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Tax expenditures are widely used by French governments as employment and social policies. Such programmes together amounted to more than 1.3 points of GDP in 2011. Thanks to a systematic review of academic policy evaluations, we assess the efficiency of the different parts of such policies, showing that at least €6 billion is used for policies whose cost is greater than €62,500 per year and job created, and €0.5 billion for policies whose cost is greater than €160,000 per year and job created. We examine the replacement of these tax expenditures by direct public funding for (publicly or privately delivered) "quality" jobs addressing specific social needs. We discuss the conditions under which at least comparable employment performances could be achieved (factoring in the crowding out of privately funded jobs and the properties of created jobs in terms of the service provided or the characteristics of suppliers and consumers) as well as any positive economic and social externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French and German political economies have been significantly reconfigured over the past two decades. Although the changes have often been more piecemeal than revolutionary, their cumulative effects are profound. The authors characterize the changes that have taken place as involving the institutionalization of new forms of dualism and argue that what gives contemporary developments a different character from the past is that dualism is now explicitly underwritten by state policy. They see this outcome as the culmination of a sequence of developments, beginning in the field of industrial relations, moving into labor market dynamics, and finally finding institutional expression in welfare state reforms. Contrary to theoretical accounts that suggest that institutional complementarities support stability and institutional reproduction, the authors argue that the linkages across these realms have helped to translate employer strategies that originated in the realm of industrial relations into a stable, new, and less egalitarian model with state support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany, France and the Netherlands all have specific ‘Bismarckian’ health insurance systems, which encounter different and specific problems (and solutions) from those of national health systems. Following a relatively similar trajectory, the three systems have gone through important changes: they now combine universalization through the state and marketization based on regulated competition; they associate more state control (directly or through agencies) and more competition and market mechanisms. Competition between insurers has gained importance in Germany and the Netherlands and the state is reinforcing its controlling capacities in France and Germany. Up to now, continental health insurance systems have remained, however, Bismarckian (they are still mainly financed by social contribution, managed by health insurance funds, they deliver public and private health care, and freedom is still higher than in national health systems), but a new ‘regulatory health care state’ is emerging. Those changes are embedded in the existing institutions since the aim of the reforms is more to change the logic of institutions than to change the institutions themselves. Hence, structural changes occur without revolution in the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paygo pension schemes are said to be difficult to transform. However, the study of the French pension system shows that progressively, funded schemes play a greater role in the transformation. This change has been possible, despite path-dependent forces, through four sequences. First, the change is based on a diagnosis shared among most actors, which challenges the instruments chosen in the past. Second, the new instruments are chosen in opposition to the past. Third, the new measures are adopted on the basis of an ambiguous, even contradictory, agreement. Finally, the new instruments expand incrementally, but their development is leading to cumulative change and a profound transformation of both the logic and the structure of the pension system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, the French welfare system has been reformed in three distinct ways: reducing social security deficits by increasing employer and employee social contributions; controlling spending through retrenchment of social programs; transforming the system's foundations through institutional change. First attempts at reforming the social insurance system were blocked in part by that system's own institutions. But under European Union constraints, French governments have managed to negotiate measures that reduce social benefits by sharpening the separation between the worlds of social insurance and national solidarity. Institutional reform was only marginal at first, and based on ambiguous and in some cases contradictory consensus. However, such reform is now working to further what has become a general process of "dualizing" the French welfare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Analyzes the first governmental reactions to social security deficits which implied no real changes in the social security system in France. Details on the sectoral reforms in 1990 introducing limited retrenchment; Impact of the reforms on the welfare system; Main political condition for the appearance of the structural reforms.