Opinion
Scholz's improved plan to complete the banking union
The head of German Finance has written in the Financial Times defending the need to deepen the banking union, now London is about to leave
Opinion
The head of German Finance has written in the Financial Times defending the need to deepen the banking union, now London is about to leave
Opinion
Die deutsche Industriepolitik folgt bisher keiner klaren Strategie, sondern ist von Unternehmensinteressen getrieben. Das ist der falsche Weg.
Opinion
Although national industrial policies have a bad reputation, there is a strong case for government support to sectors that will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence. In this regard, the German government’s plan to promote production of electric-car batteries may accelerate an industrial renaissance in Europe.
Opinion
Eastern Germans vote, think, and feel differently than western Germans do, as the results of the September 1 regional elections make clear. To help tackle the underlying economic causes of this divide, the federal government should introduce incentives to encourage foreign investment in the east of the country.
Opinion
Recession! This is the new worry in Europe and the US. A simple look at google trends shows that in Germany, France and the US, search interest for recession peaked in the last weeks. In Italy, the peak already occurred end of January. Whether a recession is actually occurring is difficult to gauge in real time. But there can be no doubt that significant risks such as the trade war and no-deal Brexit exist.
Blog Post
An on-going research project is seeking to quantify and analyse printed media discourses about Europe over the decades since the end of the Second World War. A first snapshot screened more than 2.8 million articles in Le Monde between 1944 and 2018. In this second instalment we carry out an analogous exercise on a dataset of more the 500 thousand articles from two German weekly magazines: Die Zeit and Der Spiegel. We also report on the on-going work to refine the quantitative methodology.
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.
Blog Post
A proposal in Berlin to ban increases in rent for the next five years sparked intense debate in Germany. Similar policies to the Mietendeckel are currently being discussed in London and NYC. All three proposals reflect and raise similar concerns – the increase in per-capita incomes is not keeping pace with increases in rents, but will a cap do more harm than good? We review recent views on the matter.
Blog Post
The quarterly growth rate of the euro area in Q1 2019 was 0.4% (1.5% annualized), considerably higher than the low growth rates of the previous two quarters. This blog reviews the reaction to the release of these numbers and the discussion they have triggered about the euro area’s economic challenges.
Blog Post
Germany is having a political debate on the adjustment of its budgetary plans due to revised forecasts, and an academic debate on the debt brake. Yet, since 2011, general government revenues and surpluses have been systematically and significantly higher than forecast. The German surplus reached 1.7% of GDP in 2018. This bias did not exist from 1999-2008 before the introduction of the debt brake. While the IMF also got its forecasts of German surpluses wrong, the extent of the bias is larger for the German government’s forecasts. These data suggest that the political debate should focus on the debt brake and its implementation rather than on how to close the budgetary ‘hole’.
Opinion
France and Germany recently unveiled a manifesto for a European industrial policy fit for the 21st century, sparking a lively debate across the continent. The fundamental idea underpinning the manifesto is a good one: Europe does need an industrial policy to ensure that EU companies remain highly competitive globally, notwithstanding strong competition from China and other big players. However, the Franco-German priorities are unsuitable for the pursuit of this goal.
Opinion
There is a fear that EU companies will find it increasingly difficult to be on top of global value chains. Many argue that EU-based firms simply lack the critical scale to compete and, in order to address this problem, that Europe’s merger control should become less strict. But the real question is where the EU can strengthen itself beyond the realm of competition policy.
