June 2016

France badly needs economic reform. But we shouldn’t let negative news headlines blind us to the fact that the French economy has tremendous potential and that, provided a small number of important but feasible policy changes, it can do very well. Even more auspiciously, an ongoing political realignment arguably makes reform more likely than at any time since Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic. In other words, there is both an economic and a political case for what one might call ‘Francoptimism.’