Since mid-2007 we have been witnessing a financial crisis that originated in the now notorious "subprime crisis" which developed in the United States in 2006/07. Since most of the financial institutions concerned have international ramifications, the crisis spread, damaging the confidence of many players in the global financial system, and it continues to inspire fear regarding its possible consequences.
Since the Chinese economy is closely linked to that of the USA, on account of the many letters of credit issued in dollars, American Treasury bonds held by China and export flows to the United States, is there a risk that this economic giant will be affected by the current crisis? We should not assume so, argues Philippe Delalande: on the one hand, the conditions for a property slump, followed by a banking and stock-market crisis, do not seem present in China; on the other, the current global crisis might well enable that country to reduce its pace of growth and opt for a path of "harmonious development", provided that inflation does not take off.

In late August 2008, after several months of wavering in which the projected law perhaps seemed doomed, French president Nicolas Sarkozy officially announced the introduction of a new scheme for assisting those in difficult or marginal situations, the so-called Active Solidarity Income. He also announced a timetable for the measure and how it would be funded. About four million French homes suffering from unemployment or casual employment (including 1.5 million "working poor"), or those on income support, should, he said, be affected by the measure. It is to come into force in July 2009 and will be debated in the French parliament from 22 September 2008 onwards, a few days before the publication of this issue.
Chantal Euzéby takes stock of the scheme here and reminds us how necessary it is for the benefits muddle to be reviewed and simplified, so that social benefits can recover their basic role of returning the groups concerned to work. She outlines the project for merging the various benefits, but also raises some questions that remain unanswered, concerning, for example, which social security scheme will apply to the beneficiaries, the index-linking of the new provision, and the decisions to be made over the "reinsertion" strand, particularly regarding the division of responsibilities between the state and the local authorities.

Les exercices de prospective de ces dernières années qui portaient (pour tout ou partie) sur le commerce international comportaient généralement un scénario où le processus de mondialisation et de division internationale du travail était remis en cause, que ce soit à cause d'une montée du protectionnisme ou bien des coûts de l'énergie et du transport. À l'heure où le prix du baril de pétrole est passé de 28 dollars US en 2003 à plus de 100 dollars ...

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In the current context of economic globalization, combining employment flexibility and employee security is one of the major challenges for France and Europe. Alongside the Danish route, which consists in making redundancy easier while at the same time boosting the performance of the employment agencies, the option of employer groupings can also be very attractive, both for employees and for companies. By coming together jointly to employ their workers - who operate in various companies within the group depending on the season or day of the week - the companies provide their employees with stable, open-ended employment and, at the same time, profit from the enhanced experience of these "multi-company" workers, while, at the same time, expanding their networks and increasing their synergy.

Dans un récent rapport, le CERC (Conseil de l'emploi, des revenus et de la cohésion sociale) tente de comprendre qui sont les jeunes sans diplôme en France, comment cette population a évolué au cours des dernières décennies et comment elle évoluera à l'avenir, une problématique analysée récemment par Julien Damon.

À l'heure des délocalisations et de l'intensification de la concurrence sur le marché du travail mondial1, de grands espoirs sont placés dans les perspectives économiques ouvertes par la nécessité de faire face au double défi énergétique et environnemental. Les investissements dans l'environnement, les changements nécessaires de mode de production et de transport sont censés générer d'importantes créations d'emplois dont l'un des avantages, et non le moindre, est qu'il s'agirait d'emplois " protégés ...

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The demographic dynamic in France today is largely a product of the migration flows affecting the country. But these flows are not the same over the whole national territory: some regions receive greater inflows of immigrants than average, while others are barely involved. The impact of these migration flows on local development is not uniform either, as Gérard-François Dumont shows here.
After briefly reviewing the two main approaches to the analysis of foreign immigration and its consequences on territorial development (source of wealth vs. budgetary burden), Dumont offers a detailed region-by-region analysis of foreign immigration in France, covering such aspects as the share of regional migration, the changes to flow-patterns, the proportion of immigrants in the active population, the unemployment rate for foreign nationals of working age, the pivotal role of the Île-de-France region etc. He also analyses the - very variable - economic effects of the presence of this foreign population, taking two distinct aspects into account: the legal criterion (nationality) and the geographical criterion (origin of the immigrants, whether or not they have acquired French nationality) and studies the relations between immigration and unemployment more closely (identifying "four different Frances" here). These findings show that the effects of immigration on local development vary as a function of two distinct geographical criteria: the geographical origins of the individuals and the particular area in which they settle.

L’exposé est centré sur la hausse des prix des produits agricoles et la sécurité alimentaire. Il s’appuie sur deux documents qui en constituent la toile de fond : — Le modèle économique « Oléosim » : analyse structurelle du marché international des produits de grande culture, basé sur les oléagineux et sur toutes les grandes productions végétales. — L’exercice de prospective « INRA 2013 », fait en parallèle avec le modèle Oléosim, simule les conséquences de l’adaptation de la Politique Agricole Commune aux décisions ...

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Trois ans après le lancement du " plan de développement des services à la personne " en France, un premier bilan des créations d'emplois dans ce secteur peut être fait. Selon les modes de calcul, celui-ci est plus ou moins positif. Toutefois, le secteur commence lentement à se professionnaliser.

Le 4 mai 2008, la 11e réunion des ministres des Finances de l'ASEAN+3 a rassemblé à Madrid les ministres des Finances des 10 pays de l'Association des nations de l'Asie du Sud- Est (ASEAN) et ceux de la Chine, du Japon, et de la Corée du Sud (ASEAN+3). Ils y ont annoncé la création d'un fonds commun de réserve en devises, destiné à faire face à une éventuelle crise financière régionale, doté d'un ...

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La compétitivité de la Chine dans le secteur de la production manufacturière s'effrite, tel est le point le plus marquant d'une étude publiée en mars 2008 par le cabinet de conseil Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) en partenariat avec l'American Chamber of Commerce de Shanghai (AmCham) . Cela signifie-t-il que les multinationales vont relocaliser leurs activités pour s'adapter à une nouvelle géographie des avantages comparatifs au profit de pays tels que l'Inde, le Viêt-nam ou la Thaïlande ...

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France, which has regularly been presented by various prominent authors as a "blocked" society, if not indeed a society doomed to decline, is marking time economically and has not managed to recover a sufficient pace of economic growth to end the crisis besetting it for more than three decades. Under one government after another, reports and proposals have been produced aiming to reverse this trend, providing lists of the measures to be taken, but so far to no avail.
Two new reports in this same vein were published in late 2007 and early 2008. The first, by the Conseil d'analyse économique is entitled The Levers of French Growth (Paris: La documentation Française, 2007). The second, by the Attali Commission is called 300 Decisions for Changing France (Paris: La documentation Française/Xo éditions, 2008). Both provide quite a well-stocked list of measures aimed at re-launching the country's economic growth and Charles du Granrut has analysed and compared these for Futuribles. Though they share a diagnosis of the obstacles to growth, particularly in the employment field, the two reports converge on many points, including higher education, increased labour market flexibility, the liberalization of "closed" occupations etc. However, as Charles du Granrut reminds us, and as the previous reports (which in many cases contained very similar proposals) have proved, implementing these measures (which, according to the authors make sense only when carried out in a joined-up way) is a delicate matter, to say the least, given the various "blockages" in French society and its aversion to change, which have bedevilled earlier attempts. Moreover, the factors accounting for economic growth are not perhaps as clear as they seem.

L'activité économique soutenue des grandes entreprises multinationales occidentales, conjuguée à une grande mobilité des cadres, conduit à un relèvement des rémunérations dans les pays émergents, et en particulier de celles des cadres. Des pénuries de main-d'oeuvre qualifiée commencent à apparaître, qui pourraient peut-être à terme remettre en cause les stratégies de délocalisation.

Jean-Joseph Boillot a tout d’abord justifié le choix d’une étude de l’Inde à l’horizon 2025, qui lui paraît être une base de travail raisonnable compte tenu du cycle d’un investissement commercial (compris entre 5 et 15 ans) et, plus subjectivement, parce que cette date ne semble pas trop éloignée.

Le chômage baisse en Europe, mais les objectifs de Lisbonne sont loin d'être atteints. La question demeure de savoir si la reprise de l'emploi est d'ordre structurel ou résulte d'un cycle économique dont la longévité est douteuse.

On 12 October 2007 the "India 2025" Conference was held in Paris. It was organized by the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale and the Asia 21 group (Futuribles International). Among the questions tackled were geopolitical considerations, some of which have already been the subject of articles in Futuribles (February and March 2008), and socio-economic aspects, which are covered more specifically in this issue.
Jean-Raphaël Chaponnière, who spoke on Indian economic power and Asia in 2025 at the conference, presents here the fruits of his thinking on this subject. After outlining the main features of the Indian economy and demonstrating its openness, particularly to the region (based on a comparison with the Chinese giant and a number of newly industrialized Asian countries), he examines how India - and, more generally, Asia - might develop economically between now and 2025. Overall, India seems likely to remain economically sound, though not to outstrip China. Its trading relations will probably stay focussed more on Asia than on the wider world and disparities of wealth can be expected to persist internally.

On 12 October 2007, the "India 2025" Conference was held in Paris. It was organized by the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale and the Asia 21 group (Futuribles International). Among the questions tackled were geopolitical considerations, some of which have already been the subject of articles in Futuribles (February and March 2008), and socio-economic aspects, which are covered more specifically in this issue.
Jean-Joseph Boillot, the chief scientific adviser to the conference, gave a paper on the economic development of India to 2025, presenting the various projections and possible future scenarios for India as an economic power. This article reproduces the main elements of that contribution, demonstrating that the country is on the eve of its "Great Transformation".
Boillot begins by analysing the development of India's GDP up to the year 2025, together with the component parts of that development (labour, capital, productivity), basing himself on a comparison of the main recent predictions. These suggest an economic growth figure of 4.5%-8.5% per annum between now and 2020/2025. He goes on to unpack these results, stressing a number of perspectival effects and micro/macro confusions, before examining the "Great Transformation" in detail. In this way, he shows that even if only part of the country - the "modern India" that is part of the globalized economy - participates in the national take-off, this could have a significant impact on the global economy.

Hugues de Jouvenel : Jean-Paul Betbèze, merci de venir à notre secours pour nous permettre de mieux comprendre quelle est la teneur, quels sont les motifs et éventuellement les conséquences de la crise financière en cours. Le prospectiviste, inéluctablement, face à un phénomène tel que celui-là se dit « est-ce un phénomène porteur d’avenir ou un phénomène conjoncturel ? », « est-ce un phénomène de krach momentané ou bien faut-il s’attendre à ce que cette crise financière ait des répercussions majeures sur l ...

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Le Vietnam est un pays dont on a beaucoup parlé par le passé pour des raisons historiques mais que l’on mentionne peu actuellement. En effet, c’est un pays très pauvre, au PIB (produit intérieur brut) de 63 milliards de dollars US, soit 3 % du PIB français, mais dont la croissance économique est forte et régulière puisqu’elle atteint depuis plus de 15 ans 7,5 % par an en moyenne. Ce pays est donc loin d’être déjà un ...

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Le rapport Mondialisation : changeons de posture (Paris : La documentation Française, 2007) est à l’origine de cette table ronde organisée par Futuribles. Rédigé par le groupe de travail présidé par Pascal Morand, à la demande de Christine Lagarde, ministre de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Emploi, il constitue une réflexion sur la dimension économique et les enjeux de la mondialisation, perçue en France comme étant la grande menace d’un libéralisme soi-disant sauvage.

Le Japon importe l'essentiel des céréales qu'il consomme. Il est donc concerné au premier chef par les tensions qui apparaissent sur le marché mondial des céréales, notamment du fait de l'essor des biocarburants. Les experts japonais s'inquiètent particulièrement de l'appétit de l'ogre chinois qui, de la même manière qu'il pèse sur les marchés de l'énergie, détient la clef des évolutions sur les marchés céréaliers. Or l'hypothèse d'une croissance de la ...

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Avec la baisse du nombre de demandeurs d'emploi inscrits à l'ANPE (voir graphique), on observe une progression des difficultés de recrutement en France : 46 % des projets de recrutement sont jugés difficiles par les employeurs en 2007, contre 44 % en 2006, selon l'enquête BMO (Besoins en main-d'oeuvre) 2008.

For some time now states have been "making a comeback" in the management of certain strategic areas of the economy, such as energy, as in the case of Russia that was covered in the January 2008 issue of Futuribles. Some emergent countries or countries whose main source of income is their oil revenues are also moving into strategic sectors through the financial markets, using so-called "sovereign" investment funds. Charles du Granrut describes what sovereign funds are, what they represent in terms of international economic relations and the investment strategies they apply etc.
He first recalls the substantial accumulation of trading surpluses that underlies these funds in the Asian countries and the oil-exporting nations. An accumulation of currency reserves ensues, conferring substantial power on these countries with regard to the management of exchange rates and the possibility of managing a part of these reserves dynamically through sovereign funds (funds for the international investment of national savings that come under the authority of the states or central banks of these countries). After giving an account of the main existing sovereign funds, their scope and their strategy, Charles du Granrut shows what the consequences of their development might be, particularly for the international monetary system: among other things, a lasting rise in exchange rates against the US dollar, generating a transfer of wealth from the United States to its creditor countries, foremost among them the emerging Asian nations and the oil exporting states.

L'industrie de l'assurance a subi des pertes à cause des catastrophes naturelles, estimées à 75 milliards de dollars US en 2007 selon le réassureur Munich Re, un chiffre de 50 % supérieur à celui de 2006, et ce alors même que cette année n'a été marquée par aucune "mégacatastrophe" .