Ferry, Pisani, Jean (2016), “Preparing For Europe’s Next Recession“, Social Europe, 1 April In 2015, eurozone output barely exceeded its 2008 level, a dismal performance for which sluggish productivity growth cannot be blamed. Despite considerable slack in the economy, growth in 2015 was a disappointing 1.5%, and the ECB expects just 1.4% growth this year. This is far better than the contraction that occurred from 2011 to 2013, but one would expect a …Read More

 Probin, Jayson, (2016), “Where next for the ECB?- Part 1: Why Draghi’s ‘Big Bazooka’ isn’t quite as big as it appears”, OpenEurope, 31 March Probably the single largest component of the latest stimulus package was the increase in the size of QE by €20bn to €80bn a month. The ECB hopes that this will further driven down interest rates across a range of assets and further depreciate the euro thus …Read More

Fazi, Thomas, (2016), “How Austerity Has Crippled The European Economy – In Numbers”, Social Europe, 31 March Europe’s post-crisis response – consisting of a combination of fiscal austerity, neoliberal structural reforms and expansionary monetary policies – has unambiguously failed. In early 2016 – eight years after the outbreak of the financial crisis – the eurozone’s overall real GDP was still below the pre-crisis peak (March 2008). The Greek economy was 27.6 …Read More

Kanbur, Ravi, Ronconi, Lucas, (2016), “Stricter labour laws go hand-in-hand with less enforcement effort”, Voxeu, 30 March Current de jure measures of labour regulation stringency point to negative consequences of labour laws. This column presents new evidence on cross-country measurements of enforcement of labour laws from almost every country in the world. The authors argue that the consequences of labour enforcement cannot be credibly assessed using de jure measures which ignore the …Read More

Wolff, Guntram B., Bénassy-Quéré, Agnès, (2016), “ECB decisions put lack of fiscal union in the spotlight”, Bruegel, 30 March Fiscal policy in the euro area is hardly supporting the recovery and the ECB. The EU needs a a proper fiscal union in order to stabilise the economy and inflation. We see four main avenues for achieving a viable fiscal framework. Relevant Posts Eijffinger, Sylvester, (2016), “The ECB Goes Rogue”, Project Syndicate, 18 March Bénassy-Quéré, Agnès, Ragot, Xavier, Wolff, Guntram …Read More