Five On The Floor
Krugman, Paul We’re coming up on the fifth anniversary of an important moment: the point at which US interest rates hit the zero lower bound, and we entered a liquidity trap. Five years! Yet many people, even many economists, are still in denial over what that means. Πηγή: The New York Times πλήρες κείμενο
Fiscal Consolidation in the Euro Area: How Much Can Structural Reforms Ease the Pain?
Anderson, Derek, Hunt, Ben & Snudden, Stephen. The IMF’s Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is used to examine the scope for structural reforms in the euro area to offset the negative impact of fiscal consolidation required to put public debt back on a sustainable path. The results suggest that structural reforms in core […]
Tax policy in (and for) hard times
Keen, Michael. Fiscal consolidation, and public concern that its pain be fairly spread, is putting tax systems under considerable pressure. This column takes stock of how they have been faring, and how they could do better. Πηγή: Voxeu πλήρες κείμενο
Proposal for a Stabilisation Fund for the EMU
Delbecque, Bernard. This paper argues that it should be possible to complement Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union with an insurance-type shock absorption mechanism to increase the resilience of member countries to economic shocks and reduce output volatility. Such a mechanism would neither require the establishment of a central authority, nor would it lead to permanent […]
Mind the gap! And the way structural budget balances are calculated
Darvas, Zsolt. he so-called structural balance of the general government aims to measure the ‘underlying’ position of the budget by excluding the impact of the economic cycle and one-off measures, like bank recapitalisation costs. It has a crucial role in designing fiscal consolidation strategies in the EU (see the Annex at the end). Late September, […]
Will income inequality cause a middle-income trap in Asia?
Egawa, Akio. The Asian economy is expected to realise favourable growth during the first half of this century, but there is no guarantee. There is a discussion about a ‘middle-income trap’, which refers to a country that has realised rapid growth to become a middle-income country but is unable to grow further. A middle-income trap could […]
The Legacy of Austerity in the Eurozone
De Grauwe, Paul, Ji, Yuemei. The recent slight improvement in the GDP growth rates in the eurozone has led European policy-makers to proclaim victory and assert that the austerity programmes imposed within the eurozone are paying off. But is this really the case? In this Commentary Paul De Grauwe and Yuemei Ji argue that the improvement […]
Is there a dilemma with the Trilemma?
Klein, Michael, Shambaugh, Jay. The ‘financial trilemma’ – that open capital markets and pegged exchange rates mean a loss of monetary autonomy – has recently been challenged. Some argue that even flexible exchange rates cannot assure monetary autonomy without capital controls, while others argue even countries with fixed exchange rates can gain autonomy through temporary capital […]
The Sovereign Debt Crisis: Placing a curb on growth (updated edition)
Brender, Anton,Pisani, Florence & Gagna, Emile. This book provides an update to the major 2012 study by the same authors on the dual role of the public sector as the provider of the ultimate riskless asset and, at the same time, the source of a potential major systemic risk. In this second edition, Brender and his […]
Latvian Adventures
Krugman, Paul. The paper by Blanchard, Griffiths, and Gruss is here (pdf). Some bemusement among the non-international-macro types about why a long session devoted to a country roughly the same size as either Nebraska or Brooklyn, take your pick. But a good discussion all the same. My take: What to Make of Latvia? Πηγή: The […]