Djankov, Simeon, (2016), “Is Europe spending too much?”, LSE Europpblog, 28 July Yes, it is, according to Simeon Djankov. He notes that public expenditures had risen to dangerously high levels in some Southern and Western European countries even prior to the eurozone crisis and argues that the European Central Bank’s loose monetary policy since 2012 has provided public sectors with little incentive to modernise. This, in turn, may be helping to fuel Eurosceptic …Read More

Reinhart, Carmen, (2016), “What’s New About Today’s Low Interest Rates?”, Project Syndicate, 28 July A day seldom passes without articles appearing in the financial press pondering why interest rates have remained so low for so long. This is one of those articles. So let’s start by clarifying whose and which interest rates are low and what is and isn’t novel or unprecedented. Interest rates in emerging and developing countries are importantly affected …Read More

Krueger, Dirk, Mitman, Kurt, Perri, Fabrizio, (2016), “On the Distribution of the Welfare Losses of Large Recessions”, Centre for Economic Policy Research, July How big are the welfare losses from severe economic downturns, such as the U.S. Great Recession? How are those losses distributed across the population? In this paper we answer these questions using a canonical business cycle model featuring household income and wealth heterogeneity that matches micro data from …Read More