Marcos Chamon, Julian Schumacher, Christoph Trebesch, (2018), “Sovereign bond pricing in the euro area: When legal clauses matter”, VoxEU, 6 Νοεμβρίου The discussion on sovereign debt restructuring in the euro area has recently focused on legal considerations, in particular on whether the legal framework should be reformed to make restructurings more ‘viable’, for example via new collective action clauses (Bénassy-Quéré et al. 2018, Tabellini 2018, Pisani-Ferry and Zettelmeyer 2018). Should …Read More

Jan Mazza, (2018), “The consequences of Italy’s increasing dependence on domestic debt-holders”, Bruegel, 6 Νοεμβρίου What could happen then, if the government indeed had to revise its estimates downward and provide a rebalancing of its fiscal position (either through increased revenues or lower expenditure)? Several signals point to the usual suspects: Italian residents, and their still substantial private wealth. On this, there is perhaps surprising agreement between the Italian ruling …Read More

Peter S. Goodman, (2018), “2 Views of Angela Merkel’s Legacy: Stoic Leadership, and Economic Malpractice”, The New York Times, 1 Νοεμβρίου But many economists take a less generous view of the German chancellor’s place in modern European history. Far from a hero who anchored the bloc under profound challenges, she played a leading role in amplifying an economic crisis, allowing it to erupt into an existential threat to the European …Read More

Kirkegaard J., (2018), “Italy-EU Budget Confrontation: Prospects for a Happy Ending”, Peterson Institute for International Economics, 5 Νοεμβρίου Perhaps predictably, the new anti-establishment Italian coalition government, which took office in May, is engaged in a confrontation with the European Commission over its expansionary budget. With a significantly larger deficit planned for the coming fiscal year, the budget conflicts with the EU’s fiscal rules and reneges on commitments made by the …Read More

Giang Ho and Rima Turk-Ariss, (2018), “The Labor Market Integration of Migrants in Europe: New Evidence from Micro Data”, IMF Working Paper, No. 18/232, 1 Νοεμβρίου This paper presents novel empirical evidence on the labor market integration of migrants across Europe. It investigates how successfully migrants integrate in 13 European countries by applying a unified framework to analyze a rich micro dataset with over ten million individuals surveyed between 1998 …Read More

Fernando Avalos and Emmanuel C Mamatzakis, (2018), “Euro area unconventional monetary policy and bank resilience”, BIS Working Papers, No 754, 2 Νοεμβρίου The ECB has deployed a broad array of unconventional monetary policy tools over the last few years. Those include negative interest rates, and several programmes of asset purchases and long-term liquidity provision, which we bundle together under the general label of “quantitative easing”. We study the impact of …Read More

Michel Rose, (2018), “Macron’s strategist says goal is to reshape fracturing EU politics”, Reuters, 31 Οκτωβρίου Europe’s fragmenting political landscape is an opportunity for Emmanuel Macron to blow apart Brussels’ traditional left-right duopoly in next year’s European election, the newly appointed head of the French president’s EU campaign said. In his first interview since his appointment this week as top strategist in Macron’s En Marche party, Stéphane Séjourné says the …Read More

Cohen-Setton J.and Leandro A., (2018), “Could Sanctions against Italy Be Imposed Earlier than Expected?”, Peterson Institute for International Economics, 30 Οκτωβρίου Ιtaly may soon find that time is running out if it wants to escape swift punishment for violating the European Union’s tough rules against excessive budget deficits.[1] The nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 130 percent is well above the EU debt limit of 60 percent. In the past, …Read More