This column reports the nature and the amplitude of economic cycles in the Euro area since 1970, with a focus on the role of financial factors in generating these cycles.

Following the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, modern industrial countries appear to be coming back to a moderate growth trajectory, as was the case for the last three decades.

While European external surpluses are accumulating and domestic demand is slacking, insisting on improving the Union’s external competitiveness, as some in the Commission are presently doing, is paradoxical. For Europe, the paramount risk is not losing its competitiveness. It is not recovering cohesion and growth.

The current turmoil in emerging capital markets is the result of a classical reversal of market sentiment after an excess of optimism. There are good reasons for being cautiously optimistic but uncertainties remain.

International trade plays a key role in technological diffusion. In a recent work, we show how firms can improve their competitiveness and export performance through importing more varieties of high quality or lower cost intermediate goods.

The Lettre du CEPII No. 324 shows that internal devaluation strategies in Latvia and in Ireland produced only limited adjustments at the price of considerable social costs.

In a previous post, the CEPII presented its World Growth Projections to 2050. This article focuses on two themes that were not addressed yet: Education and Female Participation to the Labor Force.

In France, like in most Western European countries, the debate on competitiveness is entirely focused on manufacturing industries. The case of services sectors remains in the shadows, even though they undoubtedly are an important source of employment and constitute a clear comparative advantage.

The CEPII recently revisited its projections for the world economy in 2050. The great shift in economic power to the emerging countries seems to be accelerating. By 2050, China would represent one-third of the world economy, more than the European Union, the United States, India and Japan all together.

The specialization of countries in international trade reveals their comparative advantages and disadvantages. The CHELEM database which provides complete and consistent statistics classified by country in the long term is used to analyze the structural aspect of the competitiveness of nations in all economic sectors, namely the primary sector, industry and services.