This review synthesizes a certain number of real-life experiences made by Prof. Archibugi, from the end of the 60s to the end of the 70s, participating in the elaboration of documents concerning the analysis and prospecting of the problems of a “new economic policy” at several international organisations.
To be precise, Prof. Archibugi was a member of the Committee of Senior Economic Advisers of the Economic Commission for Europe of the United Nations (UN-ECE) and has collaborated at the editing of a “perspective” document that the Commission adopted and tried to update annually. The document was called Overall Economic Perspectives and was regarding a long-term perspective, born from the information and evaluation exchange that the Senior Economic Advisers developed periodically at Geneva, in collaboration with the Secretary of the same Commission. The Commission, which in the first postwar years was strongly stimulated by its Secretary General’s, Gunnar Myrdal’s actions, was for a long time the only point of encounter and comparison between the countries of the advanced West (the European countries plus the United States and Canada) and the “Socialist” countries of Eastern Europe, at the time of the Cold War. And it was also the only international organisation where an analysis of the perspectives of economic development in the long term were stabilised and normalised with a horizon of at least fifteen years.
Secondly, the author has – under different titles – been part of several organisations working in the European Economic Community. As a consultant to the Italian Government at the time of the attempt at economic programming, he was part of the “Committee for the economic policy in the medium term” when editing the fourth Programme of economic policy at the medium term of the Community (1986-90). And – under the title of independent expert – he was a member of a Group of experts (made up of Jacques Delors, still expert of the French Government, Stuart Holland, a British economist and parliamentarian, and Hans Markmann, a well-known German trade union economist), which has edited, on account of the Commission of the EEC, a document on the problems of inflation (known better as “Maldague Report”, derived from the name of the Belgian Programming Commissioner who acted as chairman of the Group); stimulated by the growing inflation, the Report supplied the occasion to outline the conditions and perspectives of a strong renewal of the economic policy in Europe, both at a national and the European Community level.
This book wanted to represent only a critical “review” of the tendencies that have emerged in the here recorded works and documents. Where possible, without changing the review nature of this work, Prof. Archibugi has expressed his personal, critical views with respect to the final form of those very documents.
The elaboration and reflection activities which have been developed in several international organisations normally find a scarce echo in Italy. Those organisations’ own official documents have not found satisfying acquaintance and diffusion – also because of the well-known linguistic difficulties. The “insiders” themselves have met difficulties regarding information and documentation in Italy. Maybe a testimony and a review of this kind can develop a useful informative as well as didactic function.
And with the passing of time, the review can constitute an instrument to recall the topics that were at the centre of attention in the 70s and obtained also the importance of a historical testimony. For this reason the Planning Studies Centre has arranged to make a re-edition of it, at the disposal of all those interested.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1
Introduction: the global problem of a change in economic policy

Chapter 2
Critical analysis of the principal factors of economic development in the long term
1. The “Overall Economic Perspective” (OEP) of the ONU-ECE
2. The most important factors of development in the long term

Chapter 3
An overall framework of the problems of growth
1. The growing needs of capital and the restructuring of the economy
2. The restructuring of the occupations
3. The growth rates

Chapter 4
The future evolution of the international economic relations
1. The context
2. The fields of cooperation
3. The mechanisms of cooperation

Chapter 5
The demographic perspectives, the perspectives of the labour and capital market and those of the productiveness in Western Europe
1. The demographic factor
2. Perspectives and problems of the occupation and productiveness

Chapter 6
Energy forecast and policy at an international level
1. The perspectives of energy consumption
2. The sources of supply
3. The energy equilibrium

Chapter 7
Environmental forecast and policy
1. Character of an environmental policy at a European level
2. The policies against pollution
3. The “global” management of the environment

Chapter 8
Emerging trends for a coordinated monetary and commercial policy at the European Community level
1. Historical preface
2. Analysis of the changes in the international economic-monetary “order”
3. The proposed kind of international “new order”
4. Trends of the common monetary and commercial policy in Europe
5. With regard to the “balance of payments”

Chapter 9
The lines of action followed by the European Community in the field of economic and social “structure”
1. The reduction of regional imbalances
2. The directions of a new industrial policy
3. The directions of a new social policy

Chapter 10
The character and the limits of an occupation policy in the Programmes of the European Community
1. A policy of the labour market
2. The promotion of occupation
3. The possibilities of a restructuring of occupation
4. The limits of a EC occupation policy

Chapter 11
The character and the limits of a policy of the control and direction of production in the Programmes of the European Community
1. Concentration control
2. The promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises
3. The elimination of “artificial” advantages
4. The consumer “protection”

Chapter 12
Towards a new European Community development model
1. Substantial tendencies and formal checks to the development of a new policy
2. The analysis of inflation and its causes
3. The contents of a “new development model”
4. New forms of work and occupation
5. A new consumer policy

Chapter 13
The policy of the public expenditures
1. The proportional increment of the public expenditures
2. The criteria of selectivity of the public expenditures
3. The increase of effectiveness of the public expenditures

Chapter 14
A new industrial policy and the control of the production
1. The analysis of “meso-economic” power
2. The control of “meso-economic enterprises”
3. The promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises
4. The control of the prices

Chapter 15
Towards a new framework for planning and conducting
1. Towards a new system of social accounting
2. A new system of social conducting of planning
3. A precise definition of the plan procedures
4. A system of choices as the foundation of planning at a national and EC level