Gros, Daniel, (2013), “Combating Youth Unemployment: The latest European fad?”, CEPS, Ceps Commentaries in Economic Policy, 14 June. When examining youth unemployment in the broader context of its contribution to total unemployment in Europe, Daniel Gros finds in this new Commentary that the problem reveals a completely different picture from the one usually presented. Extreme figures on youth unemployment in the periphery hide the fact that the number of actually …Read More
Building a Strengthened Fiscal Framework in the European Union: A Guide to the Stability and Growth Pact
Frayne, Christine, Jaffee, Elizabeth, Riso, Stéphanie, (2013), “Building a Strengthened Fiscal Framework in the European Union: A Guide to the Stability and Growth Pact”, European Economy, Occasional Papers, N.150. This publication provides a non-technical overview of the Stability and Growth Pact, the rule-based framework for fiscal policy in the European Union. It is divided into two sections. The first section provides a historical look at the evolution of the SGP’s …Read More
Europe’s Way Out
Rodrik, Dani (2013), “Europe’s Way Out”, www.project-syndicate.org, 12 June. It seems that austerity is out of fashion in the eurozone – at least for the moment. The European Commission has given Spain, France, and the Netherlands more time to comply with the European Union’s 3%-of-GDP deficit ceiling. Even German government officials now concede that something more than fiscal belt-tightening is needed to revive the economies of the eurozone periphery.
The ‘Single Supervisory Mechanism’: A Major Building Block Towards a European Banking Union
Gortsos, Christos, (2013), “The ‘Single Supervisory Mechanism’: A Major Building Block Towards a European Banking Union”, ECEFIL Working Paper Series, N. 2013/8. full text
The New Rome: The EU and the Pillage of the Indebted Countries
Polychroniou, C.J., (2013), “The New Rome: The EU and the Pillage of the Indebted Countries”, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, May. The European Union (EU) is a treaty-based organization that was set up after World War II as a means of putting an end to a favorite practice of the Europeans: sorting out their national differences by engaging in bloody warfare. The European experiment—the formation of a Common Market, …Read More
Germany: A Global Miracle and a European Challenge
Bastasin, Carlo, (2013), “Germany: A Global Miracle and a European Challenge”, Brookings Institute, May. In 1994, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Germans feared that the unification of the two Germanys had failed. In 1997 the term “Reformstau” (the reform deadlock) had been elected as the “word of the year”. In 1999 and 2000 the weekly magazine The Economist called Germany “the sick man of Europe”. …Read More
OECD (2013): Economic Outlook
Europe’s Troika Should Grow Up
Pisani-Ferry, Jean, (2013) “Europe’s Troika Should Grow Up”, www.project-syndicate.org, 27 May 2013. In early 2010, a group of men (and a few women) in dark suits landed in Athens. They belonged to a global institution, the International Monetary Fund, and to a pair of regional ones, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Their mission was to negotiate the terms and conditions of a financial bailout of Greece. A …Read More
Are Germans poorer than other Europeans? The principal Eurozone differences in wealth and income
D’alessio, Giovanni, Gambacorta, Romina, Ilardi, Giuseppe, (2013), “Are Germans poorer than other Europeans? The principal Eurozone differences in wealth and income”, www.voxoeu.org, 24 May. The ECB’s recent survey on household finances and consumption threw up some unexpected results – counter-intuitively, the average German household has less wealth than the average Mediterranean household. In line with a recent VoxEU.org contribution from De Grauwe and Ji, this article analyses the principal differences …Read More
Europe’s Lost Keynesians
Rogoff, Kenneth, (2013), “Europe’s Lost Keynesians”, www.project-syndicate.org, 23 May. There is no magic Keynesian bullet for the eurozone’s woes. But the spectacularly muddle-headed argument nowadays that too much austerity is killing Europe is not surprising. Commentators are consumed by politics, flailing away at any available target, while the “anti-austerity” masses apparently believe that there are easy cyclical solutions to tough structural problems.