La dette publique: marqueur des transformations de l’économie française

Robert Boyer and Olivier Boylaud ()

Revue d'économie financière, 2022, vol. N° 146, issue 2, 101-117

Abstract: After 1945, public debt was used to finance infrastructure spending which allowed the emergence of the mode of growth of the Golden Age whose dynamism and inflationary character then ensured the reduction. Since then, the drift of the public debt testifies to the tension between the imperative of redistribution in response to the new responsibilities of the State and the limits encountered by tax levies. In 2022, the search for an alternative growth model and a functional tax system has still not succeeded, so that public debt has become the structural adjustment variable. The repercussions of the 2008 financial crisis, then that of the Euro and finally the pandemic point in the same direction: the use of public debt in response to adverse events. In the trade-off between social peace through redistribution and preparation for the future, most governments have favored the first option. In the absence of a founding compromise of the type observed in social-democratic economies, capable of reconciling these two objectives, the drift in public finances appears as a means of continuing to buy time. Can it last forever? Classification JEL : H53, H54, H63, O23, O52.

JEL-codes: H53 H54 H63 O23 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=ECOFI_146_0101 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-financiere-2022-2-page-101.htm (text/html)
restricted

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cai:refaef:ecofi_146_0101

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue d'économie financière from Association d'économie financière
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().