Opinion
Despite confident official pronouncements, the deteriorating state of the global economy is now high on the international policy agenda. The OECD recently revised down its forecasts to 1.5% growth in the advanced G20 economies in 2020, compared to almost 2.5% in 2017. And its chief economist Laurence Boone warned of the risk of further deterioration – a coded way of indicating a growing threat of recession.
Past Event
What connections exist between central banks and climate change, and what are the resulting implications?
Blog Post
Recent primary elections in Argentina saw the defeat by a wide margin of President Macri. This fueled market volatility given expectations of a reversal of reforms after national elections in October; the recent re-introduction of capital controls attests to the extent of the economic fallout. With Macri’s end in sight, this post will review the evolution of the Argentinian economy during his term.
Podcast
Backstage at the Bruegel Annual Meetings, Nicholas Barrett talks with Zsolt Darvas on Europe's monetary union.
External Publication
This external publication delves into the new responsibility given to the European Central Bank: supervision on banks in the euro-area. It tells its history and illustrates its functions, structure and responsibilities and the exceptional answers to respond to the "perfect storm" of the crisis.
Blog Post
Croatia seems a suitable candidate for euro area accession: there is a tight peg to the euro, high public debt is coming down, and the banking sector is already dominated by euro area banks. But the Eurogroup has rightly targeted reforms of the state’s role in the economy as a precondition for participation in ERM II and the banking union. None of the announced reform plans are new or easily concluded within the timeframe that has now been agreed.
Blog Post
The authors assess whether the European Commission's actions towards Italy since September 2018 have had a visible impact on the spread between Italian sovereign-bond yields and those of Germany, and particularly whether the Commission’s warnings have acted as a ‘signalling device’ for bond-market participants that it might be difficult for Italy to obtain the support of the ESM or the ECB’s OMT programme if needed.
Past Event
What does the new Eurozone budget do, and what does it not do? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
Podcast
In this Director's Cut of 'The Sound of Economics', Guntram Wolff talks to two of the authors of Bruegel's memo to the new ECB president, Maria Demertzis and Grégory Claeys, to specify the most important issues at the beginning of this eight-year cycle and to clarify the parameters within which the new incumbent will have to work.
Policy Brief
Memo to the president of the European Central Bank. Grégory Claeys, Maria Demertzis and Francesco Papadia present the challenges that the next ECB president will face during the upcoming mandate, reinventing monetary policy in a system riddled with uncertainties.
Blog Post
A textbook condition of international finance breaks down. Economic research identifies the interplay between divergent monetary policies and new financial regulation as the source of the puzzle, and generates concerns about unintended consequences for financing conditions and financial stability.
Podcast
In this Director’s Cut, Bruegel’s Grégory Claeys and Maria Demertzis take a deeper look at whether the monetary policy decisions made by the ECB over the past three presidential eras arrived by consensus, by unanimity or by majority votes of the governing council.