The 2023 CEPII's Programme of work: focus on shocks and deep transformations of global economy

This year, the major topics of the CEPII's Programme of work emerge from the current gloomy context : the energy transition, the resilience of value chains, impacts of geopolitical tensions, the macroeconomic situation marked by new budgetary priorities and the tightening of monetary policies.

The global economy is going through a period of exceptional uncertainty that results from the consequences of the health crisis, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, climate change, a potential decoupling between China and the United States, which would likely go along with a technology war and the redefinition of macroeconomic policies in Western countries, as well as more aggressive and protectionist industrial policies. Understanding the economic impacts of these shocks and analysing ongoing or looming global structural transformations are at the heart of our projects that we carry on or launch this year.

The CEPII's Programme of work strives to find a balance between providing academic research, updating statistics and data accessible to all and shaping economic policies.

The development and streamlining of models and databases are an important part of our ongoing projects. MIRAGE is evolving to better take into account value chains as well as climate and energy issues. A new model for quantifying the dynamics of intersectoral adjustment in the labour market, in the context of the energy transition, is being built.

The CEPII continues its work on databases, notably with an update of the database on protection in services. A new database provides the balance sheets of the world's main central banks over a 50-year period.

International Trade Analysis

In 2023, our work programme highlights four main topics: the analysis of the evolution of global value chains and multinational companies, the geopolitical issues of globalisation, environment and competitiveness factors in international trade. We follow up on our 2022 works on competitiveness of the French economy and its sectoral specialisations in order to better understand the link between innovation and production activities in a specific territory, as well as the role of robotics in national sectoral specialisations. For years, the team also has been developing, updating and disseminating the CEPII databases for the benefit of both the international scientific community and the general public.

International Macroeconomics and Finance

This year, the projects revolve around three axes: the macroeconomic upheavals caused by the energy crisis and the return of inflation; macroeconomic issues and the challenges of the energy transition; structural changes linked to external imbalances and transformations of the international monetary system.

International Migrations

The CEPII continues its research on international migration along two main lines. The first one is the economic consequences of migration. We focus on employment at regional and sectoral levels (essential and digital sectors) and on the impact of migration policies through the analysis of natural experiments, and in particular the regularisation cases. The second axis focuses on questions of culture and opinions, which are currently high on the international research agenda and on that of the CEPII. It includes four components: global analysis, the interconnections between migration and cultural norms, the measurement of the influence of the media on the opinions and social behaviour of natives, and the weight of migration in electoral behaviour (whether the vote of natives or immigrants).

Trade Policies

Against the backdrop of successive crises and the beginning of decoupling of the world economy, the CEPII's Programme of work on trade policies is built around three topics. The first concerns the interface between trade and the environment. It addresses the issue of trade policy bias in favour of polluting industries. It quantifies the economic consequences of the transition to a low-carbon economy and raises the question of the use of the environmental argument to mask possible protectionist pressures. Finally, there is the question of the decoupling of the world economy caused by the current crises. This subject is on the edge of the second topic concerning studies of trade policies. The topics that we address, such as African trade integration, sanctions related to the war in Ukraine, protection of controlled designations, illustrate the diversity of approaches and the scope of our works. A final section of our programme concerns the assessment of past trade policies. Taking into account the current world events and questions of economic policy, we decided to complete these most pressing subjects with a set of works relating to tools, databases and models, with a particular focus on their improvement by including the issues of renewable energies and agriculture.