For the last fifty years, the American system of social stratification has known a great turn: after the equalisation and social interventionism of the prosperity 1950-1970, a reversion appears. Since 1970, a superclass has been concentrating the outcome of the growth, the middle class is...

The strong American growth is considered as mainly coming from the diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It is at the root of the « new economy » concept. Good theoretical arguments support the thesis of a new technological paradigm, such as those delivered by General...

Traditionally in French, social link was derogatory, recently it has become wishful goal. The book by Robert D. Putnam, Bowling alone, analyses a great deal of material to show that Americans are loosing their traditional associativeness. Some of his indices are not quite convincing. A...

This article estimates inobservable components models for studying the division of the zone euro GDP between trends and cycles, using quarterly data covering all the decades 1960 to 1990. Three approaches are confronted: they respectively identify the European cycles starting from the aggregate...

The paper shows how to exploit monthly data to forecast the growth of real GDP over the two next quarters. We first notice that the well-known coincident and leading composite indicators don?'t permit to obtain a reliable forecast, which is not surprising because they have not been built for...

The dependency ratio is expected to rise from 39.5% in 2000 to 79.5% in 2040 due to the increase in life expectancy and falling birth rates in Europe. Even with full employment and higher employment rates, the ratio of pensions to GDP would rise from 12.5 to 18.3%. Most European countries have...

From 1997 to 2001, the French unemployment rate fell by around 4 points. We show it can reach 5 % in 2005 under favorable but realistic assumptions. Lower interest rates could imply a higher investment rate, which would however remain under its level in the 60s. This would allow a 1.1 point fall...