Georges Sokoloff nous a quittés ce lundi 7 décembre. Avec ce contributeur de toujours aux travaux du CEPII disparaît l’un des meilleurs experts du monde russe et soviétique.

This column reports the nature and the amplitude of economic cycles in the Euro area since 1970, with a focus on the role of financial factors in generating these cycles.

Paris 2015 marks the start of a climate change investment boom worth trillions of dollars. This upcoming hype begs the question: can we grow our way out of climate change?

In theory, uncertainties about the costs of the low carbon policies implemented by each country to meet the emissions quota imposed by the agreement make it unlikely that any credible agreement could be reached or respected, either because countries would be reluctant to commit, or due to opportunistic cheating.

A factor that clearly differentiates COP21 and COP15 in Copenhagen is the increasing mobilization of the financial sector. In the past months, financial actors have taken commitments and spoken out on climate-related topics.

Because the climate is a common good, economists generally advocate the use of an international carbon price to internalize climate risk, to incorporate as many countries as possible into an agreement and to thwart “free-rider” strategies.

It will be key for the global sustainability transition that the measures taken in the respective sustainability dimensions, i.e. the economic, the ecological, and the social dimension, complement and reinforce each other.

Linking public debt to CO2 emissions could give governments a strong incentive to deliver on climate change action.

It is a widely accepted view that many commodity-exporting countries have commodity currencies, in that movements in real commodity prices can explain fluctuations in their real exchange rates.

This year, Europe is confronted with a critical double challenge: addressing the climate change issue and pulling itself out of a persistent low growth trap. Today these two challenges are addressed separately. We propose to make private low-carbon assets eligible for the ECB asset purchase program.