Gros, Daniel, (2013), “EZ banking union with a sovereign virus”, www.voxeu.org, 14 Ιουνίου. The doom-loop between banks and the national governments played a dominant role in the Eurozone crisis for Ireland and Cyprus. A Eurozone banking union is usually viewed as the solution. This column argues that the doom-loop cannot be undone as long as banks hold oversized amounts of their government’s debt. A simple solution would be to apply …Read More
De Grauwe, Paul, Ji, Yuemei, (2013), “Fiscal implications of the ECB’s bond-buying programme”, www.voxeu.org, 14 Ιουνίου. The monetary-fiscal policy connection is under scrutiny by the German Constitutional Court in the context of the ECB’s OMT bond-buying programme. This column argues that most analyses are deeply flawed by the misapplication of private-company default principles to the central bank. ECB bond-buying transforms public bonds into monetary base, and sovereign-default risk into inflation …Read More
Coutinho, Leonor, (2013), “Capital Controls in Cyprus; Shooting at a moving target”, Ceps, Ceps Commentaries in Economic Policy, 14 Ιουνίου. In her examination of the capital controls that have been in place in Cyprus since March 27th, Leonor Coutinho asks how soon can they be lifted and whether the recapitalisation plans will be sufficiently convincing to allow the Cypriot banking sector to regain the trust of the public.
Gros, Daniel, (2013), “Combating Youth Unemployment: The latest European fad?”, CEPS, Ceps Commentaries in Economic Policy, 14 Ιουνίου. When examining youth unemployment in the broader context of its contribution to total unemployment in Europe, Daniel Gros finds in this new Commentary that the problem reveals a completely different picture from the one usually presented. Extreme figures on youth unemployment in the periphery hide the fact that the number of actually …Read More
Rodrik, Dani (2013), “Europe’s Way Out”, www.project-syndicate.org, 12 Ιουνίου. It seems that austerity is out of fashion in the eurozone – at least for the moment. The European Commission has given Spain, France, and the Netherlands more time to comply with the European Union’s 3%-of-GDP deficit ceiling. Even German government officials now concede that something more than fiscal belt-tightening is needed to revive the economies of the eurozone periphery.
Pisani-Ferry, Jean, (2013) “Europe’s Troika Should Grow Up”, www.project-syndicate.org, 27 Μαΐου 2013. In early 2010, a group of men (and a few women) in dark suits landed in Athens. They belonged to a global institution, the International Monetary Fund, and to a pair of regional ones, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Their mission was to negotiate the terms and conditions of a financial bailout of Greece. A …Read More
D’alessio, Giovanni, Gambacorta, Romina, Ilardi, Giuseppe, (2013), “Are Germans poorer than other Europeans? The principal Eurozone differences in wealth and income”, www.voxoeu.org, 24 Μαΐου. The ECB’s recent survey on household finances and consumption threw up some unexpected results – counter-intuitively, the average German household has less wealth than the average Mediterranean household. In line with a recent VoxEU.org contribution from De Grauwe and Ji, this article analyses the principal differences …Read More
Rogoff, Kenneth, (2013), “Europe’s Lost Keynesians”, www.project-syndicate.org, 23 Μαΐου. There is no magic Keynesian bullet for the eurozone’s woes. But the spectacularly muddle-headed argument nowadays that too much austerity is killing Europe is not surprising. Commentators are consumed by politics, flailing away at any available target, while the “anti-austerity” masses apparently believe that there are easy cyclical solutions to tough structural problems.
Higgins, Matthew, Klitgaard, Thomas, (2013), “Foreign Borrowing in the Euro Area Periphery: The End Is Near”, Federal Reserve of New York, 22 Μαΐου. Current account deficits in euro area periphery countries have now largely disappeared. This represents a substantial adjustment. Only two years ago, deficits stood at nearly 10 percent of GDP in Greece and Portugal and 5 percent in Spain and Italy.
Spence, Michael, (2013), “Learning about growth from austerity”, www.project-syndicate.org, 18 Μαΐου. In a recent set of studies, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff used a vast array of historical data to show that the accumulation of high levels of public (and private) debt relative to GDP has an extended negative effect on growth. The size of the effect incited debate about errors in their calculations. Few, however, doubt the validity of …Read More
