The economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi left us on April 15, in Paris. Doctor of State in economics and agrégé, he began as a professor at the University of Strasbourg where he was at the origin of the Office of Theoretical and Applied Economics (Beta), then at the European University Institute in Florence , before joining Sciences Po and becoming president of the French Economic Observatory (OFCE) from 1989 to 2010. Doctor Honoris Causa of many universities, his work has been recognized by several international awards. He also taught in France and Italy, where his reputation was also very important.
Jean-Paul Fitoussi was a great economist but also a social thinker. He understood that our economies generate strong instabilities. The high inflation of the 1970s, the mass unemployment of the 1980s, the high interest rates of the 1990s due to the convergence towards the Euro, the financial crisis of 2008, the health crisis, then the geopolitical crisis and current energy: economic instability is the norm, hitting the most fragile, and public intervention must be the constant.
Capitalism is not a stable system where politicians only change technical elements, such as a tax or the parameters of a pension system, for example. It requires permanent intervention through budgetary and monetary policy, with instruments adapted each time. His most recent thoughts focused on the effects on poorer households of rising inflation and energy prices since the war in Ukraine. How to reduce energy dependence without penalizing the poorest households?
Identify imbalances and anticipate future crises
Jean-Paul Fitoussi was able to draw the implications of this approach for European construction. We cannot build economic governance by economic rules: the criteria of 3% public deficit and 60% public debt, in addition to being arbitrary, distract from thinking about the imbalances that accumulate outside the budget of the ‘State. We do not need uniform rules, but a place of debate to identify imbalances and anticipate future crises, a place of European sovereignty therefore to coordinate and manage economic tensions.
However, the aim of this coordination cannot be to maximize growth, without worrying about inequalities or sustainability. It is about contributing to the common well-being. The intellectual strength of Jean-Paul Fitoussi here meets the modesty of the economist. It is not up to the economist to give the meaning of the economy, but to democracy to show desirable futures. His contributions have therefore focused on the definition and measurement of well-being. With the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi commission, he contributed from 2009 to broaden the measures of economic progress beyond the growth of the gross domestic product alone.
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