Dani Rodrik, (2017), “Rescuing Economics From Neoliberalism”, Social Europe, 17 November As even its harshest critics concede, neoliberalism is hard to pin down. In broad terms, it denotes a preference for markets over government, economic incentives over social or cultural norms, and private entrepreneurship over collective or community action. It has been used to describe a wide range of phenomena—from Augusto Pinochet to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, from the …Read More

Sami Ben Naceur, Caroline Roulet, (2017), “Basel III and Bank-Lending: Evidence from the United States and Europe”, IMF Working Paper No.17/245, 15 November Using data on commercial banks in the United States and Europe, this paper analyses the impact of the new Basel III capital and liquidity regulation on bank-lending following the 2008 financial crisis. We find that U.S. banks reinforce their risk absorption capacities when expanding their credit activities. …Read More

Mumal Rathore, Shrutee Sarkar, (2017), “Confidence in euro zone expansion strong among economists”, Reuters, 17 November The euro zone economy will mark its best year in a decade and maintain solid growth well into 2018, according to economists in a Reuters poll who said the risk was that their forecasts might not be optimistic enough. Inflation, last clocked at 1.4 percent, is expected to stay below the European Central Bank’s target …Read More

Era Dabla-Norris, Pietro Dallari, Tigran Poghosyan, (2017), “Fiscal Spillovers in the Euro Area: Letting the Data Speak”, IMF Working Paper No. 17/241, 15 Νovember We estimate a panel VAR model that captures cross-country, dynamic interlinkages for 10 euro area countries using quarterly data for the period 1999-2016. Our analysis suggests that fiscal spillovers are significant and tend to be larger for countries with close trade and financial links as well, as for fiscal …Read More

Kemal Dervis, (2017), “Democracy Beyond the Nation-State”, Project Syndicate, 14 Νovember According to the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, it is impossible to have full national sovereignty, democracy, and globalization simultaneously. The concept of a “political trilemma of the world economy” is useful, but it becomes less binding when one takes into account levels of government above and especially below the nation-state. Relevant Posts Harold James, (2017), «Europe’s Hard-Core Problem», Project …Read More

Dirk Schoenmaker, Nicolas Veron, (2017), “A ‘twin peaks’ vision for Europe”, Bruegel, 13 November The organisation of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) is based on a sectoral approach with one ESA for each sector, with separate authorities for banking, insurance and securities and markets. But is this sectoral approach still valid? This Policy Contribution outlines a long-term vision for the supervisory architecture in the European Union. Relevant Posts Francesco Papadia, …Read More

Ferdinando Giugliano, (2017). “The ECB Needs an Inflation Plan, Just in Case”, Bloomberg, 14 November Nearly three weeks after the European Central Bank halved the pace of its monetary stimulus to the euro zone economy, something strange is happening in the sovereign debt market.Even as the ECB takes a little step back from quantitative easing, investors are continuing to pile into government bonds, particularly from some countries that were most …Read More

Maurice Obstfeld, (2017), “Understanding and Managing Financial Interdependence”, IMF Blog, 8 November The 18th Annual Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference last week opened with Managing Director Christine Lagarde noting the ebb and flow of capital movements into emerging market and developing economies since the turn of the millennium. She asked three questions at the heart of the discussion, and to which speakers returned consistently during the conference: How do advanced-country …Read More