PUBLICATIONS | Policy Briefs
16 July 2024
Anne Épaulard, Paul Malliet, Anissa Saumtally, Xavier Timbeau
The European Union (EU) has embarked on an ambitious ecological transition based on the European Green Deal, which aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. This Policy brief examines the environmental policies put in place by the von der Leyen Commission and analyzes their impact on the European economy and the different countries. The Green Deal includes measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote the circular economy and protect biodiversity...
27 June 2024
Elliot Aurissergues, Christophe Blot, Edgar Carpentier-Charléty, Magali Dauvin, François Geerolf, Éric Heyer, Mathieu Plane
The eurozone has gone through a series of crises that have sometimes threatened its survival, but these have also led to reforms in its fiscal governance and to changes in how it conducts monetary policy. On the eve of the European elections, 25 years after its creation, the question arises of how well the eurozone’s economy has performed in comparison with the US economy...
30 May 2024
Sébastien Bock, Aya Elewa, Sarah Guillou, Mauro Napoletano, Lionel Nesta, Evens Salies, Tania Treibich
Over the past 20 years, the gap in per capita income between the United States and the eurozone, which stood at around €10,000 in 2000, has not narrowed. It has widened since 2012. GDP per capita in the eurozone fell from 77% to 72% of US GDP per capita the 2000 and 2019, thus diverging from the level of wealth on the other side of the Atlantic.
This gradual decoupling of GDP per capita started before the pandemic...
24 April 2024
Elliot Aurissergues, Bruno Coquet, Magali Dauvin, Ombeline Jullien de Pommerol, Pierre Madec, Raul Sampognaro
French growth is expected to reach an annual average of 0.5% in 2024. This downward revision of our growth forecast from 0.8% in October 2023 is due mainly to weaker than expected growth for 2024 (ultimately -0.15 GDP point lower for 2024 than previously forecast) and a new 10 billion euro fiscal adjustment program, whose impact on GDP is estimated at -0.2 GDP point in 2024. In 2025, French growth is forecast at 1.2%, despite the positive effects of lower interest rates (0.2 GDP point)...
23 November 2023
OFCE Analysis and Forecasting Department, Éric Heyer (dir.) and Xavier Timbeau (dir.)
In 2023, with inflation still high (+5.2% in 2023, as in 2022) and a context marked by a sharp rise in key ECB interest rates, France's GDP will grow by 0.9%.
2024 should see falling inflation (3.3% annual average and 2.3% year-on-year at year-end), but growth will remain modest (0.8%) as hikes in the key interest rates take full effect...
26 June 2023
Johanna Deperi, Ludovic Dibiaggio, Mohamed Keita, Lionel Nesta
Artificial intelligence (AI) is viewed as the next technological revolution. The aim of this Policy Brief is to identify France's strengths and weaknesses in this great race for AI innovation. We characterise France's positioning relative to other key players and make the following observations:
1. Without being a world leader in innovation incorporating artificial intelligence, France is showing moderate but significant activity in this field.
2...
22 October 2021
Xavier Timbeau, Elliot Aurissergues, Eric Heyer
We propose a definition of public debt sustainability based on the possibility of conducting a fiscal effort or giving support to a macroeconomic path that makes it possible to reach a public debt target over a given horizon.
The concepts of a fiscal effort and a macroeconomic trajectory are both speculative, as they rely on the anticipation of unknown futures...
09 March 2021
Xavier Ragot
The purpose of this Policy brief is to present an estimate of the fiscal space for a new stimulus plan in France that takes fully into account the impact of the low interest rate environment.
Negative rates should lead to a different way to measure the public debt, a method that complements the Maastricht measurement...
06 July 2020
Mattia Guerini, Lionel Nesta, Xavier Ragot, Stefano Schiavo
We simulate the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on corporate solvency using a sample of around one million French nonfinancial companies, assuming they minimize their production costs in the context of a sharp drop in demand.
We find that the lockdown triggers an unprecedented increase in the share of illiquid and insolvent firms, with the former more than doubling relative to a No-Covid scenario (growing from 3.8% to more than 10%) and insolvencies increasing by 80% (from 1.8% to...
18 June 2020
Jérôme Creel, Mario Holzner, Francesco Saraceno, Andrew Watt, Jérôme Wittwe
The Recovery Fund recently proposed by the EU Commission marks a sea-change in European integration. Yet it will not be enough to meet the challenges Europe faces. There has been much public debate about financing, but little about the sort of concrete projects that the EU should be putting public money into.
Here we propose a 10-year, €2tn investment programme focusing on public health, transport infrastructure and energy/decarbonisation.
It consists of two pillars...