Janssen, R. (2014) “Quantitative Easing Or Business Easing In Europe?“, Social Europe Journal, 08 September.   A political “consensus” is at this moment being forged in the Euro Area around a policy mix where the ECB would go for some form of, yet undefined, quantitative easing and this in exchange for radical structural reforms. To push this view through, it seems as if anything is allowed. A rather hallucinating illustration …Read More

Schweiger, C. (2014) “Juncker, Tusk, Mogherini and the EU’s credibility crisis“, Ideas on Europe Blog, 07 September.   After months of public wrangling and backroom discussions over the selection of the candidates for the vacancies of key institutional posts the EU is now finally in a position to address its mounting internal and external challenges with a new guard of official representatives. The selection process itself resembled very much the …Read More

Merler, S. (2014) “Super Mario: 1up? – the ECB cuts the three reference rates and introduces a private asset purchase programme“, Bruegel Think Tank, 05 September.   The stake at this month’s meeting of the ECB’s Governing Council was exceptionally high. Mario Draghi himself raised the bar of expectations, with his intervention at Jackson Hole. That speech marked a significant change in his language, on a number of important dimensions. …Read More

Kirkegaard, F. J. (2014) “The ECB Throws down the Gauntlet“, The Peterson Institute for International Economics, 05 September.   The European Central Bank (ECB) surprised financial markets on September 4 by announcing an interest rate cut of 10 basis points, a new program to purchase asset-backed securities (ABS) in the nonfinancial sector, and another round of purchases of covered bank bonds. The ECB was responding not only to the recent …Read More

Marzinotto, Β. & Turrini, Α. (2014) “Which factors shape the relationship between manufacturing and government wages?“, VoxEU Organisation, 05 September.   The link between public- and private-sector compensation has important implications for the labour market and price competitiveness. This column reports that manufacturing and government wages co-move both in the long and short run, but that the long-run co-movement is much stronger where the government is an important employer. This …Read More

Derviş, Κ. & Saraceno, F. (2014) “An Investment New Deal for Europe“, Brookings Blog, 03 September.   Six years into the crisis, the eurozone remains the sick man of the world economy. Its GDP today is barely at the pre-crisis level, deflation looms and the difference between the healthier core and a struggling periphery is not resolved. Moreover, even Germany may be slowing down, and Finland is in persistent recession. …Read More