The French housing market is characterized by inadequate growth in supply relative to growth in the number of households.From 2003 to 2007 the acceleration in demand arising from the easing of financial conditions, new tax incentives, and probably the speculative nature of some property investments, led to increased pressure on prices.In a symmetric manner, the downturn in the housing market since... Lire la suite
The environment market has expanded very rapidly since 1970. Initially confined to pollution cleanup services, it has expanded over the past ten years with the emergence of "clean" products and technologies in most sectors of the economy.It is still hard to form a picture of the environment market in statistical terms due to the lack of any standardised definition. The United Nations Environmental... Lire la suite
Non-financial corporations registered a sharp increase in their debt between 2004 and 2008 (by 10 percentage points of their value added). By 2008 this had reached 121% of their value added (€1,203 billion).This increase in debt since 2004 appears unrelated to the acquisition of financial assets, unlike in the late-1990s. Against a background of relatively stable mark-ups and rising dividend payou... Lire la suite
Various studies of the trade performance of France and Germany find similarity in the two countries' sectoral export specializations. An examination of highly disaggregated data using the CEPII revealed comparative advantage indicator yields a more nuanced view. When examining aggregated data, France and Germany are found to have similar areas of revealed comparative advantage but those areas are... Lire la suite
GDP cannot be regarded as the sole indicator of economic performance and social progress. This is the underlying finding of the Stiglitz Commission, which has made an unprecedented effort to study the entire body of theoretical and empirical literature devoted to measuring economic performance, quality of life, and environmental sustainability.As an indicator of economic performance, GDP is in nee... Lire la suite
The turmoil at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was followed by a lull in Q2 2009. With the stimulus plans starting to take effect, the pace of decline in activity slowed and certain countries even posted positive growth. This, coupled with the improvement seen on the financial markets, has tended to confirm the scenario of a gradual stabilisation of activity.The upturn is likely to remai... Lire la suite
Japan's labour market model stands apart from that of other countries by the importance it places on employment, which it seeks to guarantee for life, while maintaining a high degree of wage flexibility. Among others, this has given rise to a system of company trade unions not seen elsewhere, and has led to a situation in which the unemployment rate is not particularly relevant as a variable. Gene... Lire la suite
Emerging countries' payments balances have come under severe pressure since the onset of the crisis in Autumn 2008, as widespread deleveraging has led to massive capital outflows from these countries. In earlier crises affecting the emerging countries migrants' remittances proved resilient, acting as a stable source of financing. This appears to have been less the case in the present crisis, howev... Lire la suite
The French employment premium, called "Prime Pour l'Emploi" (PPE), was introduced in 2001 to give incentives to people to go to back to work and to provide financial support to low-paid workers.The PPE is a tax credit granted to households that earn below a specific ceiling for taxable income and is based on labor income of each of its members. The PPE-scheme has been substantially revised since i... Lire la suite
Both the American and the Japanese crises originated in the bursting of speculative bubbles, forcing private agents–households in the case of the USA, and non-banks in the Japanese case–to reduce their debt. In the case of Japan, debt reduction in the midst of a financial crisis triggered a deflationary spiral. A Japanese-style deflationary spiral seems unlikely in the United States, despite simil... Lire la suite