The Sound of Economics

Maria Demertzis sits down with Bruegel senior fellow André Sapir to break down the news, discussing the events leading up to the renewed EU-US trade talks, and the likely future course. On 15 April 2019, the European Council approved mandates for the Commission to resume trade negotiations with the United States, which are to be centered around eliminating industrial tariffs. Although already a breakthrough, the talks are set to encounter many difficulties given their highly political nature. Bruegel's deputy director Maria Demertzis sits down with senior fellow André Sapir to assess the news, discussing the events leading up to the renewed talks and the likely future outcomes. A consistent theme in the making of any EU trade deal is the repeated declaration that it would only engage with countries that are signatories to the Paris Agreement. In 2017, the Trump administration announced the US' intention to withdraw from that agreement, which should in theory exclude the possibility of a trade deal. Maria and Andre discuss just how likely it is for the deal to come to fruition against this backdrop. Lastly, the discussants touch upon how the fractured EU-US trade relationship affects the multilateral trading system and, by extension, global economic growth. For further reading, we recommend the Policy Contribution of Uri Dadush and Guntram Wolff, which analyses how Europe can act in the interest both of itself and the multilateral system amid the ongoing global trade crisis. Similarly, consider Alicia García-Herrero's recent Working Paper on the the options available to the EU in the face of the US-China trade stand-off.

In this episode of the Director's cut, Guntram Wolff discusses with Alicia Garcia Herrero about the results of the 21st EU-China Summit.  The EU and China committed to further strengthen the EU-China strategic partnership at the 21st EU-China summit. Both sides agreed on a joint statement setting out the direction for EU-China relations in the years to come. Leaders expressed their joint support for multilateralism and rules-based trade. They reaffirmed their joint engagement to reform the World Trade Organisation. The EU and China agreed to work together to address industrial subsidies. They also discussed foreign and security issues in their respective neighbourhoods. Bruegel's director and Alicia Garcia Herrero comment on the joint declaration and the challenges for the next steps in this cooperation.  Further reading on Eu-China on Bruegel website

Bruegel director Guntram Wolff talks to Padmashree Gehl Sampath, a Berkman Klein fellow at Harvard University, on the consequences of ‘new manufacturing’ for European industrial policymaking. In this Director’s Cut of ‘The Sound of Economics’, Bruegel’s Guntram Wolff discusses Industry 4.0 with Harvard University Berkman Klein fellow Padmashree Gehl Sampath. Europe is yet to truly explore what interventions can and should be made with regard to the digitisation of industrial policy. But the ongoing development of technologies obliges the EU to examine how best to create a level playing-field for companies, and how to ensure that newly compiled sets of data can contribute positively to the welfare of its citizens. The deployment of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation brought into focus the potential negative consequences of people’s data being amassed. Yet, as the discussants consider here, there are many potential works to which these data can be put that would serve a greater public good. But this will only follow once policymakers formulate fresh approaches tailored to the challenge, and propose how they will follow through on their aforementioned obligations. If you would like to read more on this topic, we recommend our blog post by Silvia Merler on machine learning and economics.

Bruegel director Guntram Wolff and senior fellow André Sapir discuss how potential WTO reform might position the organisation differently towards China. In this Director's Cut of 'The Sound of Economics', Guntram Wolff talks to Bruegel senior fellow André Sapir about his upcoming paper on the WTO reform, specifically what is necessary in order for the Chinese economic system to be compatible with the global multilateral trading system. China has recently been atop the European policy agenda, especially with President Xi's recent visits to Rome and Paris ahead of the EU-China Summit in April. The discussants here walk us through the main challenges in the EU's quest to position itself vis-à-vis China, including the issues of forced technology transfers and the behaviour of Chinese state-owned enterprises. For further reading, we recommend the Bruegel Policy Contribution by Uri Dadush and Guntram Wolff on how Europe should approach the unfolding crisis in global trade.

This episode of 'The Sound of Economics' features Bruegel senior fellow J. Scott Marcus in conversation with Lise Fuhr, director general, European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO). The next wave of mobile network innovation is provoking great excitement in the industry. And indeed, there is substantial potential for improvement. However, the exact form of the technology and the appropriate policy support are still far from clear.  The next generation of mobile technology, 5G, is being developed along markedly different lines from previous generations. In the past, mobile generations were generally characterised by a core technology (or sometimes by two or more core technologies), and were designed to fulfil the requirements of a fairly small number of mobile voice and data applications. By contrast, 5G is being developed to fulfil the needs of multiple use cases. In this episode Scott Marcus and Lise Fuhr outline the challenges of 5G deployment in Europe, their policy implications, and the impact for the citizens.  For further reading we recommend the blog post by Scott Marcus High expectations for 5G confront practical realities. This podcast was recorded during the event Rethinking Industrial Policy in the Digital Age, an all-day conference held on 21 March 2019, about how the European policy-making will have to adapt to the digital transformation.

Bruegel's Maria Demertzis welcomes Yale Law School professor Yair Listokin to this Director's Cut of 'The Sound of Economics', to discuss how law might be deployed as a macroeconomic tool to counter financial crisis. In this episode of Director's Cut, Bruegel's deputy director Maria Demertzis talks to Yair Listokin, a professor at Yale Law School, about the effect law could have on achieving macroeconomic objectives. In his new book titled 'Law and Macroeconomics', Yair Listokin puts forward the idea that law has the ability to function as an instrument of macroeconomic policy. He argues that the time it took for private spending to recover after the 2008 financial crisis could have been cut, had legislation played a more vital role in the process. Here the two elaborate on these ideas, focusing particularly on the perceived trade-off between law's role in maintaining stability, and its potential to be used as a real-time response to economic shocks. They also discuss the applicability of this policy approach in the European reality of multiple legal frameworks and central banks struggling to stimulate aggregate demand at the zero lower interest rate bound. You can find more on macroeconomic policy in previous editions of the Director's Cut. First, we recommend Bruegel director Guntram Wolff's conversation about the growth and stability challenges facing the global financial system, with Tharman Shanmugaratnam, deputy prime minister of Singapore and chair of the G20 Eminent Persons Group, and Jean Pisani-Ferry, mercator senior fellow at Bruegel. Second, consider Maria Demertzis' discussion with Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times, on the topic of what the field of economics has learned in the decade since the financial crisis.

This episode of 'The Sound of Economics' features Bruegel visiting fellow Elina Ribakova in conversation with Marc-Olivier Padis and Jean-Paul Tran Thiet about the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Asylum is a fundamental human right and an international obligation, first recognised in the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees. Between 2013 and 2017, 4 million asylum applications were filed in the EU. This high number resulted in growing tensions between Member States, with some of them displaying non-cooperative behaviour. The migration crisis of 2015 revealed the inadequacies of European legal tools and, by extension, management of migration flows. In this context, Institut Montaigne jointly with Terra Nova have written a report which calls for a reform of the European asylum policy and for a rapid, unified response to the humanitarian emergency in the Mediterranean. In the context of recent rise of populism and nationalist tendencies in Europe, creating a binding mechanism for solidarity is a daunting task. Currently, the EU is in the process of reshaping the Common European Asylum System, but the negotiations have shown close to no progress. In this episode of Backstage, Elina Ribakova, a visiting fellow at Bruegel welcomes Marc-Olivier Padis, head of studies department at Terra Nova, and Jean-Paul Tran Thiet, senior fellow at Institut Montaigne, to make a case for this reform. Together, they discuss the key elements of the revised system, which include improved monitoring of the asylum process, as well as efforts for equitable burden sharing. For further reading, we recommend our blueprint “People on the move: migration and mobility in the European Union“, written by Uuriintuya Batsaikhan, Zsolt Darvas and Inês Gonçalves Raposo. Zolt Darvas also contributed to the debate on migration and refugees in Europe with two blogs on similar topics: “Beyond border control, migrant integration policies must be revived“ and “The challenge of fostering financial inclusion of refugees“. This podcast episode was recorded during an event Saving the right to asylum on March 5th, 2019.

This episode of 'The Sound of Economics' features Bruegel research fellow Simone Tagliapietra in conversation with Sir Philip Lowe and Alberto Pototschnig about the progress of the European energy transition as we prepare to enter the third decade of the 21st century.  In this episode of Backstage, Bruegel's Simone Tagliapietra welcomes Sir Philip Lowe, former director general at the European Commission, DG ENER, and Alberto Pototschnig, director at the European Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER). Together, they elaborate on the main trends driving the European energy transition towards greater sustainability, energy security and economic competitiveness. They also assess whether the EU has the necessary institutions to ensure a smooth process for a rapidly growing and more integrated energy market. Among the key challenges is the effective management of an increasingly democratised energy sector, which requires – among many things – innovative solutions in energy storage and use of renewables. The discussants also touch upon the subject of distributional effect of climate policies, as the recent unrest in France shows that this issue will sit high on the agenda as new strategies are implemented over the coming years. For further reading, we recommend a Policy Contribution co-authored by Simone Tagliapietra on European automotive industry's place in the global electric vehicle revolution, as well as a Blueprint by Grégory Claeys, Gustav Fredriksson and Georg Zachmann on distributional effects of climate policies. This podcast episode was recorded during an event The European Energy Transition: A year ahead of the Twenties on February 19th, 2019.

Bruegel fellow Dirk Schoenmaker walks Sean Gibson and 'The Sound of Economics' listeners through his latest working paper, focusing on how to make monetary policy in Europe more climate-friendly In this episode of the Deep Focus podcast series, Bruegel's Dirk Schoenmaker explains his proposed greener alternative to the ECB's current 'market-neutral' approach to monetary policy. Elaborating on research contained within a recent Bruegel working paper, the author shows that significant strides can be made while remaining within existing constraints and with due considerations for the primary vital purpose of monetary policy. If you would like to learn more on this topic, we recommend Dirk Schoenmaker's blog post on greening monetary policy, published in conjunction with the aforementioned working paper.

In this episode of Director's Cut, Stephanie Segal of CSIS joins Bruegel's Guntram Wolff and Maria Demertzis for a conversation about the tension between free trade and national security issues, and the emerging threats to multilateralism. In a changing geopolitical order, with China on the rise, the linkage of economic and national security is more evident than ever. The boom of disruptive new technologies is accompanied by increasingly country-centric political tendencies, and the more and more antagonistic stance of the US towards the EU and China. Taken together, a unique setting emerges for dealing with pressing issues in economic security. Stephanie Segal, deputy director and senior fellow of the CSIS Simon Chair in Political Economy, joins Bruegel director Guntram Wolff and deputy director Maria Demertzis to discuss the looming challenges. They sketch out the approach taken by key global players to balance the continuous benefits of free trade against the need to safeguard national security interests. The new trade-restrictive measures – such as increased scrutiny over foreign direct investment – have obvious consequences for global economic growth and the rules-based multilateral trading system. The discussants elaborate on the importance of preserving multilateralism, and the role of international organisations in the process.  For further reading, we recommend an opinion piece by Jean Pisani-Ferry where he portrays the current international economic and geopolitical order as increasingly reminiscent of chess, as well as an economic blogs review by Bowen Call on the impact of recent US mid-term elections on the world economy.