise of banking since the Middle Ages and its place in the modern international economy, first published in 1997.