The determinants of recent developments in bank loans in France and Germany (in french).

Over the recent period, developments in bank loans to the private sector in the euro area have diverged significantly across countries. While France, like most euro area countries, has seen rapid growth in bank loans since 2004 mainly due to the sharp increase in housing loans, Germany has been characterized over the past four years by a persistent stagnation of bank lending as regards both credit to non-financial corporations and loans to households. The paper presents an empirical description of the main macroeconomic factors that may explain developments in loans and determine whether the trends currently observed in France and Germany are exceptional or not in the light of past experience in both countries. To this end, the analysis relies on the modelling of loan developments in real terms, with the main explanatory variables being real GDP growth, the investment-to-GDP ratio, the nominal interest rate and yield spreads between corporate and government bonds. The analysis of causality relationships – in the sense of Granger causality – between these explanatory variables and loan-related variables supports the assumption that in the French case, the growth rate of bank loans is an endogenous variable, which does not appear to structurally affect real activity. In other words, credit developments appear to hinge much more on real economic activity than vice versa. Conversely, in the German case, results suggest that causality could run in both directions, as credit growth seems to be simultaneously cause and consequence of real economic variables. Moreover, the study of impulse response functions following shocks simulated on loans shows that the assumption of a possible one-off influence of credit supply on real activity cannot be ruled out, neither in France nor in Germany.

Développer des alternatives à des systèmes de culture Maïs-Blé en polyculture-élevage sans irrigation : enseignements de trois expérimentations conduites dans différentes régions françaises.

Trois systèmes de culture expérimentaux, alternatifs à un système local dominant à base de Maïs-Blé non irrigué, dans un contexte de polyculture-élevage, partagent le même objectif principal de diminuer de 50% l’Indice de Fréquence de Traitement (IFT) par rapport au système local dominant tout en maintenant la rentabilité. Les résultats pluriannuels montrent une diminution de 22 à 50% de l’IFT total, de 55 à 80% de l’IFT hors herbicide, de 12 à 65% de l’IFT herbicide. Les systèmes présentent aussi des risques d’exposition toxique de l’agriculteur plus faibles et des risques de transfert de substances actives vers l’environnement plus faibles. Par ailleurs, leur rentabilité est plus élevée pour l’un, plutôt plus élevée pour le deuxième et plutôt plus faible pour le dernier. Deux voies ont été empruntées pour obtenir ces résultats positifs sur les herbicides et la rentabilité : soit une diversification moyenne de la succession Maïs-Blé combinée à un travail du sol intensif, soit peu de travail du sol associé à une couverture du sol et combinés à une diversification importante de la succession. La maîtrise des adventices qui en résulte est plus ou moins satisfaisante selon les systèmes de culture. L’analyse agronomique des réussites et des échecs de la maîtrise des adventices permet de tirer des enseignements sur les conditions de réussite de chacune des stratégies.Three innovative cropping systems were tested during several years. They aimed to reduce the use of pesticides by 50% compared to local reference cropping systems while being still profitable. Reference [br/] systems were maize-winter wheat rotations in mixed crop-livestock agricultural systems. The use of total pesticides was reduced by 22-50%, i.e. 12-65% for herbicides and 55-80% for other pesticides. Toxic exposure of farmers was lower for innovative systems ; risk of active substance transfer to the environment was also lower. Regarding profitability, results were different from one experiment to another, with higher economic margins for the innovative system for two of them, and lower margin for the last one. Two strategies were employed to achieve these positive results on pesticides use and impacts and on profitability : moderate diversification of crop sequences combined with intensive tillage on one hand versus minimum tillage associated with soil cover and high crop sequences diversification on the other hand. Resulting weed pressure was acceptable or rather acceptable in two out of the three experiments. Agronomic analysis of success and failure cases led to new insights on success conditions for both strategies of weed management