As of May 2012, Moody's Analytics Data Buffet offers an expanded subnational France database, sourced from Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies). It is part of two products, the Moody's Analytics Global Database and Europe Database. Please contact your sales representative for details.

Economic sectors include demographics, business demographics, labor force, compensation, income, prices, and national (regional) accounts.  Coverage varies, but certain data are available as often as monthly, with geographic granularity to the sub-regional (NUTS 3) level.  Tables 1 and 2 summarize the indicator coverage and geo subnational structure, respectively. For full detail, please browse the catalog/geo wizard, catalog sections linked from the list of releases at the end of this article, or related Data Buffet News articles attached to time series via Mnemonic 411.

France is part of the European Union and the euro zone (1999); pre-euro, its currency was the franc (ISO 4217: FRF).  It uses the Eurostat classifications for geography, system of accounts, and economic activities (NUTS, ESA95, and NACE Rev. 2 localized as NAF Rev. 2).  The official language is French, the time zone is UTC+1, and the Data Buffet national geo code is .IFRA.

Table 1.  Summary of economic indicators.  Series frequencies are annual, quarterly, or monthly (A, Q, M).  Geographic levels are described in Table 2.  All of the subnational indicators are also available at the national level (NL).

Table 2. Geographic levels in our subnational dataset.  For example, France is divided into ten NUTS 1 areas, known as "divisions," which we identify with geo codes having the stereotypical form of IFRA_ followed by four letters.

The geography code patterns will help you create wild card basket retrievals; for example, to fetch total population for all five NUTS 2 areas, use VSQPOPMA.IFRA_^^. (The single-character basket wild card is the caret, but the table shows "a" to indicate that such use of letters, not digits.)

Table 3. References. Web sites presenting useful overviews and supplemental detail about France.

• National sources
  • Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE)
  • Banque De France
• Third parties
  • Wikipedia
  • CIA World Factbook
  • U.S. State Department
• Geographies
  • Statoids
  • National official geographic codes of France at INSEE
  • NUTS metadata by country at Eurostat RAMON
  • Geographic classifications at Eurostat
  • List of NUTS areas in France at Eurostat