Bruegel Blog (archive)

Reactions on the German Coalition Treaty

More than two months after the Federal elections, Merkel’s CDU came to an agreement to form a coalition government with the Social Democrats

Life after Bali

Negotiating round the clock, World Trade Organisation (WTO) members successfully concluded an agreement on a mini-package at Bali MC9, on a package of

Continued financial fragmentation will put ECB on the hook

Failure to agree on a strong banking union will push more responsibilities onto the ECB. The introduction of tough bail-in rules, higher capital

Export and unit labour cost adjustment: close association in EU15

We have updated, up to 2013Q2, our database on quarterly unit labour cost (ULC) based real effective exchange rate (REER) indices.

What Single Market?

“The commitment to complete the Digital Single Market by 2015 has to be delivered on: today's market fragmentation hampers the release of the dig

Blogs review: Updating the Phillips curve

What’s at stake: The missing disinflation – or even deflation – in the Great Recession has generated a large literature, which proposes a set of

Blogs review: Germany’s Energiewende

What’s at stake: Managing Germany’s highly ambitious plans for a transition to electricity generation from renewable sources will be a main task

Blogs review: The minimum wage debate redux

What’s at stake: US President Barack Obama included a raise the minimum wage in last year’s budget in an effort to fight inequality and alleviate

The protectionist dog that didn’t bark

Many trade safeguard actions have essentially protectionist and political motivations. Thus, the absence of sustained lobbying from the leading German

A broader view on EU data protection

The data protection of EU citizens has been in focus ever since the surge in espionage scandals that began with the leaks from Edward Snowden. But bes

Blogs review: Inequality

TPP participation gives Japan a bargaining chip in trade negotiations

Several important economic partnership agreements have moved into the process of trade negotiations for Japan this year. Although the macroeconomic ef

Easing now or later?

There is almost no doubt that the ECB will need to loosen up its monetary stance a bit more, the question is when to do so?

Governments must follow the ECB's rate cut with policy action

The Eurozone is still at risk of falling into deflation. Euro area core inflation rates, i.e. inflation rates excluding volatile energy and food price

Blogs review: Revisiting the case for rational expectations

What’s at stake: The debate about what determines the expectations of economic agents and what model of expectations to use in macroeconomic mode

Looking ahead at the Commission's imbalances report

The European Commission will release the analysis of its macroeconomic scoreboard on November 15. However, most of the indicators are already availabl