It is often claimed that the current basis upon which the French social security contributions are calculated, namely the wage bill, penalises employment, by increasing labor costs and consequently encouraging firms to substitute capital for labor. Broadening this basis by incorporating some...

This paper focuses on the access of independent French SMEs to bank lending and analyzes whether the observed evolution of credit to SMEs over the recent period was "demand driven" as a result of the decrease in firms' activity and investment projects or was "supply driven" with an increase in...

The acceleration of the firm failure rate in France between 2008 and 2010 was preceded by a surge in the number of firms' creations in 2003-2004.Therefore, identifying the impact of the 2008 crisis requires to distinguish, among the failures occurring over the period, those resulting from the...