This English edition of a book first written in 1984-85 for French readers provides a detailed economic analysis of the situation in 1981 and of the policies applied up to 1986. The authors, who worked during all this period on quantitative studies of current macroeconomic issues and who carefully scrutinized with some sympathy the fate of socialist decisions, were advantageously placed for writing on the topic. With the addition of just one adjective, I can endorse the assessment made by the publisher before the front page:
"This book is arguably the most detailed examination available of the [economic] reasons for, and the development and lasting legacy of, a key period in recent French political and economic history."
The authors are using all the tools now commons for teams of economists working in public national and international institutions. Particularly noteworthy is their frequent and clever presentation of results obtained from economtric models giving the estimated impacts of policies or of changes in the environment. Even readers sensitive to the criticisms voiced during the last two decades against macroeconometrics ought to recognize the value of the method when it is applied by honest and shrewd analysts.
Edmond Malinvaud, Professeur au Collège de France, Journal of Economic Litterature, 1992-01-04.