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
Bershidsky, L. (2014) “Europe’s Center of Power Shifts East“, Bloomberg Views, 04 September. As Jean-Claude Juncker assumes its presidency, the European Commission — Europe’s de-facto government — will ostensibly be run by representatives of the bloc’s newest, post-Communist members, but there will no longer be a commissioner for EU expansion. Europe needs time to heal, consolidate and reorient itself politically and economically. The reorientation appears to be along unfashionably …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
Melitz, J. (2014) “The discontented members of the Eurozone should consider very seriously the creation of a second euro“, LSE EUROPP Blog, 04 September. Since the height of the Eurozone crisis, a number of reforms have been pursued to stabilise the economic situation in states using the single currency. In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, Jacques Melitz outlines why the Eurozone is still suffering from two key …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
Szczurek, M. (2014) “Investing for Europe’s Future“, VoxEU Organisation, 05 September. The ‘lost decade’ is not a scenario for the EU, it’s the baseline forecast. In this column, Polish Finance Minister Mateusz Szczurek calls for an EU-wide public investment programme of 5.5% of GDP to overcome the constraints behind Europe’s ‘secular stagnation’. He calculates that €700 billion of capital expenditures could close the output gap in the short term …Read More
Wiberg, Μ. (2014) “The political economy of regional policy and industrial location“, VoxEU Organisation, 03 September. Regional policy is a primary expenditure item for many countries. A substantial share of the regional policy budget is allocated to firms in poor regions. This column argues that electoral concerns and rent-seeking behaviour bias regional policy in favour of smaller regions. However, this bias lowers total welfare. The EU spends €130 billion …Read More
Leach, G. (2014) “Forget the dodgy numbers: Leaving the EU makes economic sense“, City A.M. free daily business newspaper, 28 May. UKIP’S recent electoral triumph has reignited debate about the cost of Britain’s place in the EU. But what do we know about the economics of our membership? Let’s start from the beginning: we’ll find that Brexit has long made economic sense. Prior to joining the then Common Market …Read More
