Wanted: a stronger and better G20 for the global economy

Ahead of the G-20 summit in Cannes of 3-4 November, this policy contribution by Jean Pisani-Ferry and Ignazio Angeloni outline a set of priorities t

Publishing date: 31 October 2011
Authors: Jean Pisani-Ferry Ignazio Angeloni

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The G20 acted as a crisis manager when global financial markets were under threat in 2008 and 2009, and contributed to a positive outcome. However since then, in the more routine work of crisis prevention, its performance has been less convincing at best, and criticism of its effectiveness has increased.

Nevertheless, a global governance forum such as the G20 is necessary. Allowing the G20 to slide slowly into irrelevance would be unfortunate because a global crisis manager is once again needed, this time to deal with the European sovereign-debt crisis

The first priority is to promptly finalise the macro-coordination framework still under construction, and strengthen it by bringing intra-regional imbalances explicitly to the fore. These should be treated as global imbalances under G20 responsibility if they have global implications, as the euro crisis certainly does.

Second, decisions should be taken on how the emerging country bloc represented in the G20 could contribute to provide financial-market support in conditions of stress. The 3-4 November Cannes G20 summit is an opportunity to strengthen the G20’s role.

This paper is a contribution to a Think Tank 20 volume to be published by The Brookings Institution.

About the authors

Jean Pisani-Ferry

Jean Pisani-Ferry is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute (Washington DC). He is also a professor of economics with Sciences Po (Paris).

He sits on the supervisory board of the French Caisse des Dépôts and serves as non-executive chair of I4CE, the French institute for climate economics.

Pisani-Ferry served from 2013 to 2016 as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie, the ideas lab of the French government. In 2017, he contributed to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid as the Director of programme and ideas of his campaign. He was from 2005 to 2013 the Founding Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank that he had contributed to create. Beforehand, he was Executive President of the French PM’s Council of Economic Analysis (2001-2002), Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance (1997-2000), and Director of CEPII, the French institute for international economics (1992-1997).

Pisani-Ferry has taught at University Paris-Dauphine, École Polytechnique, École Centrale and the Free University of Brussels. His publications include numerous books and articles on economic policy and European policy issues. He has also been an active contributor to public debates with regular columns in Le Monde and for Project Syndicate.
Ignazio Angeloni

Ignazio Angeloni joined Bruegel as a visiting fellow in June 2008 and is currently a Member of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank. He has previously been the Director General - Financial Stability, Head of ECB preparation for the SSM, and Adviser to the ECB Executive Board on European financial integration, financial stability and monetary policy. He was the coordinator and contributor to the the G20 monitor.

Before that, he was the Director for International Financial Relations at the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.

He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include macro economics, central banking, financial markets and the economics and politics of European integration.