1,689 research outputs found
A NEW LOOK AT NET BALANCES IN THE EUROPEAN UNIONâS NEXT MULTIANNUAL BUDGET. Bruegel Working Paper Issue 10 12 December 2019
Whenever the European Unionâs budget is discussed, much of the political
focus is on net balances â whether countries pay in more than they receive
â rather than on the broader overall positive effects of EU spending. The
largest net contributor countries have sought to limit their contributions,
leading to the build-up of an ad-hoc, complex, opaque and regressive
system of revenue corrections.
To inform debate on the 2021-2027 EU budget, I estimated the impact on net
balances of the 2018 European Commission multiannual budget proposal,
under three scenarios: elimination of rebates for all of the 2021-2027 new
budget period, gradual elimination of rebates and non-elimination of
rebates. These estimates were done on the basis of the EUâs âoperating
budgetary balanceâ indicator, and on the basis of a new and broader
indicator, the ânet direct balanceâ. The calculation also takes into account
the estimated net contribution of the United Kingdom to the 2021-2027 EU
budget based on the draft EU-UK withdrawal agreement.
Under the baseline scenario of the Commissionâs proposal, those member
states that currently benefit from rebates would face between 0.01 percent
of GNI and 0.06 percent of GNI increases in their net contributions to the
EU budget, measured by the EUâs operating budgetary balance indicator.
Meanwhile, central and eastern European member states that received
several percent of their GNI as net payments from the EU in 2014-2020
would face significant reductions, though they would still receive net
payments of about two percent of their GNI in 2021-2027.
The methodology in this paper can be easily applied to estimate the net
balance implications of any new MFF proposal
Real effective exchange rates for 178 countries: A new database
We use data on exchange rates and consumer price indices and the weighting matrix derived by Bayoumi, Lee and Jaewoo (2006) to calculate consumer price index-based REER. The main novelties of our database are that (1) it includes data for 178 countries âmany more than in any other publicly available databaseâ plus an external REER for the euro area, using a consistent methodology; (2) it includes up-to-date REER values, such as data for January 2012; and (3) it is relatively easy to calculate REER against any arbitrary group of countries. The annual
database is complete for 172 countries and the euro area for 1992-2011 and data is available for six other countries for a shorter period. For several countries annual data is available for earlier years as well, eg data is available for 67 countries from 1960. The monthly database is complete for 138 countries for January 1995-January 2012, and data is also available for 15 other countries for a shorter period. The indicators calculated by us are freely downloadable and will be irregularly updated
Geometric pluripotential theory on K\"ahler manifolds
Finite energy pluripotential theory accommodates the variational theory of
equations of complex Monge-Amp\`ere type arising in K\"ahler geometry. Recently
it has been discovered that many of the potential spaces involved have a rich
metric geometry, effectively turning the variational problems in question into
problems of infinite dimensional convex optimization, yielding existence
results for solutions of the underlying complex Monge-Amp\`ere equations. The
purpose of this survey is to describe these developments from basic principles
Beyond the crisis: prospects for emerging Europe
This paper assesses the impact of the 2008-09 global financial and economic crisis on the
medium-term growth prospects of the countries of central and eastern Europe, the Caucasus
and Central Asia, which began an economic transition about two decades ago. We use crosscountry
growth regressions, putting special emphasis on a proper consideration of the crisis and robustness. We find that the crisis has had a major impact on the within-sample fit of the models used and that the positive impact of EU enlargement on growth is smaller than previous research has shown. The crisis has also altered the future growth prospects of the countries studied, even in the optimistic but unrealistic case of a return to pre-crisis capital
inflows and credit booms
A Tale of Three Countries: Recovery after Banking Crises
Highlights:
âą Iceland, Ireland and Latvia experienced similar developments before the crisis, such as sharp
increases in banksâ balance sheets and the expansion of the construction sector. However the impact of the crisis was different: Latvia was hit harder than any other country in the world. Ireland also suffered heavily, while Iceland came out from the crisis with the smallest fall in
employment, despite the greatest shock to the financial system.
âą There were marked differences in policy mix: currency collapse in Iceland but not in Latvia,
letting banks fail in Iceland but not in Ireland, and the introduction of strict capital controls
only in Iceland. The speed of fiscal consolidation was fastest in Latvia and slowest in Ireland.
âą Economic recovery has started in all three countries and there are several encouraging signals. The programme targets in terms of fiscal adjustment, structural reforms and financial reform are on track in all three countries.
âą Iceland seems to have the right policy mix.
âą Internal devaluation in Ireland and Latvia through wage cuts did not work, because privatesector wages hardly changed. The productivity increase was significant in Ireland and moderate in Latvia, yet was the result of a greater fall in employment than the fall in output, with harmful social consequences.
âą The experience with the collapse of the gigantic Icelandic banking system suggests that letting banks fail when they had a faulty business model is the right choice.
âą There is a strong case for a European banking federation
The Case for Reforming Euro Area Entry Criteria
The global economic and financial crisis has raised further concerns about the euro-entry criteria, in
addition to other factors, such as the effective tightening of the criteria due to the enlargement of the
EU from 12 to 27 members, the highly unfavourable property of business cycle dependence, the
internal inconsistency of the criteria due to the structural price level convergence of Central and
Eastern European countries, and the continuous violation of the criteria by euro-area members. The
interest rate criterion became a highly volatile measure. Many US metropolitan areas would fail to
qualify to be members of the US monetary union by applying the currently used inflation criterion to
the US. It is time to reform the criteria and to strengthen their economic rationale within the legal
framework of the EU treaty. A good solution would be to relate all criteria to the average of the euro
area and simultaneously to extend the compliance period from the currently considered one year to a longer period
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