Rota Baldini, I. and Manasse, P., (2013), “What’s wrong with Europe?”, VoxEU, 04 Νοεμβρίου. Unlike the US, Europe is struggling to recover from the crisis. This is especially the case in certain European countries. This column discusses why the process of convergence in the Eurozone has slowed down. It proposes a way for European institutions to cope with the structural problems – with individual country-level reforms and a federal budget. …Read More
European Union, (2013), Quarterly Report on the Euro Area, Volume 12, No. 3, pp. 1-34. The volume contains: Focus: Financial dependence and growth since the crisis. [εδώ] Labour costs pass-through, profits and rebalancing in vulnerable Member States. [εδώ] Cross-border spillovers in confidence. [εδώ] The focus section takes a look at the relationship between growth and finance at the level of industrial sectors and shows that more developed financial markets have, …Read More
Pisani-Ferry, J., (2013), “Europe’s Elusive Growth Consensus”, Project Syndicate, 31 Οκτωβρίου. In most European countries, GDP per capita is currently lower than it was six years ago. In some cases, like Greece, Italy, and Ireland, it is more than 10% lower. Even in Germany, where it is higher, average growth over the last six years has been anemic. It is hard to overestimate the adverse consequences of this state of …Read More
Charlemagne, (2013), “Fawlty Europe”, The Economist, 01 Νοέμβριος. “DON’T mention the war” is the catchphrase from one of the best-loved scenes in “Fawlty Towers”, a British television comedy series. John Cleese plays the eccentric owner of a small-town hotel who causes uproar by incessantly and rudely talking about the war to his German guests. These days in Brussels the equivalent catchphrase about Germans has been “Don’t mention the surplus”. It …Read More
Stevis, M., (2013), “Statistics Show Bailout Countries’ Slide Away from EU Targets”, The Wall Street Journal, 29 Οκτωβρίου. Euro-zone countries in bailout programs have slipped away from the European Union’s targets for economic and social performance, a number of detailed statistical indicators show. The backtracking was made evident Tuesday when Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, presented aggregated data on a set of goals that form Europe’s 2020 Strategy. The program …Read More
Cohen-Setton, J., (2013), “Blogs review: The comparative performance of fixed and flexible ER regimes”, Bruegel, 29 Οκτωβρίου. Andrew Rose recently published a provoking paper, which shows that the choice of the exchange rate regime has had little influence on economic outcomes in the Great Recession. While the empirical analysis of the paper excludes EMU countries, this result has challenged the consensus that life outside the euro would have been easier …Read More
Mahony, H., (2013), “Crisis knocking EU 2020 goals off track”, EUObserver, 29 Οκτωβρίου. The economic crisis has knocked the EU’s longterm strategic targets off track with planned poverty-reduction and employment goals unlikely to be met by 2020. “Without adequate policy measures to rapidly reverse this escalating poverty trend, the EU risks moving away from the Europe 2020 headline target on poverty,” said a Eurostat report, published Tuesday (29 October) on …Read More
Hancké, Β., (2013), “Despite signs of recovery, the Eurozone crisis is still far from over”, European Politics and Policy Blog, 30 Οκτωβρίου. The Eurozone emerged from recession in the second quarter of 2013, with the single currency area’s GDP increasing by 0.3 per cent. Bob Hancké writes that although the situation in the Eurozone has improved, a closer look at the economic data would suggest reason for caution. He argues …Read More
Wickens, M. and Polito, V., (2013), “A fiscal perspective on EU sovereign credit ratings: Did the credit-rating agencies get them right?”, VoxEU, 30 Οκτωβρίου. A good credit rating has become a key fiscal objective, even if it requires austerity when unemployment is high. Recent experience has raised doubts about the sovereign ratings provided by the credit-rating agencies. This column suggests a new way to measure credit ratings based on a …Read More
Wren-Lewis, S., (2013), “The ‘Official’ Cost Of Austerity”, Social Europe Journal, 29 Οκτωβρίου. Well, not quite, but probably as close as we will ever get. In a new paper, Jan in‘t Veld uses the European Commission’s QUEST model to estimate the impact of fiscal consolidation in the Eurozone (EZ) from 2011 to 2013. The numbers in the table below include spillover effects from other EZ country fiscal consolidations, so they …Read More
