The Post-Crisis Global Economy in Three Words
Pisani-Ferry, Jean. Five years have passed since the collapse of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers triggered financial mayhem and marked the onset of the Great Recession. Though the dust may not have fully settled, three catchwords sum up what we have learned so far – and what remains to be done. Πηγή: www.project-syndicate.org πλήρες κείμενο
How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class
Autor, David, Dorn, David. In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the productivity of American workers — those lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since the […]
Why does capital flow from poor to rich countries?
Gros, Daniel. Why does capital flow from poor to rich countries? This column argues that the direction of capital flows makes economic sense given savings behaviour. But the real puzzle is why savings rates are high in poor countries and low in rich ones. Πηγή: www.voxeu.org πλήρες κείμενο
2013 Spillover Report
Five years after the global financial crisis, the severe tensions and risks rooted last year in some of the “Systemic five” (S5)—China, euro area, Japan, United Kingdom, United States––have abated but all five are still operating below potential, i.e., they are not contributing to global activity as much as they might: if they could somehow […]
The Times They are a-Changin’: will (fiscal) history repeat itself?
Cottarelli, Carlo. Recent political and social unrest in some emerging and developing countries may have idiosyncratic features. But they also have a common denominator: a yearning for more equality in incomes, economic self-determination, and political power. Are these developments in seemingly unrelated emerging economies the beginning of a trend? Πηγή: iMFdirect πλήρες κείμενο
Hitting China’s Wall
Krugman, Paul. All economic data are best viewed as a peculiarly boring genre of science fiction, but Chinese data are even more fictional than most. Add a secretive government, a controlled press, and the sheer size of the country, and it’s harder to figure out what’s really happening in China than it is in any […]
Why economics needs economic history
Kevin O’Rourke. The current economic and financial crisis has given rise to a vigorous debate about what training graduate and undergraduate economics students are receiving. This column argues that knowledge of economic and financial history isn’t taught enough, yet it is crucial in thinking about the economy. It’s also replete with opportunities for instructors trying to […]
When is the time for austerity?
Taylor, Alan. Recent austerity policies have been guided by ideology rather than research. This column discusses research that reconciles disparate estimates of fiscal multipliers in the literature. It finds that common identification assumptions are problematic. Matching methods based on propensity scores show how contractionary austerity really is, especially in economies operating below potential. Πηγή: Voxeu […]
Redesigning the ECB with regional rather than national central banks
Burda, Michael. Eurozone national central banks that take a national perspective risk politicising the ECB’s monetary policy. This column argues that this is a significant risk that should be overcome with a fundamental overhaul of the Eurosystem. A central element would be to take the ‘national’ out of the EZ’s national central banks. Just as […]
Big banks and macroeconomic outcomes
Bremus, Franziska, Buch, M. Claudia, Russ, Katheryn & Schnitzer, Monika. The regulation of big banks has been in the spotlight for many reasons. This column adds to the list. Examining evidence for more than 80 countries for the years 1995-2009, banking systems are shown to be highly concentrated. In many cases, the banks are so big that bank-specific credit-growth […]