Reports of Professor Enrico Colombatto
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New opportunities 2021: Asia’s push in international trade
The 2020 proportional decline in trade was twice as large as the decline of world GDP, but a strong rebound can be expected and international trade will drive global growth in 2021. The good news is that policymakers have taken steps to undo at least some of the trade restrictions ...
Fast growth in 2021, but not for everybody
Many forecast that 2021 will be characterized by vigorous growth and that, by the end of the coming year, the world economy will have recovered from the 2020 losses. The author takes a more discriminating view and argues that only a few countries, China among them, will be back on ...
The WHO may be Covid-19’s next victim
The World Health Organization did poorly in living up to its responsibilities at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Much of this can be put down to its leader, who had a mixed record coming into his position and seems to be heavily backed by China. The future of this ...
Opinion: The WTO drifts toward irrelevance
The WTO is a relatively cheap international organization, but it has achieved very little since it was created in 1995. It will not likely disappear, especially if it keeps a low profile and transforms bilateral deals driven by politics into multilateral deals. That would be less useful than if it ...
Scary EU policies: Broken rules and opportunistic socialism
With the Covid-19 crisis bearing down on eurozone economies, all efforts at maintaining fiscal responsibility have been abandoned. The euro area could adopt new fiscal rules – likely ones that would allow for more profligacy and greater centralization. But the ultra-low interest rates that come with such a strategy could ...
The Fed and ECB: Average inflation targeting for two
Central banks have long maintained that price stability means 2 percent inflation. Now we hear from the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank that it actually means “average” 2 percent inflation. This seemingly small change in the banks’ mission aims to contain and sustain public debt, not inflation.
Post-Covid recovery is not the main challenge ahead
The statistics describing the condition of the world economy three months after the lockdowns seem reassuring: We have not had a V-shaped recovery but GDP growth in the second part of 2020 appears to be firming up and predictions for 2021 are optimistic. However, trouble is brewing in labor markets.
Causes and consequences of the dollar’s weakness
At the pandemic’s onset, few paid any attention to exchange rates. The U.S. dollar has weakened significantly since March 2020, surprising many observers. Some of the drop can be ascribed to the diminished international trade flows, which cut the demand for the globe’s leading exchange currency. There may also be, ...
