Reports of Professor Elisabeth Krecké
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Recovery economics: Optimism or overheating?
Economists Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard have long urged governments to engage in more stimulus but now have become critical of President Biden's spending plans. Though they are right that economic overheating and higher interest rates would be disastrous, at least the U.S. has an optimistic outlook – something that ...
The ECB’s new rush toward the digital euro
The European Central Bank is gearing up to introduce a “digital euro” that would circulate alongside regular currency. Doing so would give the ECB more flexibility in monetary policy and consumers greater access to money. But it would also upend the current system, giving the ECB huge powers of surveillance ...
The end of central banking as we know it
The new Executive Board of the European Central Bank has shown remarkable unity under President Christine Lagarde’s leadership, even during the bitter trials of the 2020 pandemic. However, the team will face challenges. With respected economists working for her, the president – a lawyer and politician – could find herself ...
New Opportunities 2021: The ECB and bringing financial markets down to earth
The Covid-19 pandemic has capped a decade of economic crises that the European Central Bank has had to deal with. The bank’s tools to keep countries’ finances afloat and investors’ confidence solid have been unprecedented. Weaning them off low interest rates, financial injections and high debt will be its next ...
ECB: Pushing banks too far?
After the last economic crisis, the European Central Bank put in place strict rules to ensure banks were in a strong financial position. Now, to counter the pandemic's effects, authorities are pushing banks to take more risks in lending to households and businesses. But banks see a rough road ahead, ...
Is there a Covid-19 inflation puzzle?
The world’s governments have issued massive waves of debt in response to the pandemic’s economic damage. Public deficits have exploded and central banks are taking extraordinary measures. Will there be inflation, or deflation in the post-Covid fiscal future? The crisis has produced a huge negative supply shock, but the shock ...
The future of public debt
With the Covid-19 crisis pushing debt to record heights in many countries, it is worth wondering how they will ever pay it back. Several solutions have been proposed, from inflating the debt away, to deeply negative interest rates, to debt cancellation. All of these have severe flaws however, and in ...
The ECB’s wobbly ‘bridge function’
After the financial crisis of 2008, EU leaders decided that the European Central Bank needed supervisory powers over banks. Initially, the project successfully helped rein in bad practices and clean up banks' balance sheets. However, if the ECB's supervisory and monetary policy-setting functions are not kept separate, it could lead ...
