Isabelle Rabaud

Terrorist events typically vary along many dimensions, making it difficult to identify their economic effects. This paper analyses the impact of terrorism on international trade by examining a series of three large-scale terrorist incidents in France over the period from January 2015 to July 2016. Using firm-level data at monthly frequency, we document an immediate and lasting decline in cross-border trade after a mass terrorist attack. According to our estimates, France’s trade in goods, which accounts for about 70% of the country’s trade in goods and services, is reduced by more than 6 billion euros in the first 6 months after an attack. The reduction in trade mainly takes place along the intensive margin, with particularly strong effects for partner countries with low border barriers to France, for firms with less frequent trade activities and for homogeneous products. A possible explanation for these patterns is an increase in trade costs due to stricter security measures.

This paper draws insights from the literature on Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modeling of potential gains from liberalization for developing countries, in particular Northern, Eastern and Southern African economies. Due to the importance of regulatory framework and to the size of service industries, substantial potential gains are expected from liberalization, by accession to WTO, regional, preferential or bilateral trade agreements. However, it seems that attention should be focused on the specificity of each region and country and that a sectoral approach is necessary. Regarding the choice between multilateral, bilateral or regional liberalization, the optimal framework depends on service industries. Institutions particularly matter for services and reforms should be global and focused. Domestic reforms are necessary prior to trade liberalization.

This paper investigates the relationship between FDI and private investment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), using a sample of 40 countries over 1980-2017. To disentangle short term from long-term dynamics, our empirical analysis is based on Pooled Mean Group (PMG), Mean Group (MG) and Dynamic Full Effects (DFE) models. We find that FDI has little effect on private investment in the short run but significant crowding-in effects in the long-run: a one percentage point increase of the share of FDI in GDP leads to a 0.29% rise in private investment, in the long run. Our results also show that FDI interacts with public domestic investment to boost these positive effects. Finally, we show that the impact of FDI on domestic private investment is stronger in non-natural resource exporting diversified countries as opposed to non-diversified commodity exporters.

L’attractivité d’un pays renvoie à une gamme très large de déterminants : taille des
marchés, coût du capital et du travail (au sein desquels la fiscalité joue un rôle important), présence ou non d’entreprises concurrentes ou complémentaires dans le processus de production. Dans une perspective de plus long terme, ce sont aussi les stratégies d’insertion dans les échanges, la qualité des infrastructures et des institutions, l’éducation et la formation. Les développements récents de la nouvelle économie géographique ont permis d’analyser plus finement l’interaction complexe entre coût des facteurs, taille des marchés et décisions de localisation des activités, mettant en évidence des effets d’agglomération cumulatifs qui justifient de considérer avec prudence les comparaisons statiques entre pays, en particulier en matière de fiscalité. Dès lors, comment mesurer l’attractivité ? La diversité des indicateurs disponibles désoriente souvent l’économiste et le décideur politique. Dans ce domaine comme dans d’autres, la France produit une variété précieuse de données – encore faut-il qu’elles soient mieux connues et utilisées. Il revient d’abord à l’utilisateur de clarifier le concept qu’il cherche à appréhender : mesure de la performance économique, observation des décisions d’implantation ou, plus en amont du processus de décision, de leurs déterminants. Dès que ces distinctions sont reconnues et prises en compte, la variété des indicateurs se révèle en
fait un atout. Ni les indices synthétiques de compétitivité comme ceux construits par l’IMD de Lausanne ou par le Forum économique mondial de Davos, ni les données quantitatives comme les investissements directs étrangers enregistrés en balance des paiements, ne suffisent à mesurer l’attractivité. Les premiers, qui donnent de la France une image peu favorable, manquent d’homogénéité, ne reposent pas sur une vision théorique claire des déterminants de la croissance, et produisent des classements contradictoires et volatils. La piste la plus prometteuse d’amélioration consisterait à fonder de manière plus systématique la construction de ces indices sur les travaux économiques récents sur le rôle des institutions dans la croissance de long terme. Les secondes, qui soulignent au contraire la place de premier plan de la France comme pays d’accueil des investissements étrangers, n’appréhendent cependant que la dimension financière des décisions de localisation, sont fortement influencées par les opérations de fusions et acquisitions et par le développement des prêts à court terme entre entreprises affiliées. Il est donc utile de les croiser avec des indicateurs d’activité comme le chiffre d’affaires et l’emploi, ce que permettent progressivement les statistiques de l’Insee sur l’activité des groupes et les données Fats sur les entreprises étrangères élaborées par la Banque de France.

Huge gains from increase in exports and growth are expected from liberalization of trade in services in African countries. The size and the growth of tertiary sector and the breadth of existing barriers seems to justify this expectation. We analyze computable general equilibrium models developed to measure the impact of the openness of services markets in Africa. We show that the outcomes of those models should be looked at with caution. Rather than asking for regulations harmonization, it could be better to search for new means to increase productivity and to reduce the costs in services. The fulfillment of domestic reforms reveals a necessary prerequisite to avoid that domestic monopoly rents be transferred to foreign oligopolies.

Trade in services covers four modes of supply: cross-border trade, consumption abroad, commercial presence and presence of natural persons. Thus, impediments to trade in services involve the regulatory framework. Domestic reforms are at stake to provide falling prices and technology transfers arising from trade liberalization for forward using industries. We look at the way gravity equations explain the determinants of trade in services and how they permit to assess the gain arising from the removal of impediments to trade. First, we criticize the measurements of barriers to trade in services. We then show that if gravity equations provide a good fit for international transactions in services, they tend to overestimate the impacts of impediments to trade in services and thus the growth of exports and FDI inflows occurring from liberalization.

This paper proposes an original framework to determine the relative influence of five factors on the Feldstein and Horioka result
of OECD countries with a strong saving–investment association. Based on panel threshold regression models, we establish
country-specific and time-specific saving retention coefficients for 24 OECD countries over the period 1960–2000. These
coefficients are assumed to change smoothly, as a function of five threshold variables, considered as the most important in the
literature devoted to the Feldstein and Horioka puzzle. The results show that; degree of openness, country size and current account
to GDP ratios have the greatest influence on the investment–saving relationship.

Feldstein Horioka puzzle; Panel smooth threshold regression models; Saving–investment association; Capital mobility

This paper is the first to uncover in details the impact of different families of disasters
on exports from 1979 to 2000 (storms, floods, earthquakes and changes in temperatures). Besides, our paper is the first to compare in a quasi-systematic way the results across the two datasets at hand, the standard EM-DAT data and GeoMet data, a newly available dataset based on geophysical and meteorological data (Felbermayr and Gröschl (2013) and Felbermayr and Gröschl (2014)). We run series of regressions while accounting progressively for the characteristics of products (all traded goods v/s agriculture ones), the characteristics of the country (size, level of development) and the intensity of the catastrophes. When pooling all countries, and all types of disasters, we do not find any statistical impact on exports. But when focusing on each of them separately and on agricultural goods, the occurrence of an earthquake appears to reduce exports of about 3%, regardless of its location. A windstorm shock, even when it happens to be very severe, has hardly any impact. A flood, on its side, is estimated to reduce export flows of a small country by nearly 3%. The effect of changes in temperatures is ambiguous. All in all, except for
temperatures related disasters, the results are consistent across both datasets, EM-DAT and GeoMet, although they appear to be slightly more in line with our expectations in the case of GeoMet.

Nous analysons le lien entre exportations de services et immigration. Notre échantillon observe la migration de 191 pays vers 20 membres de l'OCDE en 2000, 2005 et 2010. Nous montrons qu'une part plus élevée de migrants dans une population accroît les exportations de services. Cet effet ressort particulièrement lorsque les immigrés proviennent de pays avec une faible qualité de régulation et de règles de droit. Leur connaissance profonde des usages locaux de leurs pays d'origine leur donne des compétences complémentaires à celles des natifs. On peut dire que le canal du coût à l'échange est pertinent. Mots-clés : lien commerce-migration, commerce de services, équations de gravité, migrations OCDE Classification JEL : F14, F22, F63, J61, L80 Migration and OECD service exports: An institutional perspective We analyze the links between the exporting of services and immigration. Our sample concerns immigration from 191 countries towards 20 OECD countries in 2000, 2005, and 2010. We show that a higher share of immigrants in the population increases the exporting of services. This complement effect shows up in particular for immigrants originating from countries with a low quality of regulations and respect for the rule of law. Thanks to their deep knowledge of the local habits of their countries of origin, immigrants' skills are complementary to those of natives. A trade cost channel seems to be at stake.