Invisible Trade : Elements for Analysis and Forecasting, Based on National Accounts,
by Hélène Ewenczyk and Jacques Régniez.
Invisible trade (service receipts and payments, international income flows, and households' consumption outside their country of residence) are of growing importance in France's foreign trade. It is increasingly clear that this must be taken into account in macro-economic models. National Accounting provides a complete and homogeneous description of foreign trade, in the "Rest of the World" account. The article by Hélène Ewenczyk and Jacques Régniez presents the econometric relationships concerning invisible trade which are to be used in conjunction with the Copain model, an annual macro-econometric model used by the Direction de la Prévision (Forecasting Office) to analyse economic policy. Relationships concerning the three main categories of invisible trade are discussed successively.
As far as services are concerned, volume exports and imports are processed separately for "services provided to companies" on the one hand, and "transport services" on the other. The explicative variables are essentially factors related to exports and imports of goods (visible trade), which were examined in Economie et Prévision, Number 50. Operations concerning the break down of these figures, and the relationships which describe them, are quite varied. But these relationships all involve explicative variables which are linked to domestic economic changes. Finally, the analysis of households' consumption outside their country of residence shows that international household movements may be seen as a consumer good with income elasticity of one.