Contenu du sommaire : Aspects de la contrainte extérieure

France's foreign trade over the last decade, by Thierry Francq, Dominique Lamiot. The degree of openness of the French economy has increased during the last decade, as a confirmation of France's integration into world economy. The geographical specialization of its foreign trade has changed. Services have done much to keep our trade balance close to equilibrium. As a result, our current account position has constantly been maintained at appropriate levels. But the external constraint remains and encourages France to strenghten its supply capacities in the manufacturing sector, in order to boost our trade performances. This task will be eased by the recent rise of industrial investment. This paper aims at presenting these various aspects of French foreign trade over the last decade. The French performance in export is compared to the German one.

Competitiveness and price elasticities of external trade, by Jean Math is. Competitiveness is a common concept yet not well defined as far as macroeconomics are concerned. The current account balance is an outcome of competitiveness and not a measurement ; in addition it depends on the general macroeconomic equilibrium and not only on competitiveness. A definition of competitiveness is suggested. Then a very simple model is used to isolate a few parameters that can be a measure of competitiveness. Next, the macroeconomic strategy of competitiveness is defined. Attention is paid to the elasticities of import demand and export demand, for those appear to be crucial parameters of competitiveness ; in particular, the question of their variability with relative prices is examined.

External trade and comparative advantages : French and competitors' specialization compared, by Jean-Luc Tavernier. The weaknesses of french specialization are sometimes blamed for the deteriorating french performance in manufacturing trade. If it seems obvious that french manufacturing supply has been adaptating too slowly to changes in international demand since the early 80's, it appears more difficult to ascertain how poorly specialized french industrial production has really been. This article shows, through a set of converging indicators, that France is the industrial country that has the fewer comparative advantages or disavantages. Moreover, french specialisation has proved very unstable. The structure of french external trade differs markedly, therefore, from the inert but very coherent specialisation of german industry, which has allowed some sectors to benefit from positive spillover effects and to be insulated from macroeconomic fluctuations. This specialization is also very different from the Japanese model, where comparative advantages, although intense, keep evolving continuously in line with the modifications of international demand. In the absence of spontaneous comparative advantages, no part of French industry seems sheltered from short-term problems.

Foreign trade performance and the process of openness of french industrieal firms in the eighties, by Thierry Francq. This paper aims at presenting foreign trade performance and the dynamics of openness of french industrial firms. Disparities between hte various categories of firms have been studied in the light of desagregated surveys which provided a special framework enhancing strandard macroeconomic analysis. A first descriptive approach showed that the slowing down in the process of openness during this period was not part of a general change but was actually due to a limited number of firms equally firms have even targeted growing domestic markets rather than foreign trade which actually did not show more dynamism from their point of view. Asecond analytical approach highlighted the two main patterns of behaviour of french firms in the 1980's : a first category has followed a clear strategy of growth, seeking expansion on new markets, while others just aimed at restoring their profit margins. Consequently, the later have experienced a slowness in real investment as they oriented their activity on the domestic market. As a result, the analysis in terms of patterns of behaviour provides a better understanding of the slowing down in the openness process of french industrial firms than the sectorial approach.

Atlas : a dynamic and coherent model of international trade of manufactured products, by Jean-François Loué. Atlas is a dynamic model of international trade of manufactured products estimated, for ten countries, on quarterly datas. The volumes of the imports are calculated by the country models. The model describes the evolution of the trade prices and of market shares, regarding exchange-rates, costs and prices in each country. The integration of dynamics rises the problem of the short-term neutrality of the billing currency used : the observed prices depend, in the short-term, on the evolution of the currency in which contracts are drawn up. Concerning the market-shares, we propose a model based on relative costs, and we prove that the dynamics of their evolution theoretically depends on the currency which is used to compare prices (or costs).

Error Correction Models and equations for aggregate importations, by Jean-Pierre Urbain. In this paper we consider the empirical modelling of aggregate imports for two small open european economies (Belgium and the Netherlands). The analysis is conducted by means of recently developed econometric concepts. Among these we focus on the so called "general to specific" approach (see inter alia Hendry, 1987) in the context of data series whose (non) stationary properties are investigated. The notion of co-integration (Engle and Granger, 1987) of a set of variables is analysed, both in a single equation and in a multivariate framework. We allowed the data to play an important role in the dynamic specification but also the specification of the underlying long run equilibrium. Using co-integration techniques we derived long run estimates for Belgium and the Netherlands. For the latter country, the traditional hypothesis of price homogeneity was deary accepted in the long run but rejected for the short run dynamic. For Belgium, our results are more puzzling although multivariate co-integration along the lines of work of Johanson and Juselius (1990) led us to accept long run symmetry.

Hysteresis effects on US external trade, by Philippe Ducos, François Lecointe. In spite of a declining dollar and a return to its 1980 parity in 1987, the US trade deficit has not been eliminated yet. This paper surveys recent trade models which explain hysteresis effects on external trade and presents empirical evidence. It is shown that the use of disaggregated data is crucial to validate the models. It seems that the dollar appreciation has changed the market structure of both the consumer durable goods sector and the capital goods sector. The corresponding theoretical models would be the sunk cost model and demand dynamics model respectively.

Regulation of external exchanges and external constraint over the long term : a comparison of four big European countries with Sweden and Switzerland, by Angel Asensio. The paper describes the regulation of the external manufacturing exchanges in the six countries, with emphasis on their sectoral international specialization and the structural parameters of the equations of external trade. A simple model then allows to illustrate the notion of external constraint, and also the role of determinants of competitiveness, notably the real exchange rate. A retrospective study of the last twenty years allows, at last, to understand the national dynamics of insertion into exchanges, and to interprète the so-called external constraint as the sign of the ending of previous growth conditions, resulting from a more difficult control of overall demand, linked to increasing internationalisation.

An econometric disequilibrium model of the French economy, with two sectors and endogenous prices and investment, by Patrick Artus, Sanvi Avouyi-Dovi, Jean-Pierre Laffargue. A small disequilibrium model of the French economy, is estimated. It isolates two sectors, the first sheltered, the second exposed to international competition, with endogenous investment. The sheltered sector is characterized by competitive equilibrium. The firms of the exposed one face a situation of monopolistic competition, but bear some adjustment costs when they change their prices. Two situations can then be observed : monopolistic equilibrium when theoretical demand is satisfied, classical disequilibrium when some fraction of it is rationed, an then is satisfied by foreign supply. Our conclusion is that classical disequilibrium is the situation that predominates since 1978. So, a wage moderation rises employment and investment. On the contrary only weak consequences on output result from a rise of public consumption, which deteriorates the trade balance.

Disequilibrium models and external exchanges : two studies with applications to the French manufacturing sector, by Frank Amalric, Alain Gubian, Pierre-Alain Muet. This paper analyses the respective impact of supply and demand on manufacturing production and foreign trade in two different ways. The first part presents an estimated global disequilibrium model for the manufacturing sector, taking into account the impact of foreign trade and inventory changes in the reduction of disequilibria between notional internal supply and notional internal demand. As an indication of disequilibria, the estimation procedure uses the percentage of firms which cannot increase their production because of a lack of equipment, skilled workers or raw materials (bottlenecks series drawn from the French quarterly business surveys). The second part presents an estimated disequilibrium model of the French manufacturing exports. Both models conclude that, since the first oil shock, price competitiveness and world demand remained the major factors explaining the evolution of industrials exports, even if the lack of production capacities may have constrained export growth during some periods of recovery.

World inflation, by Patrick Artus, Eric Bleuze. Instead of analysing the recent evolutions of inflation country by country, we treat the problem at the world level. For this purpose we agregate the seven bigger industrialised countries. This allows us to carefully examine, using different statistical techniques, such as causality, co-integration, econometric models, the links between prices of raw materials, world prices, interest rates and real activity.

Autonomy of monetary policies, coordination of fiscal policies and external constraint, by Jean Bensaïd, Dominique Bureau. The best way to reduce external disequilibria between industrial countries has been the main topic of economic policy debates in the eighties. The use of monetary policy and exchange rates movements or capital flows to finance easily external disequilibria has been gradually questioned. Genberg and Swoboda (1987) suggest to assign monetary policy to achieve internal GDP growth. Moreover monetary policy could be used in an autonomous way by each country. By contrast, differences in fiscal policies between countries could explain external disequilibria. To reduce them, countries should coordinate their fiscal policies. In this article such claims are tested with a small model which proceeds from the Atlas multinational model.