I read your excellent posting on the debate between Paul Krugman and Bill O'Reilly ["Kill Bill? No, Paul is Dead" 8/9/2004].

I am a french economist, at the University of Perpignan in the south of France (near the Spain frontier), very inspired by the French classical school and Austrian economics. In the French university, Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz are great academic references becauses french economist think they are against free market economics, asking for state regulation and so on.

During the last twenty years, the United States had remained prosperous, productive and dynamic -- contrary to Europe, and especially France. French politicians never understand the fact that the tradition of law, respect of private property, tradition of profit and contractual freedom, are the engine of growth. They have forgottent the excellent analysis of french classical economics as Bastiat, J. B. Say and Molinaro. But today, we have forgotten our classical public education is more and more collectivist one.

In my country, for example, analysis of "market failures" is the dominant topic in the academic institution and the French state (and French mentality) is very strongly for interventionnism and centralism in all aspects of social life (not only economic, but education, health, culture and so on). Paris controls the recruitment of professors in my university, and in all French public universities.

The politicians, with the state machine, want to "regulate" the economic sphere because they have the conviction -- and they diffuse this conviction with education and media system -- that the free market is not an auto-regulated system. This is the fallacy of mercantilism: it is a very strong fallacy today (see my articles concerning the World Trade Organization).

Jean-Louis Caccomo
Maître de conférences en sciences économiques
Université de Perpignan