Convinced of the major role of public intervention in the economy, this former professor at Sciences-Po had presided over the French Observatory of economic conditions for twenty years. He died on April 15 at the age of 79.
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The economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi has left us on April 15, in Paris. State Doctor in Economic Sciences and Aggregated, He began as a professor at the University of Strasbourg where he was at the origin of the theoretical and applied economy office (beta), then at the European University Institute of Florence Before joining Sciences Po and becoming President of the French Observatory of Economic Consumption (OFCE) from 1989 to 2010. Doctor Honoris causing many universities, his work was recognized by several international awards. He also taught in France and Italy, where his fame was also very important.
Jean-Paul Fitoussi was a great economist but also a society’s thinker. He understood that our economies generate strong instabilities. The high inflation of the 1970s, the mass unemployment of the 1980s, the high interest rates of the 1990 decade due to the convergence towards the euro, the financial crisis of 2008, the sanitary crisis, then the geopolitical crisis and the geopolitical crisis and Current energy: economic instability is the norm, striking the most fragile, and public intervention must be the constant.
Capitalism is not a stable system where women and politicians change only technical elements, such as a tax or parameters of a pension system, for example. It requires permanent intervention by fiscal and monetary policy, with instruments each time adapted. His most recent reflections focused on the effects on the poorest households of rising inflation and energy prices since the war in Ukraine. How to reduce energy dependence without penalizing the poorest households?
Identify imbalances and anticipate crises to come
Jean-Paul Fitoussi has been able to draw the implications of this approach to European construction. Economic governance can not be built by economic rules: the criteria of 3% of public deficit and 60% of public debt, in addition to arbitrary, divert the reflection of imbalances that accumulate outside the budget of the ‘State. There are no uniform rules, but a place of debate to identify imbalances and anticipate upcoming crises, a place of European sovereignty therefore to coordinate and manage economic tensions.
However, the purpose of this coordination can not be to maximize growth, without worrying about inequalities or sustainability. It’s about contributing to common well-being. The intellectual force of Jean-Paul Fitoussi meets here the modesty of the economist. It is not the economist to give the meaning of the economy, but to democracy to show the future desirable. His contributions were therefore on the definition and measurement of well-being. With the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission, it has contributed since 2009 to expand the measures of economic progress beyond the only growth of the gross domestic product.
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