Most Read: All Time
A tale of two depressions: What do the new data tell us? February 2010 update
This column updates the original Vox columns by Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke comparing today’s global crisis to the Great Depression. The three previous columns have shattered all Vox readership records with over 450,000 views. This latest edition covers up to February 2010 showing that, while there is cause for optimism, there is no room for complacency.
Educated in America: College graduates and high school dropouts
Official statistics for US high school graduation rates mask a growing educational divide. This column presents research showing that a record number of Americans are going to university – while an increasing number are dropping out of high school. This poses major social challenges for the United States.
Eurozone breakup would trigger the mother of all financial crises
Originally posted 17 November 2007, this Vox column is more relevant than ever arguing that adopting the euro is effectively irreversible. Leaving would require lengthy preparations, which, given the anticipated devaluation, would trigger the mother of all financial crises. National households and firms would shift deposits to other Eurozone banks producing a system-wide bank run. Investors, trying to escape, would create a bond-market crisis. Here is what the train wreck would look like.
Debt, deleveraging, and the liquidity trap: A new model
Debt is the crux of advanced economies’ current policy debates. Some argue for fiscal expansion to avoid recession and deflation. Others claim that you can’t solve a debt-created problem with more debt. This column explains the core logic of a new model by Eggertsson and Krugman in which debt shocks and policy reactions can be examined. Relying on heterogeneous agents, the model naturally produces the paradox of thrift but also finds new supply-side paradoxes, those of toil and flexibility. The model suggests that most economists have been misthinking the issues and that actual policy in the US and EU is misguided.
Panic-driven austerity in the Eurozone and its implications
Eurozone policy seems driven by market sentiment. This column argues that fear and panic led to excessive, and possibly self-defeating, austerity in the south while failing to induce offsetting stimulus in the north. The resulting deflation bias produced the double-dip recession and perhaps more dire consequences. As it becomes obvious that austerity produces unnecessary suffering, millions may seek liberation from ‘euro shackles’.
Are Germans really poorer than Spaniards, Italians and Greeks?
A recent ECB household-wealth survey was interpreted by the media as evidence that poor Germans shouldn’t have to pay for southern Europe. This column takes a look at the numbers. Whilst it’s true that median German households are poor compared to their southern European counterparts, Germany itself is wealthy. Importantly, this wealth is very unequally distributed, but the issue of unequal distribution doesn’t feature much in the press. The debate in Germany creates an inaccurate perception among less wealthy Germans that transfers are unfair.
Five decades of evidence on financial crisis and recession: How long? How deep?
The house and equity price busts on top of a credit crunch make this an unprecedented crisis for the modern US economy; its real economy effects are thus difficult to assess. This column provides insights based on evidence from 122 recessions in 21 advanced nations since 1960. Findings suggest recessions in such circumstances are much costlier and slightly longer. But the outcome can be affected by policy, and it’s high time that policymakers act swiftly and decisively.
Trade and inequality, revisited
It’s no longer safe to assert that trade’s impact on the income distribution in wealthy countries is fairly minor. There’s a good case that it is big, and getting bigger. I’m not endorsing protectionism, but free-traders need better answers to the anxieties of globalisation’s losers.
Subprime 'crisis': FAQs (revised & updated)
A revised and updated version of the 13 August column on the basic how's and why's of what the Fed has been doing to calm financial markets.
Slave trade and African underdevelopment
Slavery, according to historical accounts, played an important role in Africa’s underdevelopment. It fostered ethnic fractionalisation and undermined effective states. The largest numbers of slaves were taken from areas that were the most underdeveloped politically at the end of the 19th century and are the most ethnically fragmented today. Recent research suggests that without the slave trades, 72% of Africa’s income gap with the rest of the world would not exist today.
Subprime crisis: causes, consequences and cures
We may just have started to feel the pain. Asset price drops – including housing – are common markers in all the big banking crises over the past 30 years. GDP declines after such crises were both large (-2% on average) and protracted (2 years to return to trend); in the 5 biggest crises, the numbers were -5% and 3 years. This column, based on the author’s testimony to the Congress, picks through the causes and consequences. It argues that when it comes to ‘cures,’ it would be far better to get the job done right than get the job done quickly.
The euro could surpass the dollar within ten years
One of the world’s leading international economists explains how the euro could surpass the dollar as the premier international currency and examines the geopolitical implications of such a shift.
Rescuing our jobs and savings: What G7/8 leaders can do to solve the global credit crisis
Without rapid and coordinated action by G7/8 leaders, this financial crisis could turn into a jobs crisis, a pension crisis and much more. This column introduces a collection of essays by leading economists on what the G7/8 leaders should do this weekend. The dozen essays present a remarkable consensus on a few points: we need immediate, coordinated global action that includes recapitalisation of the banks.
Why was the Industrial Revolution British?
It is still not clear among economic historians why the Industrial Revolution actually took place in 18th century Britain. This column explains that it is the British Empire’s success in international trade that created Britain’s high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial Revolution.
Subprime ‘crisis’: FAQs
Here are the basic how's and why's of what the Fed has been doing to calm financial markets.
How bad could the crisis get? Lessons from Iceland
Iceland’s banking system is ruined. GDP is down 65% in euro terms. Many companies face bankruptcy; others think of moving abroad. A third of the population is considering emigration. The British and Dutch governments demand compensation, amounting to over 100% of Icelandic GDP, for their citizens who held high-interest deposits in local branches of Icelandic banks. Europe’s leaders urgently need to take step to prevent similar things from happening to small nations with big banking sectors.
Krugman’s view on the dollar
As the dollar has started to slide, the question is: how far, how fast? This column, which is based on Paul Krugman’s recent Economic Policy article suggests the answers are: pretty far and pretty fast.
Good news at last? The recession will be over sooner than you think
A key source of the today’s economic weakness is uncertainty that led firms to postpone investment and hiring decisions. This column, by the authors whose model forecast the recession as far back as June 2008, report that the key measures of uncertainty have dropped so rapidly that they believe growth will resume by mid-2009. This means any additional economic stimulus has to be enacted quickly. Delaying to the summer may mean the economic medicine is administered just as the patient is leave the hospital.
Iceland’s banking collapse: Predicable end and lessons for other vulnerable nations
In the first half of 2008, Buiter and Sibert were invited to study Iceland’s financial problems. They identified the “vulnerable quartet” of (1) a small country with (2) a large banking sector, (3) its own currency and (4) limited fiscal capacity – a quartet that meant Iceland’s banking model was not viable. How right they were. This column summarises the report, which is now available as CEPR Policy Insight No. 26 with an October 2008 update.
Mother of all bailouts and what it means for Europe
The radical moves in the US have direct implications for European banks and indirect implications for European governments. This column discusses the likely channels and notes that several European banks are both too big to fail and may be too big to be saved by their national governments alone.
Open Letter to European leaders on Europe’s banking crisis: A call to action
This is a once-in-a-lifetime crisis. Trust among financial institutions is disappearing; fear may spread. Last week’s US experience showed that saving one bank at a time won’t work. A systemic response is needed and in Europe this means an EU-led initiative to recapitalise the banking sector. Unless European leaders immediately unite to address this crisis before it spirals out of control, they may find themselves fighting over how best to salvage the aftermath.
Is the LIBOR-OIS spread due to predatory behaviour?
Editor's Note: Originally posted 2 June 2008.
There has been a persistent spread between the rate at which banks lend each other money and government-backed securities yields in recent months. This column describes hypotheses explaining the spread – including the possibility that banks aren’t lending in order to bankrupt acquisition targets.
The protectionist temptation: Lessons from the Great Depression for today
What do we know about the spread of protectionism during the Great Depression and what are the implications for today’s crisis? This column says the lesson is that countries should coordinate their fiscal and monetary measures. If some do and some don’t, the trade policy consequences could once again be most unfortunate.
Tennis, pressure and the gender wage-gap
Female tennis players play more conservatively and commit more unforced errors when playing critical points. Does this explain the upper-echelons wage gap?
The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary stimulus in depressions
There is one important source of information on the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal stimulus in an environment of near-zero interest rates, dysfunctional banking systems and heightened risk aversion that has not been fully exploited: the 1930s. This column gathers data on growth, budgets and central bank policy rates for 27 countries covering the period 1925-39 and shows that where fiscal policy was tried, it was effective.
Economic crisis in Europe: Cause, consequences, and responses
The European economy is in its deepest recession since the 1930s. This column says that swift policy response avoided a financial meltdown, but turning the ongoing recovery into sustained growth requires action on five challenges: boosting potential output, enhancing labour market flexibility, preparing fiscal consolidation, facilitating intra-EU adjustment, and unwinding global imbalances. Europe also needs an improved crisis-management framework, lest this happen again.
Parametric estimations of the world distribution of income
World poverty is falling. This column presents new estimates of the world’s income distribution and suggests that world poverty is disappearing faster than previously thought. From 1970 to 2006, poverty fell by 86% in South Asia, 73% in Latin America, 39% in the Middle East, and 20% in Africa. Barring a catastrophe, there will never be more than a billion people in poverty in the future history of the world.
Premarital sex: An economic model of its rise and de-stigmatisation
Attitudes to sex have changed dramatically over the last hundred years. This column presents a model where socialisation – the passing on of norms and ideologies by parents and institutions such as the church or state – is determined by the technological environment in which people live. Contraception has reduced the chance of unwanted pregnancies from premarital sex, and this in turn has changed social attitudes.
The impact of the global financial crisis on the world’s poorest
Will the financial crisis reverse the trend of declining global poverty? This column estimates that the crisis will add 64 million people to the population living under $2 a day. It predicts that the global poverty rate will fall from 42% to 39% in 2009, while the pre-crisis trajectory would have brought the poverty rate down to 38%.
Eight hundred years of financial folly
This column, first posted 19 April 2008, argues that sovereign debt crises have historically followed financial crises. Although data covering only the last thirty years might have given few hints about Greece's current problems, the Reinhart-Rogoff database spanning eight centuries reveals that today's event are very much in line with historical experience.
The effects of school-starting age
Do children do better if they start school later? Contrary to the great concerns of many parents, this column says that the age at which kids start school matters little.
Do you really want to tax ability?
Should the income tax system include a tax credit for short taxpayers and a tax surcharge for tall ones? This column explains how the standard utilitarian framework for tax policy analysis says that individual attributes correlated with wages, such as height, should determine tax liabilities. Taller individuals should pay higher taxes. If this is objectionable, then something is wrong with the standard framework.
Does climate change affect economic growth?
Hot countries tend to be poorer, but debate continues over whether the temperature-income relationship is simply a happenstance association. This column uses within-country estimates to show that higher temperatures have large, negative effects on economic growth – but only in poor countries. The findings are big news for future global inequality.
Does mass media influence voters? Evidence from the US
High quality empirical evidence from the shows that mass media influences voters but it is not clear that the media imparts a bias. It could be that improving access to any media informs voters and prompts them to turn against an embattled incumbent.
History’s lessons on recession and inflation: 1930s or 1970s?
Policy makers must learn from history, but they should know which historical episodes to look to. Central bankers seem to have been focusing on the 1930s, but here one of the world’s leading macroeconomists suggests that the 1970s provides more appropriate lessons.
What the renminbi means for US inflation
This column says that low US inflation over the last 15 years is partly attributable to cheap Chinese imports. It argues that if the US trade deficit is reduced – via either Chinese inflation or a nominal appreciation of the renminbi – this disinflationary effect will be reduced. It says that the resulting inflationary impulse could be severe.
Education and technology: Supply, demand, and income inequality
US educational attainment growth has substantially slowed since the 1970s. This column explains how the educational slowdown caused much of the recent rise in economic inequality and concludes that the futures of inequality and the US depend on increasing the supply of highly educated workers.
Child labour: lessons from the Industrial Revolution
Child labour remains a pervasive problem across the globe. This column discusses the nature of child labourers’ jobs, earnings, motivations, and well-being during the British Industrial Revolution. Their historical experience offers lessons for today’s policymakers.
Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press
Despite the revolutionary technological advance of the printing press in the 15th century, there is precious little economic evidence of its benefits. Using data on 200 European cities between 1450 and 1600, this column finds that economic growth was higher by as much as 60 percentage points in cities that adopted the technology.
1000 years of urban history: the rise and fall of European and Arab cities
Baghdad was a wonder of the world in the year 800 while London was an economic backwater. By 1800, London was the largest city in the world while Arab cities languished. Recent research attributes this ‘trading places’ to institutional differences: Arab cities were tied to the fate of the state while European cities were independent growth poles.
The euro-dollar exchange rate during the crisis
The crisis has broken the close correlation between differences in expected interest rates and the euro-dollar exchange rate. This column attributes that to the sharp increase in risk aversion triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It argues that fluctuations in risk aversion explain the path followed by the euro-dollar exchange rate since the beginning of the financial crisis.
Restoring financial stability: How to repair a failed system
How did global finance become so fragile that a collection of bad mortgages in the US could bring the entire system to its knees and the global economy along with it? How can this fragility be eliminated? This column describes the answers provided in an important new book which has been written by a team of world-class scholars from NYU’s business school.
New strategies to promote gender equality
Discrimination against women significantly hampers the economic development of many poor countries. This column introduces two new OECD Development Centre efforts to assess and reduce gender discrimination, including a new portal www.wikigender.org.
Why the US dollar may strengthen in 2010
Many expect the dollar to continue to depreciate over the foreseeable future. This column suggests that it may strengthen in 2010 if the Federal Reserve exits quantitative easing sooner than its counterparts and the US economy enjoys a strong rebound.
Risk taking, regulatory capture and bailouts: The doomsday cycle
Over the last 30 years, the US financial system has grown to proportions threatening the global economic order. This column suggests a ‘doomsday cycle’ has infiltrated the economic system and could lead to disaster after the next financial crisis. It says the best route to creating a safer system is to have very large and robust capital requirements, which are legislated and difficult to circumvent or revise.
Determining the size of the fiscal multiplier
How much stimulus does spending provide? This column says that fiscal multipliers are much weaker in countries that have high debt, lower income, flexible exchange rates, and greater international openness. Policymakers should consider these characteristics when evaluating the benefits of any fiscal stimulus package.
The dangerous protectionism of Barack Obama
Barack Obama, the likely Democratic presidential candidate, has proposed tax breaks for US corporations that invest at home rather than abroad. This column argues that his proposal is protectionist, reactionary, and economically unsound.
Why Paulson is wrong: Saving capitalism from the capitalists
This weekend’s decisions will shape the type of capitalism we live with for the next fifty years. Here one of the world’s leading financial scholars, Chicago Business School Professor Luigi Zingales, argues that bailing out the financial system with taxpayers’ money is wrong. He discusses an alternative – forced debt-for-equity swap or debt-forgiveness.
Debt and growth revisited
With the advanced economies at a critical juncture, some economists are urging more fiscal stimulus while others argue that raising debt levels will stunt growth. This column presents the Reinhart-Rogoff findings on the relationship between debt and growth based on data from 44 countries over 200 years with a focus on the debt-growth link during high-debt episodes.
Currency “manipulation” and world trade: Three reasons for caution
Many critics argue that Chinese currency undervaluation amounts to an export subsidy and import tariff responsible for global trade imbalances. This column cautions against that equivalence. In the long run, currency devaluation does not alter export volumes, and in the short run, its effects depend on firms’ invoicing decisions. Policymakers should take care before turning to trade sanctions as a remedy.
Most Read
- Fiscal consolidation: At what speed?Blanchard, Leigh
- Public debt and economic growth, one more timePanizza, Presbitero
- Escaping liquidity traps: Lessons from the UK’s 1930s escapeCrafts
- The lessons of the North Atlantic crisis for economic theory and policyStiglitz
- Rethinking macroeconomic policyBlanchard
- A tale of two depressions: What do the new data tell us? February 2010 updateEichengreen, O’Rourke
- Educated in America: College graduates and high school dropoutsHeckman, LaFontaine
- Eurozone breakup would trigger the mother of all financial crisesEichengreen
- Debt, deleveraging, and the liquidity trap: A new modelKrugman
- Panic-driven austerity in the Eurozone and its implicationsDe Grauwe, Ji
Vox Talks
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Helicopter money as a policy option
Reichlin, Turner, Woodford
CEPR Policy Research
- The "Greatest" Carry Trade Ever? Understanding Eurozone Bank RisksAcharya, Steffen
- Political Credit Cycles: The Case of the Euro ZoneFernández-Villaverde, Garicano, Santos
- Winning by Losing: Incentive Incompatibility in Multiple QualifiersDagaev, Sonin
- Income and schoolingBrückner, Gradstein
- Monetary Policy and Rational Asset Price BubblesGalí
- How the EZ crisis is permanently changing EU institutionsMicossi
- WTO 2.0: Global governance of supply-chain tradeBaldwin
- Is US economic growth over? Faltering innovation confronts the six headwindsGordon
- The economic crisis: How to stimulate economies without increasing public debtWood
- Austerity: Too Much of a Good Thing?Corsetti
Events
- Global Spillovers and Economic Cycles30 - 31 May 2013 / Paris / Banque de France
- Understanding banks in emerging markets5 - 6 September 2013 / EBRD, London / European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Tilburg University
