Napoleon III's probably most lasting economic reforms took place in the education and financial sectors. While in the short-term the lowering of tariffs across the board spurred productivity growth and encouraged foreign trade, in the long-term the true determinants of economic growth are threefold: population growth, human capital (i.e. education), and increased liquidity of capital. Modernizing the French agricultural industry helped to mitigate the famines that routinely decimated early-modern France and the new public education system (which competed with the existing Catholic school based system) further served to improve literacy and otherwise prepared children for the "real world."

That being said, the legacy of Napoleon III persists mostly in the form of the large number of banks that he encouraged or supported. BNP Paribas (a combination of Banque Nationale de Paris and Paris Bank), Societe-Generale, Credit Lyonnais (which merged with Credit Agricole), are all banks that were created during the Second French Empire. They quickly grew to be some of the world's largest banks and persist even to this day as some of the largest and most sophisticated financial institutions. Without the financial bedrock that they were able to provide (in tandem with a surplus of gold into global markets that increased the currency supply), it is unlikely that Napoleon III could have been able to finance any of the fiscal and infrastructure reforms that he needed to modernize France. The now-defunct Credit Mobiliere, for instance, was a major contributor to the finance of French railways, French public transit, and even the French intervention into the Crimean War. The rise of the French banking sector also worked well with the increased savings of French workers, which provided a sufficient capital base for investment and further growth.