This study first summarises the forces that affect positively and negatively the spatial concentration of economic activity, and the bell curve that links general transaction costs to regional disparities. The specific role played by local labour markets is then detailed. While spatial...

According to New Economic Geography models, the limited diffusion of knowledge through space is a key determinant of the location decision of innovative activities. Following the dynamic externality approach presented by Glaeser et al. (1992), many recent econometric studies attempt to evaluate...

The starting point of the paper comes from the inability of standard models to explain the recent evolution of exports in industrialized countries. The long term price and income elasticities are unstable and the cointegration hypothesis is rejected. We consider explaining exports in a panel...

The aim of this article is to determine whether Monetary Condition Indices are useful indicators for future economic activity. First, two versions of MCI are successively studied (Long-term MCIs defined with long-term weights and standard MCIs like those built by the IMF). In-sample regressions,...

This paper deals with recent developments in foreign trade and notably with the fall of the French market shares. We first describe the deterioration of the French external trade since the beginning of the 2000?s. We show that within the euro zone, Germany is the exception rather than France,...

Very much like the Lisbon Agenda, the European strategy against climate change suffers from a discrepancy between high ambitions and weak collective instruments. As France takes the EU Presidency in July 2008, one of its priorities is precisely to make some significant progress in reducing the...

The particularly low employment rate of French older workers could be explained by a « distance to retirement » effect. In fact, employers and employees? investment in the work relation would be not profitable when employees are near to retirement. In their empirical study, Hairault and al....

This article deals with the relation between the rate of employment of older workers and the great advances made in technology in the last decades. The analysis of specialization of production allows grasping part of this technological evolution. We suppose a relation between older workers? rate...

In recent years the European Union has sought to transform its trading regime with the ACP countries by advocating reciprocal free trade agreements with them through Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). This policy shift from preferential trade to free trade would imply drastic changes for...

New Economic Geography presents increasing returns to agglomeration as the central explanation behind the concentration of economic activity. Within this framework, returns to scale are caused by a preference for variety in consumption which is better satisfied by agglomeration. The estimation...