Contenu du sommaire : Propriété immobilière, Mélanges

VAT and Mark-Up Variations: An Empirical Analysis of Corporate Data Provided by French Exporters We study how French exporters react to a VAT shock in a destination country. As VAT shocks are by nature almost permanent, exogenous, and without impact on marginal costs, the subsequent price reaction makes it possible to identify a pure demand-led mark-up adjustment. The results of an analysis of French customs data for 1995-2005 indicate a 67 % average mark-up adjustment for consumer goods. The adjustment is greaterfor companies, sectors, and destinations with a relatively higher market share. We then use our estimates and the Atkeson-Burstein (2008) theoretical framework to derive the distribution of mark-up adjustments of the various sector-destination pairs.

Overview of French Tax/Benefit System and its Progressivity This study seeks to provide the most comprehensive possible overview of the progressivity and the redistributive nature of the French tax/benefit system. We adopt a broad definition of redistribution by jointly examining taxes and the cash benefits that they partly finance. Our approach demonstrates the progressivity and the redistributive nature of the system as a whole. Both characteristics are mainly due to benefits and, to a lesser extent, direct taxes. The tax/benefit system entails a top-down redistribution on the standard-of-living scale, leaving the middle unchanged. We conclude by assessing the system's effectiveness in the light of optimal taxation theory.

Effect of the New French “Active Solidarity Income” (RSA) Benefit on Labour Market Equilibrium

This paper uses the Pissarides matching model to study the effects of the “Active Solidarity Income” (RSA) benefit on the unskilled labour market. Unskilled workers are employed in “low-ranking” jobs that pay the minimum wage or in “higher-ranking” jobs, part- or full-time. Job-seekers may look for only one type of job, part- or full-time (voluntary part-time work) or for both types of jobs (involuntary part-time work). The RSA increases earnings but reduces the bargained wage of part-time workers in higher-ranking jobs. It also raises the employment level and, broadly speaking, the proportion of higher-ranking jobs and part-time work, as well as labour-force participation.

Reforming French Pensions: Transition to a Notional Defined Contribution System We simulate the consequences of the transition of the French pension system to a notional defined contribution (NDC) system between 2015 and 2030 using a stylised overlapping-generations general equilibrium model incorporating macroeconomic feedback effects. Introducing an NDC system would reduce financing requirements by around 0.8 points of GDP by 2030. In terms of financing requirements, an NDC system would outperform the existing pay-as-you-go system in case of an increase in life expectancy or a decrease in productivity growth. The two systems are equivalent in the event of a decline in fertility or a rise in the unemployment rate. In an NDC system, however, an increase in the contribution rate has a negative impact on financing requirements because pensions automatically rise in line with contributions.

Misalignments of the CFA Franc and Influence of the Anchor Currency The euro's appreciation in the 2000s has revived the debate on the future of the CFA franc. In this paper, we study how the economic fundamentals of the CFA zone interacted with the evolution of the anchor currency over the 1980-2009 period to form the CFA franc's real effective exchange rate. We assess the respective impacts of fundamentals and euro trends on CFA franc misalignments and hence on the price competitiveness of the region and its constituent countries. Relying on recent panel co-integration methods, we identify three episodes in which the anchor currency and CFA-zone fundamentals have had relatively differing effects.

Productivity of the French Food Industry, 1996-2006 From 1996 to 2006, total factor productivity in the French food industry declined by 0.4 % per year. Productivity in the “milk”, “beverage”, and “grain” industries remained relatively stable, while significant decreases were observed in the “meat and fish” and “otherfood” industries. These results may be due to the large share of intermediate consumption, the difficulty in raising technological yields, and stricter sanitary and environmental standards. Weaker intermediate-consumption prices offset the loss in productivity, but were also passed on to consumers in the form of lower food prices. The productivity trend in the French food industry was comparable to that observed in the other leading EU15 countries.

Public Housing and Homeowner ship Homeowner ship requires previous wealth accumulation, which is influenced by housing expenditure. Does the provision of public housing at below-market rents allow some households to attain home ownership faster? We test this hypothesis for France by simultaneously estimating a duration model explaining the age of first-time buyers and the probability of their having previously occupied public housing. To instrument this probability, we use the share of public housing available on the local urban rental market. Our estimation sample is taken from the 2006 French Housing Survey. Our results suggest that a spell in public housing decreases age at first-time homeowner ship.

Does Homeowner ship Hinder Exits from Unemployment? This study uses micro-economic data to test “Oswald's hypothesis”, which postulates a link between rising homeowner ship rates and longer unemployment spells. We contribute to the existing literature by contrasting econometric results for France and the United States, whose labour and housing markets function and interact in very different ways. Using unemployment-spell samples from the French part of the European Community Household Panel and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, both covering 1994-2001, we estimate mixed proportional hazard models incorporating simultaneous behaviours in the housing and labour markets. Our main results indicate that homeowner ship is not significantly related to longer unemployment spells in the United States, while French homeowners exhibit faster re-employment rates than renters.

Congestion: A Key Variable in Recreation-Site Choice Models The travel-cost method is widely used to estimate the value of recreational sites and simulate the impact of public policies on welfare. Congestion is often excluded from the explanatory variables generally used in these analyses, thus leading to omission bias. Admittedly, introducing congestion in a model poses major econometric problems, because the variable is determined by a sorting Nash equilibrium and is potentially correlated with the model's error term. Several methods have recently been proposed to address these difficulties. We describe and illustrate the methods in a nested model of recreational choice. The treatment of congestion has a significant influence on our results.

Analysing Youth Unemployment The youth unemployment rate gives a very incomplete view of the difficulties facing young people entering the French labour market. The main obstacles are the general rigidities that penalise new entrants whatever their age. However, some young entrants–notably dropouts– experience specific problems. Short-term contracts have lasting but ambiguous effects on integration into the labour force. On the positive side, entering the labour market with a temporary contract may raise the probability of remaining employed in the medium/long term. On the negative side, a succession of short-term contracts may make it harder to find a stable job. Lastly, young people are often forced to enter the labour market by accepting a job for which they are overqualified.

Learning from the First Globalisation (1870-1914) This article analyses the similarities between the first globalisation (1870-1914) and the current one. The first globalisation offers some lessons in economic policy. As regards capital markets, the close integration of the advanced countries in the nineteenth century vividly illustrates the advantages of exchange-rate stability, promoted by the gold standard at the time. The financial crises of the first globalisation also remind us of the stabilising effect of limited current-account deficits and of a debt mostly denominated in domestic currency. As regards goods markets, lessons were drawn from the lack of trade-policy coordination characteristic of the first globalisation. The establishment of international organisations has fostered the gradual opening and coordination of trade policies of countries at different stages of development.

International Trade Integration and Consumer Prices in Europe, 1998-2008 Globalisation helps to restrain the rise in prices of many goods by encouraging economies to specialise in sectors where they hold comparative advantages. In particular, the goods that are most traded internationally –excluding fossil fuels– are those most likely to experience lower inflation. We seek to identify the European countries that have most benefited from this lower inflation in 1998-2008, and to explain the heterogeneity of country price trends. We find three significant determinants for these differences: the degree of penetration of imports from emerging countries, initial price levels, and changes in retail-trade regulations.