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Since 1980 the direct investments of the United States in western developed countries have fluctuated considerably. The large disinvestment of the early eighties in Europe and Canada has been recently followed by substantial reinvestments.
This paper introduces a theoretical explanation of the decision to invest abroad, considered as a two-step process : the allocation of productive capital and the financing of investment. Depending on how foreign subsidiaries are bound to their parent, we get two possible modelling formulations.
Whatever modelling method is chosen, the econometric tests performed for every country (Canada, United-Kingdom, West-Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy) over the period 1962-1986 stress the financial return of setting up production abroad. The other variables considered (factor costs and local demands) play a minor part in the accumulation of capital abroad.
In addition, we test the hypothesis of a common evolution of the share of exports in production and the accumulation of direct investment abroad. On the basis of the figures for Canada, the Netherlands, France and Italy, we observe that such a relation does exist between exports of US goods and US capital.

L'étude de la répartition du revenu national est le plus souvent limitée à celle du partage de la valeur ajoutée entre salaires et profits, dont les déterminants essentiels sont les évolutions de la productivité et des salaires réels. Pourtant, l'analyse du partage du produit intérieur brut, incluant l'ensemble des impôts indirects, puis du revenu national disponible qui comprend le solde des opérations avec l'extérieur, permet de mieux prendre en compte le rôle redistributif des opérations de répartition — revenus de la propriété, fiscalités directe et indirecte, cotisations et prestations sociales. La présente étude retient cette seconde démarche pour cinq grands pays de l'OCDE (Etats-Unis, Japon, RFA, Royaume- Uni et France) et couvre la période 1970-1986. Les secousses de 1975 et 1980, consécutives aux chocs pétroliers, et le retournement de 1982 affectent dans tous les pays la part des salaires, qu'elle soit mesurée par le poids des salaires bruts ou des rémunérations brutes dans le PIB ou dans la valeur ajoutée. Le recours à des indicateurs différents modifie en revanche sensiblement la hiérarchie internationale obtenue : les caractéristiques structurelles nationales décrites par les taux d'imposition directe, de salarisation, de prestations et de cotisations sociales sont autant de causes de divergence. L'étude du partage du revenu fait apparaître une structure que l'on peut qualifier d '«européenne» — part des ménages plus faible et des administrations plus forte — face aux répartitions américaine et japonaise. Entre 1970 et 1986 les modifications de la structure de répartition du revenu disponible concernent essentiellement les parts des ménages et des entreprises, celle des administrations restant en général stationnaire, malgré l'augmentation des prélèvements obligatoires en pourcentage du PIB, à l'exception notable des Etats-Unis où elle décroît tendanciellement. L'ajustement au profit des entreprises depuis le début des années quatre-vingt a emprunté des voies très différentes selon les pays. Le calcul du rapport entre le revenu final des ménages et leurs salaires bruts montre une convergence impressionnante des différents pays, mais l'analyse détaillée — prestations sociales, cotisations employeurs et employés, impôts directs... — confirme, sur fond de socialisation croissante du revenu des ménages, l'utilisation d'instruments divers : pression sur les salaires en France ou moindre évolution des revenus de la propriété au Japon par exemple. L'analyse en termes de répartition des «fruits de la croissance» et de contribution des composantes à la formation du revenu des ménages montre que l'idée d'une «norme européenne» de répartition semble perdre de sa pertinence depuis 1982, la France et la RFA conservant cependant des structures assez proches.

Two Decompositions of National Income in the Major OECD Countries Jérôme Henry, Jacques Le Cacheux Two alternative decompositions of national income are commonly undertaken : the division of value added amongst major actors of the production process, i.e. the distribution of gross income ; and the decomposition of demand, which shows expenditure by category of expenditure (consumption, investment, etc.). These two approaches are confronted in this comparative study of six large OECD countries — Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United States — over the period 1970-1987. During these years, factor shares have changed considerably : a marked increase in the wage share is observable everywhere until the beginning of the 1980s, followed by a decrease of about the same magnitude. Recently, wage shares have been on the rise again everywhere, including in France according to the new national accounts. The size and persistence of the most recent increase are however uncertain. Changes in the way value added is shared reflect variations in labor productivity and in the product wage, the time profiles of which have been extremely diverse across the various countries. Factor shares are also affected by relative price changes. And, due to exchange rate fluctuations and oil price shocks, the various relative prices have moved considerably during the period covered by this study. This has resulted in — sometimes large — divergences between the product wage and the real wage in terms of consumption goods. The structure of national spending in the various countries has also been profoundly altered during this period ; however, these changes appear to be only loosely related to those of income shares. Thus, for instance, the changes in investment rates in major OECD countries do not seem to be closely correlated with the variations in gross profit shares in value added. Our conclusions raise questions about the combined effects of the policies that have been pursued in the recent years. In particular, they bear upon the choice of the right mix of incomes policy and exchange- rate policy.

Relative Cost of Capital to Labour and Substitution : Does the Link Still Exist ? Jérôme Henry, Véronique Leroux, Pierre-Alain Muet In France, the slowdown in economic growth which occurred after each oil shock has been followed by a simultaneous reduction of the productivity of both labour and capital. This is contrary to the substitu- tion that should have occurred since the early 1980s, on the basis of the sustained increase in real interest rates and the stagnation of wages. It helps to explain the difficulties faced when trying to identify econometrically a significant impact of capital cost investment in recent past years. The article shows however that the evolution of the average factor productivity becomes consistent with the movement of relative factor costs once two effects are taken into account : on the one hand the impact of delays in the adjustment of capital to slower growth ; and on the other hand the less favourable effects of inter-industry factor mobility. We first analyze different hypotheses related to the magnitude of the effects of substitution, and then present a quantitative assessment of the different influences which are likely to affect the evolution of both labour and capital productivity. As this study does not find any marked slow-down of technical progress, it would seem that the potential growth of the French economy may remain strong.

This paper describes how we constructed a real-time database for the euro area covering more than 200 series regularly published in the European Central Bank Monthly Bulletin, as made available ahead of publication to the Governing Council members before their first meeting of the month. We describe the database in details and study the properties of the euro area real-time data flow and data revisions, also providing comparisons with the United States and Japan. We finally illustrate how such revisions can contribute to the uncertainty surrounding key macroeconomic ratios and the NAIRU.

This paper reviews the existing empirical evidence on the short-term impact on prices of fiscal variables and assesses it against new results from harmonised simulations, conducted with six well-established econometric models used by the ECB and five national central banks (NCBs) of the Eurosystem. The outcome is also compared with results from the European Commission and the OECD models. Overall, a broad consensus appears on the impact on prices of changes in individual government budget items in the euro area. In all cases, changes in government demand and in direct taxes paid by households have a limited impact on prices in the first year while, in contrast, changes in indirect taxes and employers' social security contributions have a relatively large impact. The second year results show that the effects on prices usually take some time to materialise fully; in particular, they often become large for the public consumption shock.