The Night Economy: an empirical approach to a still unknown sector[L’économie de la nuit : une approche empirique d’un secteur encore inconnu]

SUMMARY - A recognized indicator of a country's wealth, gross domestic product (GDP) combines the monetary value of goods and services produced annually in a given country, regardless of any diurnal or nocturnal segmentation of this production. During the COVID-19 period, many employees took advantage of teleworking to perform some of the tasks normally performed during the day at night. We sought to explore the macroeconomic vision of the "nighttime economy" in France through an empirical study to calculate the gross domestic product it encompasses, investigating purely nocturnal activities, but also those where the continuity of daytime work performed at night is essential to the proper functioning of society. In the absence of existing data, we outlined a methodology to empirically calculate the nighttime GDP of a country's main productive sectors.