The large international bailouts of the 1990s have been criticized for differentreasons, in particular for generating moral hazard at the expense of theglobal taxpayer. We argue in this paper that some of these concerns areexaggerated or misleading because international bailouts have no or...

The great financial crisis and the euro area crisis led to a substantial reform of financial safety nets across Europe and - critically - to the introduction of supranational elements. Specifically, a supranational supervisor was established for the euro area, with discrete arrangements for...

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, wholesale prices for electricity and gas in the European Union have risen five to fifteen-fold, with severe impacts for households and businesses. The crisis is also creating liquidity problems for energy companies, with contagion risks for the financial...

The European Union's banking union project started in mid-2012 in response to the euro-area crisis, with the goal of breaking the bank-sovereign vicious circle. The objective was also to restore private liability in banking and to move towards an integrated supranational market for banking...

The 2022 United States Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a significant and welcome climate law. It also includes trade-distortive subsidies, including local-content requirements prohibited under World Trade Organisation rules - the first time the US has done this and a blow to the international...

The pandemic and subsequent price shocks triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have increased longer-term fiscal pressures in the European Union through higher debt, higher expected real interest rates and higher public investment needs. This Policy Brief makes some simple quantitative...

In March 2023, the European Commission published a legislative proposal for an EU response to the US Inflation Reduction Act: the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA). It is an unconvincing policy proposal, both for what is in it and for what is not in it. The proposal has five problematic aspects....

The Greek debt restructuring of 2012 stands out in the history of sovereign defaults. It achieved very large debt relief - over 50 per cent of 2012 GDP - with minimal financial disruption, using a combination of new legal techniques, exceptionally large cash incentives, and official sector...

The European Union's new fiscal framework aims to incentivise public investment and reforms by offering the option to extend the four-year fiscal adjustment period to seven years, thereby lowering the average annual fiscal adjustment requirement. Investments and reforms proposed by EU countries...

The competitiveness of countries and that of firms are different concepts. EU GDP is stable at two-thirds of the US, but productivity growth has lagged since the 1990s. The EU does better on wealth equality and clean-tech export shares. The EU faces two supply-side disadvantages: high energy...