Under the Bretton Woods system, fixed parities vs. the dollar required that national monetary policies follow that of the United States. The demise of that system raised the question of the need for some other form of macroeconomic policy coordination.From a theoretical point of view, coordination amounts to tailoring each country's policies to match those recommended by an "all-knowing global pla... Lire la suite
The rise of the emerging countries has transformed the geography of global trade. The major developed countries, France included, are seeking to win market share in these countries. By comparison with its main European partners, France needs to focus its efforts on certain regions where it lacks presence, e.g. emerging Asia, the oil producing countries, and Eastern Europe.As far as market shares a... Lire la suite
There are several methods for dating past economic cycles, but it is harder to define where we are in the cycle in real time. The difficulty in detecting turning points sufficiently quickly can give rise to substantial forecasting errors, generally common to the entire forecasting community.The practice, in that case, consists in consulting business tendency surveys and, in the past ten years or s... Lire la suite
The link between exchange rates and interest rates is a recurring topic of discussion among economists and financial analysts, with particular emphasis on how a monetary policy shift affects the exchange rate.This article focus on the relationship referred to as uncovered interest-rate parity (UIP). UIP formalises the following principle: when two currencies' relative interest rates diverge substa... Lire la suite
Moving to a single currency has reduced trading costs, enhanced price transparency and increased financial stability. However, the euro area is sometimes subject to asymmetric shocks. In order to respond to these shocks, EMU Member States can rely on appropriate national policies, or other real dynamics adjustment mechanisms, such as real competitiveness adjustments or the mobility of production f... Lire la suite
To safeguard against credit risk and prevent a systemic crisis, banks must comply with prudential regulations requiring them to hold a certain amount of capital for each loan granted. The Basel II Capital Accord has reformed the procedures for calculating regulatory capital - which now increases with borrower risk - as part of efforts to strengthen the stability of the international banking system... Lire la suite
The balance of global growth has shifted since summer 2006 in geographical terms. The United States has been experiencing a soft landing since the middle of last year, under the influence of the housing market downturn, which will probably continue to act as a drag on the economy for much of 2007. Eurozone growth (year-on-year) overtook the United States at the end of 2006, indicating a decoupling... Lire la suite
Until the end of the 1990’s, the rapid growth of trade has had only a limited impact on Europe’s labour markets and inequalities, insofar as it mainly affected countries with comparable levels of development. The growing share of the major emerging countries in world trade could change this pattern, notably by pushing the European countries to specialise more: that is what the growth in the share... Lire la suite
The French unemployment rate fall to 8.6% at the end of 2006, its lowest level since 1983. For the year as a whole, unemployment has declined by around 1 percentage point: can we put this fall entirely down to a good economic situation, or does it also reflect structural improvements in the labour market?To answer this question we need to distinguish between cyclical and structural components in t... Lire la suite
Several reports published in recent years have highlighted the gap that has opened up between Europe (notably France) and the United States in terms of the number of patents filed. Taking the number of "triadic patents" (filed simultaneously in the United States, Japan and with the European Patent Office), the European Union (EU) filed 35 patents per million head of population versus 66 in the Uni... Lire la suite