This study explores the impact of El Ni & ntilde;o weather shocks on the exports of eight South American countries from January 1984 to December 2022. The findings reveal that strong El Ni & ntilde;o events result in an immediate and significant reduction in exports, whereas strong La Ni & ntilde;a events do not exhibit a significant short-term impact. The negative effects of El Ni & ntilde;o are heterogeneous, with pronounced implications for countries specializing in the agricultural sector.

This study examines regional disparities in both the allocation and impact of a French financial innovation support program for SMEs, assessing its effects on firm-level Total Factor Productivity, labor productivity, and intangibles-to-assets ratio as indicators of firm efficiency and innovativeness. Using a quasi-experimental design, our analysis reveals that firms in the Paris region experience significantly greater benefits from innovation support compared to those in other regions. This disparity in policy effectiveness is strongly influenced by localization and urbanization economies, as well as substantial knowledge spillovers, which are more prevalent in highly agglomerated regions like Paris. These factors amplify the effectiveness of public support, suggesting that densely networked innovation ecosystems enhance firms' ability to leverage public funding for productivity and innovation gains. Our findings underscore the importance of considering regional agglomeration effects in the design of innovation policies to address existing heterogeneity in policy impact.

The central issue of this paper is to understand how policy makers can design instruments to create incentives towards green mobility. With this in mind, we ran a field experiment in 89 French firms (both public and private organizations) over 54 weeks to investigate how nudges and financial incentives can decrease the use of polluting vehicles by employees during their commute to work each week. Based on data including 845 employees, our study highlights several results related to three important attributes of policy design: the type of instrument, the timing and the targeting. We find that individuals exposed to the nudges "Moral Appeal", "Risk of Loss", and a combination of these two, significantly decrease their use of polluting vehicles in their daily commute to work. We find no treatment effect, either for the other nudges or for the impact of financial incentives. Our findings also reveal a persistent effect in time of the three successful nudges on the transport behavior of employees. Using a causal forest method to evaluate the heterogeneous treatment effects of these three nudges, we demonstrate that distance from work and pro-environmental behavior are the strongest predictors of treatment effects. We find that the further the employees reside from their workplace, the lower the treatment effect estimates. It suggests that selective targeting can improve the effectiveness of the nudging policy.

The current method of calculating nominal bank output in the national accounts has significant shortcomings. Discussions to remedy this have been ongoing for several years. We propose a new method that addresses the flaws of the current approach of the System of National Accounts. We implement a simple model -free method that removes the 'pure' credit risk premium from the production of banks while keeping the liquidity provision as part of the total nominal bank output. Using both local projections and autoregressive distributed lag models, we show that our method produces nominal bank output estimates that are consistent with the evolution of the economic activity and that remain always positive including during periods of financial stress. This method satisfies the four conditions set by the Inter -Secretariat Working Group on National Accounts. Furthermore, our method reveals that the nominal banking output of the eurozone is overestimated by approximately 40% over the period 2003-2017.

This paper studies the relationships between digitalisation, trade costs, quality upgrading and trade flows, using an extended version of a gravity model. Based on information from various sources of data, we estimate these relationships sequentially for a sample of 18 manufacturing and 14 service sectors in 40 countries over the period 2000-2014. Using input-output tables from World Input-Output Database, we define an original measure of digitalisation at the country-sector level that reflects the use of digital inputs into a country's production function. Using trade databases from the CEPII and OECD, we estimate a series of gravity models of trade augmented with this measure of digitalisation. Our results show that sectoral digital intensity positively affects sectoral exports. We provide evidence that this result is not ruled out by other possible factors, such as internet adoption or participation in a global value chain. A heterogeneous analysis also reveals that the effect of digital intensity is stronger for manufacturing trade and for trade between emerging economies. We explore two possible mechanisms explaining this positive relationship. First, we find that digital intensity facilitates trade between countries by reducing communication and transport costs. Second, we show that digital intensity improves the quality of exported products.

La Banque de France (BDF) a effectué une mission auprès de la Banque Nationale de Roumanie (BNR) et du gouvernement roumain entre 1929 et 1933 pour conseiller les autorités monétaires et financières. Cette mission s’est inscrite en complément à deux prêts accordés respectivement en 1929 et 1931 à l’État roumain pour stabiliser le leu et développer l’économie. Malgré quelques mois de relative stabilité, la mission s’est soldée par un échec. Après 4 ans de coopération chaotique, les autorités monétaires ont été obligées de restreindre la convertibilité pour défendre le leu. Le gouvernement roumain n’a pas non plus été en mesure de suivre les conseils de la France et a finalement fait défaut. Cet épisode a déjà été analysé par Kenneth Mouré [2005], Philipp Cottrell [2003], les auteurs (Torre and Tosi [2010]), et Ileana Racianu [2012]. Cet article incrémente ces analyses dans deux directions : (i) il associe à l’exploitation de documents d’archives de la Banque de France diverses sources inexploitées, en roumain pour la plupart ; (ii) de façon plus fondamentale, il complète l’analyse strictement économique de l’épisode étudié par un examen des changements d’opinion des intellectuels et des politiques, mais aussi de l’évolution de la situation internationale en Europe centrale pendant la période. Ces éléments permettent de mieux comprendre comment la France a pu prolonger plus que de raison cette phase de coopération stérile. JEL Classification : N24, B22

L’effort public en faveur du financement de l’innovation, notamment des PME, a fortement augmenté en France ces vingt dernières années. Dès lors, il convient de se demander dans quelle mesure les aides dédiées à la RDI atteignent les objectifs pour lesquels elles ont été conçues. Une revue de trois évaluations récentes sur des dispositifs d’aides directes à la RDI principalement à destination des PME permet de conclure à une absence générale d’effet d’aubaine. Il apparaît que les aides individuelles et collaboratives à la RDI permettent à leurs bénéficiaires d’accéder à des financements complémentaires (publics comme privés) tout en stimulant leurs efforts de RDI (dépenses de R&D, investissements en R&D, emplois R&D et salaires affiliés). Finançant des phases plus en amont du processus d’innovation, les projets collaboratifs semblent stimuler significativement les performances en brevet des PME et des ETI même si ces effets varient en fonction de la forme de la collaboration et du type de partenaire associé. Un effet sur le développement économique (chiffre d’affaires, valeur ajoutée, etc.) est également visible, mais uniquement pour les dispositifs d’aide individuelle. Classification JEL : O33, O38 .

A nascent literature explores the impact of taste differences on trade. In gravity model estimations, the coefficient on geographic distance is large because it tends to capture such (usually unobservable) preference-related frictions. We examine this question in the context of French wine, that is, a cultural good characterized by a great variety of types (i.e. accommodating a large heterogeneity in wine tastes) and of quality levels (from cheap table wine to the finest grands crus). A series of gravity models are estimated using the universe of French bottled wine exports by detailed appellation between 1998 and 2015. We use genetic distance as a proxy for taste differences inherited from biology and culture. We show that this interpretation is not ruled out by other possible roles of genetic distance on trade (i.e., microgeography or non-gustatory cultural dimensions such as trust). We find that genetic distance has an independent effect on trade, explaining between 20% and 40% of the coefficient on geographic distance. Dynamic estimates confirm this result and establish both the persistent and contemporaneous effects of genetic differences. A heterogeneous analysis also corroborates previous findings in the literature showing that high-tier goods tend to escape gravity. In addition, we find that premium wines escape the home bias associated with taste differences, possibly illustrating that luxury wines have become global iconic products purchased for status and investment motives rather than for gustatory pleasure.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on population health. For this purpose, we rely on a new measure of health, which not only takes into account life expectancy, but also morbidity and allows us to evaluate both quality and length of life. We apply a new instrumental variable approach, based on the diffuse characteristic of globalization, to a panel of 143 countries over the period 1990-2019 and find an overall positive association of FDI with health. However, we also demonstrate that this positive relationship decreases with countries' per capita GDP. We reveal that developing economies have strongly benefited from inward FDI but, more developed economies less so. For the most-developed countries in our sample, the impact is even negative, but we demonstrate that higher employment protection, which is associated with a lower level of job insecurity, allows countries to decrease this pernicious effect.

Financial constraints hamper the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to undertake innovative activities, which, in turn, affects countries' long-term growth. Therefore, promoting access to external funding for SMEs represents an important challenge for policymakers. This paper investigates whether innovation subsidies, provided by France's public investment bank to French SMEs, have translated into better access to both debt and equity financing by means of a certification effect. We exploit a unique database that collates the innovation subsidies received by French firms over the 2000-2014 period to construct a quasi-natural experiment and evaluate the causal impact of these subsidies on financial constraints for SMEs. We find a significant improvement in access to bank financing for subsidized firms, but the effect is heterogeneous and mainly concentrated on micro and small firms that have been operating for around six years. In contrast, we do not find any significant improvement in access to equity financing. We demonstrate that this last result is partly explained by a substitution effect between bank debt and equity financing.

This article analyzes the impact of firms' workforce composition on cultural distance and export performance. On the one hand, empirical literature has shown that there are dark trade costs that hinder trade performance, among which is cultural distance; on the other hand, the literature has shown that firms' export performance is positively correlated with employees’ qualifications. Using a unique database of 59,606 French firms, we reconcile these two streams of literature by estimating a structural gravity model. We demonstrate that hiring more executives decreases the negative impact of cultural distance and that firms with a higher share of executives have a higher probability of exporting and a higher level of recorded exports. As exporting involves practicing foreign languages or managing intercultural differences, firms with a greater reliance on skilled workers who exhibit this “export culture” have a higher probability of exporting, export more products and benefit from higher export values.

Nous proposons une méthode de calcul de la valeur ajoutée bancaire ajustée du risque de crédit. En appliquant cette méthode sur une base de données trimestrielle originale, nous montrons qu’en moyenne sur la période 2003-2015, la production bancaire en France est surestimée de 50 %. Ainsi, le poids moyen des institutions financières dans le PIB français passe de 2,9 % à 2 % entre 2003 et 2015. De plus, à partir d’une analyse empirique fondée sur des modèles ARDL, nous montrons que la méthode proposée suit le cycle économique alors que la méthode actuelle de calcul de la valeur ajoutée bancaire en est déconnectée. Ce faisant, la méthode de calcul que nous proposons est en adéquation avec les critères fixés par les institutions internationales pour la mesure de la valeur ajoutée bancaire. Classification JEL : E43, G21.

This paper examines critically the current method to measure bank value added in national accounts and propose a new method adjusted from risk premium, which better fits the economic cycle. By applying this new method on an original quarterly database for French banks, we show that on average the banking production is overestimated by 50 %. In this way, the average share of the banking sector in the French GDP between 2003 and 2015 decreases from 2,9 % to 2 %. Furthermore, an empirical analysis based on ARDL models reveals that the new method is cointegrated with the economic cycle whereas the current one is not. In the end, our results put forth the evidence that the new method fits better the guidelines set out by the European Union and the United Nations.

The aim of this article is to analyse the main determinants of emerging markets' exchange rate movements, particularly in Asia. For this purpose, we implement a dynamic latent factor model to investigate the drivers of 24 emerging countries' exchange rate movements and decompose the patterns into three components: a global common factor, a regional factor and a country-specific factor. Our results reveal that, in the whole period of 2000–2015, the common global factor is by far the most important determinant of exchange rate variations for Asian economies and, albeit to a lesser extent, for Latin America. However, after 2005, there is a strong increase in the explanatory power of the regional factor in Asia, from 5.6% to 45.1%, and to 49.7% in the period of 2011–2015, which shows that it is becoming the dominant factor in this area. Then, we use a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model and an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to show that the regional factor in Asia, estimated from the dynamic latent factor model, is mainly explained by Chinese economic variables. More particularly, our results highlight that the bilateral exchange rate of China, both the onshore and the offshore rates, and the macroeconomic climate in China greatly influence the regional factor in Asia in the long-run. These results give some evidence of a Renminbi zone in the long-run and are robust to the inclusion of two other major currencies in Asia, the Japanese Yen and the Korean Won, notably in the long run.