ABSTRACT
The logical consequence of the structuralist diagnosis - and it is the consequence which J. P. Fitoussi draws - is to abandon global demand management, and instead resort to selective policies. “Structuralists” are people who not only complain about some of the aggregate generalisations of the Keynesian and monetarist schools but do something about it. Several basic assumptions underly the structuralist approach. In any explanation of the problem at hand it seems to be necessary to acknowledge the fact of heterogeneous labour and product markets, of asymmetrical price and quantity adaptations, and of mutual quantity constraints between product and labour markets. The structure of productive capacities and of effective demand are assumed to remain as unchanged as the composition of the labour force. Unemployment has become rather inelastic with respect to increases in demand pressure. The assumption of a homogeneous macroeconomic state is a prerequisite for the Keynesian hypothesis of a basic trade-off between inflation and unemployment.
