La récession de 1993 réexaminée

Abstract

[fre] Si la récession du début des années quatre-vingt-dix dans les pays anglo-saxons, ou encore celle du Japon en 1993, résultent principalement d'une crise financière, celle de fin 1992-début 1993 en Europe continentale fut au contraire la conséquence de politiques monétaires excessivement restrictives, qui transformèrent la phase de ralentissement que connaissaient alors les partenaires de l'Allemagne en dépression. La première partie de l'article examine les principales caractéristiques des récessions qui ont affecté les pays industrialisés au cours des trois dernières années. La seconde s'appuie sur le modèle Mundell-Fleming élargi pour illustrer la gestion particulièrement inefficace de la réunification allemande par les pays européens et notamment la France. On montre que, dès lors que l'Allemagne tentait d'éliminer l'inflation résultant du choc de demande de la réunification par une politique monétaire restrictive, l'appréciation réelle du mark était inévitable. Celle-ci aurait pu être réalisée par une appréciation nominale qui aurait atténué en France la phase de ralentissement économique ; mais, avec une parité fixe franc-mark, la désinflation désirée par la Bundesbank ne pouvait que provoquer une déflation française. [eng] The 1993 recession revisited Pierre-Alain Muet If the recessions at the beginning of the 90s in the English speaking countries or in Japan in 1993 were mainly the result of a financial crisis, the recession during the winter of 1992-1993 in Continental Europe was due to excessively restrictive monetary policies, which transformed the economic downturn into recession. The first part of this paper examines the main characteristics of recessions which affected the industrialised countries during the last three years. The second part, based on an extended Mundell-Fleming model, illustrates the inefficient way in which european countries, especially France, dealt with German reunification. We show that when Germany tried to reduce the inflation due to fiscal expansion by restrictive monetary policy, the real appreciation of the mark was unavoidable. This could have been achieved by a nominal appreciation which would have attenuated the downturn in France. But since the franc was tied to the mark, the disinflation sought after by Germany could only lead to a deflationnary impact in France.

Which Size and Evolution of the Government Expenditure Multiplier in France (1980-2010)?

“…The interest rate spread relative to Germany then disappeared rapidly. For more details on the EMS crisis, see Muet (1994). Figure 13: Government spending multiplier for a shock initiated at different dates (1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010).…”

“…Finally, opposite effects may have influenced the size of the multiplier during the Great Recession: on the one hand, the zero lower bound may have muted the response of monetary policy and pushed multipliers above one (Christiano et al 2011, Woodford 2011) but on the other hand, the rapid increase of French public debt may have led consumers to behave in a more Ricardian way (Sutherland 1997). Hence, we do not 2 In the United States, defense expenditures represent 25% of government consumption and investment from 1995 to and 35% from 1960to 1994. The breakdown of government expenditures by function is only available since 1995 in France.…”