Le comportement des prix agricoles dans l'inflation au cours des années 70. Comparaison entre les pays de la C.E.E

In spite of the economical crisis and the development of inflation, the agricultural prices declining trend in Western Europe remained basically unchanged over the seventies. Nevertheless, the agricultural prices evolution, compared with the general inflation, is more favourable in the high inflation and weak currency countries than in the low inflation and strong currency ones. Agricultural prices seem less related to the general level of prices than to the price of the intermediate consumptions. In the Netherlands, because of a particularly slow increase of the intermediate consumptions price, agricultural prices can stay far below the general level of prices, without any loss for the producers. In this, the Dutch strong position in the international agricultural competition seems less related to the producers efficiency than to the low prices of the inputs they use. If one expresses the agricultural prices in ECU, the great dispersion of the national prices evolutions gives place to a remarkable concentration. Consequently, it appears that in spite of the agro-monetary disturbances, the Common Market unifying effect on agricultural prices remains important. Nevertheless, the determination of the national agricultural prices on the basis of a common price expressed in unit of account seems, because of the differences beetwen the european currencies, likely to accentuate the dispersion of the national rates of inflation. For this reason, the green moneys system doesn't appear economically unjustified. On the contrary the MCAs do not seem to be well adjusted to the situation ot the different national market prices.