Conférence "The new competitiveness indicators" avec Stefan Collignon

Le 3 mai 2016, l'Observatoire de la compétitivité du ministère de l'Economie a organisé une conférence avec le Professeur Stefan Collignon au sujet de "Nouveaux indicateurs de compétitivité".

Résumé de la présentation

"A prominent explanation for the Euro crisis is that lack of competitiveness in Europe’s South has caused macroeconomic imbalances and unsustainable debt in the private and public sector. This argument implies that a monetary union functions like a fixed exchange rate arrangement, only that the mechanism for keeping the exchange rates fixed is stronger. This logic requires that debtor countries need export surpluses to service their debt. I have shown that this claim is fundamentally flawed (Collignon, 2014). A currency area functions like a domestic economy, which means that contrary to debt in foreign currency, domestic debt can be serviced out of profits in the non-tradable sector and not only by export earnings. What is needed is balanced growth between the sectors and between regions (countries). In this context, competitiveness takes a new role – not as a measure of comparative advantage in foreign trade, but as a measure of profitability for investment. In this chapter I shall present a new index for measuring the competitiveness of wage levels based on the return on capital in the Euro Area".

Stefan Collignon et Serge Allegrezza (c) STATEC