How Occupied France Financed Its Own Exploitation in World War II

Filippo Occhino, Kim Oosterlinck and Eugene White ()

No 12137, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The occupation payments made by France to Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1944 represent one of the largest recorded international transfers and contributed significantly to financing the overall German war effort. Using a neoclassical growth model that incorporates essential features of the occupied economy and the postwar stabilization, we assess the welfare costs of French policies that funded payments to Germany. Occupation payments required a 16 percent reduction of consumption for twenty years, with the draft of labor to Germany and wage and price controls adding substantially to this burden. Vichy's postwar debt overhang would have demanded large budget surpluses; but inflation, which erupted after Liberation, reduced the debt well below its steady state level and redistributed the adjustment costs. The Marshall Plan played only a minor direct role, and international credits helped to substantially lower the nation's burden.

JEL-codes: E1 E6 N1 N4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mac
Note: DAE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Filippo Occhino & Kim Oosterlinck & Eugene N. White, 2007. "How Occupied France Financed Its Own Exploitation in World War II," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 295-299, May.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12137.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How Occupied France Financed Its Own Exploitation in World War II (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12137

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12137

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().