Mr. Massimo M BeberSenior TutorCollege Lecturer in Economics
Sidney Sussex CollegeCambridge CB2 3HU
[email protected]://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mb65/
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Summer School 2013
One Market, One Money?The Economics and Politics of European Monetary Union
(http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mb65/OneMarketOneMoney.htm)
Mobility of Capital and
Labour
Microeconomic Policy Co-ordination
Common Macroeconomic
PolicyNo internal
tariffsCommon
External Tariff
FREE TRADE AREA y n n n n
CUSTOMS UNION y y n n n
COMMON MARKET y y y n n
SINGLE MARKET y y y y n
EMU y y y y y
Trade in Goods and Services
Source: a version of a Table introduced by Bela Balassa in The Economics of Integration (1961)
ECONOMIC INTEGRATION: A CLASSIFICATION
EUROPE – A CHRONOLOGY
• 1945-51: HEGEMON LED INTEGRATION (Marshall Plan, OEEC-OECD, EPU)
• 1951-1973 (ECSC to EEC – customs union, single market in agricuture and coal/steel, first MU blueprint – Werner and MacDougall Reports)
• 1973-1984 “devil take the hindmost”• 1985-1999: One Market (“1992”); One Money?• 2008-?? “Make (banking & fiscal union) or Break”
COSTS AND BENEFITS OF EMU
PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN AND RECOVERY
Source: The Kok Report (2004)
AVERAGE EU INCOME PER PERSON AS % OF THAT OF USA
Source: High Level Group (2004): Figure 1
Source: Commission of the European Union (2003) Second Progress Report on Economic and Social Cohesion. Communication from the Commission, Brussels, Commission of the European Union: COMM (2003) 34 Final): Maps
The Growth of Structural Funds, 1975-2006
5%
7%9%
25%
37%
30%
35%
32%
39%
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
0.45
1975 1981 1987 1992 1998 2002 2002(enl.) 2006 2006(enl.)
Source: adapted from Allan (2003), p. 244
% o
f EU
Bud
get Delors I
Delors II
Berlin
Agreement
“GREED IS GOOD”
Source: Lane (2012) “The European Sovereign Debt Crisis”, p. 52.
The Lender of Last Resort (LLR)
• Liquidity: money back today
• Solvency: money back in full
• The fire-sale problem
• “to lend freely on good security at a time of crisis” (Walter Bagehot, Lombard Street)
The central bank creates its own IOUs. As a result it does not need equity at all to support its activities. Central banks can live without equity because they cannot default. The only support a central bank needs is the political support of the sovereign that guarantees the legal tender nature of the money issued by the central bank. This political support does not need any equity stake of the sovereign. In fact it is quite ludicrous to believe that governments that can, and sometimes do, default are needed to provide the capital of an institution that cannot default
Paul De Grauwe (July 2012)
THE POLITICS OF LLR LENDING
Source: Lane (2012) “The European Sovereign Debt Crisis”, p. 53.
while Germany is running a big trade surplus with the rest of the eurozone which Germany's private sector is no longer willing to finance, transfers of one sort or another are inevitable. But no-one should be under any illusions about how difficult this is for politicians to explain to their electorates, even if they understand themselves. In the public's eyes and in the minds of many politicians, a trade surplus just shows that their country is more competitive. What could be wrong with that?
Simon Tilford, July 2012
WHEN PRIVATE FINANCE STOPS
Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis: Greece
• Focus on ECB’s liquidity management 2007-9• October 2009 – Greek general election• Budget revises deficit from 6 to 12.7% of GDP• Earlier years’ budgets (and thus debt) also
revised up• Rising cost of servicing debt forces first Greek
bailout in May 2010
Eurozone’s Sovereign Debt Crisis:continued
• Ireland (November 2010)• Portugal (April 2011)• Greece again (March 2012)• Spain, Cyprus (June 2012)
In contrast to the central banks of the US, the UK and Japan, the ECB is not allowed to finance treasuries in the member states. It cannot therefore act as a lender of last resort for governments. This dividing line between monetary and fiscal policy was drawn by the Maastricht Treaty to ensure price stability and, given the experience with monetisation of fiscal deficits in Europe’s history, should remain in place. But it induces an implicit insolvency risk for investors financing sovereign debt of EZ countries...
Peter Bofinger, July 2012
ECB’S COSTLY INDEPENDENCE
The trouble with consolidation
• The “denominator effect” of low growth, low inflation limit the “natural” fall in debt-to-GDP ratios
• “Adjustment fatigue” leads to protests• “Financial repression” within the single market is
increasingly difficult – residents cannot be forced to buy government bonds
• Persistent, significant risk praemia raise the cost of servicing existing debt in the Eurozone’s periphery
European Financial Stability Facility
• Established in 2010 to avoid another “Greece I” bailout (Euro 110bn hard to cobble together)
• Hopes that it would merely deter bank runs by its existence
• Yet needed for Ireland and Portugal within months
• Euro 440bn not enough
The Banking Union Proposal
• A true banking union removes all national differences in the policy and regulatory environments in which banks operate
• Crisis Prevention– Regulation– Supervision
• Crisis management: LLR• Crisis resolution: bailing in/out
THE “MUTUALIZED” DEBT CAKE
Transfers I (aid)? Not really
we frown upon the transmission of family-acquired wealth to offsprings if two different individuals belong to the same nation [but] we take it as normal that there is a transmission of collectively acquired wealth over generations within the same nation, and if two individuals belong to two different nations, we do not even think, much less question, such acquired differences in wealth, income and global social position. (Milanovic 2012)
Transfers II: FDI – Perhaps, but...
Migration – really?
“either poor countries will become richer, or poor people will move to rich countries. Actually, these two developments can be seen equivalent. Development is about people: either poor people have ways to become richer where they are now, or they can become rich by moving somewhere else. “ (Milanovic 2012)
European policy-makers have been reluctant to accept that the eurozone's decentralised nature makes it an inherently unstable currency union that forces its constituent states and 'their' banks into a pernicious and deadly embrace.
On the face of it, all that changed at the June 29 summit, when member-states agreed to consider establishing a banking union. Among the features of such a union would be: a shared supervisory authority; a collective deposit protection scheme for the currency union; and a common resolution framework for dealing with weak banks.
... The idea of a banking union is sometimes spoken of as an easier route to 'mutualisation' (or federalisation) than issuing common debt – partly, the reasoning goes, because citizens do not understand what a banking union entails.
Philip Whyte, July 2012
CAN THE EU FACE THE TRUTH?
EUROPEAN REDEMPTION (GSP MK II)
in November 2011, the GCEE suggested a bridge between short-term stabilisation and long-term governance: The European Redemption Pact, one element of which is the European Redemption Fund. In fact, the European Redemption Pact (henceforth “the Pact”) rests on three pillars, (i) a European Redemption Fund (henceforth “the Fund”), relying on mutualizing part of Eurozone debt; (ii) the Fiscal Compact, in particular a commitment to national debt brakes preferably at the constitutional level; and (iii) the installation of a crisis resolution mechanism, with provisions for the possible involvement of the private sector in future crises.
Bofinger, July 2012
