Zaki Laidi, (2018), “Is Europe Ready for a Trade War?”, Project Syndicate, 21 March US President Donald Trump’s long-awaited protectionist policies have finally arrived in the form of import tariffs that will impose higher costs on friends, like the European Union, than on adversaries such as China. And that outcome, however perverse, is fully in keeping with Trump’s worldview. Relevant Posts Στέλιος Μορφίδης, (2018), «USA vs Europe: Ο παγκόσμιος εμπορικός …Read More
Independent report on the Greek official debt
Emilios Avgouleas, Barry Eichengreen, Ugo Panizza, Miguel Poiares Maduro, Richard Portes,Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Charles Wyplosz, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, (2018), “ Independent report on the Greek official debt”, CEPR Policy Insight No 92, Tuesday 20 March Although Greece’s third economic programme gives reason for cautious optimism, the country will require further debt relief. The scale and mechanism of its delivery, however, remain controversial. This Policy Insight addresses these issues, arguing that any further debt relief …Read More
Women in the EU earned on average 16% less than men in 2016
EUROSTAT/Women in the EU earned on average 16% less than men in 2016/7 Μαρτίου 2018 In 2016, the unadjusted gender pay gap stood at just over 16% in the European Union (EU). In other words, women earned on average 84 cents for every euro a man makes per hour. Across Member States, the gender pay gap in 2016 ranged from just over 5% in Romania and Italy, to more than 25% in Estonia, …Read More
Symmetry and Convergence in Monetary Unions
Nauro F. Campos and Corrado Macchiarelli, (2018), “Symmetry and Convergence in Monetary Unions”, LSE, LEQS Paper No. 131/2018, March This paper has three main objectives, namely to (a) propose a new framework that can support placing countries along a core-periphery continuum (beyond the more common binary treatment as either core or periphery), (b) to construct a continuous dynamic theory-based measure (the first, to the best of our knowledge) illustrating the use of this framework …Read More
ECB staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area
ECB, (2018), “ECB staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area”, March The economic expansion in the euro area is projected to remain robust, with growth rates staying above potential. Real GDP growth is projected to slow from 2.5% in 2017 to 1.7% in 20202 as some tailwinds slowly fade away. HICP inflation is expected to pick up to 1.7% in 2020, supported by a gradual rise in underlying inflation as …Read More
Potential threats to central bank independence
Charles Goodhart, Rosa Lastra, (2018), “Potential threats to central bank independence”, VoxEU, 11 March Some 30 years ago, New Zealand introduced an arrangement combining operational independence and inflation targetry for the central bank, a regime change that rapidly caught on in the next few years as best practice for central banks around the world. This column, taken from a recent VoxEU eBook, argues that central bank independence owed a great …Read More
The economics of supranational bank supervision
Thorsten Beck, Consuelo Silva-Buston, Wolf Wagner, (2018), “The economics of supranational bank supervision“, VoxEU, 13 March International cooperation on bank supervision is still rare. This column analyses data on supervisory cooperation among a global sample of countries between 1995 and 2013 to show that cooperation among bank supervisors is not always optimal. Country pairs with higher cross-border externalities and lower heterogeneity are more likely to cooperate, and in more intense …Read More
Have We Dodged the Secular-Stagnation Bullet?
Kemal Dervis, (2018), “Have We Dodged the Secular-Stagnation Bullet?”, Project Syndicate, 6 March Is the world on the cusp of a sustainable acceleration in global economic growth? The answer hinges on whether today’s much-touted innovative technologies finally have an appreciable impact on labor and total-factor productivity. Relevant Posts Ferrero, Giuseppe, Gross, Marco, Neri, Stefano, (2017), «On secular stagnation and low interest rates: demography matters», European Central Bank (ECB) Working Paper …Read More
Euro area annual inflation down to 1.2%
Eurostat/Euro area annual inflation down to 1.2% /28 February 2018 Euro area annual inflation is expected to be 1.2% in February 2018, down from 1.3% in January 2018, according to a flash estimate from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Looking at the main components of euro area inflation, energy is expected to have the highest annual rate in February (2.1%, compared with 2.2% in January), followed by services (1.3%, compared …Read More
Breaking the Stalemate on European Deposit Insurance
Isabel Schnabel, Nicolas Veron, (2018), “Breaking the Stalemate on European Deposit Insurance”, Bruegel, 5 March In the wake of the European financial and sovereign debt crisis, the euro area embarked in 2012 on establishing a banking union. Its aim was to elevate parts of banking sector policy from the national to the European level, particularly bank supervision and resolution. Successive EU-level reports, including the Four Presidents’ Report of 2012 and …Read More