Wolff, G., De Sousa, C., Sapir, An., and Terzi, Al., (2014), “The Troika and financial assistance in the euro area: successes and failures”, Bruegel, 19 February. This study provides a systematic evaluation of financial assistance for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus. All four programmes, and in particular the Greek one, are very large financially compared to previous international programmes because macroeconomic imbalances and the loss of price competitiveness that accumulated …Read More

Mariniello, M., (2014), “Why Competition Policy matters for Growth?”, Bruegel, 18 February. Economic literature suggests that competition can have broad economic effects in three areas: the total amount of economic wealth available in the market at a given point of time, companies’ productive process, and their incentives to innovate or improve the quality of their products. In the first area, any transaction creates some value. An increase in prices resulting …Read More

Priestley, J., (2014), “EU election fault lines: Jobs and growth”, Policy Network, 18 February. No-one, not even UKIP (presumably), supports increasing youth unemployment. But just because politicians from the main European political parties share the view that something has to be done about nearly 6 million youngsters who cannot find work, while recognising that governments have to pursue fiscal responsibility does not mean that there is a consensus about the …Read More

Wyplosz, Ch., (2014), “What you ought to know about the ECB and Unemployment”, Social Europe Journal, 18 February. Τhe unemployment rate in the Euro area has increased by more than 50% since 2007, starting from an already unacceptably high level. The financial crisis that hit the world in 2007-8 is of historical proportions and explains some of this increase, of course. Figure 1 shows that the decline has been much …Read More

The Eiffel Group, (2014), “For a Euro Community”, Bruegel, 14 February. Everyone expected that Economic and Monetary Union would bring prosperity and improve the living conditions and employment possibilities of Europe’s citizens, prior to political rapprochement. Its design flaws, and management errors, have produced the opposite. Europe’s citizens have grave doubts. We however are convinced that we must not give up. The initial goals of European integration – to ensure …Read More

Bauchowitz, St., (2014), “Entrepreneurship in Southern Europe: Symptom or Solution to the Euro Crisis?”, LSE Eurocrisis in the Press, 14 February. Entrepreneurship has long been recognised as an important factor in generating economic growth[1], but the post gets the roots of Greece’s (not so new) entrepreneurship wrong. Where there are few employment possibilities people will have to become entrepreneurs – but these are subsistence entrepreneurs, which are quite distinct from …Read More

Warner, J., (2014), “The eurozone crisis is just getting started”, The Telegraph, 14 February. On the face of it, they seem worlds apart. Switzerland’s referendum vote against the free movement of labour, the ruling by the German Constitutional Court on the European Central Bank’s (ECB) attempts to save the euro, and the warning to Scotland that it won’t be allowed to keep the pound if it votes for independence – …Read More

Sapir, A., (2014), “France and Germany must both change economic strategy”, Bruegel Blog, 13 February. The euro was first and foremost a Franco-German project, not only politically but also economically. Thanks to its stability culture, Germany had a strong currency. At times, when the dollar was weak, the D-mark was even too strong, penalizing German exporters in favor of their European competitors. Germany was therefore keen to have France and …Read More

Guha, K., (2014), “Can Mario Draghi Beat Deflation?”, Bloomberg Opinion, 12 February. The European Central Bank may soon have to roll out the heavy artillery, in the form of an asset purchase program similar to those in the U.S., U.K. and Japan, to fight the specter of deflation. But in a currency union with 18 different sovereign bonds, the tough question will be what to buy. The best solution: Purchase …Read More