Amariei, C. (2017), “Creating Long-Term Value in Europe’s Capital Markets: Opportunities and constraints”, 1st Interim Report of the CEPS-ECMI Task Force on Asset Allocation in Europe, Brussels, 30 October Many factors – changing economic/financial conditions, evolving demographics and regulatory as well as technological developments – will impact asset allocation in the coming years. In anticipation of these changes, the Mid-Term Review of the Capital Markets Union (CMU) Action Plan set out …Read More

Paul De Grauwe, Yuemei Ji, (2017), “Behavioural economics is also useful in macroeconomics”, VoxEU, 1 November Behavioural economics is seeing increased acceptance as a legitimate way of thinking about economic issues. The recent awarding of the Nobel Prize to Richard Thaler testifies that there has been a change of view within the economics profession on the need to allow for departures from the paradigm of the ‘homo economicus’. Relevant Posts …Read More

Jorge Cabrita, (2017), “Rethinking Working Time In Europe”, Social Europe, 1 Νοεμβρίου The results of recent Eurofound research on working time patterns in the EU constitute a strong plea for working time policies that clearly acknowledge the life course perspective. This means that working time must not only be thought and organised in daily, weekly, monthly and/or yearly terms but also take into full consideration the different stages of our …Read More

Martin Feldstein, (2017), “Europe’s Economic Dilemma”, The Project Syndicate, 30 October The European Central Bank deserves credit for the economic improvements that have occurred in the past few years. But the ECB’s policies also mean that the eurozone has no ammunition left to fight the next recession, because interest rates cannot be reduced further and fiscal policy remains in the hands of national governments. Relevant Posts Jean Tirole, (2017), «The European …Read More

Viktoria Dendrinou, (2017), “Europe Is Doing So Well Even Politics Can’t Drag It Down”, Bloomberg, 31 Οctober Even as economic confidence in the euro area reaches historic highs, a series of political risks simmering across the European Union still threaten to undermine the bloc’s fragile recovery.The euro-area economy, aided by more than 2 trillion euros ($2.3 trillion) of bond purchases by the European Central Bank, has been gathering pace with …Read More

Jean Tirole, (2017), “The European Project Needs a New Long-Term Vision”, Bloomberg View, 30 October The euro area has two main options: the current strategy of improving the Maastricht Treaty, designed to ensure the fiscal discipline required for many states to share a currency; or a more ambitious move toward federalism, which would require greater risk sharing among member states. Neither is compatible with the desire for more sovereignty. This …Read More

André Sapir, Dirk Schoenmaker,(2017), “The time is right for a European Monetary Fund”, Bruegel Policy Brief, Issue 4, October The creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the banking union were instrumental in stemming the euro-area sovereign crisis. However, both remain incomplete.While the ESM reduces the risk of sovereign debt crises, it still lacks an instrument to deal in an orderly way with insolvency crises. This makes the no-bailout clause of the …Read More