2023-09-22 10:30:02
Book. The sociologist Thomas Angeletti (CNRS, Irisso) dates « l’invention » of the French economy of the mid-20th century scentury. This may come as a surprise. It’s that his book (The Invention of the French EconomyPresses de Sciences Po) is ostensibly part of an approach “constructivist” : according to this approach, it is by naming phenomena and qualifying them, to give them statistical and administrative consistency, that we construct new social beings. It is therefore not a question of claiming that there were no commercial and industrial activities in France in earlier periods. This is regarding the invention of the category “French economy” and, through it, a new regime of macroeconomic knowledge and its effects.
The story begins between the wars. New institutions then want to speak in the name of “the French economy” : the National Economic Council, from 1925, then the Ministry of the National Economy, in 1936. “The French economy” also appears in the publications of economists and statisticians who strive to clarify its content (what is economics and what is not?), to identify its cycles, and measure its size in the form of “national income”.
After 1945, this knowledge became the basis for new public policies. Two new characters enter the scene: the macroeconomist and the planner. Their names are Alfred Sauvy (1898-1990) and André Vincent (1900-1990), at the Institut de conjoncture, and Claude Gruson (1910-2000) at the Ministry of Finance. Their common language is that of national accounting and its simplified model of the economy.
From the beginning of the 1950s, it took the form of three tables: the overall economic table, which represents exchanges between households, businesses and administrations; the table of financial operations, intended to better harmonize savings and investment; finally the inter-industrial exchange table (today the input and output table), which makes it possible to identify the dependence of each sector of activity on raw materials. Since “the French economy” has an accounting structure and a monetary size, it can be the subject of a policy oriented towards ” growth “which at the same time became a new paradigm, promoted in particular by François Perroux (1903-1987), the holder of the chair of economics at the Collège de France.
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