By Hervé Péléraux

According to the OFCE’s leading indicator, the French economy has grown by 0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2013. This result, which was anticipated, reflects the improvement in business surveys seen for about a year now. However, does this mark the return of GDP to a path of higher long-term growth? It is still too early to say.

The improvement in the business surveys anticipated the interruption in the second recession that took place in the first half of 2011. The national accounts then validated the signal emitted by the surveys, with renewed growth of 0.6% in the second quarter of 2013 (Table). GDP did of course fall again in the third quarter (-0.1%), but on average over the last two quarters there was growth of approximately 0.2% per quarter, a rate that, though very moderate, was still positive.

At the same time, the leading indicator, which aims to arrive at an estimate of GDP growth in the very short term by translating the cyclical information contained in the surveys, also pointed to a slow recovery in activity: on average over the last two quarters, growth was estimated at 0.1%, a figure that is slightly under the assessment of the national accounts.

In the last few months, the uncontested growth in the confidence of private agents has enhanced the outlook for the end of 2013: the debate is now focusing on the possibility for the French economy to break through a turning point upwards and for growth to settle in at a level higher than the pace of long-term growth (0.35% per quarter).

Based on past experience, when the indicator has sent out warning signs of a turning point in the economic cycle, the signal issued for the fourth quarter of 2013 is indicating that the long-term growth rate of the French economy is being crossed (Figure). This signal is fragile: the still very partial information on the first quarter of 2014, i.e. the business surveys for January, point towards the growth rate falling below its potential. The possibility of a real lasting recovery that is able to create jobs and reverse the trend in unemployment is thus still very uncertain.

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Note on the leading indicator:

The leading indicator aims to forecast the quarterly growth rate for French GDP two quarters beyond the latest available data. The components of the indicator are selected from survey data sets that are rapidly available and unrevised. The selection of the data series is made on an econometric basis, starting from the business surveys carried out in different productive sectors (industry, construction, services, retail) and among consumers. Two series related to the international environment are also significant: the rate of growth of the real exchange rate of the euro against the dollar, and the real growth rate of oil prices.

Some components are at least two quarters in advance and as such can be used to predict GDP growth. Others are coincidental, or are not sufficiently advanced to make a forecast two quarters ahead. These series need to be forecast, but over a short-term horizon that never exceeds four months.

The leading indicator is calculated at the beginning of each month, shortly after the publication of the business and consumer surveys.

By Gérard Cornilleau

With respect to opening DIY stores on Sundays, one aspect of the issue has never been raised. It nevertheless concerns the majority of customers who shop on weekdays during the day. If stores keep their doors open late or outside traditional work days, the labour costs will rise and the structural costs will fall. The rise in cost is due to the wage compensation to be paid to employees who agree to work outside normal hours. It is now clear that such compensation is necessary. The current discussions between the trade unions and the high street chains will undoubtedly lead to an increase in compensation, with wages likely to be doubled for those working Sundays. Evening work, after 9 pm, will also be compensated. Otherwise, the number of “volunteers” is likely to fall drastically. Nor does anyone really want to argue about whether such compensation is “fair”[1]. The reduced structural costs (due in particular to lengthening the duration of capital utilization) should be accompanied by a redistribution of business between neighbourhood shops and the large retailers: as it is unreasonable to expect a higher volume of sales[2], the extension of hours should strengthen the trend towards business concentration, with fewer stores open longer. From the perspective of well-being, this development should be favourable to those who want to shop outside normal times, and can, and unfavourable to those who prefer to do without a local service on a human scale, or would find it difficult to do so, such as the elderly.

This raises the issue of compensating “loser” customers who do not wish to shop outside traditional hours or in less accessible stores. It is not acceptable that in the absence of price discrimination, the customers who demand to be served at night or on Sundays are subsidized. This existence of an implicit subsidy like this is also unjustified from a strictly economic perspective: in order for consumer choices not to be biased, they must bear the cost of the service they want. In other words, Sunday and late night consumers should pay a fair price for the service they use, and the extended hours should not come at the expense of other consumers [3]. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem: a mandatory fixed coefficient could be applied to the price of purchases made after 9 pm or on Sundays [4]. From then on consumers can choose freely whether to buy during normal hours at the current rate, or outside these hours at the higher rate. Detailed statistical work would be needed to determine the amount of the increase, but it is possible to give an order of magnitude: since trade margins are close to 1/3 and payroll accounts for about 60% of the cost of the business operations, a minimum increase of approximately 15% would be required to account for the doubling of wages on Sundays and after 9pm. Furthermore, to compensate for the potential loss of well-being due to the impact of non-standard shopping hours in the commercial facilities, a coefficient of 20% seems reasonable. Once store customers pay for the extra service they want, i.e. shopping on Sundays or evenings, it would be possible to agree for traders to freely choose whether or not to open, under the same conditions as today of paying compensation and of verification of the “voluntary” nature of the work outside standard working hours. Based on customers’ response to this price discrimination, the store’s choice of whether to open would be made on a rational basis, without penalizing those that do not do business outside regular hours.

This solution is extremely easy to apply since it would involve only a very slight change in the software coding of store tills. It would also be very easy to verify implementation. It is compatible with greater business freedom and fair compensation for employees. Nevertheless, this could still be opposed for moving in the direction of disrupting social time, which could be avoided only by binding regulations. It seems to me that this could nevertheless be tried out so as to accurately measure the need for opening stores outside “normal” hours: if there are still many takers despite a 20% hike in the bill, then that would indicate a substantial need for longer opening hours. Otherwise, there could be a return to a more satisfactory situation where some stores (or parts of stores) open to meet marginal demand, with most business, and therefore most working time, still focused on the traditional work week and working hours.

[1] Many professions charge premium rates on Sundays without anybody questioning the legitimacy of this practice. This is particularly the case of the medical profession. If sometime in the future work on Sundays were to become “commonplace”, the Sunday price increases could be called into question, including for those professions. On the other hand, increases for night work would continue to be justified by the highly negative impact on health.

[2] See the contribution of Xavier Timbeau (http://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/blog/never-on-sunday/)

[3] The prices in stores open on Sundays and at night, such as neighbourhood convenience stores, are already well above average, which avoids excessively subsidizing “non-standard” customers. The higher prices in these shops are readily accepted because they correspond to a specific service. But in the case of a general elimination of regulations on working hours, it is unlikely that stores in traditional channels would spontaneously introduce price discrimination.

[4] This increase is not a tax. The formula associated with this would constitute income for the store, which would be strongly encouraged by competition to lower overall prices.

By Hervé Péléraux

Public finances – battered by the Great Recession

At the end of the Great Recession of 2008/09, the fiscal problem that governments had to face was seemingly simple, as was the solution put forward. The operation of the automatic stabilizers and the stimulus packages put in place to counter the 2008/09 recession sharply increased the public deficits. This situation, which was dictated by urgency, was acceptable in the short term, but not in the longer term. Logically this would lead to an adjustment in the public accounts to reduce the deficits and halt the growth of the debt. Fiscal discipline at a forced pace under the baton of the European Commission was therefore the economic policy instrument adopted by almost all the euro zone countries.

The appropriateness of this strategy, which was undertaken to solve the initial problem, i.e. the excessive deficits in the euro zone, should nevertheless be discussed. It relied on a macroeconomic diagnosis made at the end of the recession in 2008/09 that conditioned the assessment on the spontaneous capacity for an economic recovery – in effect, the fraction of the public deficit that was likely to be spontaneously absorbed by renewed growth depended on this capacity for recovery.

Part of the deficits could be absorbed on their own

The public deficit excluding interest expense, i.e. the primary deficit, can be subdivided into two components: a cyclical component and a structural component. The cyclical component results from cyclical fluctuations in GDP around its potential, that is to say, the level of GDP achievable without inflationary pressures using the available production factors: during a phase when GDP is slowing relative to its growth potential, and thus when the output gap is widening, tax revenues slow, and public spending, in particular on social welfare, picks up. What follows is a spontaneous increase in the deficit. In economic theory this self-corrective mechanism is called the “automatic stabilizers”. The other component of the deficit is deduced from the previous one as a complement to the total deficit: this is the deliberate component, which results from the impact of economic policy. This discretionary component can be eliminated only by implementing a policy that is symmetrical to what gave rise to it, that is to say, by means of an austerity policy. By its nature it has a dampening effect on the recovery, whereas the expansionary policy during the previous phase results in boosting activity. Fiscal policy is thus an instrument for smoothing the economic cycle.

The spontaneous portion of the deficit that appeared after the 2008/09 recession was destined to be automatically reduced once growth returned. Only the elimination of the discretionary component justified a restrictive policy. The extent of the effort needed to achieve this therefore depended on the measurement of the output gap, which conditioned the estimate of the cyclical deficit, and by inference the estimate of the deliberate deficit.

The cycle’s effect on the evaluation of the potential

The measurement of the output potential that is used to calculate the output gap is obviously central for calibrating as accurately as possible the budget cuts needed to eliminate the portion of the deficit that cannot be absorbed spontaneously by growth. But policymakers face a major difficulty here, i.e. the unobservable nature of the potential, which consequently must be estimated – and economists are far from unanimous about these estimates. Moreover, periodic revisions can be significant even within the same institution, which modifies the diagnosis made and – if this institution happens to be responsible for defining the rules constraining fiscal policy, as in the case of the European Commission (EC) –  the measures to be taken as well.

A review of the revisions of the growth potential calculated by the EC shows the uncertainty of this estimate (see last section below). The estimate also appears to depend on current growth, which is somewhat paradoxical for an estimate of a supply function that depends on long-term economic parameters such as increases in the labour force, productivity and the capital stock. It is understandable that the trajectory of these supply parameters is deflected slightly during cyclical hiccups, particularly through investment, which is a vehicle for technical progress and ensures the growth of capital or a loss in human capital due to long-term unemployment. But the fact that the inclusion in the estimates of a cyclical phenomenon, even one as massive as the recession of 2008/09, is leading to revisions of the growth potential on the order of that seen between Spring 2008 and Spring 2009 raises questions. This is particularly so as these revisions have also affected the years prior to the recession, which were not affected by changes in the conditions of accumulation. Thereafter, the resumption of growth in 2010 led to revisions of the growth potential in the other direction, including for the years prior to the recession. Finally, the economic downturn in 2011 led to a further series of revisions, once again downwards.

Self-sustained austerity

The reduction in growth potential led to significant revisions downwards of the estimated output gap (see chart). These are not neutral for calibrating the fiscal consolidation policy. This is because for a given deficit, the estimate of the output gap of -2% for 2010, for example, versus nearly -6% under the assumption of a continuation of the trajectory of potential GDP estimated before the recession, would increase the part of the perceived structural deficit and thus call for heightened austerity. That’s what happened in 2010, when the stimulus packages gave way to plans for drastic budget cuts. Generalized to all member countries, they nipped the nascent recovery in the bud and plunged the euro zone countries into a new recession.

The excessive sensitivity of the estimate of potential growth to current growth precipitated the commitment to austerity policies in the euro zone and subsequently pushed towards tightening fiscal restraint further. By depressing economic activity, austerity fuelled factors that undercut supply through the destruction of capital, a slowdown in investment and deskilling the labour supply. The economies’ capacity for a spontaneous recovery was thus undermined, which could only lead to an increase in the share of the structural deficit in the total deficit, and ultimately to the need for greater austerity.

The budget purge thus led to a second recession, which invalidated the deficit reduction targets set at the beginning, as the automatic stabilizers have again increased the cyclical component of the deficit. Rigour, poorly calibrated, was counter-productive and thus could not achieve the initial goal of rapid deficit reduction. The results are far from being commensurate with the sacrifices made by the European economies.

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The European Commission’s estimate of the euro zone’s potential GDP

The 2008/09 recession led the European Commission to revise its estimate of the growth potential for the member countries rather significantly. For the euro zone as a whole, the revision process began between Spring 2008 and Spring 2009, when the effects of the financial crisis were expressed in real activity: the start of the recession in the euro zone in the fourth quarter of 2008 was associated with sharp downward revisions of the growth potential for 2008 and 2009, by -0.7 and -1.2 points, respectively (Table). There were also relatively substantial revisions to earlier years, from -0.3 to -0.5 points for the years 2004 to 2007. However, no major revision occurs between the estimates of Spring 2009 and Spring 2010, despite the downturn in year-on-year GDP growth, indicating that the modification of the economic landscape had already been included in the estimates.

The growth potential has been revised not only downwards, but also upwards when growth picked up after the recession. Between Spring 2010 and Spring 2011, the revisions were spread from +0.1 to +0.3 points and also affected more distant years. Finally, a new series of downward revisions took place with the second economic downturn in 2011. The years prior to 2008 changed little, but they fall within a broader range for the years 2008 to 2013, from -0.2 to -0.8 points, which for 2012 amounts to dividing the potential growth rate by two and a half.

The effect of current growth on the estimation of growth potential by the European Commission is thus obvious. This results in a high variability of the growth potential and therefore significant revisions of the output gap, which affects economic policy decisions since the structural balance depends on this evaluation.

By Christophe Blot, Jérôme Creel, and Xavier Timbeau

Following discussions with our colleagues from the European Commission [1], we return to the causes of the prolonged period of recession experienced by the euro zone since 2009. We continue to believe that premature fiscal austerity has been a major political error and that an alternative policy would have been possible. The economists of the European Commission for their part continue to argue that there was no alternative to the strategy they advocated. It is worth examining these conflicting opinions.

In the iAGS 2014 report (as well as in the iAGS 2013 report and in various OFCE publications), we have developed the analysis that the stiff fiscal austerity measures taken since 2010 have prolonged the recession and contributed to the rise in unemployment in the euro zone countries, and are now exposing us to the risk of deflation and increased poverty.

Fiscal austerity, which started in 2010 (mainly in Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, with a fiscal impulse [2] for the euro zone of -0.3 GDP point that year), and then was intensified and generalized in 2011 (a fiscal stimulus of -1.2 GDP point across the euro zone, see table), and then reinforced in 2012 (‑1.8 GDP point) and continued in 2013 (-0.9 GDP point), is likely to persist in 2014 (-0.4 GDP point). At the level of the euro zone, since the start of the global financial crisis of 2008, and while taking into account the economic recovery plans of 2008 and 2009, the cumulative fiscal impulse boils down to a restrictive policy of 2.6 GDP points. Because the fiscal multipliers are high, this policy explains in (large) part the prolonged recession in the euro zone.

The fiscal multipliers summarize the impact of fiscal policy on activity [3]. They depend on the nature of fiscal policy (whether it involves tax increases or spending cuts, distinguishing between transfer, operating and investment expenditure), on the accompanying policies (mainly the ability of monetary policy to lower key rates during the austerity treatment), and on the macroeconomic and financial environment (including unemployment, the fiscal policies enacted by trading partners, changes in exchange rates and the state of the financial system). In times of crisis, the fiscal multipliers are much higher, i.e. at least 1.5 for the multiplier of transfer spending, compared with near 0 in the long-term during normal times The reason is relatively simple: in times of crisis, the paralysis of the banking sector and its inability to provide the credit economic agents need to cope with the decline in their revenues or the deterioration in their balance sheets requires the latter to respect their budget constraints, which are no longer intertemporal but instantaneous. The impossibility of generalizing negative nominal interest rates (the well-known “zero lower bound”) prevents central banks from stimulating the economy by further cuts in interest rates, which increases the multiplier effect during a period of austerity.

If the fiscal multipliers are higher in times of crisis, then a rational reduction in the public debt implies the postponement of restrictive fiscal policies. We must first get out of the situation that is causing the increase in the multiplier, and once we are back into a “normal” situation then reduce the public debt through tighter fiscal policy. This is especially important as the reduction in activity induced by tightening fiscal policy may outweigh the fiscal effort. For a multiplier higher than 2, the budget deficit and public debt, instead of falling, could continue to grow, despite austerity. The case of Greece is instructive in this respect: despite real tax hikes and real spending cuts, and despite a partial restructuring of its public debt, the Greek government is facing a public debt that is not decreasing at the pace of the budgetary efforts – far from it. The “fault” lies in the steep fall in GDP. The debate on the value of the multiplier is old but took on new life at the beginning of the crisis.[4] It received a lot of publicity at the end of 2012 and in early 2013, when the IMF (through the voice of O. Blanchard and D. Leigh) challenged the European Commission and demonstrated that these two institutions had, since 2008, systematically underestimated the impact of austerity on the euro zone countries. The European Commission recommended remedies that failed to work and then with each setback called for strengthening them. This is why the fiscal policies pursued in the euro zone reflected a considerable error of judgment and are the main cause of the prolonged recession we are experiencing. The magnitude of this error can be estimated at almost 3 percentage points of GDP for 2013 (or almost 3 points of unemployment): If austerity had been postponed until more favourable times, we would have reached the same ratio of debt-to-GDP by the deadline imposed by treaty (in 2032), but with the benefit of additional economic activity. The cost of austerity since 2011 is thus almost 500 billion euros (the total of what was lost in 2011, 2012 and 2013). The nearly 3 additional points of unemployment in the euro zone are now exposing us to the risk of deflation, which will be very difficult to avoid.

Although the European Commission follows these debates on the value of the multiplier, it (and to some extent the IMF) developed another analysis to justify its choice of economic policy in the euro zone. This analysis holds that the fiscal multipliers are negative in times of crisis for the euro zone, and for the euro zone alone. Based on this analysis, austerity should reduce unemployment. To arrive at what seems to be a paradox, we must accept a particular counterfactual (what would have happened if we had not implemented austerity policies). For example, in the case of Spain, without an immediate fiscal effort, the financial markets would have threatened to stop lending to finance the Spanish public debt. The rise in interest rates charged by the financial markets to Spain would have pushed its government into brutal fiscal restraint, the banking sector would not have survived the collapse of the value of Spain’s sovereign notes, and the increased cost of credit due to the fragmentation of the financial markets in Europe would have led to a crisis that spiralled way beyond what the country actually experienced. In this analytical model, the austerity recommended is not the result of dogmatic blindness but an acknowledgement of a lack of choice. There was no other solution, and in any case, delaying austerity was not a credible option.

Accepting the European Commission’s counterfactual amounts to accepting the idea that the fiscal multipliers are negative. It also means accepting the notion that finance dominates the economy, or at least that judgments on the sustainability of the public debt must be entrusted to the financial markets. According to this counterfactual, quick straightforward austerity would regain the confidence of the markets and would therefore avoid a deep depression. Compared to a situation of postponed austerity, the recession induced by the early straightforward budget cuts should lead to less unemployment and more activity. This counterfactual thesis was raised against us in a seminar held to discuss the iAGS 2014 report organized by the European Commission (DGECFIN) on 23 January 2014. Simulations presented on this occasion illustrated these remarks and concluded that the austerity policy pursued had been beneficial for the euro zone, thereby justifying the policy a posteriori. The efforts undertaken put an end to the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone, a prerequisite for hoping one day to get out of the depression that began in 2008.

In the iAGS 2014 report, publically released in November 2013, we responded (in advance) to this objection based on a very different analysis: massive austerity did not lead to an end to the recession, contrary to what had been anticipated by the European Commission following its various forecasting exercises. The announcement of austerity measures in 2009, their implementation in 2010 and their reinforcement in 2011 never convinced the financial markets and failed to prevent Spain and Italy from having to face higher and higher sovereign rates. Greece, which went through ​​an unprecedented fiscal tightening, plunged its economy into a deeper depression than the Great Depression, without reassuring anyone. Like the rest of the informed observers, the financial market understood clearly that this drastic remedy would wind up killing the patient before any cure. The continuation of high government deficits is due largely to a collapse in activity. Faced with debt that was out of control, the financial markets panicked and raised interest charges, further contributing to the collapse.

The solution is not to advocate more austerity, but to break the link between the deterioration in the fiscal situation and the rise in sovereign interest rates. Savers need to be reassured that there will be no default and that the state is credible for the repayment of its debt. If that means deferring repayment of the debt until later, and if it is credible for the State to postpone, then postponement is the best option.

Crucial to ensuring this credibility were the intervention of the European Central Bank during the summer of 2012, the initiation of the project for a banking union, and the announcement of unlimited intervention by the ECB through Outright Monetary Transactions (Creel and Timbeau (2012), which are conditional upon a programme of fiscal stabilization. These elements convinced the markets almost immediately, despite some institutional uncertainty (particularly concerning the banking union and the state of Spain’s banks, and the judgment of Germany’s Constitutional Court on the European arrangements), and even though OMT is an option that has never been implemented (in particular, what is meant by a programme to stabilize the public finances conditioning ECB intervention). Furthermore, in 2013 the European Commission negotiated a postponement of fiscal adjustment with certain Member States (Cochard and Schweisguth (2013). This first tentative step towards the solutions proposed in the two IAGS reports gained the approval of the financial markets in the form of a relaxation of sovereign spreads in the euro zone.

Contrary to our analysis, the counterfactual envisaged by the European Commission, which denies the possibility of an alternative, assumes an unchanged institutional framework [5]. Why pretend that the macroeconomic strategy should be strictly conditioned on institutional constraints? If institutional compromises are needed in order to improve the orientation of economic policies and ultimately to achieve a better result in terms of employment and growth, then this strategy must be followed. Since the Commission does not question the rules of the game in political terms, it can only submit to the imperatives of austerity. This form of apolitical stubbornness was an error, and in the absence of the ECB’s “political” step, the Commission was leading us into an impasse. The implicit pooling of the public debt embodied in the ECB’s commitment to take all the measures necessary to support the euro (the “Draghi put”) changed the relationship between the public debt and sovereign interest rates for every country in the euro zone. It is always possible to say that the ECB would never have made ​​this commitment if the countries had not undertaken their forced march towards consolidation. But such an argument does not preclude discussing the price to be paid in order to achieve the institutional compromise. The fiscal multipliers are clearly (and strongly) positive, and it would have been good policy to defer austerity. There was an alternative, and the policy pursued was a mistake. It is perhaps the magnitude of this error that makes it difficult to recognize.

[1] We would like to thank Marco Buti for his invitation to present the iAGS 2014 report and for his suggestions, and also Emmanuelle Maincent, Alessandro Turrini and Jan in’t Veld for their comments.

[2] The fiscal impulse measures the restrictive or expansionary orientation of fiscal policy. It is calculated as the change in the primary structural balance.

[3] For example, for a multiplier of 1.5, tightening the budget by 1 billion euros would reduce activity by 1.5 billion euros.

[4] See Heyer (2012) for a recent review of the literature.

[5] The institutional framework is here understood broadly. It refers not only to the institutions in charge of economic policy decisions but also to the rules adopted by these institutions. The OMT is an example of a rule change adopted by an institution. Strengthening the fiscal rules is another element of a changing institutional framework.

By Jean-Paul Pollin (Université d’Orléans) and Jean-Luc Gaffard

This time the evidence is there and it’s irrefutable: the reaction of the French “authorities” to the proposed structural reform of Europe’s banking sector proves that their law on the so-called “separation of banking activities” was nothing but a false pretence, a ruse to head off the European Commission’s initiatives in this field (see this OFCE blog). It was also an occasion for them to smoothly undercut the report by Bourget, whose most striking passage was the denunciation of finance as the “invisible enemy”, followed by its promise to create distance between deposit banks and trading banks (finance and investment banks). At the time this declaration was well received – the innumerable eccentricities of deregulated finance were held, rightly, to be responsible for the “Great Recession” and it was considered necessary to prevent the predatory and destabilizing dynamics of the financial markets from returning to pollute the traditional activities of lending and managing means of payment, whose impact on the economy is significant and lasting.

But these ambitions were buried a few months later by legislation that separates almost nothing, as was agreed by the bankers themselves: virtually all trading activities thus remain closely linked to the commercial bank operations which serve to strengthen them. During the debate on this law, one of the arguments in defence of its feeble character was that our banking system should not be put at a disadvantage relative to the Anglo-American institutions. MPs, including Karine Berger, the law’s rapporteur, pretended to believe that to preserve the City the British government would never dare implement the recommendations of the Vickers report, which advocated a strict separation of activities. It is curious to see now that the UK has actually legislated in the manner recommended, resisting the pressure of the financial lobbies, whereas the French government not only capitulated to the “invisible enemy” but now is battling against a less stringent proposal than that adopted across the Channel.

Thus the Minister of the Economy expressed his wrath (cf. Le Monde of 30 January 2014 and Le Monde  of 5 February 2014) at European Commissioner Michel Barnier, whose fault was to propose a text that intends to follow the conclusions of the Liikanen report and the recommendations of a report of the European Parliament approved by a large majority last July. But there is nothing shocking about this text: it merely prohibits trading for own account (directly, or indirectly through exposure to the entities doing this) and imposes the separation of trading activities (with the specific exception of transactions in government securities) in institutions for which these activities reach a certain absolute and / or relative size (as a percentage of assets). This should affect only some thirty European banks which, it is true, include the four largest French groups. In the end, France has become one of the most determined opponents of a reform that was the subject, less than two years ago, of one of the main campaign promises of the President-elect.

Equally shocking is the incongruous intervention of the Governor of the Bank of France, Mr. Noyer, who took it upon himself to label Mr. Barnier’s project as irresponsible and assert that it ran counter to the interests of the European economy. It is rather improper to label the European Commissioner as irresponsible, when he has actually demonstrated a great deal of prudence in this matter. This criticism is also indirectly targeted at the Working Group chaired by the Governor of the Bank of Finland and composed of well-known figures (including Mr. Louis Gallois) who could be said, with due respect to Mr. Noyer, to be no less competent or less familiar with the state of European interests than he is. In reality their report offers a serious analysis and thoughtful conclusions. It is an example of a well-documented work, clearly argued and non-partisan, which should be a source of inspiration for the administration, and in particular the Bank of France. Yet Mr. Barnier’s recommendations largely reflect the proposals in this earlier report, while leaving even broader margins of appreciation to the supervisor about possibilities for the separation of the main trading activities, with the exception of own account trading. This should not displease Mr. Noyer.

Nor are there any grounds to claim that the Barnier proposal could undermine the financing of the European economies or otherwise damage them. Nobody can seriously believe that this financing can be performed efficiently only by universal banks – particularly since we took so much pleasure recently in recalling the importance of bank credit for the economies of continental Europe. What actually worries Mr. Noyer (as well as Mr. Mestrallet, the head of Paris Europlace) is the future of trading, and more specifically the potential role of the French banks. But the separation principle obviously does not imply the disappearance of the finance and investment banks. What Mr. Noyer needs to explain is why he believes that, to be competitive, the finance and investment banks should not be separated from commercial banking, including through subsidiarization:

• – Is it because this allows for possible economies of scale? The existence of synergies between the different types of activities is not proven, but even if it exists, then subsidiarization should preserve them. For example, information that is useful for financing trading or for bank loans to finance a company can easily circulate between the separate entities of a banking group. More generally, to market a range of services that customers consider complementary, there is no need to produce these within the same entity.

• – Is it because the existence of cross-subsidies between activities helps to build a more profitable and more robust model? But this would mean that the strength of universal banking resides in the violation of the rules on competition. This is of course unacceptable, and it should not be forgotten that what defines efficiency is not that one or another product or service has a lower price, but that all these products and services have a “fair price”. The subsidizing of trading operations by commercial banks can lead to excessive risk-taking, with the reverse true as well. In this sense, if separation leads to a differentiation in ratings between group entities, this should benefit the commercial bank and therefore the cost of credit. On the other hand, it may be that this would increase the cost of market transactions and thus reduce the volume of transactions. But is it reasonable to manipulate the relative prices of financial services in order to stimulate activity on Europe’s financial markets?

• – Is it because the possibility of transferring cash or equity between activities also helps to make the bank more stable and reduce its operating costs? But in part this would be covered by what has just been raised about competition and efficiency, since this assumes that transfer prices would differ from market prices. Above all, it is likely to endanger the commercial bank when losses or liquidity problems occur on the markets. It would no longer be possible to guarantee the protection of lending or the management of payments. The decrease in the commercial banks’ equity could constrain the flow of credit, and the investment of deposits in market transactions could subject them to excessive risk.
• – Or finally is it because the constitution of banks that are “too big to fail” and / or “too interconnected to be subject to an orderly resolution” would protect the national champions? But this would end up perpetuating the implicit subsidy that benefits these institutions – which once again poses the problem of distorting competition and encouraging the growth of these institutions, and hence the concentration of the industry, thus continuing to endanger the public finances. As for the entanglement of activities, this would prohibit the establishment of a credible resolution mechanism. In this sense the separation of activities is an essential complement to the provisions envisaged under the European Banking Union.

It is really important that this type of question be answered precisely and consistently, otherwise the French protests will remain ineffective because they will appear to be based solely on defence of the interests of the national financial lobbies, as if this would be worth the sacrifice of the efficiency and stability of the financial systems; this is not in the interests of Europe’s economies.

In fact, the many arguments from a variety of backgrounds (including the OECD Secretariat in 2009) in favour of separation have never been convincingly refuted. Without going into detail (cf. OFCE Note no. 36/November 2013), it seems that separation is the best if not the only solution to the problems to be solved: to protect commercial banking activities, which have the character of a public service; to avoid distortions of competition; to control systemic risk; to ensure the efficient governance and management of the large banking groups in a transparent manner; and to provide for a possible orderly “resolution” –all of which generally corresponds to the explicit list of the Barnier proposal’s objectives.

While awaiting these explanations, the remarks by the Minister of the Economy and the Governor of the Bank of France only reinforce suspicions of the possible complicity in our country between the banking sector and part of the high public financial administration. It also demonstrates how the argument often heard in France that what is needed is to focus on supervision rather than regulation is full of ulterior motives and devoid of all credibility. Even if the supervision of the large banks must now be entrusted to the European Central Bank, it is evident that some work will still be carried out at the national level. And following the declarations by the Governor of the Bank of France, who is also President of the ACPR, France’s Prudential Control and Resolution Authority, who can seriously believe that the supervision of our institutions will be carried out with the rigor and independence needed?

By Céline Antonin, Henri Sterdyniak and Vincent Touzé

At the impetus of EU Commissioner Michel Barnier, on 29 January 2014 the European Commission proposed new regulations aimed at limiting and regulating the commercial activities of banks “of systemic importance”, that is to say, the infamous “too big to fail” (TBTF).

Regulating proprietary activities: a need born of the crisis

Due to banks’ particular responsibility in the 2008 economic and financial crisis, many voices have been raised demanding stricter regulation of their financial activities. This has led to two approaches: prohibition and separation.

In the United States, the “Volker rule” adopted in late 2013 prohibits banks from engaging in any proprietary trading activities as well as taking holdings of greater than 3% in hedge funds. The banks can nevertheless continue their own market-making and hedging activities. Obviously, this rule does not prohibit banks from investing their own funds in financial assets (equities, government and corporate bonds). The purpose of the rule is to prevent a bank from speculating against its customers and to minimize the use of the leveraging that proved so costly to the financial system (banks using their clients’ money to speculate on their own behalf).

The European approach is based on the Vickers Report (2011) for the United Kingdom and the Liikanen Report (2012) for the European Union. These reports recommend some separation between traditional banking activities on behalf of third parties (management of savings, provision of credit, simple hedging operations) and trading activities that are for the bank’s own account or bear significant risk, although the activities can be maintained in a common holding company. The Vickers Report proposes isolating traditional banking activities in a separate structure. In contrast, according to the Liikanen report it is proprietary trading and large-scale financial activities that need to be isolated in a separate legal entity.

The idea of ​​separating banking activities is not new. In the past, many countries enacted legislation to separate commercial banks from investment banks (Glass-Steagall Act in 1933 in the United States, the 1945 Banking Act in France). These laws were revoked in the 1980s due to a growing belief in the superiority of the “universal bank” model, which allows a single bank to offer a full range of financial services to individuals (loans, deposits, simple or complex financial investments) and especially to business (loans, hedging, issuance of securities, market-making activities). The crisis exposed two defects in this model: the losses incurred by a bank on its proprietary trading and other activities on the markets led to a loss in its equity capital, thereby calling into question the bank’s lending activities and requiring the State to come to its rescue in order to ensure that bank credit didn’t dry up. The universal bank, backed by the State’s guarantee and sitting on a mass of deposits, did not have sufficient vigilance over its proprietary trading activities (as was shown by the cases of Kerviel, Picano-Nacci and Dexia).

An ambitious European regulatory proposal

This proposal for bank reform is coming in a situation that is complicated by several factors:

1)      The Basel 3 regulations currently being adopted already impose strict rules on the quality of counterparties of the equity capital. Speculative activities must be covered by substantial levels of common equity.

2)      The banking union being developed provides that in case of a crisis creditors and large deposit holders could be called upon to save a bank facing bankruptcy (principle of “bail in”), so that taxpayers would not be hit (end of “bail out”). But there are doubts about this mechanism’s credibility, which could cause a domino effect in the event that a TBTF bank faces bankruptcy.

3)      Some European countries have anticipated reform by adopting a separation law (France and Germany in 2013) or setting prohibitions (Belgium). In the United Kingdom, a separation law inspired by the Vickers Report (2011) is to be adopted by Parliament in early 2014.

The regulatory proposal presented on 29 January is more demanding than the Liikanen Report. Like the “Volker rule” in the US, it prohibits speculation on the bank’s own account through the purchase of financial instruments and commodities, as well as investments in hedge funds (which prevents banks from circumventing the regulation by lending to hedge funds while holding significant shares in these funds, thereby taking advantage of the greater leverage).

Moreover, in addition to this prohibition the European legislator provides for the possibility of imposing a separation on an independent subsidiary for operations that are considered too risky, that is to say, that would result in taking positions that are too large. The aim is to address the porous border between proprietary trading and trading for third parties, as bankers could take risks for themselves while not covering the positions sought by their clients. With these new regulations, the legislator hopes that in the event of a bank crisis public support for the banks will benefit only depositors, not the bankers, with as a consequence an overall reduced cost.

Compared to French regulations, the regulatory proposal is more restrictive than the law on the separation and regulation of banking activities of 26 July 2013. Indeed, French law provides for the legal compartmentalization only of certain proprietary activities and highly leveraged activities in an independently financed subsidiary; strict prohibition concerns only high-frequency trading activities and speculation in agricultural commodities. And there are numerous exceptions: the provision of services to clients, market-making activities, cash management, and investment transactions and hedging to cover the bank’s own risks. In contrary, the prohibitions are broader in the regulatory proposal, as it applies to all proprietary trading. In addition, the regulatory proposal prohibits investment in hedge funds, whereas the French law permits it provided that such activities are compartmentalized.

The regulatory proposal nevertheless concerns only banks of a systemic size, i.e. 30 out of the 8000 found in the European Union, representing 65% of banking assets in the EU. It will not be discussed until the election of the new Parliament and the establishment of a new Commission.

A reform that doesn’t have a consensus

Michel Barnier’s proposed reform has already provoked sharp criticism from certain member countries and the banking community. Some have reproached it for intervening in an area where it has no jurisdiction, which clearly indicates the current complexity of the legislation governing the European banking system.

France, Germany, Belgium could object, “Why are you interfering? We have already enacted our banking reform.” But the logic of the banking union is that the same laws apply everywhere. These countries have chosen to carry out a minimal banking reform in order to pre-empt the content of European law. This is hardly acceptable behaviour at European level. There is also the case of the United Kingdom (for which Barnier’s proposal opens the exit door: the regulations will not apply to countries whose legislation is more stringent).

The banking union provides for the European Central Bank to oversee the large European banks and for the European Banking Agency to set the regulations and rules on supervision. The Commission can therefore be reproached for intervening in a field for which it is no longer responsible. On the other hand, the crisis clearly showed that banking concerns more than just the banks. It is legitimate for EU political institutions (Commission, Council, Parliament) to intervene in the matter.

The proposal has encountered two contradictory criticisms. One is that it doesn’t organize a genuine separation of deposit-taking banks and investment banks. From this perspective, deposit or retail banks would be entrusted with specific tasks (collecting and managing deposits; managing liquid savings and risk-free savings; lending to local government, households and businesses); they would not have the right to engage in speculative activities or trading activities or to lend to speculators (hedge funds, arranging LBO transactions). These banks would be backed fully by a government guarantee. In contrast, market or investment banks would have no government guarantee for their market interventions and equity and other above-the-line operations. Since these transactions are risky, the absence of a public guarantee would lead them to set aside a greater amount of capital and to bear a high cost for attracting capital. This would reduce their profitability and thus the development of hedging and other speculative activities. A company that was in need of a hedging operation would have to have it carried out by an investment bank and not by its regular bank, so at a higher cost. Conversely, this would reduce the risk that banks suck their clients (banks and companies) into risky investments and operations. A reform like this would greatly increase the transparency of financial activities, at the cost of diminishing the importance of the banks and financial markets. Michel Barnier did not dare take the principle of separation to this, its logical conclusion. He remains instead within the logic of the universal bank, which uses its massive size as a deposit bank to provide financial intermediary services to its customers (issuance of securities, coverage of risk, investment in the markets, etc.), to intervene in the markets (market-making for foreign exchange and public and private securities) and to underwrite speculative activities.

The reform is nevertheless facing stiff opposition from the banking community, who would have preferred the status quo. Hence Christian Noyer, a member of the ECB Governing Council, has labelled the proposals “irresponsible”, as if the ECB had acted responsibly before 2007 by not warning about the uncontrolled growth of banks’ financial activities.

The European Banking Federation (EBF) as well as the French Banking Federation (FBF) are demanding that the universal banking model be preserved. The banks are criticizing the obligation to spin off their market-making operations (including for corporate debt). According to the FBF, this regulation “would lead to making this operation considerably more expensive,” which “would have a negative impact on the cost of financing companies’ debts and hedging their risks”. However, this obligation may be waived if the banks demonstrate that their market interventions do not require them to take on any risk. The banks could therefore continue to act as market makers provided that they set strict limits on their own positions; they could provide simple hedging operations by covering these themselves.

A fourth pillar for the banking union?

European banks have of course rightly pointed out that this reform comes in addition to the establishment of the SSM (single supervisory mechanism), the SRM (single resolution mechanism), and the ECB exercise assessing the banks (launched in November 2013). The overall system does lack cohesion; a well thought-out schedule should have been set.

However, the separation advocated by the Barnier proposal lends credibility to the banking union and its three pillars (SSM, SRM and deposit insurance). This project does contribute to convergence in banking regulations, from both a functional and a prudential perspective. The establishment of a consistent framework simplifies control by the European supervisor under the SSM (the ECB will monitor the banks’ normal activities and ensure that they are not affected by speculative activities). The separation recommended by the Barnier proposal enhances the credibility of the SRM; there will no longer be any banks that are too big to go bankrupt, and investment bank losses will not rebound onto the lending activities of deposit banks and will not have to be borne by the taxpayer. By reducing the risk that deposit banks might fail, the risk of a costly rescue plan for investors (bail-in) is also lowered, as is the risk of needing recourse to deposit insurance. In this sense, the draft regulations can be considered a fourth pillar of the banking union.

For more information:

– Antonin C. and V .Touzé V. (2013), The law on the separation of banking activities: political symbol or new economic paradigm?, OFCE Blog, 26 February 2013.

– Avaro M. and H. Sterdyniak H. (2012), Banking union: a solution to the euro crisis?, OFCE Blog, 10 July 2012.

– Gaffard J.-L. and J.-P. Pollin (2013), Is it pointless to separate banking activities?, OFCE Blog, 19 November 2013.