By Pierre Aldama and Jérôme Creel
At the euro zone summit in December 2018, the heads of state and government hit the brakes hard on the reform of fiscal governance: among the objectives assigned to the euro zone’s common budget that they are wishing for, the function of economic stabilization has disappeared. This is unfortunate, since this function is the weak point of the fiscal rules being pursued by the Member States. Continue reading “Europe’s fiscal rules – up for debate”
By Guillaume Sacriste, Paris 1-Sorbonne and Antoine Vauchez, CNRS and Paris 1-Sorbonne
In the latest article in La Revue de l’OFCE (no. 165, 2019), accessible here in French, the authors analyze the emergence of a new European government, that of the euro, built to a great extent on the margins of the EU’s existing framework. In noting this, the article takes stock of a process of the transformation of Europe (the European Union and Member States), which we call here the “Euro-isation of Europe”, in three dimensions: 1) the creation at its core of a powerful pole of Treasuries, central banks and national and European financial bureaucracies; 2) the consolidation of a European system of surveillance of the economic policies of the Member States; 3) the gradual re-hierarchisation of the political priorities and public policies of the European Union and the Member States around the priority given to financial stability, balanced budgets and structural reforms. The article thus makes it possible to redefine the nature of the “constraints” that the management of the single currency is imposing on the economies of the Member States, constraints that are less legal than socio-political, less external and overarching than pervasive and diffuse, and ultimately closely linked to the key position now occupied by the transnational network of financial bureaucracies in defining European issues and policies.
OFCE[1], ECLM[2], IMK[3], AKW[4]
It was during the climax of the so-called Eurozone sovereign debt crisis that we engaged into the independent Annual Growth Survey – the project was first discussed at the end of the year 2011 and the first report was published in November 2011. Our aim, in collaboration with the S&D group at the European Parliament, has been to challenge and question the European Commission contribution to the European Semester, and to push it toward a more realistic macroeconomic policy, that is to say less focused on the short term reduction of public debt and more aware of the social consequences of the crisis and the austerity bias. For 7 years, we argued against a brutal austerity failing to deliver public debt control, we warned against the catastrophic risk of deflation. We also alerted on the social consequences of the deadly combination of economic crisis, increased labor market flexibility and austerity on inequalities, especially at the lower part of the income distribution. We cannot claim to have changed alone the policies of the Union, but we acknowledge some influence, although insufficient and too late to prevent the scars let by the crisis. Continue reading “The imperative of sustainability economic, social, environmental”
By Catherine Mathieu and Henri Sterdyniak
The United Kingdom will leave the European Union on 29 March 2019 at midnight, two years after the UK government officially announced its wish to leave the EU. Negotiations with the EU-27 officially started in April 2017. Continue reading “Brexit: the November 25th agreement”
The spectre of a sovereign debt crisis in Italy is rattling the euro zone. Since Matteo Salvini and Luigi di Maio came to power, their headline-catching declarations on the budget have proliferated, demonstrating their desire to leave the European budgetary framework that advocates a return to an equilibrium based on precise rules[1]. Hence the announcement of a further deterioration in the budget when the update of the Economic and Financial Document was published at the end of September 2018 frayed nerves on the financial markets and triggered a further hike in bond rates. (graphic). Continue reading “Italy’s debt: Is the bark worse than the bite?”
By Catherine Mathieu and Henri Sterdyniak
The result of the referendum of 23 June 2016 in favour of leaving the European Union has led to a period of great economic and political uncertainty in the United Kingdom. It is also raising sensitive issues for the EU: for the first time, a country has chosen to leave the Union. Continue reading “Brexit: Roads without exits?”
By Bruno Ducoudré and Pierre Madec
In the course of the crisis, most European countries reduced actual working hours to a greater or lesser extent through partial unemployment schemes, the reduction of overtime or the use of time savings accounts, but also through the expansion of part-time work (particularly in Italy and Spain), including on an involuntary basis. In contrast, the favourable trend in US unemployment has been due in part to a significant fall in the labour force participation rate. Continue reading “The participation rate and working hours: Differentiated impacts on the unemployment rate”
OFCE Analysis and Forecasting Department
This text is based on the 2018-2019 outlook for the world economy and the euro zone, a full version of which is available here [in French].
Global growth remained buoyant in 2017, allowing both the recovery and the reduction in unemployment to continue, especially in the advanced countries where growth rose to 2.3%, up from 1.6% the previous year. Although there are still a few countries where GDP has not recovered to its pre-crisis level, this improvement will gradually erase the stigma of the Great Recession that hit the economy 10 years ago. Above all, activity seemed to be gathering pace at the end of the year as, with the exception of the United Kingdom, annual GDP growth continued to pick up pace (Figure 1). However, the gradual return of the unemployment rate to its pre-crisis level and the closing of growth differentials, particularly in the United States and Germany, which had widened during the crisis, could foreshadow a coming collapse of growth. The first available estimates of growth in the first quarter of 2018 seem to lend credence to this assumption. Continue reading “The end of a cycle?”
By Benjamin Montmartin
France can be viewed as a unique experimental laboratory in terms of public support for investment in R&D. Indeed, since the Research Tax Credit was reformed in 2008, France has become the most generous country in the OECD in terms of tax incentives for R&D (OECD, 2018a.) In 2014, the tax credit alone represented (MESRI, 2017) a total of nearly 6 billion euros for the State, and the specific taxation scheme on patent grant revenues (15%) costs the State between 600 and 800 million euros per year. Continue reading “The French policy mix and support for private R&D: What realities for what results?”
By Xavier Ragot
There are new inflections in the debate over the construction of Europe. New options from a variety of economic and political perspectives have seen the light of day in several key conferences and workshops, though without the visibility of public statements. The debate is livelier in Germany than in France. This is due probably to the caricature of a debate that took place during France’s presidential elections, which took the form of “for or against the single currency”, while the debate needed was over how to orient the euro area’s institutions to serve growth and deal with inequalities. Continue reading “How can Europe be saved? How can the paradigm be changed?”
