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41. Monetary Policy in the Franc Zone: Estimating Interest Rate Rules for the BCEAO

Author:
Anja Shortland and David Stasavage
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper examines to what extent the central bank for the West African Economic and Monetary Union (BCEAO) has used interest rate policy in response to domestic economic developments. We show that while in the long run the BCEAO matches changes in French (Eurozone) interest rates one for one, in the short run it retains freedom to react to domestic economic variables, such as inflation, the output gap, its foreign exchange position and government borrowing.
Topic:
Economics, International Organization, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa, France, and West Africa

42. Monetary Policy in the CFA Zone: Country-level Credit Policy

Author:
Anja Shortland and David Stasavage
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper examines whether the BCEAO has made use of the various policy instruments at its disposal for steering credit in the individual CFA zone member countries to complement interest rate policy at the zone level. We estimate whether private sector credit has responded systematically to different monetary policy variables using iterated 3-stage least squares regressions for Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and Togo. If we constrain the coefficient estimates there is some support for the hypothesis that the BCEAO has contracted private sector credit in response to a higher inflation differential with France. However, there seems to be no policy rule to restrict private sector credit in response to increasing government borrowing from the central bank or increased foreign borrowing. If the coefficient estimates are unconstrained, there does not appear to be any systematic policy to control credit expansion at the domestic level.
Topic:
Economics, International Organization, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa and France

43. France's Double-Talk on Globalization

Author:
Sophie Meunier
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
France has become a worldwide champion of anti-globalization. French intellectuals have long denounced the cultural and economic shortcomings of US-led globalization, while French politicians, on the Left as on the Right, load their speeches with rhetoric critical of a phenomenon that gets a lot less attention in other European countries and in the United States. Yet, at the same time, France is a country whose economy and society have adapted well to this much-criticized globalization. Why this double-speak? Why this disjuncture between words and actions? This article explores this paradox, analyzes the role that France's double discourse on globalization has played in producing the surprising outcome of the 2002 elections, and reflects on the options open to the main political parties today.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and France

44. Creating a Tourist's Paradise: The Marshall Plan and France, 1948 to 1952 [Dossier: Promoting American Tourism in Postwar France]

Author:
Brian A. McKenzie
Publication Date:
03-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
This article examines the promotion of American tourism to France during the Marshall Plan. The paper assesses the cultural and economic goals of the tourism program. Economic aid provided by the United States was essential for the post-war reconstruction of the French tourism industry. Furthermore, transatlantic air carriers adopted new guidelines for tourist class airfares at the urging of U.S. officials. The paper also examines marketing strategies and the creation of tourism infrastructures that facilitated transatlantic tourism. Representatives from the French tourism industry visited the United States to study American hotels and they agreed to adopt practices and rebuild French hotels in ways that would be congenial to American tourists. The paper demonstrates that French and American officials and tourism professionals Americanized the French tourism industry during the Marshall Plan.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States, America, and France

45. OECD Health at a Glance - How France Compares

Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
In many respects, France fares well among OECD countries in terms of indicators of the health status of its population and resources allocated to its health care system. The French population (and particularly French women) enjoys a relatively high life expectancy compared with the average across OECD countries. The French have a free choice of doctor, and can approach relatively easily both generalists and specialists. Also, the French health system has not generally experienced the problems of long waiting lists for certain treatments, as has been the case in several other OECD countries. The health care system in France is predominantly funded through public sources, but with services delivered by both the public and private sector. Universal access is provided to doctors and hospital services, with some co-payments for patients which vary depending on the type of services. Since the introduction of the Universal Health Coverage Law (Loi de la Couverture médicale universelle or CMU) in 2000, people with low income who are not covered by complementary insurance have access to doctors and hospitals free of charge. Overall, public satisfaction with the health care system in France has traditionally been much higher than in most other countries. However, health spending in France is relatively high in comparison with the OECD average.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Economics, International Organization, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
France

46. Economic Survey of France, 2003

Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
After several years of rapid expansion, the French economy has entered into a period of below potential growth, with a negative output gap opening up. Monetary conditions have been relaxed, while fiscal policy has eased excessively, provoking the European Commission to initiate an excessive deficit procedure. As uncertainty dissipates towards the middle of this year, the economy should pick up speed, reaching a growth rhythm of around 2 per cent in 2004. Nevertheless, over the medium term, in the absence of substantial reforms the ageing of the population risks threatening economic and fiscal equilibrium. Current pension and healthcare reform initiatives and plans to redress spending over the medium term go in the right direction. However, in order to ensure medium and long-term fiscal sustainability, additional policies to slow the expansion of health and pension spending are required, while efforts to raise employment rates and potential output are needed to improve the economy's ability to finance future ageing-related expenditure. Here, programmes that offer the possibility of on-the-job training should be expanded so as to reactivate young and lowskilled workers, while reforms to early-retirement schemes and the pension system need to be continued so as to restore work incentives for older workers. Ongoing tax and labour market reforms and policies to facilitate the development of high-tech and fast growing enterprises, which should help promote investment and higher productivity growth, also need to be pursued. The opening of the capital of stateowned enterprises and their eventual privatisation, and planned improvements to governance structures should help promote growth, but revenues from sell-offs ought to be used to reduce debt. Finally, in order to better manage the totality of public expenditures, the authorities need to implement reforms that can be used to ensure that all spending organisms contribute to controlling spending. Here, it will be necessary to implement mechanisms that would improve the effectiveness of measures to control healthcare spending. Moreover, decision-makers need to be more directly confronted with the long-term consequences of their actions. Initiatives such as decentralisation and the new budget framework law should help in this regard. Pursuit of reforms along all of these lines should permit society to meet the fiscal challenge posed by population ageing, while retaining high levels of service.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Economics, International Organization, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and France

47. Take the State Back Out? Comparing French Responses to Globalization in Agriculture and Shipping

Author:
Mark Aspinwall and Imtiaz Hussain
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
How autonomous is a state in today's highly interdependent international economy to pursue policies that diverge widely from the international norm? Does the degree of autonomy vary for different domestic sectors? We adapt and apply Benjamin Cohen's unholy trinity model (1993), to a comparative assessment of how France responded to globalization over agriculture and shipping, focusing on three dimensions—investment, transaction costs, and government policy responses. Although France is reputed to possess a strong state machinery (Katzenstein, 1987; Wilson, 1987; Skocpol, 1985), our analysis raises qualifications. On the one hand, regardless of government policy intentions, we find irreversible forms of disinvestment in both sectors, though different in nature—geographic for shipping, and functional for agriculture; on the other, we also find continued dependence upon the state—for aid in shipping and resisting free trade in agriculture. We further find that, although internal and endogenous, as well as external and exogenous, factors influence policy-making, the nature of these factors are different for the two sectors. We conclude by drawing implications of our findings for state-society relations and European integration.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and France

48. French Democracy Without Borders

Author:
Suzanne Berger
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
There are intense debates in France today over globalization and its impact on democratic values and practice. The arguments retrace in many respects a much older inquiry into the compatibility of democracy and capitalism. The history of the past two hundred years suggests that despite the inequities that capitalist economies generate, the majority of the electorate has not been willing to vote out the system. Capitalism was protected, in part, by the fact that these systems were never wholly democratic, but provided constitutional protections for property. And democracy was preserved, in part, by the fact that these systems were never wholly capitalist, but in fact within national borders found a variety of solutions for blunting the impact of market forces. If globalization means a world without national borders, one may question whether this co-existence of capitalism and democracy can continue, and in fact, much of the French debate focuses on this point. This article retraces the history of the borders of France and suggests that borders are political, not geographic, constructions and as such, are far from disappearing even between the US and Canada, even within the European Union. As long as states can still regulate economic exchanges in ways that differentiate their societies from adjacent countries, borders persist. Globalization does create serious new challenges, but the stark dilemma of choosing either a world of economic openness or a world of liberal democracy does not capture the real stake and choices available to France and other democratic societies.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe, Canada, and France

49. Precocious British Industrialization: A General Equilibrium Perspective

Author:
N.F.R. Crafts and C. Knick Harley
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The British industrial revolution created an industrial economy. While casual discourse conflates industrialization and economic growth, Britain was remarkable primarily for the pronounced structural change that occurred rather than for rapid economic growth. Uniquely the British labour force became highly industrialized even prior to the move to free trade in the 1840s. On the eve of the abolition of the Corn Laws the share of agriculture in employment had already declined to levels that were not reached in France and Germany until the 1950s.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, France, and Germany

50. Substitutability Cross-Stream Between Oriented Markets: Conventions in the Wine Sector of France

Author:
Harrison C. White
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
I explicitly model the social mechanism that constructs markets. Producers array along a market profile along which buyers trade off quality for volume. Outcome features can be predicted from two ratios of parameters, yielding a MAP. Five distinct families of market cultures correspond to its regions. As previous work showed, Supply equaling Demand is transmuted into matchings across local variabilities of valuation with volume and with quality. Such matching is vulnerable to unraveling, but it can be achieved with market oriented either upstream or downstream.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Europe and France