Dani Rodrik and Stefanie Stantcheva in Project Syndicate:
Just as the pandemic was gathering pace in early 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron set up an international commission of economists to assess these longer-term challenges and make policy proposals. Headed by the former International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard and the Nobel laureate economist Jean Tirole, the commission debated each of these issues over the course of several months. Interesting proposals emerged from the three reports produced by a subgroup of authors and released at the end of June.
We prepared the report on inequality and economic insecurity. France is an interesting case, because it is one of the few major economies that did not experience an increase in overall inequality, measured by conventional indicators such as the Gini index. Yet, socioeconomic gaps across different strata have not closed, many regions lag behind in creating good jobs and economic opportunity, youth unemployment is very high, and social mobility remains low.
More here.