By Benjamin Bureau, Anne Duquerroy, Mathias Lé and Frédéric Vinas (Banque de France), Julien Giorgi and Suzanne Scott (INSEE)
Since the start of the public health crisis, the Banque de France and INSEE have compiled a monthly estimate of the loss of activity in each sector, notably via their monthly economic surveys and their monitoring of high-frequency data. The monthly surveys have proved to be a reliable and almost real-time indicator of the impact of the restrictions, and have on the whole been confirmed by the national quarterly accounts. In parallel, the Banque de France and INSEE have launched a joint project which differs from these surveys but complements them in terms of methodology: using real turnover data for individual firms (measured using VAT returns), they compare ex-post the “activity shock” with a counterfactual of what turnover would have been without the. This makes it possible to carry out an analysis at a more granular level, within individual sectors. This blog post presents the first results of this project, which are consistent with our monthly surveys. They will be supplemented with an ex-post analysis of firms’ cash and financial positions.