Abstract
"The balance of payments is a measure of the payments that flow between two specific countries. It is used to analyze and summarize the international economic transactions of that country during a specific time period."(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_payments). It is an important indicator for the conduct of economic and monetary policy. It is divided in three main categories: the current account, the financial account and the capital account. This is applicable to all countries and is an interesting topic that has been chosen for our case study. Our case study is more specific to the balance of payments in France. A couple of question that will be addressed in the case study are: What are the elements that can lead to imbalances in the balance of payments? What were the external events that could have influenced the French balance of payments? How does a country work towards improving them? We will also study the effects of these imbalances.
