Abstract

The article focuses on national economic planning and business decision making in the context of France. The proponents of national planning generally emphasize the inherent weaknesses of the market mechanism, which create the need for the elaboration of an overall plan to provide the individual decision maker with sufficient information to relate his decisions to those of the rest of the business community. The French economy, basically a market economy, has been subject to planning for more than two decades, and the French system of planning has attracted considerable attention. Among the industrialized nonsocialist countries France has gone furthest in planning its economic affairs. Its system has been in effect for more than 20 years and can be used as a model in attempting to find specific answers to the questions above by investigating the interrelationship between French national planning and the decision making of French business firms. This article presents the pertinent findings of such an investigation, based on in-depth interviews with business executives and information obtained through questionnaires completed by executives of almost 400 French firms.