The Competitiveness of French Industry: Lessons from a European Comparison

Guillaume Gaulier (), Juliette Milgram (), Laurence Nayman () and Deniz Ünal ()

La Lettre du CEPII, 2002, issue 210

Abstract: Since 1997, strong growth of the French economy has also generated much employment. Such a trend, which reflects the deceleration of productivity growth, could be worrying were it to affect competitiveness. However, productivity growth in manufacturing industry, which is especially exposed to international competition, appears to have maintained a constant level since the 1970s. From this point of view, comparisons made with Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain highlight the specificity of the French case. The macroeconomic policy adopted as of 1983 has forced French firms to control prices and costs, via wage moderation and productivity gains. Comparisons based on an evaluation of production within a single price system indicate that, at the end of the 1990s, France had lower prices and costs as well as better productivity levels than Germany and the United Kingdom.

Keywords: competitiveness; international comparison; industry; productivity; growth; factor costs; prices; factor markets and growth; sectors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O40 O52 O57 L60 D24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-03

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepii.fr/anglaisgraph/publications/lettre/pdf/2002/210ang.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cii:cepill:2002-210

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in La Lettre du CEPII from CEPII research center
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().