Reports of Professor Enrico Colombatto
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American financial markets and the specter of inflation
The policies of easy money, unlimited public indebtedness and indiscriminate subsidies make fertile ground for inflation. Are the jittery financial markets signaling that the U.S. and several other Western economies are approaching the end of the long free ride – profligacy with neither reimbursements nor inflation? And what if that ...
The hidden repercussions of public debt in the West
Europe and the U.S. share a common commitment to monetization: their central banks buy much of the debt issued by the government. However, while the share of European bonds in the hands of non-European investors is limited, the portion of U.S. Treasuries held abroad is significant. GIS economic expert Enrico ...
GameStop and the future of financial markets
The story of what happened with GameStop shares in January is simple: certain investors made the wrong bet and lost. The market worked just as it should have. Regulators and many established financial players do not see it that way, though. Already, they are working together, using the episode to ...
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 ...
