This project presents a detailed analysis of EU‐China trade and investment relations, and of the associated dependencies and traditional trade policy concerns. At the macroeconomic level, the intensity of relations exhibits stark contrasts across EU’s member states, for both trade and investment. Trade relations are also strongly imbalanced, and increasingly so. We then characterize exposure to the Chinese market, measured as its weights in producers’ revenue. We show that it is significant for many large firms, and for several sectors, when activity of foreign affiliates in China is considered; in contrast, firm‐level data for France shows that exposure to the Chinese market remains limited when focusing on exports. We finally discuss traditional trade policy issues, linked to market access, forced technology transfers and industrial subsidies, and emphasize that serious concerns remain in these areas.

This paper assesses the impact of exchange of information on foreign-owned bank deposits in international fnancial centres (IFCs). IFC deposits declined globally by 24% or USD 410 billion during 2008 to 2019. The commencement of automatic exchange of information is associated on average with a 22% reduction in IFC bank deposits held by non-IFC jurisdictions. Increasing multilateral expansion of exchange of information on request seems to diminish marginal gains of new bilateral treaties. IFC jurisdictions specialising in banking activities have been mostly affected by increasing tax transparency. A comprehensive multilateral approach is thus fundamental for successfully increasing international tax transparency.

Based on an analysis of over 100,000 bank accounts of French micro‐enterprises and SMEs, this project analyzes the effects of the health crisis and the subsequent government programs on their financial situation. We find that the liquidity of firms in the sample has improved significantly over the course of the pandemic, suggesting that corporate bankruptcies should not rise in the coming months. However, there is heterogeneity in the financial situation of businesses, with SMEs in so‐called S1 sectors (sectors most affected by health restrictions) and Ile-de-France region firms being more vulnerable than others. We also note that businesses that took out State-Guaranteed Loans were already in a worse financial position before the pandemic, and about 40% to 50% of the loans were used to absorb losses rather than to finance investment or savings. Finally, we recommend to monitor the financial position of businesses in the coming months to determine whether the economic recovery offsets the fall in government support and how quickly accumulated debt can be repaid.

The article discusses the potential for public procurement to stimulate the relocalization of economic activity in France, either by encouraging “local” purchases or by gaining market share in foreign public procurement markets. We find that there is limited room for improvement in domestic public procurement, since it results in only a small amount of imports (approximately 8%). If we exclude intra-European imports, this figure decreases to 3-4%, which is similar to the proportions observed in Germany, the United States, or China. As for foreign public procurement markets, we observe that France’s performance is significantly lower than that of Germany, with Germany exporting nearly twice as much as France. However, this difference can be explained by the fact that the ratio between German and French exports to non-European countries is much higher, indicating that France narrows the gap when it comes to public procurement abroad. Furthermore, the remaining gap in export performance could be attributed in part to the structure of French multinational companies, which tend to prioritize having affiliates abroad rather than focusing on domestic operations.

This article intends to examine the border carbon adjustment mechanism as a potential complement to existing macro-environmental policies in light of the European Union’s reaffirmed climate goals. Rather than solely targeting greenhouse gas emissions produced by manufacturing, the border carbon adjustment mechanism aims to address all greenhouse gases associated with consumption, which could enhance their effectiveness with regard to international trade. The European Union will have to select among various types of border carbon adjustment mechanisms, each with its own environmental and economic objectives, if it decides to go down this path. Moreover, the decision must take into account the legal constraints of the multilateral trade framework within which the European Union operates - they are significant but not insurmountable.

This article presents new findings on offshore financial centers (OFCs) and their role in the international financial system. We develop a statistical methodology to identify and quantify the importance of OFCs based on international banking data, leading to a list of 13 countries/jurisdictions. We also compute an indicator measuring the degree of extraterritoriality for each banking system based on this list to quantify OFCs’ importance in the international financial architecture. The analysis reveals that the banking system of a reporting country holds, on average, 1/5 of its asset positions on entities resident in OFCs and receives 1/6 of its liability positions from entities resident in OFCs. The article also explores the financial stability issues raised by OFCs during the 2008 financial crisis and applies a community detection method to analyze the organizational pattern of banking systems interactions. The study shows that OFCs participate in the regionalization of banking systems interactions, suggesting that despite increasing interconnection, OFCs retain a form of geographical specialization.