Although the EU economy has returned to a period of stable growth since the Eurozone crisis, several key issues in the governance of economic and monetary union remain unresolved. Drawing on results from the Firstrun project, Iain Begg provides an overview of current concerns and outlines five recommendations to help further the debate.
Read Iain Begg’s blog at economicblogs.org.
The dataset of fiscal variables has been updated.
Dataset of fiscal variables: Autumn 2017 forecast update [2017-11-22]
Note: Autumn 2013 vintage corrected
Updated list of variables [2017-11-22]
More information about the data and variables can be found on the European Commission’s AMECO webpage.
http://www.firstrun.eu/research/data/
Read Iain Begg’s latest blog “The Post-Brexit EU budget: opportunity or more messy politics?” at the Friends of Europe website.
In its White Paper on the Future of Europe, published in March, the European Commission promised to bring out a series of ‘reflection papers’ on specific topics, the last of which, on the future of the EU’s finances, has now been released. While its main purpose is to inform public debate on how the EU budget should evolve during the next multi-annual financial framework (MFF), due to start in 2021, it also highlights a number of tricky issues deriving from the exit of the UK.
The European Commission published a reflection paper at the end of May on deepening economic and monetary union. Iain Begg assesses the strategy for reform put forward, writing that the paper is relatively guarded and does not convey an explicit trajectory for the next stages of development of EMU governance. He argues that unless and until there is a greater sense of urgency when it comes to pursuing reforms, the Eurozone will remain vulnerable and could easily drift into a fresh crisis which it is still ill-equipped to resolve.
The dataset of fiscal variables has been updated:
Dataset of fiscal variables: Spring 2017 forecast update [2017-05-22]
Note: Autumn 2013 vintage corrected (2014spr->2013aut)
Updated list of variables [2017-05-22]
More information about the data and variables can be found on the European Commission’s AMECO webpage.
Read Prof. Iain Begg’s latest blog on Brexit and UK fiscal rules:
http://ukandeu.ac.uk/spreadsheet-phil-no-more/
Read Valentina Milano and Pietro Reichlin’s new column Risk sharing across the US and Eurozone: The role of public institutions (VoxEU, 23 January 2017).
Abstract
Risk sharing across the Eurozone is well below the levels observed in other federations, including the US. This column argues that the US achieves more intensive risk sharing largely because of a more integrated financial market, and also that the contribution of public institutions to risk sharing is much higher in the Eurozone than in the US. The reason why the Eurozone needs more fiscal transfers to withstand idiosyncratic shocks is not because these institutions should do more to improve risk sharing, but because delegation of risk sharing to national governments threatens the stability of the currency union.
New version of the dataset of fiscal variables with autumn 2016 forecast update is now available here.