Report
Patrick Artus

Is Emmanuel Macron a "liberal president"?

If we refer to the standard work on liberal economics (Milton Friedman’ s “Capitalism and Freedom”, 1962), a liberal economic policy can be characterised by: A search for equal rights and opportunities, but not income equality; Monetary support for the poor (in particular through negative taxes), but not by providing certain free services or by granting aid (minimum wage, housing, healthcare); An end to union monopoly; The principle that companies must be as efficient as possible from the shareholders’ viewpoint, and that they must not have any social objective that could distract them from this objective; The absence of a discretionary, countercyclical fiscal policy , because there is Ricardian neutrality; The principle that the state shall limit its intervention to areas where there is a significant externality on the functioning of the economy: justice, compliance with laws and contracts, security, basic education. If we take these six criteria, we can then say that Emmanuel Macron is liberal within the meaning of criteria 1-2 and partially criterion 3, but not within the meaning of criteria 4-5-6.
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Natixis
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Analysts
Patrick Artus

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