2018 in 18 blog posts

Blog Post

ECB’s huge forecasting errors undermine credibility of current forecasts

In the past five years ECB forecasts have proven to be systematically incorrect: core inflation remained broadly stable at 1% despite the stubbornly predicted increase, while the unemployment rate fell faster than predicted. Such forecast errors, which are also inconsistent with each other, raise serious doubts about the reliability of the ECB’s current forecast of accelerating core inflation and necessitates a reflection on the inflation aim of the ECB.

By: Zsolt Darvas and Bruegel Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance Date: December 6, 2018

Opinion

The world deserves a more effective G20

As the presidency shifts from Argentina to Japan at Buenos Aires (and then to Saudi Arabia) it is worth asking why the G20 has endured this long and what it needs to remain relevant in a dramatically changed world.

By: Suman Bery Topic: Finance & Financial Regulation, Global Economics & Governance Date: November 29, 2018

Blog Post

Could Italian private wealth compensate for flight of foreign bond-holders?

Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini is "convinced" that Italians can help out their government, in the face of a widening yield spread between German and Italian government bonds. The authors assess the feasibility of recourse to household wealth in Italy, and estimate the relative importance of foreign debt-holders in the upcoming bond redemptions.

By: Jan Mazza and Silvia Merler Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance Date: November 19, 2018

Opinion

The global economy’s three games

In this column, Jean Pisani-Ferry portrays the current international economic and geopolitical order as increasingly reminiscent of chess. Three key players: the US, China and a loose coalition of the other G7 members play three games simultaneously, and no one knows which game will take precedence.

By: Jean Pisani-Ferry and Bruegel Topic: Global Economics & Governance Date: October 29, 2018

Opinion

Greece: What to expect after the bail-out

After being under the close scrutiny of three financial assistance programmes since May 2010, Greece has finally left the bail-out in August 2018. How different is the post-bail-out era from the preceding eight years? Will Greece be able to stand on its own? And how might the country improve its economic outlook? In this post, which summarises a presentation recently given at an Athens conference, the author answers these three questions.

By: Zsolt Darvas and Bruegel Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance Date: October 9, 2018

Blog Post

Something Putin and Juncker appear to agree on – the euro

“It is absurd that Europe pays for 80% of its energy import bill – worth €300 billion a year – in US dollars when only roughly 2% of our energy imports come from the United States,” said President Juncker in his state of the union speech.* Europe’s largest supplier of energy – Russia, who accounts for a third of that bill – couldn’t agree more. Russia’s offer to switch to euros in trade with the EU will likely be costly to implement, but the US switch towards unilateralism is forcing its long-standing partners to question the dollar’s global dominance.

By: Elina Ribakova Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance Date: September 25, 2018

Opinion

Overcoming the hurdles to Italian Growth

Is the time for refining recommendations and for a serious political debate on how best to overcome bottlenecks and improve the economic prospects of Italians.

By: Guntram B. Wolff Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance Date: September 4, 2018

Opinion

US-China trade war: What’s in it for Europe?

To help evaluate whether the market response is warranted or exaggerated, the author measured the trade impact of additional import tariffs based on standard economic theory, namely two key parameters—the tariff pass-through rate and the price elasticity of demand. The end of multilateralism seems clear, at least for trade.

By: Alicia García-Herrero Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance, Global Economics & Governance Date: August 23, 2018

Opinion

Europe needs a fresh approach to climate strategy

The EU needs a new approach to long-term climate strategy to ensure that EU climate policy is brought in line with the goals of Paris and takes into account recent technological and political changes. Climate policy can only succeed if it does not come out of a bureaucratic ‘black box’, but is part of an inclusive process involving a wide range of stakeholders.

By: Andrei Marcu, Georg Zachmann and Bruegel Topic: Energy & Climate Date: June 20, 2018

Blog Post

Understanding (the lack of) German public investment

An array of data suggests that there is a general lack of investment by all branches of the German government, despite running budget surpluses for several years. This blog post plots the progression of the public investment problem, and explores which regions, which sectors, and which levels of government have been most affected.

By: Alexander Roth, Guntram B. Wolff and Bruegel Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance Date: June 19, 2018

Blog Post

Robots, ICT and EU employment

Disruptive technologies based on ICT, robots, and artificial intelligence have transformed labour markets through their important effects on employment. As the number of industrial robots continues to rise, our results imply that some measures to facilitate workforce transition and accommodate the rise of automation might be needed to maintain satisfactory labour market outcomes.

By: David Pichler, Georgios Petropoulos, Francesco Chiacchio and Bruegel Topic: Innovation & Competition Policy Date: June 15, 2018

Blog Post

The Commission’s proposal for the next MFF: A glass half-full

The Commission’s proposal for the next Multiannual Financial Framework provides a good basis for subsequent negotiations and includes a number of bold suggestions. But it has a number of deficiencies and some of the proposed tools are conceptually weak. We make proposals as to how to improve them.

By: Grégory Claeys, Zsolt Darvas and Bruegel Topic: European Macroeconomics & Governance Date: May 25, 2018