Germany's unemployment rate hardly budged during the crisis: it was 7.3% in 2008 and 7.5% in 2009. This contrasts sharply with what happened in the other large countries of the euro zone - increases from 11.4% to 18.0% in Spain, from 7.8% to 9.4% in France, from 6.8% to 7.8% in Italy - and it occurred even though output in Germany declined by far more than the euro zone average. Three factors shed... Lire la suite
The National Bureau of Economic Research has dated the end of America's "Great Recession" to June 2009, but the very nature of the current U.S. recovery remains uncertain. Growth is fragile; the situation on the labor market remains poor; and any improvement will depend on the strength of economic activity and the job content of the recovery. Historically, throughout the post-war period until the... Lire la suite
The decline in industrial employment has affected France like many of the developed economies. It can be pictured in the light of three concomitant trends over the period 1980-2007, namely the decline in industrial employment, a fall in this sector's contribution to GDP and, in parallel, strong growth in the market services sector.French industrial employment fell from 5.3 to 3.4 million jobs over... Lire la suite
Getting gradually a more balanced Chinese growth by fostering consumption is instrumental in achieving global economic stability. Il would help in lowering gradually China's current account surpluses and reducing global imbalances.The stabilisation of China's working population between now and 2015, coupled with the drying up of much of the pool of rural migrants (mainly men aged 18-30), are expec... Lire la suite
As part of the enlargement of the European Union on 1 May 2004 and 1 January 2007, it was agreed that the fifteen existing member states could introduce transitional provisions to regulate the access of NMS citizens (but those of Cyprus and Malta) to their labour markets.Like most of the "old" member states, France implimented these restrictions opening up gradually its labour market to citizens o... Lire la suite
After the great recession of 2008-2009, global activity stabilized in the spring of 2009 and picked up in the summer, when most economies emerged from recession. But the recovery is fragile: in Q4 2009, when the rebound was confirmed in the United States and Japan, activity faltered in most European countries.The economic rebound has been so far driven by stimulus plans and the inversion of the in... Lire la suite
The Institutional Profiles Database (IPD) is a database quantifying the institutional characteristics of a set of developing and developed countries. The third IDP was published recently and can be consulted at no charge. It now covers 123 developed, transition and developing countries. Its predecessors, the 2001 and 2006 editions, covered 51 and 85 countries respectively.IPD 2009 has been enriche... Lire la suite
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