France has a long and unique experience of public intervention in household debt restructuring. When facing financial distress, households can file a case to a “households’ over-indebtedness commission” (HOC). These HOCs either grant a delay of payment or impose a partial reimbursement of...

We uncover technological standardization as a microeconomic mechanism which is vital for the implementation of new technologies, in particular general purpose technologies. The interdependencies of these technologies require common rules (“standardization”) to ensure compatibility. Using...

In this paper, we assess the impact of fiscal policy discretion on economic activity in the short and medium-term. Using a panel of 132 countries from 1960 to 2008, we find that fiscal policy discretion provides a net stimulus to the economy in the short-run and crowding-in effects are amplified...

This paper develops an arbitrage-free affine term structure model of potentially defaultable sovereign bonds to model a cross-section of eight euro area government bond yield curves since January 1999. The existence of a common monetary policy under European Monetary Union determines the short...

This paper examines the ability of financial advice provided by sellers of financial services to substitute for financial literacy of customers. I set up a simple theoretical model in which an informed financial advisor communicates with a less informed customer of financial services. Given the...

Small and medium-sized enterprises are a centrepiece of Europe's economy. Due to their limited size and their generally lower creditworthiness, their access to financial market instruments is more limited than for large enterprises, which benefit from more elaborate Treasury operations,...

Malgré un contexte économique toujours difficile, le total des crédits accordés aux professionnels de l’immobilier par les principales banques françaises, tel qu’il ressort de l’enquête annuelle du Secrétariat général de l’Autorité de Contrôle prudentiel et de Résolution...

The French housing market showed some recovery in 2013 amid furthermoderate price falls in the Paris area, Île de France and the rest of the country,at -1.5%, -1.6% and -1.4% respectively, and as interest rates stabilised athistorically low levels. The volume of transactions for existing homes,...

- Contrairement au marché américain, le marché de la titrisation européenne ne s’est pas totalement effondré avec la crise financière de 2008, même s’il a connu depuis une certaine atonie. La plus grande attention désormais apportée à la qualité des actifs sous-jacents a permis un...

In a context of declining housing sales and decreasing prices, the annual survey on housing finance carried out by the Autorité de Contrôle prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) recorded a 27.6% decrease in loans extended in 2012. Outstanding loans experienced their lowest annual growth since...