I was interviewed about the recent European GDP figures by CCTV America recently. This is what I had to say.
Reinhart-Rogoff Comeback Fails To Convince
26/04/2013 by 2 Comments
Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have defended their work of the public debt-growth against their critics in the New York Times. It is not convincing. They repeat their claim that they always insisted that they were talking about correlation, even if less careful or interested parties made strong claims about causation. But this is belied [...]
Europe’s Unemployment Problem – Perhaps Half As Big Again
25/04/2013 by 7 Comments
We are getting used to bad news about the labour market situation in Europe. Record-breaking 12% unemployment in the euro area. More than 26 million men and women unemployed across the EU27. More than a quarter of the workforce jobless in Spain and Greece. Youth unemployment rates (which need careful interpretation) around twice as high. [...]
A Brief Social Science Methodology Primer – Renowned Harvard Economists Please Take Note
22/04/2013 by
If you want to give a really, really brief and basic intro to empirical social scientific research, for an alert school-kid or to give an elderly relative with a limited attention span an idea what you do all day, you might, simplifying heroically, say something like this. There are two basic ways to analyse regularities [...]
Reading Rehn On Reinhart-Rogoff
22/04/2013 by
A number of commentators have been discussing the use made of the now debunked Reinhart-Rogoff findings by EU economics commissioner Olli Rehn. (Wolfgang Munchau is in good form.) He repeatedly referred in speeches and publications to a 90% rule that, we now know if we didn’t already, is humbug. It is worth looking a little [...]
Reading Reinhart-Rogoff On Reinhart-Rogoff
19/04/2013 by
I won’t repeat the numerous points that have been made in the debate of the past couple of days over the Reinhart and Rogoff paper “Growth in a time of debt”. A useful overview is provided by Bruegel here. I will emphasise a few points based, not on the original paper nor on what recent [...]
France Backsliding On Fiscal Consolidation – About Time Too!
18/04/2013 by
France is planning to relax budgetary targets in the current year, failing to meet prior commitments, delaying the return to a balanced budget and incurring slippage in reversing the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio, now set to peak at 94.3 per cent of GDP next year. About time too! Under the new economic governance rules [...]
EU Commission Makes A Mockery Of Imbalance Procedure
11/04/2013 by
The Commission has just issued an analysis (in-depth review, IDR) of thirteen EU countries considered to have macroeconomic imbalances.* In principle this is a sensible exercise. Macroeconomic imbalances had built up in the pre-crisis years. They have important cross-border spillover effects. Resolving them is thus a matter of the common interest of all the member [...]
The ECB’s Actual Mandate – A Reminder
05/04/2013 by
Simon-Wren Lewis (here and on these pages) is as disappointed by the ECB’s lack of action as I am. He makes a number of important additional points, such as the fact that the ECB’s perceived upside risks to price stability (administered prices, VAT and oil) are things that most sensible macroeconomists do not believe that [...]
The ECB Disappoints Again
04/04/2013 by
I planned to blog on the failure of the ECB to take the opportunity of its Council meeting today to inject confidence and optimism (or at least counter fear and pessimism) in the face of the recession, record unemployment and falling inflation by announcing concrete steps to underpin the promise “to do all its takes” [...]
Economic Policy In Europe: Hypocrisy Joins Incompetence
04/04/2013 by
Sven Giegold (MEP for the German Greens) has an interesting comment piece in Handelsblatt: while focusing on Portugal, it is illustrative of much that is wrong with economic policymaking in Europe. He reports that 17 of the 20 largest Portuguese listed companies organise at least part of their activities in the form of holding companies [...]
Austerity Kills – Not Only Economic Growth
28/03/2013 by
From a study in (the medical journal) The Lancet: Greece, Spain, and Portugal adopted strict fiscal austerity; their economies continue to recede and strain on their health-care systems is growing. Suicides and outbreaks of infectious diseases are becoming more common in these countries, and budget cuts have restricted access to health care. By contrast, Iceland [...]
All Content