The primary purpose of this paper is to study the extent to which prices and markets can be employed as means towards efficient control of pollution. The model which is examined is, however, sufficiently general to apply to any sort of externalities among producers and consumers, including classical public goods. In the first section we consider the problem of efficient means of achieving a specified standard of environmental quality. We then briefly discuss the more difficult problem of choosing the environmental quality standards themselves.

As was to be expected, the last conference of the International Monetary Fund at Nairobi has not lead to an immediate and major reform of the international monetary system. What has become clear, however, is that the major trading countries envisage a system of fixed exchange rates for the future with the proviso of more frequent adjustments. The present state of floating exchange rates may therefore be considered as transitory and the fixed exchange rate system retains the primary interest of investigation.

L'objet de cette étude est de présenter tout d'abord un aperçu général de l’évolution régionale des structures industrielles belges (première partie). A partir d'échantillons des principales entreprises installées en Belgique, nous examinerons ensuite dans quelle mesure, pour ces entreprises, l'appartenance régionale a joué, aux côtés d'autres variables telles que la dimension, le secteur industriel, la structure de propriété, un rôle spécifique (deuxième partie).

Depuis longtemps la science économique a recours à des modèles. Elle entend par modèle tout ensemble d'hypothèses décrivant une économie, un secteur ou le comportement d'un agent.

L'industrie textile est implantée en Belgique depuis des siècles et elle y a connu un développement et une prospérité remarquables. Toutefois, elle porte aujourd'hui le poids de son passé, de ses traditions. Tout en restant un élément actif de la vie industrielle du pays, si l'on en juge par sa part dans la valeur ajoutée des industries manufacturières, elle n'en est pas moins caractérisée par un rythme d'expansion lent. L'industrie textile belge cherche son second souffle, et les secteurs traditionnels se débattent dans de grosses difficultés liées à l'ancienneté de leur équipement, la concurrence des fibres nouvelles et l'apparition de nouveaux producteurs dans les pays en voie de développement.

The capitalist market economy has been not only a notoriously bad export article to developing countries, but even in the advanced economies dissatisfaction is growing. The Soviet-type of command economy never having been a realistic alternative for Western societies, labor representatives and businessmen alike are now concerned with “adjusting the system” in order to improve working conditions and human relationships on the job to reduce the ever costlier labor disputes and social unrests which we are able to witness. Sofar adjustment has been taking the direction of “job enrichment” without, however, leading to striking, or permanently granted, successes. A real alternative, requiring fundamental departures from the capitalist model is offered by labor-management or, as expressed more appropriatly in the French terminology, “autogestion”. If it is recognized, as probably most economists would be ready to do, that the pivotal two, but not unrelated, causes of the socioeconomic malaise are, on the one hand, the increasing concentration of power, letting competitive forces only play at the margins of capitalist society, and, on the other hand, the increasing alienation of the working man from the decisions about, and the product of, his activity, then labor-management suggests almost itself. Furthermore, in the Western world where, apparently, we are strongly committed to democratic principles, simple logic would lead us to request that these principles be applied consistently and should not, therefore, stop at factory gates.