Introduction Firstly, We Have Given a Little Background of France, in Terms

Introduction Firstly, we have given a little background of France, in terms of its geographic, Demographic, political and economic characteristics and a brief History of France from its old age till the Modern times. Secondly, In order to find the absolute and comparative advantages of France, in terms of its international trade and economic prosperity, we have categorized the imports and exports of France into the following categories: Mineral products, Wood products, Metal products, Stones and glass products, Paper goods, Agriculture products, Animal products, Food stuffs, Weapons, Footwear and headwear, Animal hides, Textiles, Transportations, Machineries, Arts and antiques, Precious metals, Chemical products, instruments, plastics and rubbers. We have kept the imports/exports data of the year 2013 and 2014 under observations and had a relative comparison of France’s imports and exports commodities of these three years. The relative comparison of which are listed in the appendix, in terms of monetary value, percentage value of each categories and the overall imports and exports. Since, the imports and exports were in large numbers, thus we have taken the top 5 imports and exports of each category, as mentioned in the above paragraph, to find out the absolute and comparative advantages of France. Furthermore, we have: revealed the best comparative advantage by applying porter’s diamond model; determined the destination countries, where commodities are exported, by selecting a single company with in the industry that has the best comparative advantage. And finally, we determined the mode expansion using Foreign Direct Investment model. Background Geographically: France, with an Area of 643,801 Sq. Km and locality of Western Europe, has boundaries of 2,751 km connected with the boarder countries as Andorra, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain and Switzerland; it also connects with the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel and Mediterranean Sea. The land covers 52.7% of Agriculture crops (arable land 33.4%, permanent crops 1.8% and permanent pasture of 17.5%), 29.2% of forest and 18.1% of others. The metropolitan France bears the reserves of Coal, Iron ore, bauxite, Zinc, uranium, antimony, arsenic, potash, feldspar, fluorspar, gypsum, timber, arable land and fish. Apart from the above mentioned metropolitan France, as mentioned above, it has several overseas boundaries and territories. Because of which France is the second largest exclusive economic zone in the world. Demographically: France, comprises a population of 67 Million with a variant age structure and growth rate of 0.43% (July 2015 est.); have an ethnic concentration of Celtic and Latin with Teutonic, Slavic, North African, Indochinese, Basque minorities and overseas (black, white, mulatto, East Indian, Chinese and Amerindian); while the official language of France is French with the intensity of 100%, with a quick declination of Provencal, Breton, Alsatian. Corsican, Catalan Basque and Flemish (regional dialects and languages). The population is religionized as 63-66% Christian (overwhelmingly Roman Catholic), 7-9 % of Muslims, 5-0.75 % of Jewish, 5- 0.75% of Buddhist, 5-1.0% of minorities and 23-28% of the population has either no religion or is unknown. In addition to the demographic characteristics, France has 79.5% of urban population and changes by 0.84% rate chance annually. The life expectancy ratio ranges from 75 to 85-year. People of France enjoys high standard of living. Politically, France: with the capital “Paris”, is a sovereign state (derived from people) and the statutory laws of French’s constitution state the country to be a secular and democratic country. Economically, France has an owner of being a part of G-8 group: making him one of the leading industrialized country. In terms of purchasing parity, France is 7th in world, and 2nd largest economic giant in European Union. France had 39 companies: enlisted in the fortune 500, as per 2010 estimate. France is considered to have a mixed economy because it has both of private, state owned enterprises and obvious government interventions. Apart from this, the French government has a considerable influence on major key sectors of France’s infrastructure and most of the infrastructures as Railway, Electricity, aircraft, nuclear power and telecommunication etc. are owned by French government itself. Furthermore, France is a large producer of agriculture product, by the use of latest technologies. It is the center of attraction for tourist, as 84 million foreign tourist visit the country in one year (with exclusion of tourists that visit for not more than 24 hours); the country bears the capability of producing large electricity, has the a considerable infrastructure of transport i.e. 2nd most extensive network of transport after Germany, and has also honor of being: major contributor of science’s achievements (67 French people have been honored noble prizes, and 12 people have been awarded Fields medal). History During the Iron Age, what is now Metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls: Celtic people; The Gauls were conquered in 51 BC by the Roman Empire, which held Gaul until 486. The Gallo-Romans faced raids and migration from the Germanic Franks, who dominated the region for hundreds of years, eventually creating the medieval Kingdom of France. France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years' War (1337 to 1453) strengthening French state-building and paving the way for a future centralized absolute monarchy. During the Renaissance, France experienced a vast cultural development and established the beginning of a global colonial empire. The 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots).France became Europe's dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV. French philosophers played a key role in the Age of Enlightenment during the 18th century. In 1778, France became the first and the main ally of the new United States in the American Revolutionary War. In the late 18th century, the absolute monarchy was overthrown in the French Revolution. Among its legacies was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the earliest documents on human rights, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. France became one of modern history's earliest republics until Napoleon took power and launched the First French Empire in 1804. Fighting against a complex set of coalitions during the Napoleonic Wars, he dominated European affairs for over a decade and had a long-lasting impact on Western culture. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments: the monarchy was restored, it was replaced in 1830 by a constitutional monarchy, then briefly by a Second Republic, and then by a Second Empire, until a more lasting French Third Republic was established in 1870. By the 1905 law, France adopted a strict form of secularism. Which has become an important federative principle in the modern French society. France reached its territorial height during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it ultimately possessed the second-largest colonial empire in the world. In World War I, France was one of the main winners as part of the Triple Entente alliance fighting against the Central Powers. France was also one of the Allied Powers in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis Powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War. The Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Following World War II, most of the empire became decolonized. In the context of the Cold War, de Gaulle pursued a policy of "national independence" towards the Western and Eastern blocs. To this end, he withdrew from NATO's military integrated command, he launched a nuclear development program and made France the fourth nuclear power. He restored cordial Franco-German relations in order to create a European counterweight between the American and Soviet spheres of influence. However, he opposed any development of a supranational Europe, favoring a Europe of sovereign Nations. In the wake of the series of worldwide protests of 1968, the revolt of May 1968 had an enormous social impact. In France, it is considered to be the watershed moment when a conservative moral ideal (religion, patriotism, respect for authority) shifted towards a more liberal moral ideal (secularism, individualism, sexual revolution). Although the revolt was a political failure (as the Gaullist party emerged even stronger than before) it announced a split between the French people and de Gaulle who resigned shortly after. In the post-Gaullist era, France remained one of the most developed economies in the World, but faced several economic crises that resulted in high unemployment rates and increasing public debt. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries France has been at the forefront of the development of a supranational European Union, notably by signing the Maastricht Treaty (which created the European Union) in 1992, establishing the Eurozone in 1999, and signing the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. France has also gradually but fully reintegrated into NATO and has since participated in most NATO sponsored wars. Since the 19th century France has received many immigrants. These have been mostly male foreign workers from European Catholic countries who generally returned home when not employed. During the 1970s France faced economic crisis and allowed new immigrants (mostly from the Maghreb) to permanently settle in France with their families and to acquire French citizenship. It resulted in hundreds of thousands of Muslims (especially in the larger cities) living in subsidized public housing and suffering from very high unemployment rates. Simultaneously France renounced the assimilation of immigrants, where they were expected to adhere to French traditional values and cultural norms.

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