Ce rapport, rédigé sous la direction d'Alain Supiot pour la Communauté européenne par un groupe de neuf experts issus des divers pays de l'Union, a été réalisé avec la collaboration de l'université Carlos III de Madrid. Il s'agit d’une initiative particulièrement heureuse puisqu'elle donne accès à un travail collectif de la plus grande importance pour l'avenir des relations des citoyens au travail, dont on sait qu'il est une des préoccupations majeures des ...

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Si la population mondiale a doublé de 1950 à 1997, passant de 2,5 à 5,7 milliards d'habitants, la consommation d'eau globale a elle quadruplé sur la même période pour s'élever à environ 761 m3 par an et par personne. Environ 80 pays, représentant près de 40% de la population mondiale, font face à des pénuries d'eau chroniques. C'est pourquoi si peu de conflits ont ouvertement débuté du fait disputes sur l'appropriation des ...

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Le Commissariat général du Plan a été chargé par le premier ministre français, à la demande de la Délégation pour l'Union européenne de l'Assemblée nationale, d'étudier les conséquences économiques et budgétaires de l'élargissement de l'Union européenne aux dix pays candidats d'Europe Centrale et Orientale (PECO). Cette étude est une synthèse des analyses réalisées sur le sujet, notamment celles de la Commission européenne, de l'OCDE (Organisation de coopération de développement économiques), du FMI (Fonds ...

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Pierre de Senarclens, professeur de relations internationales à l'université de Lausanne, appréhende ici les enjeux et questionnements dont l'humanitaire est l'objet. Montrant tout d'abord comment la multiplication des acteurs et des interventions conduit à la complexification d'opérations mêlant considérations humanitaires, politiques et médiatiques, il souligne le caractère problématique du développement d'un véritable « marché » concurrentiel de l'humanitaire et les effets pervers (détournement de l'aide, collusion entre responsables humanitaires et chefs de guerre...) induits ...

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Work-Sharing Policies in Europe
As the title suggests, the article by Boulin and Cette sketches the broad array of policies affecting length of the working week in European countries since the beginning of the sixties. They show the different motivations and methods which have led all these countries to resort to more or less important reductions and re-arrangements of the working week.
They show that after a phase of general reduction in the hours of work on a common model (during the sixties), some country-specific patterns evolved which were further transformed within countries by growing diversification in duration, rhythms and times of operation.
The authors identify the factors which have played a motivating role in these evolutions, by period and country: improvement in the quality of life, more effective machinery and equipment, higher productivity. They have paid special attention to the quite different methods (notably collective bargaining and statutory regulations) by which the reduction in working week has been put into effect.
Finally, and while acknowledging that the highly variable incidence of part-time work can bias international comparisons, the authors show that reduction of the working week is a tendency of long duration common to all the countries of Europe. If there is a particularly French aspect to the trend it is the important role played by government, which is doubtless attributable to shortfalls in collective bargaining.

Length of the Work-Year in Eight OECD Countries
This article is complementary to the paper by Boulin and Cette on European work sharing policies. It makes more clear for us the evolution of work-time conceived as an annual figure, in eight OECD countries. After a cautionary note on the nature of the indicators employed, it shows that important disparities exist among the countries, in trends as well as levels.
It underlines the rise of organisational structures which are supposed to offer more flexibility to employers, in labour management particularly:
- development of part-time work, for men as well as women, which is increasing everywhere except in Sweden or the U.S.,
- more or less intensive and unequal recourse to over-time work and to sharing work-time on an annual basis,
- the subtle increase which seems to be taking place in shift work, particularly in the manufacturing sector.
The authors report finally on some recent surveys of wage earners, concerning their preferences for the amount of time they spend at work and their remuneration.

The Economy of the East German Länder. A Unique Trajectory
Nine years ago the Berlin Wall was dismantled, giving way to German unification. Some have regarded this as a challenge on the scale of integrating central and eastern European countries into the European Union. While the analogy may be questionable, there is no doubt that the political economic and social challenge was formidable. Were the Eastern Länder condemned to remain for decades at the retarded periphery, the Mezzogiorno of the German industrial giant, or would they be promoted into the ranks of the most modern European regions?
Nine years later, at the end of the Kohl era, Rémi Lallement evaluates a recovery which does not fit into black and white categories. The Eastern Länder have partially caught up but have not yet overcome all of their handicaps. He explains why, showing which efforts have been successful and identifying the major challenges that remain.
The author adds, however, that the present German conjuncture is not very favorable to an accelerated pursuit of the recovery. On the other hand, it appears that the Eastern Länder are developing in a pattern noticeably different from the well known Rhenan one. Neither catch-up nor Mezzogiorno, it seems. The Eastern Länder are varied, and some of them at least could play a leadership role between the East and the West.

Employment in Europe in the Year 2015. Demographic Evolution and Ebb of Unemployment
Géry Coomans analyses here the incidence of change in the working population - and more specifically the population of working age (15-64 years) - from changes in employment and unemployment in the European Union.
He shows that the increase in workers aged 15-64 years - whose numbers and work schedules varied according to country - explains in part the changes in unemployment and under-employment during the last twenty years.
Showing then that this population category will go on decreasing to the year 2015 (at the exit of the Baby Boomers and when the Baby Busters, the low-birth-rate generation, reach working age), unemployment would be bound to decrease and labour shortages occur.
He stresses however that prospects differ according to country and region because of the very different levels in the rate of occupation (employment rate), that - in other words - pools of workers remain able to work in places where these rates are the lowest. He thus outlines two scenarios one based on the geographic mobility of the workforce, the other on investment which results in showing a comparison of prospects for development in the different regions.
One thing in any case seems evident to the writer: the scarcity of workers aged 20-29 years will lead - apart from a labour shortage - to a re-assessment of their salaries, benefiting all levels of qualification.

Ce numéro de la revue Économie et humanisme a fait de la question de l'avenir du droit d'asile son thème principal. En ouverture, les deux auteurs qui ont supervisé la réalisation du dossier s'interrogent sur le droit régissant la situation des migrants, des réfugiés et des apatrides. Suivent plusieurs articles portant sur les conditions politiques, économiques et démographiques des migrations, avec comme question sous-jacente : la mondialisation s'opposerait-elle à la libre circulation des hommes ? Dans une seconde ...

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Au moment de la dislocation de l'URSS, la recherche soviétique était considérée comme la deuxième du monde, derrière celle des États-Unis. À la fin des années 1980, 7 % du budget était consacré à la seule recherche civile ; 1,3 million de personnes étaient employées dans ce secteur. Toutefois, ce tableau avantageux masquait une autre réalité : la recherche militaire occupait une place démesurée, et dissimulée, qui imposait à l'ensemble du système les contraintes du secret et de l'isolement ...

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La fiscalité, le chômage, la retraite anticipée, le changement climatique, les réformes japonaises et l'impact de la crise asiatique sur la compétitivité commerciale sont les grands thèmes du numéro 63 des Perspectives économiques de l'OCDE. Concernant les problèmes du vieillissement démographique et l'action à mener pour préserver la prospérité, ce numéro s'attache à un aspect essentiel : la décision concernant le moment du départ à la retraite. Le rapport du nombre de retraités au nombre de salariés ...

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Globalisation and Governance: The Challenge of Planetary Public Regulation
Globalisation is not a new phenomenon, but it has now attained unprecedented amplitude, manifested particularly in economic and financial domains. At the same time it is asymetric rather than universal. Deep inequalities are a consequence, accompanied by a major challenge: governance in a context of interdependence.
The inequalities are particularly gripping, says Valaskakis. For not only do we have a divergence between rich and poor that is all the more shocking given the general level of opulence, but also a growing disparity between those who are able to participate in the system and those who are excluded. These extremes are inducing a dangerous fracture.
It is happening amid a sense that we are powerlessness to manage interdependence, reflected, for example, in the planetary ecosystem and global cyberspace.
The author has nonetheless sketched three scenarios to illustrate possible modes of regulation:
- The first of these seems most probable today. It is characterized by the decline of traditional regulatory structures maintained by the state, the rise of transnational, stateless enterprises and the development of a merciless competitive rivalry which must be suicidal in the end.
- The second would be characterized by the creation of mechanisms and institutions of governance on a planetary scale. But, observes the author, intergovernmental institutions form a mosaic of little coherence, paralyzed from the inside.
- The third scenario would be characterized by the adoption of governance systems at the regional (supra-national) level, on an appropriate economic and social scale (and with the reservation that those regions endow themselves with a minimum of protection against external aggression).
This third scenario is the one which permits the best reconciliation of the desirable and the possible. The European Union could put it in place and thus prefigure the creation of regional political spaces, which would then negociate a new planetary order among themselves. Nothing is yet in play, though; everything remains to be done.

Reality of the American Challenge
In 1967 Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber gathered the views of a dozen or so European experts and published The American Challenge. The message was a stern warning to Europeans that they were in danger of being transformed into satellites of the United States, which then held a commanding lead in information technology.
One of those experts was Michel Albert, who has taken a critical second look at the book three decades later. His first observation is that we have not witnessed the flight of American investments from Europe, and that the countries of the old continent have pulled themselves up to the same level of development as the United States. On the other hand, he emphasizes that Europe has not understood how to cope with the social challenge posed by the post-industrial revolution, in spite of its exemplary social aspirations. In Albert's analysis this defect is due to the lack of a common industrial, economic and social policy.
The American Challenge has receded, therefore, and the real challenge for Europe, beyond the single market and common currency, is to construct a real federal union.

The Impact of an Aging Population: Commentary on the OECD Report: "Aging in OECD Countries"
Several recent studies have attempted to forecast the effects of demographic aging, especially on public expenditures for retirement and health.
This article presents and discusses briefly the results of the study by OECD published in 1996 entitled "Demographic Aging in OECD Countries".
Readers will notice that boxes in the text provide the results of another study. This one, directed by Gerard Calot and Jean-Claude Chesnais, uses a different methodology, to isolate the "strict effect" of demographic aging in the European Union towards 2050.

When the World Bank Wakes up
The World Bank, official leader of the free market chorus, has finally acknowledged in its annual Report on Development for 1997 the usefulness of public institutions and especially of the state, which has played a determining role in the take-off of the rapidly developing countries of South-East Asia.
René Lenoir congratulates the Bank, while encouraging even more effort of this kind from the "gentlemen of Washington". Instead of escaping into financial speculation, they should focus on strategies of development which take into account human needs and local conditions.
Lenoir criticizes in passing the general incoherence of annual reports published by international institutions, and urges them to a collective effort of rethinking development.

En cette fin de siècle, aucun État n'est épargné par les manifestations de criminalité et de délinquance les plus diverses, voire les plus difficiles à supporter. Cet ouvrage se livre à une analyse scrupuleuse des statistiques de ces phénomènes à l'échelle de la planète qui permet de dégager les grandes tendances et d'illustrer leur importance. L'accent plus spécialement mis sur la situation des États-Unis et de la France permet d'entrer davantage dans le détail et ...

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Sous-titré Le diplomate et le marché, ce livre est plus riche que son titre ne le laisse deviner. On y trouve un abrégé d'histoire économique et monétaire, un manuel d'économie internationale, une explication de la mondialisation, mais aussi de précieux renseignements sur les mécanismes de définition et de coordination des politiques nationales visant ce domaine nécessairement partagé entre affaires étrangères, affaires économiques et finances. Ayant occupé de hauts postes dans la diplomatie économique française, à Rome puis à ...

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Cette étude offre une rétrospective et une projection du processus d'intégration économique en Amérique du Nord. Elle débute par un survol historique des relations économiques entre le Canada et les États-Unis ces 25 dernières années pour ensuite passer à la boule de cristal : l'évolution probable des relations économiques bilatérales durant le prochain quart de siècle.

L'OCDE a publié le 17 décembre 1998 ses perspectives économiques. Outre les analyses économiques générales et les rubriques propres à chaque pays, l'ouvrage a mis en place trois nouveaux chapitres thématiques concernant respectivement l'Union économique et monétaire européenne, les marchés financiers et la pauvreté. C'est ainsi que le rapport décline les objectifs qu'aura à remplir la Banque centrale européenne pour mettre en place une politique monétaire adaptée aux différents pays de la zone euro. Il ...

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Alors que l'on a longtemps cru que les océans étaient des immensités dont on pouvait disposer librement, il semble qu'il y ait une véritable prise de conscience, depuis plusieurs années, des dangers qui pesaient sur eux. À trop avoir voulu exploiter l'océan, l'homme a fini par mettre en péril les ressources qu'il contient et la qualité même de ses eaux : pollutions, surpêche,... En outre, les océans demeurent des espaces géopolitiques et commerciaux très importants, conférant ...

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Jacques Godfrain, ministre français de la Coopération de novembre 1995 à juin 1997, donne d'emblée le ton de l'ouvrage en intitulant son premier chapitre : « contre l'afro-pessimisme ». À travers le récit de sa propre expérience africaine, il montre d'abord une Afrique accueillante. Il met aussi en avant ses potentialités en termes de développement économique, soulignant la capacité du continent à tirer parti des dernières innovations technologiques, et rappelant que la croissance a repris, ces dernières années, dans ...

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