Rota Baldini, I. and Manasse, P., (2013), “What’s wrong with Europe?”, VoxEU, 04 November. Unlike the US, Europe is struggling to recover from the crisis. This is especially the case in certain European countries. This column discusses why the process of convergence in the Eurozone has slowed down. It proposes a way for European institutions to cope with the structural problems – with individual country-level reforms and a federal budget. …Read More

Pisani-Ferry, J., (2013), “Europe’s Elusive Growth Consensus”, Project Syndicate, 31 October. In most European countries, GDP per capita is currently lower than it was six years ago. In some cases, like Greece, Italy, and Ireland, it is more than 10% lower. Even in Germany, where it is higher, average growth over the last six years has been anemic. It is hard to overestimate the adverse consequences of this state of …Read More

Charlemagne, (2013), “Fawlty Europe”, The Economist, 01 November. “DON’T mention the war” is the catchphrase from one of the best-loved scenes in “Fawlty Towers”, a British television comedy series. John Cleese plays the eccentric owner of a small-town hotel who causes uproar by incessantly and rudely talking about the war to his German guests. These days in Brussels the equivalent catchphrase about Germans has been “Don’t mention the surplus”. It …Read More

Cohen-Setton, J., (2013), “Blogs review: The comparative performance of fixed and flexible ER regimes”, Bruegel, 29 October. Andrew Rose recently published a provoking paper, which shows that the choice of the exchange rate regime has had little influence on economic outcomes in the Great Recession. While the empirical analysis of the paper excludes EMU countries, this result has challenged the consensus that life outside the euro would have been easier …Read More