What economic policy recommendations in the aftermath of the COVID crisis?

We will illustrate our analysis with the case of France, but it applies to all OECD countries. What should be the economic policy objectives in the aftermath of the COVID crisis? Supporting the categories most affected by the crisis: young people and the most vulnerable people (employees with short-term employment contracts, self-employed); support for job creation targeted at these categories is essential, perhaps a universal income beyond the activity bonus; Helping companies develop despite the sharp increase in their debt and the decline in their earnings: transformation of the additional corporate debt into quasi-equity, reducing distortionary taxes (social contributions on low wages, production taxes); Facilitating a transfer of jobs from the sectors that will be most lastingly affected by the crisis to sectors that have weathered the crisis and are developing after the crisis: financing a massive re-skilling plan, developing scientific training; Attracting skilled young people to jobs that are currently underappreciated and poorly paid (healthcare, education); Thinking carefully about reshoring: it is inefficient to reshore activities that remain low-end, and reshoring must be limited to high-end products and those that can be produced in a more automated manner than in emerging countries; Correcting the financial instability that will result from the highly expansionary monetary policy (real estate bubbles, etc.), by a more active use of macroprudential policies (prudential ratios for banks, loan-to-value ratios, taxation of short-term capital gains). The challenge is obviously that most of these policies generate a cost for public finances: support for job creation, universal income for people with a fragile economic status, corporate tax cuts, training, higher wages in healthcare and education, support for reshoring. One can talk about savings on less useful government spending, but we know that they are very difficult to implement in a situation of under-employment. The same applies to increasing the tax burden, because no one wants to repeat the unfortunate experience of the post-subprime crisis period. The only remaining solution is then to maintain a large fiscal deficit in an environment of low interest rates and government bond purchases by the ECB, with two hopes: That Europe will mutualise the financing of part of this new public spending; That there will be a significant positive impact of some of these policies on activity (with job creation, targeted reshoring, improvement in companies’ balance sheets, etc.).