French planning in the 1980s : A political agenda

Planners and policy makers can no longer rely on the assumptions that have stood them in good stead for the past two decades. The decline in birth rates, the growth of structural unemployment, the middle-class revolt against further taxation, and the emergence of quality of life issues will force a reappraisal of these assumptions. New methods will be needed to cope with the wider boundaries of social planning.     

Do departures from democratic accountability compromise the stability of public finances? Keynesianism, central banking, and minority governments in the Canadian system of party government, 1867–2009

This paper is concerned with the effectiveness of Westminster parliamentary institutions in ensuring the stability of a nation??s public finances. Our starting point and major hypothesis is that the governance structure embodied in Canada??s parliamentary system has contributed importantly to the maintenance of fiscal stability. The fact that the Government of Canada, like the central government of many other modern democracies, has survived for over a century without default on its public debt means that in some meaningful sense, long run responsibility with respect to the nation??s finances has in fact been achieved, and we show that this is in fact the case. Hence a more meaningful test of our main hypothesis requires the designation of specific sub-periods when the ideological background for political policy making changed and/or when the institutions and organizations for operationalizing policy varied in ways that either improved or discouraged responsible fiscal performance. We consider ideational and institutional factors that are predicted to either enhance or detract from accountability and fiscal stability, including central banking, the adoption of Keynesianism, inflation targeting and periods of minority government, and test for their effects on long run stability of the debt to GDP ratio using data for almost the entire history of the modern state from 1867 to 2008.     

The effect of environmental regulations on Swiss farm productivity

This paper analyzes the evolution of Swiss farm productivity during the implementation of environmental policy reforms, when subsidization of farms became dependent on compliance with environmental regulations. We employ a production model formulation with technology parameters defined as the functions of subsidies, as well as individual farm characteristics. Our estimates for two groups of farms - dairy and crop farms - show that payment of subsidies via compliance in environmental regulations induced major changes in the production technology and productivity of inputs, especially land, labor and fertilizer. The overall effect of the subsidies on the output has been found to be negative. Additionally, we find that farms do not use their resources optimally, indicating some deficiencies in structural adjustments, primarily in the land and labor markets.