debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Europe’s currency union is built on two key principles. The first is that the central bank must be independent of political control and its policies squarely focused on maintaining price stability. The second is that fiscal policy must be disciplined and never threaten price stability. Price stability, in turn, is the foundation for economic stability [...]
The ONS figures were dreadful: it’s not just that the UK’s growth performance in Q4/2010 was seriously negative and this is bound to have a spill-over effect in 2011. Add the January rise in VAT and mounting pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates, and things on this side of the Channel [...]
One of the main purposes of the current drive for European economic governance is to transform wages into the main or even single instrument of adjustment under monetary union. Strangely, this idea appears to enjoy a high degree of consensus among both conservative and progressive economists. For the former, extreme wage flexibility including wage cuts [...]
The European Commission has presented draft legislation that, if adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council, would mark the biggest reform of economic governance in Europe since the start of monetary union. Europe urgently needs to reform its system of economic governance. But it does not need these proposed changes. While marking progress [...]
One of the dirty secrets of economics is that there is no such thing as “economic theory.” There is simply no set of bedrock principles on which one can base calculations that illuminate real-world economic outcomes. We should bear in mind this constraint on economic knowledge as the global drive for fiscal austerity shifts into [...]
The mandate of the European Central Bank has been a source of controversy since before the start of monetary union in 1999. A battle raged between those who wanted to focus exclusively on ‘price stability’ and those arguing for a broader mandate, taking in growth and employment on a formally equal footing, as is the [...]
In the official account of the unfolding Greek tragedy the villain is readily identified, the plot is clear, and the dénouement inevitable, tragic, but ultimately both just and morally uplifting. The villain of the piece is Greece itself: a bloated and inefficient public sector, rampant corruption, and decade-long fiscal incontinence partially shielded from public scrutiny [...]
In the debate about Greece and the Eurozone analogies have been drawn with various other currency unions, but the most significant has gone unnoticed. The Franc Zone has been linked to the European currencies for over sixty years. The relationship between the French Treasury and the governments of Francophone Africa displays many of the structural [...]
All Content