Picture of Silvia Merler

Silvia Merler

Bruegel Non-resident fellow

Silvia Merler, an Italian citizen, is the Head of ESG and Policy Research at Algebris Investments.

She joined Bruegel as Affiliate fellow at Bruegel in August 2013. Her main research interests include international macro and financial economics, central banking and EU institutions and policy making.

Before joining Bruegel, she worked as Economic Analyst in DG Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission (ECFIN). There she focused on macro-financial stability as well as financial assistance and stability mechanisms, in particular on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), providing supportive analysis for the policy negotiations.

 

Featured work

Opinion piece

How Europe can sustain Russia sanctions

Russia's war in Ukraine has underscored the need for Europe finally to invest more in its own defence and security. Such an outrageous act of aggressi

Silvia Merler, Francesco Nicoli, Simone Tagliapietra and Ana Palacio
Blog post

The microeconomics of Christmas

Review of major contributions to the literature on the controversial topic of the deadweight loss of Christmas.

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won the Brazilian presidential elections after a highly polarising campaign. We review economists’ and scholars’ vi

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Digesting the Salzburg Summit

As the moment of truth for Brexit negotiations is approaching, with the October European Council around the corner, we review opinions on the outcome

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Inequality in China

After amply discussing income inequality in Europe and the US, economists are now looking at the magnitude, implications and possible remedies for thi

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Italy's "Dignity Decree"

The new Italian government pushed through its first legislative act including elements of labour market reform. Presented as an overturn of the previo

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Demographics and Long Run Growth

Scholars have been investigating the relationship between demographics and long term growth, in the context of the secular stagnation hypothesis. We r

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The Italian mini-BOT debate

Talks of parallel currency are not new in Italy. But one of the proposals – the so called mini-BOT – has made it into the government contract that und

Silvia Merler
Blog post

200 Years of Karl Marx

May 5th 2018 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. We review some economists’ takes on the controversial philosopher’s legacy.

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Did Economics Fail?

The debate about rethinking economics keeps rambling. We summarise newest contributions to this important discussion.

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The cost of remittances

Remittances flows are very important for developing countries. In 2009 the G8 pledged to reduce the cost of remittances to 5%, a commitment that was e

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The Brexit Transition Deal

Michel Barnier, the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, and David Davis, Britain’s Brexit secretary, announced a transition deal on March 19. We revie

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The Italian elections

Italy goes to the polls on March 4, with a new electoral law that is largely viewed as unable to deliver a stable government. We review recent opinion

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Venezuela’s hyperinflation

The International Monetary Fund forecasts Venezuelan inflation spiralling to 13,000 percent this year. As President Maduro is expected to introduce th

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Abenomics, five years in

Five years have passed since Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzō Abe was elected in 2012 and started “Abenomics”, a macroeconomic package based upon the “th

Silvia Merler
Book

Remaking Europe: the new manufacturing as an engine for growth

Europe needs to know how it can realise the potential for industrial rejuvenation. How well are European firms responding to the new opportunities for

Dalia Marin, Reinhilde Veugelers, Carlo Altomonte, Georg Zachmann, Silvia Merler, Simone Tagliapietra, J. Scott Marcus, Uuriintuya Batsaikhan, Albert Bravo-Biosca, Justine Feliu, Robert Kalcik, Filippo Biondi, Valeria Negri, Maciej Bukowski and John Morales
Blog post

Taxing robots?

What’s at stake: “More human than human”, was the motto guiding the Tyrell Corporation’s engineering of biorobotic androids, in 1982’s Blade Runner. F

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The economic effects of migration

What’s at stake: migration is currently a very hot topic in both the US and the EU. Immigration issues have come to the forefront due to the problem o

Silvia Merler
Blog post

2016: The end

What’s at stake: 2016 is coming to an end. It will be remembered as an annus mirabilis and horribilis, at the same time. 2016 brought us some previous

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The Italian referendum

What’s at stake: on 4 December, Italy will hold a referendum on a proposed constitutional reform approved by Parliament in April. The reform, which wa

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Brexit and the law

What’s at stake: last week, the UK High Court ruled that the triggering of Article 50 - and therefore the Brexit process - should involve the UK Parli

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The Wallonian Resistance

What's at stake: this week has been filled with news that the small Belgian region of Wallonia intended to veto CETA (the Canada-EU trade agreement).

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Should we rethink fiscal policy?

What’s at stake: there has been quite some discussion recently on whether we should rethink the framework of fiscal policy in order to make it more ap

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Trumping Trade

What’s at stake: Trade is a central topic in the US presidential campaign, with both candidates expressing some degree of criticism about past trade p

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Big in Japan

What’s at stake: This week saw two important Central Banks’ meetings, whose outcomes could hardly be more different. While the U.S. Federal Reserve le

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The Apple of Discord

What’s at stake:

On August 30th, following the results of an in-depth state aid investigation started in 2014, the European Commission concluded t

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Hard times for Italian banks

Silvia Merler and Marcello Minenna review the structure of of the recently adopted Italian guarantees scheme, and look at solutions implemented in oth

Silvia Merler and Marcello Minenna
Blog post

Greece budget update - October

The Finance Ministry of Greece has published the preliminary budget execution bulletin for September, covering the first 9 months of the year. It reve

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Greece budget update - September

Last week, while Europe was anticipating the Greek election, the Greek finance ministry published the latest budget execution bulletin, covering Janua

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Greece budget update - August

The Greek finance ministry published last week the latest budget execution bulletin. The state budget primary balance increased significantly during J

Silvia Merler
Opinion piece

#Greferendum

Defying hopes that negotiations could lead to an agreement between Greece and its creditors by the end of the week and ahead of the programme expiring

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Greece budget update

As Eurogroup discussions with Greece continue, the latest budget execution bulletin from the Greek finance ministry has been published yesterday, comp

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Greece: where we stand and what to watch

It has been an intense couple of days on the front of Greek negotiations, with leaks from both sides. Beyond the noise, here are some key points to wa

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Greece’s hot summer

After a Eurogroup meeting that appears to have not achieved much progress, and after Greece met its most recent payment due to the IMF drawing on its

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The 2015 Greek redemptions’ path

Tomorrow, the Eurogroup meets to discuss the Greek government’s plan to reach an agreement with the Country’s public creditors. The sense of urge

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Greece: update on public finances

At the end of last week the Greek Finance Ministry published the preliminary budget execution bulletin for February. The State primary budget balance

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Greek payment deadlines ahead

Discussions between Greece and its creditors are due to restart tomorrow. In the meantime, the pressure on Greece is increasing.   Here we take a

Silvia Merler
Blog post

A Greek primary issue

On the 25th February, the Greek ministry of finance published the final data for the execution of the State Budget in January 2015. This data is

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Who’s (still) exposed to Greece?

Following the recent elections, Greece has come under pressure. Fear is growing about the stance of the newly elected government and there have been s

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The ECB has fired its bazooka

The ECB announced today an expansion of its asset purchases, to include securities issued by European agencies and institutions, as well as central go

Guntram B. Wolff and Silvia Merler
Blog post

TLTRO spoils Christmas holidays at the ECB

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but it does not look like Santa Claus has any intention to stop by Frankfurt. Today, the ECB revealed the

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The ECB winter of discontent

It was the last meeting before Christmas at the ECB, as well as the first in the new premises and the last with a non-rotating voting system. It ended

Silvia Merler
Opinion piece

“Unanimous” is the new black

As it was largely anticipated, no new measures were announced Thursday at the ECB meeting. But sometimes words can be as important as facts.

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Vicious circle(s) 2.0

Since the beginning of the crisis – and more so since 2010 – Europeans have been looking at the sovereign-banking “vicious circle”, tying the dismal f

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Monday blues for Italian banks

On Sunday, the ECB and EBA published the results of their comprehensive assessment of banks balance sheets, and Italian banks where the worst performe

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Russian Roulette, reloaded

European attention will be back to Russia and Ukraine this week, as sanctions are reviewed.  In the meantime, important changes have taken place.

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Whose is Russia’s external debt?

Data from the Central Bank of Russia show that, as of 1st Quarter of 2014, 90% of the country’s external debt was attributable to banks and other (non

Silvia Merler
Blog post

T-LTRO: variation on a (ECB’s) theme

Last Thursday the ECB unveiled its “big bazooka plan” to fight the threat of deflation in the Euro area. Among the measure announced, there is a varia

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Super Mario: 1up?

The stake at this month’s meeting of the ECB’s Governing Council was exceptionally high. Mario Draghi himself raised the bar of expectations, with his

Silvia Merler
Blog post

T-(rompe-l’Oeil)-LTRO

I already pointed out that several important points were quite vague in the initial ECB T-LTRO announcement. Some of these have been clarified, b

Silvia Merler
Blog post

An Italian déjà-vu

The European Commission published today its country-specific recommendations, in the context of the European semester. The leitmotiv, in the case of I

Silvia Merler
Opinion piece

The Renzi-Frenzy

If there’s a rule that Italian voters learn quickly, it’s never to trust provisional election results. They have a tendency to display spectacular rev

Silvia Merler and Alessio Terzi
Blog post

Addressing weak inflation: The ECB’s shopping list

In this blogpost, we summarize our recently published paper, in which we discuss in detail the dilemmas for the ECB and the need to act. Inflation for

Zsolt Darvas, Guntram B. Wolff, Silvia Merler and Grégory Claeys
Blog post

Shrinking times

Over the last 5 years, the Eurozone financial system has been flooded with liquidity, due to the ECB’s very special response to the very special bank-

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Is there a risk of deflation in the euro area?

Even though the euro area as a whole has not yet entered into deflation, this picture is worrying. Low inflation rates will make the relative price ad

Silvia Merler, Grégory Claeys and Pia Hüttl
Blog post

Russian roulette

The possibility that this geopolitical crisis spills over from the Eastern Europe to the (closer) Mediterranean and even the core of the EU cannot to

Silvia Merler
Opinion piece

2014 Financial Odyssey

The European Banking Union matures in 2014, with the ECB assuming its role as single supervisor. This column outlines the transition to the new steady

Guntram B. Wolff and Silvia Merler
Blog post

Home-(Sweet Home)-Bias and other stories

Behind the relative calm that now seems to reign on the financial markets, fragmentation is still there. And if you see it charted, it is actually qui

Silvia Merler
Blog post

The liquidity quandary

The risk connected to the normalisation of the liquidity condition in the Eurozone exists. It should therefore be acknowledged and its impact assessed

Silvia Merler
Blog post

Which role should the ECB give up?

In a briefing paper written for the European Parliament’s Monetary Dialogue with ECB President Draghi, we look at old and new competences of

Zsolt Darvas and Silvia Merler
External publication

Policy Lessons from the Eurozone Crisis

Co-authored by Chiara Angeloni and Silvia Merler.
The current European crisis has shed light on several weaknesses and the institutional incompletenes

Guntram B. Wolff and Silvia Merler
Blog post

Sudden stops in the euro area

Many analysts and observers have put forward that the euro crisis is a balance-of-payments crisis at least as much as a fiscal crisis. The issue has g

Jean Pisani-Ferry and Silvia Merler
Policy brief

Sudden stops in the euro area

There is a view that the euro crisis is a balance-of-payments crisis at least as much as a fiscal crisis.The balance-of-payments discussion lacks clar

Jean Pisani-Ferry and Silvia Merler
Policy brief

Who's afraid of sovereign bonds?

The December large-scale provision of liquidity to banks by the ECB contributed to reducing spreads on Southern European sovereign bonds, but did it c

Jean Pisani-Ferry and Silvia Merler