Growth, competition and ICT.

Summary The obsession with economic growth dominates the political discourse. The main determinant of long-term growth put forward by endogenous growth theories is innovation, but the institutional environment of economic activity is also a key element in explaining the pace of growth, and in particular, within this environment, competition, whose role is much debated. The purpose of this thesis is to study some dimensions of growth, its determinants and the policies that seek to foster it, in particular innovation and competition. The first part focuses on two types of policies that encourage innovation. The first is direct public support, through a study of the impact of the research tax credit (chapter 1). The second policy examined is the evolution of the legal framework for innovation (chapter 2). The theoretical model presented intends to take into account the new practices of intellectual property law. The second part deals with the institutional environment in the broad sense, and in particular with competition. It opens with an international comparison of the level of competition between France and several European countries in various sectors, using an econometric method based on growth equations (chapter 3). Two sectors are then analyzed in detail: the agri-food sector, whose equilibrium has been largely modified to the benefit of supermarkets in recent years (chapter 4), and the hotel-cafe-restaurant sector (chapter 5).