Weber, Alexander, (2017), “Monte Paschi Bailout Plan Has Some ECB Supervisors Grumbling”, Bloomberg, 27 Μαρτίου When the European Central Bank declared Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA solvent last December, the first step toward a state-funded rescue, some members of the 19-nation Supervisory Board weren’t fully on board. Confronted with what they saw as a political agreement to bail out the world’s oldest lender, dissenters went along with the …Read More

Garcia-Herrero, Alicia, Turegano, David Martinez, (2017), “Who would bet on currency unions after EMU crisis?”, Bruegel, 29 Μαρτίου The recent years of crisis have made clear that real convergence in the euro area has been insufficient to prevent stress through asymmetric shocks. Following this experience, and building on earlier work, we assess the opportunities for current union in the two most promising integration processes in the emerging world: ASEAN and the …Read More

Vox Eu, (2017), “The first CEPR Flashback: Flexible Integration: Towards a More Effective and Democratic Europe”, Vox Eu, 30 Μαρτίου This is the first “CEPR Flashback” – a new series of short Vox columns that highlight the current relevance of past CEPR reports. Since 1983, CEPR reports have often been ahead of the curve in anticipating and analysing problems in Europe and beyond. Looking back, it is clear that much of …Read More

Heil, Mark, (2017), “Finance And Productivity: A Literature Review Economics Department Working Papers No. 1374”, OECD, 21 Φεβρουαρίου This paper surveys a broad range of studies and highlights the main findings of the empirical literature regarding business finance and productivity. Numerous studies analyse the productivity effects of financial development and frictions. The results suggest: 1) Financial development likely has favourable effects on productivity growth; 2) financial frictions that impede the …Read More

Bongaerts, Dion, Schoenmaker, Dirk , (2017), “A call for uniform sovereign exposure limits”, Bruegel, 28 Μαρτίου In recent years we have seen sovereign financial problems spilling into the banking sector because the banking sectors have held a very large share of the domestic sovereign debt. This is clearly not desirable. First, by buying these domestic sovereign bonds, the banking sector allows governments to overspend. Second, the excess bad sovereign debt crowds …Read More

Feliu, Justine, (2017), “Why was the last TLTRO take-up unexpectedly high?”, Bruegel, 27 Μαρτίου Last week the ECB published data about the take up of the fourth and last tranche of funding from the second Targeted Long-Term Refinancing Operation (TLTRO 2.0). The data showed an unexpectedly large demand for liquidity from euro area banks. In total, EUR233.47bn was allotted to 474 Eurozone banks. Although the level of liquidity in the Eurozone …Read More

Emmanouilidis, Janis A., Zuleeg, Fabian , (2017), “The Rome Declaration – An imperfect display of unity”, EPC, 27 Μαρτίου On 25 March 2017, the leaders of the European Union (EU) came together to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Rome Treaties. The EU and its members had good reasons to celebrate. The European integration process has been the product of grand aspirations inspired by the imagination of pragmatic visionaries, born of …Read More