By Eric Heyer and Hervé Péléraux
At the end of 2012, five years after the start of the crisis, France’s GDP has still not returned to its earlier level (Figure 1). At the same time, the labour force in France has grown steadily and technical progress has constantly raised workers’ productivity. We are therefore more numerous and more productive than 5 years ago when output was lower: the explosion in unemployment is a symptom of this mismatch. Why had the shoots of recovery seen in 2009 been choked off by mid-2010?
The main factor stifling the recovery has been the austerity measures that were enacted in France and Europe in 2010 and then intensified in 2011 and 2012 (Table 1). The impact of austerity has been all the more marked as it has been generalized throughout the euro zone. The effects of domestic cutbacks have combined with the effects of undercutting demand from other European partners. Given that 60% of France’s exports are to the European Union, any external stimulus had virtually vanished by mid-2012, less due to the slowdown in global growth, which is still almost 3%, than to the consequence of the poor performance of the euro zone, which is on the brink of recession.
It is austerity that is at the root of the lack of growth: after shaving -0.7 GDP point off growth in 2010, its effects increased in 2011 and 2012 (respectively -1.5 and -2.1 points) because of the stepped-up measures and the existence of high fiscal multipliers. Indeed, in a period of low economic activity simultaneously tightening fiscal policy in all the European countries while there is very little manoeuvring room for monetary policy (real interest rates close to zero) has led to raising the value of the multiplier. There is now a broad consensus that the short-term fiscal multipliers are high, especially as full employment is still out of reach (see Heyer (2012) for a review of the literature on multipliers). The theoretical debate about the value of the multiplier and the role of agents’ expectations must give way to empirical observation: the multipliers are positive and greater than 1.
In addition to the fiscal drag, there is the effect of tight monetary conditions: the easing of monetary policy – seen in particular in the lower key interest rates – is far from enough to offset the negative effect on the economy of tighter borrowing conditions and the widening of the spread between private investment and risk-free public investment.
All things considered, including taking into account the impact of the resurgence in oil prices after the onset of the recession, the spontaneous growth of the French economy would have averaged 2.6% over the past three years. The realization of this potential would have led to a further reduction in excess production capacity and would ultimately have cut short the downturn in the economy that actually took place.