Loss of productivity of the French food processing industry

Bad news for one of the high profile industry in France, which contains for instance wine. According to a research by three economists from the Toulouse School of Economics, the food processing industry in France has lost 0.44%pa of productivity over the decade from 1996 to 2006. Of course, this loss of competitivity is at the expense of foreign competitors. At the same time, agricultural sector has made small competitivity gains (2%pa) which the food processing industry benefitted. The authors suggest that increased regulation may be (partly) responsible for this loss of productivity. However, since most of the regulation is now EU-wide, I doubt that this could explain the difference with our European competitors.

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