Farah-Yacoub, Juan, Gerling, Kerstin, A Medas, Paulo, Poghosyan, Tigran, Xu, Yizhi, (2017), “Fiscal Crises”, IMF, 3 April A key objective of fiscal policy is to maintain the sustainability of public finances and avoid crises. Remarkably, there is very limited analysis on fiscal crises. This paper presents a new database of fiscal crises covering different country groups, including low-income developing countries (LIDCs) that have been mostly ignored in the past. Countries faced …Read More

Fabbrini , Sergio, (2017), “After The Rome Declaration: A Union – Not A State”, Social Europe, 4 April The Declaration recites: “We will act together, at different paces and intensity where necessary, while moving in the same direction, as we have done in the past, in line with the Treaties and keeping the door open to those who want to join later. Our Union is undivided and indivisible”. Indeed, the …Read More

Perotti , Enrico, (2017), “The conduct of monetary policy in a diverse monetary union”, Vox EU, 4 April The monetary union of the euro has been established between very diverse countries. In itself, diversity is a positive feature, since variation in comparative advantages enables more risk sharing and gains from enhanced trade (Alesina and la Ferrara 2005). Yet European countries also differ in terms of institutional quality. This difference is …Read More

Garda, Paula, (2017), “Employment ins and outs in OECD countries”, OECD, 30 March The paper Garda (2016) “The Ins and Outs of employment in 25 OECD country” uses household surveys for 25 OECD countries to analyse cross-country differences in the transitions between employment, unemployment and economic inactivity for individuals. Between 2005 and 2012, the annual probability of leaving employment averaged 10% across OECD countries. Jobless people have an average 30% …Read More

Benoît Cœuré, (2017), “Central bank communication in a low interest rate environment”, Bruegel, 31 March Speech by Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at an event organised by Bruegel, Brussels, 31 March 2017 Relevant Posts Blanke, Jennifer, Krogstrup, Signe, (2016), “Negative interest rates: absolutely everything you need to know”, World Economic Forum, 2 November Barwell, Richard, (2016), “No hawks, no doves, only consensus: How central banks set interest rates”, …Read More

Weber, Alexander, (2017), “Monte Paschi Bailout Plan Has Some ECB Supervisors Grumbling”, Bloomberg, 27 March When the European Central Bank declared Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA solvent last December, the first step toward a state-funded rescue, some members of the 19-nation Supervisory Board weren’t fully on board. Confronted with what they saw as a political agreement to bail out the world’s oldest lender, dissenters went along with the …Read More