Europe

Greece: reculer pour mieux sauter

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

According to Reuters, Eurozone officials attempted to suppress the publication of this report.

The International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, recently asked a simple and important question: “How much of an adjustment has to be made by Greece, how much has to be made by its official creditors?” But that raises two more questions: How much of an adjustment has Greece already made? And have its creditors given anything at all?

The Ukrainian government has committed to implement far-reaching reforms in exchange for the support it is getting from the international community, led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Understandably, given Ukraine’s disappointing transition history, there is widespread scepticism on whether the country will live up to its commitments. Three failed IMF programmes later, the fundamental question is: Is it different this time?

As Greece descended into a financial maelstrom in the spring of 2010, a small group of staffers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held top-secret talks with officials from the German and French finance ministries to discuss the idea of restructuring Greece’s debt.

Yanis Varoufakis and Joseph Stiglitz discuss Greece’s financial challenges and the associated Eurozone politics in this exclusive conversation.

This research project provides a better understanding of the processes that accompanied the reforms of the Austrian schilling in 1947 and the birth of the deutschmark in 1948 by merging archival sources with financial data from banks and markets and comparing the two reforms.

This research project rescues the work of the London and Cambridge Economic Service, arguably the first body in Britain to collect and disseminate economic statistics.

This research project explores the origins of covered mortgage bonds and tests for the impact of financial development on economic growth by analyzing the Prussian Landschaften.

This research project shows the European origins of development economics between the late 1930s and the early 1960s and describes how the postwar global challenge of development took shape.

This research project explores the causes and consequences of the way countries innovate and the economic foundations for the government’s direct involvement in conducting innovation.

How should the Eurozone handle unemployment and other immediate hurdles?

Since the outbreak of the Greek debt crisis at the end of 2009, the Eurozone finds itself in an unprecedented debt crisis.

Owing to its strong dependence on exports, Germany was among the economies hit hardest by the financial crisis.

Pisani-Ferry discusses the challenges facing the creation of a common monetary union in the form that was eventually agreed in the 1990s absent a political union.

Who wields supreme power over the ECB? This column analyses the recent ruling by the German Constitutional Court that the ECB cannot act as lender of last resort. Although seemingly couched by the referral of this decision to the European Court of Justice, this is a bid for power and the return to the pre-crisis paradigm of ‘ultra posse nemo obligatur’.

A showdown has taken place within Italy’s governing coalition.

This research project reinterprets the events causing the British Industrial Revolution by showing that the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 was significant in causing the divergence of political institutions which led to the divergence of economic institutions and policy.

This research project examines the value of political connections between corporate groups in Italy and the National Fascist Party (PNF) during the years of Mussolini’s rise to power (1921-1929).

The Bank of England took the first step in putting the brakes on the surging property market as it scrapped the United Kingdom’s flagship initiative that encourages mortgage lending, introduced earlier this year by Treasury minster George Osborne.

The reason why the Euro zone crisis has dragged on for so long is that Europe’s leaders have focused too much on short-term measures to patch up the emergency of the moment, rather than formulating a comprehensive plan.

After the announcement of Mario Draghi, the ECB president, to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the integrity of the European Monetary Union (EMU) in July 2012 and the establishment of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program in September 2012, the crisis of EMU is far from being resolved.

Regulation and supervision of banks and financial markets are now upgraded in the euro area. Surveillance of macroeconomic performance of all EU countries is also intensified.

Europe can choose its musical accompaniment. In Berlin, 50 Cent’s All Things Fall Apart has just had its premiere. Or go back to Giuseppe Verdi, born two hundred years ago.

This research project focuses on the effect of the technological changes that led to the British Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century on the market for skilled workers.

This research project investigates the influence of economic doctrines on policy norms in recent decades through analysis of the history of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

The purpose of this Chartbook is to present a summary of evidence about changes in economic inequality – primarily income, earnings, and wealth – for 25 countries covering a 100 year period from 1911 to 2010.

A country that produces goods of high quality at a competitive price is likely to be rewarded for its ingenuity with a trade surplus. Small countries often achieve great development success through export-led growth. At the same time, the entire economic system must be balanced.

What has been learned now that the Euro zone’s fault lines have been revealed? Where are Europe and the Euro zone today?

In a classic book and subsequent articles, Obstfeld and Taylor (2004) have shown how the broad contours of international financial history over the past century and a half can be well understood by appealing to the famous economictrilemma which emerges from the standard Mundell-Fleming model many of us still teach our undergraduates.

The euro area’s sovereign debt crisis continues though significant steps have been taken to resolve it.

In preparing this paper I have decided not to embark upon the decades-old issue of optimal-currency areas and governance as such. I assume that one of my colleagues on the panel will do that. Instead I will present an historical case of over-indebtedness of parts of a common-currency area somewhat similar to the present challenge of Europe, or rather of the Euro area with its common currency.