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How Portugal’s leaders exploited the bail out to pass measures they already supported

Moury, Catherine, Standring, Adam, (2017), “How Portugal’s leaders exploited the bail out to pass measures they already supported”, EUROPP, May We recently conducted both an analysis of official statements and interviews with many of the main political actors that were in power during the sovereign debt crisis in Portugal (2010-2015). Our research highlights that both the crisis and the bailout made the executive stronger in relation to other domestic actors. Consequently, when …Read More

Financial integration in the Eurozone should not be a tough sell

Brosens, Teunis, (2017), “Financial integration in the Eurozone should not be a tough sell”, Vox Eu, 24 May Much progress has been made in recent years to improve the financial integration of the Eurozone. Banking union is the most important example. Increasing stability is an important objective. But let us not forget that an integrated financial market also helps European consumers and companies in a more direct way. A fully equipped …Read More

Welfare: Savings not taxation

Douglas, Roger, MacCulloch, Robert, (2017), “Welfare: Savings not taxation”, Vox Eu, 25 May Across many countries, the cost of publicly funded healthcare, retirement, and other welfare programmes are forecast to put rising pressure on government budgets. As a result, many nations are seeking to reform their welfare states so that costs to the government can be reduced, quality of outcomes increased, and the plight of low- and middle-income earners improved. Regrettably …Read More

Populism, Austerity And Democratic Deficit

Watt, Andrew, Andor, László, (2017), “Populism, Austerity And Democratic Deficit”, Social Europe, 23 May Critiques of the European Union target a political problem – the so-called democratic deficit – and an economic (and social) one: austerity, sometimes subsumed under the broader heading of neoliberalism. It is also often claimed or simply assumed that there is a connection between the two: the first being the main cause of the second. Bureaucrats …Read More

Governance and Ownership of Significant Euro Area Banks

Véron, Nicolas, (2017), “Governance and Ownership of Significant Euro Area Banks”, PIIE, May European policymakers and analysts often appear to assume that most euro area banks are publicly listed companies with ownership scattered among many institutional investors, a structure in which no single shareholder has controlling influence and that allows for considerable flexibility to raise capital when needed. Such an ownership structure is indeed prevalent among banks in advanced countries such …Read More

Social Europe revisited

Bentolila, Samuel, Dolado , Juan, (2017), “Social Europe revisited”, Vox Eu, 23 May Almost 20 years ago, the eighth CEPR Monitoring European Integration report explored the interactions between social policy, broadly interpreted, and economic integration in Europe. The experience of the past enlargement of the European Community to include Greece, Portugal, and Spain from the early to the mid-1980s provided Social Europe: One for All? (Bean, Bentolila, Bertola, and Dolado, 1998) …Read More

Debt Limits and the Structure of Public Debt

 Pienkowski, Alex, (2017), “Debt Limits and the Structure of Public Debt”, IMF, 22 May This paper provides a tractable framework to assess how the structure of debt instruments—specifically by currency denomination and indexation to GDP—can raise the debt limit of a sovereign. By calibrating the model to different country fundamentals, it is clear that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to optimal instrument design. For instance, low income countries may find benefit …Read More

Financial integration in Europe

ECB, (2017), “Financial integration in Europe”, ECB, May 2017 The ECB’s annual report on financial integration in Europe contributes to the advancement of the process of European financial integration by analysing its development and the related policies. For the ECB, the market for a given set of financial instruments and/or services is fully integrated if all potential market participants with the same relevant characteristics: (1) face a single set of rules …Read More

Determinants of FDI inflows in advanced economies: Does the quality of economic structures matter?

Dellis, Konstantinos, Sondermann, David, Vansteenkiste, Isabel, (2017), “Determinants of FDI inflows in advanced economies: Does the quality of economic structures matter?”, ECB Working Paper Series No 2066, May This paper investigates the role of economic structures as determinants of FDI inflows. We expand on the existing literature by focusing on advanced economies, using a newly available measure of FDI which cleans the data from statistical artefacts, such as financial round tripping, …Read More

The importance of being special: repo markets during the crisis

Corradin, Stefano, Maddaloni, Angela, (2017), “The importance of being special: repo markets during the crisis”, ECB, May 2017 Specialness – the premium of procuring a specific security in the repo market – increased in the second half of 2011 for Italian government bonds. We assess the impact on specialness of the outright purchase program of the Eurosystem during the same period. Bonds bought by the Eurosystem had higher specialness. The impact was …Read More