30/11/18: Turning Europe into Greece

My latest column for the Cayman Financial Review is out, discussing how the lessons from the Global Financial Crisis, not learned by Europe, are creating new ghosts of VUCA across the European financial and economic landscapes:  https://www.caymanfinancialreview.com/2018/10/31/turning-europe-into-greece/.

26/5/16: European Reforms: Mostly "No Show" grades

An interesting heat map from Moody's covering the deteriorating pace of reforms in the euro area:

Source: @Schuldensuehner 

The key point is that under the monetary easing created by the ECB, Euro area sovereigns are all slacking off on reforms, especially more politically difficult reforms, such as product markets reforms (9 out of 11 states are in red, none in green), pensions & healthcare reforms and fiscal reforms (5 out of 11 are in read). The best performing countries are, bizarrely, Spain and Italy. Farcically, Ireland apparently does not require reforms to improve efficiency of public administration. Presumably, Moody's analysts never heard of tsunami of public waste unleashed by the likes of HSE and Irish Water.

Take it for what it is - a sketchy top-level view of the reforms landscape and give it a wonder: are ECB policies helping long term sustainability of European institutions or harming it?.. In 23 out of 60 point observations, the reforms have delivered so far 'no or limited progress' and only in 6 out of 60 point observations, the reforms have delivered 'substantial progress'. Go figure...

15/2/15: European Federalism: Principles for Designing New Federal Institutions

This week, I was honoured to have been invited to participate in a discussion panel of the Future of Europe at the Trinity Economic Forum 2015.

Here are my extended speaking notes on the subject of European Federalism and the challenges of building future European institutions: http://trueeconomicslr.blogspot.ie/2015/02/15215-european-federalism-principles.html

12/5/2013: Open Europe on Trade in Services

A very interesting piece of research from Open Europe thinktank, focusing on the potential economic impact from liberalising services trade within the EU: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/Content/Documents/Pdfs/kickstartinggrowthEUservices.pdf

Here are some highlights:

Chart below shows gains from the full implementation of the rather limited EU Services Directive:

And on to the extension of the EU Directive (notice that Ireland is in the higher benefits group of countries as our exports of services are both growing at the faster rate than EU average and constitute already a higher proportion of total external trade than EU average).

Also, recall that "The Economic Adjustment Programme for Ireland, February 2011 [states]: “Enhanced competition in the services sector modelled in the simulations…translates into a 0.1% increase in employment and a 0.5% increase in GDP over a 10-year period.” “[The Irish] Government will introduce legislative changes to remove restrictions to trade and competition in sheltered sectorsincluding: [the legal profession, medicalservices and the pharmacy
profession]”.

Lastly, comparing the relative significance of trade in services liberalisation to other potential means for boosting economic growth in Europe:

This is the debate that has, unfortunately, stalled in Europe with the onset of the crisis, as did the reforms under the Services Directive.