THE APPLICATION OF THE CONSTANT PRICE METHOD FOR EVALUATING THE TRANSFER RELATED TO INFLATION: THE CASE OF FRENCH HOUSEHOLDS

The constant price method is used here to evaluate transfers related to inflation either between households and other economic agents (essentially enterprises) or among groups of households defined by occupation, age class and so on. The results obtained are only fragmentary due to a lack of many pieces of information. The method requires in fact the splitting up of every value variation into a price component and a size component.
Nevertheless, some interesting results are shown. In recent years, if the total productivity surplus has always been positive, the wealth surplus of households is sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Concerning the distribution of the productivity surplus among household groups, it has not been possible to find significant distortions, other than those which are related to differences in the propensity to save. On the contrary, marked distortions appear in the distribution of the wealth surplus due to wide differences in estate composition and indebtedness level.     

THE MACRO-ECONOMIC WEALTH-INCOME RATIO OF HOUSEHOLDS

The Wealth-Income Ratio of households, although less known than the capital-product ratio, has not been ignored by economic analysis. But most of the studies concerning this ratio put the stress on one unique cause of variation: the saving ratio of households. Doing so, they neglect other important factors such as the behaviour of households in incurring debt, and the influence of inflation on the variation of nominal income and on capital gains. This paper first provides a simple formula expressing the Wealth-Income Ratio as a function of all these factors. Then it shows, using data from France and United States, that this relationship is a useful tool for analysing the observed evolution of the ratio. Finally, it comes back to the famous question of the "constancy" of the Wealth-Income Ratio in the long run.     

Economies of scale in households' cash balances: A series of empirical tests

Here is tested on a sample of FRench chwque deposits in 1966 the hypothesis of economies of scale in the households cash balances. These economies of scale when compared to those expected from theoretical models (Allais, Baumol) turn out to be relatively small. It is suggested that this slight result is due to the fact that the value of the transactions of the studied accounts differ more because of the average value of the effective operations than because of the number of these operations.