PUBLICATIONS | Briefing Papers
April 2015
Christophe Blot, Jérôme Creel, Paul Hubert, Fabien Labondance
The ECB has decided to implement large-scale quantitative easing (QE) measures since March 2015 until September 2016. This unconventional monetary policy has had a variety of precedents, in the Japanese, UK and US economies. These experiments have been effective at modifying government and corporate bond yields, mostly in the UK and US and to a lesser extent in Japan...
January 2015
Guillaume Allègre, Xavier Timbeau
In Capital in the 21st century (hereafter Capital), Thomas Piketty points out the risk of a concentration of wealth in the twenty-first century that would threaten the social justice and meritocratic values of our democratic societies. The main force of divergence is due to the fact that net returns on capital (r) are expected to be greater than the growth of the economy (g), or: “r>g”. According to Piketty, this will lead to two undesirable consequences: firstly, wealth will have a tendency to concentrate in the hands of a few; secondly, constituted wealth will tend to dominate accumulated wealth from labour: “the past devours the future”...
October 2014
Lionel Nesta, Francesco Vona
This policy brief addresses the issue of the complementarity of policies supporting renewable energy and market competition in fostering green innovation...
February 2014
Guillaume Allègre
Following the submission of 125,000 signatures collected by organizations (including BIEN Suisse) supporting the establishment of a basic income, Swiss citizens will vote in a referendum on a popular initiative to include the principle of an unconditional basic income in the Swiss Federal Constitution...
January 2014
Sandrine Levasseur
Less than six months after its entry into the European Union (EU), the excessive deficit procedure (EDP) has been opened against Croatia. The government of Croatia now has to propose a corrective plan in order to bring the public deficit below 3% of GDP within a few years2. It is not the first time that an EDP coincides with entry into the EU. In 2004, six new members (the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia) were subject to a similar experience. But times are different...
October 2013
Vincent Touzé
Although an ageing population is primarily good news, since it means that people are living longer, frequently it is also depicted as an economic and social burden. It affects productive capacity (loss in productivity and decline in the workforce) and reduces per capita income (increase in the inactive population). It can also lead to greater social spending on behalf of older people (retirement, health and dependence), and taxation to finance these programmes can seriously undermine incentives to produce wealth...
July 2013
Guillaume Allègre
In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives1, Harvard Professor and bestselling textbook author Greg Mankiw defends the income earned by the richest 1%, as opposed to the movement of the 99% that attacks the explosion of inequality and the concentration of income and wealth...
March 2012
Mauro Napoletano, Jean-Luc Gaffard et Zakaria Babutsidze
Are current economic models well equipped to provide useful policy prescriptions? Many economists would have certainly answered, “yes” before the recent Global Recession. This economic crisis has not only demonstrated the importance of banking and financial markets for the dynamics of real economies. It has also revealed the inadequacy of the dominant theoretical framework. Standard models have indeed failed to forecast the advent of the crisis. In addition, they have been unable to indicate a therapy able to restore economic growth...
January 2012
Éric Heyer and Mathieu Plane
Do people work less in France than in the rest of Europe? Is France the only country to have reduced working time in the last decade? Is the 35-hour work week really dragging down the French economy? The report published on 11 January by the Coe-Rexecode Institute provides fresh material for answering these questions...
January 2012
OFCE Department of Analysis and Forecasting under the direction of Xavier Timbeau
Under the direction of Xavier Timbeau The growth outlook for the developed countries, in Europe in particular, has deteriorated dramatically in recent weeks. The “voluntary and negotiated” devaluation of Greek sovereign debt securities, which is really nothing but a sovereign default, the wave of budget cuts being announced even as the budget bills are still debated, the inability of the European Union to mobilize its forces in the crisis – all these factors render the forecasts made two months ago obsolete. For many European countries, including France, 2012 will be a year of recession...