Professor Juan Carluccio

This bulletin attempts to evaluate the effect of emergency measures introduced by European Union (EU) Member States in 2022 to counter the energy crisis, and their impact on inflation. It analyses their economic consequences with regard to their three objectives: (i) lowering energy bills for households and firms; (ii) minimising the cost to public finances; and (iii) reducing demand for energy and securing energy supplies. The EU attempted to introduce measures aimed at all three objectives. In parallel, national authorities adopted two types of response: directly acting on energy costs for consumers (notably France and Spain) or paying subsidies to households and enterprises (Germany and the Netherlands).

With the first disruptions to Russian gas supplies at end 2021, and especially the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European gas prices surged, before subsiding again in 2023. Given that natural gas accounts for only a small share of total European imports, how can we explain the huge impact this shock had on euro area inflationary trends? This article attempts to analyse the mechanisms behind the transmission of the energy shock, focusing on the specific features of the gas and electricity markets that amplified the crisis. It also examines the strategies adopted by the European Union to strengthen its resilience to future shocks, notably the reform of the electricity market.

Using monthly firm-level exports and imports over 1993-2020, we uncover four facts: (i) deviations of large exporters from the average growth rate explain a large share of aggregate fluctuations; (ii) an important source for these deviations is the top exporters' higher loadings on common shocks; (iii) the stronger reaction of the top 1% exporters to the GFC and Covid crises contributed to the export collapses; (iv) a higher elasticity to large demand shocks, not a different exposure to global value chain shocks, contributes to this stronger reaction. The results show that idiosyncratic reactions of large firms to common shocks matter for aggregate export fluctuations, and are especially relevant for the trade collapses of the 2008/2009 crisis and the Pandemic.

Using micro data on import values and quantities by product and countries of origin, we quantify the effect of imports of consumption-goods from low-wage countries (LWCs) on inflation in France from 1994 to 2014. Imports of varieties produced in LWCs affect the cost-of-living price index through pure-price and taste-shift variations (which, conditional on prices, drive expenditure shares). The pure-price effect includes both the contribution of imported inflation (given the share of imports in consumption) and the effect of imports of intermediate goods from LWCs on domestic prices. The taste shock effect cannot be directly observed but is recovered from actual expenditure shares and relative prices. We derive an expression of inflation that allows us to disentangle the impact of imports of consumption goods from LWCs on cost-ofliving versus CPI inflation – the latter abstracting for composition effects. Overall, we estimate that imports from LWCs lowered CPI inflation by 0.02 pp per year on average, and had a much larger effect on cost-of-living inflation (between 0.13 to 0.20 pp per year depending on how we measure unit values).

Using French manufacturing firm-level data for the years 1996-2007, we uncover a novel set of stylized facts about offshoring behavior: (i) Low-productivity firms ("non-importers") obtain most of their inputs domestically. (ii) Medium-productivity firms offshore skill-intensive inputs to skill-abundant countries and are more labor intensive in their domestic production than non-importers. (iii) Higher-productivity firms additionally offshore labor-intensive inputs to labor-abundant countries and are more skill intensive than non-importers. We develop a model in which heterogeneous firms, subject to fixed costs, can offshore intermediate inputs of different skill intensities to countries with different skill abundance. This leads to endogenous within-industry variation in domestic skill intensities. We provide econometric evidence supporting the factor-proportions channel through which reductions in offshoring costs to labor-abundant countries have significantly increased firm-level skill intensities of French manufacturers.

How is corporate investment affected by the weighted average cost of capital (WACC)? Since existing studies focus on listed firms, little is known of the case of private firms, in spite of their relevance in both developed and developing economies. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap. We develop an empirical study on the impact of the WACC on private firms' investment rates. We exploit accounting information on a panel of around 1700 French private corporate groups in the non-farm, non-financial sectors, covering the period 2005–2015. We overcome the challenge posed by the lack of observable information about the cost of equity for private firms by developing a methodology that relies on estimates for comparable public firms. We find that a one-standard deviation increase in the WACC (2 percentage points) leads to a 0.7 percentage point decrease in the investment rate the following year. Increases in both components of the WACC, namely the cost of debt and the cost of equity, are associated with lower investment rates. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the heightened WACC following the euro area crises reduced the aggregate corporate investment rate of French private firms by a cumulative 1.6 percentage points over 2009–2015.

We develop a simple model to study how globalization affects wage inequalities. The model features three goods, one is an “international” good, and two are local non-tradable goods. The non-tradable goods are produced by local labor, either skilled or unskilled, while labor of all types and all origins contribute to the production of the international good. We find that increasing participation of the South in global production and consumption lead to an increase in wage inequalities in the North. Higher South integration into global value chains reduces North-South wage inequalities.

We estimate the impact of international trade on wages using data for French manufacturing firms. We instrument firm-level trade flows with firm-specific instrumental variables based on world demand and supply shocks. Both export and offshoring shocks have a positive effect on wages. Exports increase wages for all occupational categories while offshoring has heterogeneous effects. The impact of trade on wages varies across bargaining regimes. In firms with collective bargaining, the elasticity of wages with respect to exports and offshoring is higher than in firms with no collective bargaining. Wage gains associated with collective bargaining are similar across worker categories.

Does foreign entry improve host country productivity and welfare? Previous studies have looked at the role of backward linkages with domestic suppliers and their effects on domestic competitors. In this paper, we study how these externalities are affected by technological incompatibilities between foreign and domestic technologies. When foreign technologies require specialized inputs, some local suppliers self-select into production for multinational firms. A decrease in the cost of inputs compatible with the foreign technology has heterogeneous effects. It benefits foreign firms and the most productive downstream domestic firms that adopt the foreign technology, and negatively affects firms using the domestic technology. Technological incompatibilities reduce the welfare gains from openness to FDI, but this negative effect can be overcome by domestic technology adoption. The model's predictions are consistent with the stylized facts drawn from the empirical literature on FDI spillovers.

Do variations in labor market institutions affect the cross-border organization of the firm? Using firm-level data on multinationals located in France, we show that firms are more likely to outsource the production of intermediate inputs to external suppliers when importing from countries with high worker bargaining power. This effect is stronger for firms operating in capital-intensive and differentiated industries. We propose a theoretical mechanism that rationalizes these findings. The fragmentation of the value chain weakens the workers' bargaining position, by limiting the amount of revenues that are subject to union extraction. The outsourcing strategy reduces the share of surplus that is appropriated by the union, which enhances the firm's incentives to invest. Since investment creates relatively more value in capital-intensive industries, increases in worker bargaining power are more likely to be conducive to outsourcing in those industries. Overall, our findings suggest that global firms choose their organizational structure strategically when sourcing intermediate inputs from markets where worker bargaining power is high.

We develop a simple model to study the interactions between a supplier's financial constraints and contract incompleteness in a vertical relationship. Applied to the analysis of multinational firms' sourcing strategies, the model predicts: (i) that complex and specific inputs are more likely to be sourced from financially developed countries and (ii) that multinationals are more likely to integrate suppliers located in countries with poor financial institutions, especially when trade involves complex goods. These predictions are examined and validated using firm-level trade data on multinational firms with operations in France.