Decius wrote: "The question of how economics is taught in France, both at the bottom and at the top of the educational pyramid, is at the heart of the current crisis," said Jean-Pierre Boisivon, director of the Enterprise Institute, a company-financed institute that sponsors the internship program for economics teachers that Scache took part in.
This is the most intelligent analysis of the protests in France that I've seen thus far. The students are doing exactly what they have been taught to do.
If you found this interesting: Durrleman, a former adviser to Chirac, said he aims to make future leaders studying at ENA more aware of how companies work. He has overhauled both the entry exam and the program to include topics related to applied economics and business administration. Since 2003, all students at ENA must go on a one-month internship in a company; 20 percent of the 100 students do a six-month corporate internship. From next year, everyone will have to spend at least three months in the private sector. "I believe we need more cross-fertilization in France," Durrleman said. "Companies create wealth, they finance the state. The state must understand companies."
You may be interested in the review of new books on globalization in the New York Review of Books: Berger is clear that acting on their own, companies cannot make all the needed adjustments. Governments have a major part in creating an environment in which businesses can plan for the future, but how governments do this will depend on the type of capitalism they must deal with. As she acknowledges in a lucid discussion, capitalism comes in several varieties reflecting different cultural traditions and political systems. Within this wide variety two different kinds of market economy can be distinguished: liberal market economies, like Britain's and the United States', in which allocation and coordination of resources takes place mainly through markets; and coordinated market economies, like Germany's and Japan's, in which negotiation, long-term relationships, and other nonmarket mechanisms are used to resolve the major issues.
These divergent capitalisms are competing and they learn from one another but the result is cross-fertilization, not evolution toward a single model. What works well varies not only from company to company but also from country to country. There is no one set of policies or institutions that can yield prosperity in all societies—or for all companies. The belief that globalization means the triumph of one way of doing business is not only historically false. It is a dangerously mistaken basis for corporate strategy. As Berger puts it, summarizing the results of the years of research conducted by her team: Succeeding in a world of global competition is a matter of choices, not a matter of searching for the one best way -- we discovered no misconception about globalization more dangerous than this illusion of certainty.
Economics, French-style | IHT |
