Jean-Claude Delaunay – författare

The growth of the services sector has transformed developed societies, their economic characteristics, their occupational structures, and even their political priorities and value systems. No comprehensive theory of this growth exists, but for three centuries a number of major economists and social scientists have sought to analyze and explain its characteristics, dimensions and consequences. This book surveys and evaluates these theoretical contributions on services growth, from the mercantilists and classicists to contemporary works, those beginning with Fisher, Clark and Fourasite, and further developed by Fuchs, Bell, Baumol, Stanback, and Gershuny among others. Throughout this critical survey the major issues raised by the ongoing development of the services are pointed out: are services a new engine for economic growth or "nonproductive" deadweights?; how should services be classified in order to better understand their social functions?; what about their productivity and possible industrialization?; and are services the basis for new social and human relationships?This book helps to shed theoretical light on these current controversies, which are among the most important at the present stage of our economic development.

Services today account for a major share of employment and national product in the U. S. , with the employment share up from 57 percent immediately post-war to well over 70 percent today (if communications, utilities and transportation are included). This transformation (which is also occurring with varying lags in the othereconomically advanced economies) is driven by a variety of forces : by changes in consumer demand, by the rising demand for health and educational services, by new ways in which businesses are organized and the increasing importance ofcertain functions (e. g. new demands for monitoring, financing, sales promotion, and responding to regulatory agencies), and, closely related, by the continuing advances in electronic technology. Moreover, these multiple transformations have been accompanied by changes in the way work is carried out (e. g. the dramatic increases in the utilization of white collar workers, particularly professionals and managers, and the employment of women and educated workers), and by shifts in the location of work and of the population (e. g. rising importance of key cities within the urban system and of suburbs generally). The role of services in modem capitalistic economies is not yet integrated into the body of economic theory, although the need for such integration, especially as regards theories ofgrowth, market structure, and pricing, is critical. Some economists and sociologists, however, have since the days of Adam Smith, dealt with certain aspects of the role of services.