This paper examines various supply and demand side aspects of the French labour market for older workers and puts them in perspective by comparing them to the US case. We first consider the supply side incentives (or disincentives) of basic pension schemes for the two countries : for France, we...

In September 2009 the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission submitted its report on the measurement of economic performance and social progress. The report is based on a large body of applied research work conducted in recent years in various fields of the economic and social sciences. Some of this...

In France, the business tendency surveys conducted in all the important sectors of the economy are key components in diagnosing the economic outlook. Over the years, INSEE has gradually introduced business climate indicators for each business sector. Such indicators summarise the data contained...

Do tariffs inhibit trade flows by limiting the entry of exporting firms (extensive margin') or by restricting the average volume exported by each firm (intensive margin')? Using a gravity equation approach, we analyze how the decrease in tariffs promoted during the 1990s by the Uruguay Round...

This paper is an empirical study of the effect of shocks to firms' collateral, with a focus on land holdings. We find evidence that stand-alone French firms are credit constrained. They invest up to .39¬ more per extra euro of collateral, and they finance this additional investment by issuing...

This paper proposes an indicator for detecting business cycle turning points involving mixed frequency business survey unbalanced data. It is based on a hidden Markov-switching model and allows for the detection of regime changes in a given economy where information is displayed monthly and/or...

During the 80s, several empirical studies have shown a positive correlation between concentration, prices and profits. It is well known that these estimates all suffer from simultaneity bias: market structure and prices are affected by common factors, some of which are not observable, which...