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31. Can EU competition law address market distortions caused by state-controlled enterprises?

Author:
Matthew Heim
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
This Policy Contribution considers whether European competition law could be applied more directly to state owned enterprises that create an unlevel playing field in Europe due to the support they receive from their home governments. This issue is now a priority for many Member States and the European Commission given the impact on European economic autonomy. Competition law may not be the appropriate tool for addressing the granting of illegal subsidies or other forms of support in third countries but it may be more effective than previously thought in dealing with the effect of state-owned entities that distort the internal market. If SOEs are not be resource-constrained or even profit maximising, such SOEs could be unconstrained by competitive pressures and therefore possess a de facto level of market power. By evolving existing exclusionary antitrust theories of harm, such as predatory pricing, to fit the specificities of SOEs, this Policy Contribution argues that it should be possible to add further tools to the EU’s toolbox. In any event, as part of its efforts to address the distortive effects of foreign state ownership and subsidies in the internal market, the Commission should develop a coherent and proactive competition policy to provide guidance to the market.
Topic:
Markets, Governance, Macroeconomics, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
Europe

32. A new look at net balances in the European Union’s next multiannual budget

Author:
Zsolt Darvas
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
Whenever the European Union’s budget is discussed, much of the political focus is on net balances – whether countries pay in more than they receive – rather than on the broader overall positive effects of EU spending. The largest net contributor countries have sought to limit their contributions, leading to the build-up of an ad-hoc, complex, opaque and regressive system of revenue corrections.
Topic:
Governance, Budget, European Union, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Europe

33. Crisis management for euro-area banks in central Europe

Author:
Alexander Lehmann
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Bruegel
Abstract:
The deep involvement of a number of euro-area banking groups in central and southeastern Europe has benefitted the host countries and has strengthened the resilience of those banking groups. But this integration has become less close because of post-financial crisis national rules that require banks to hold more capital at home, or other ring-fencing measures. There is a risk integration might be undermined further by bank resolution planning, which is now gathering pace. Regulators and banks will need to decide between two distinct models for crisis resolution, and this choice will redefine banking networks. Most efficient in terms of preserving capital and the close integration of subsidiary operations would be if the Single Resolution Board – the banking union’s central resolution authority – takes the lead for the entire banking group. However, this will require parent banks to hold the subordinated debts of their subsidiaries. Persistent barriers to intra-group capital mobility – or the option for home or host authorities to impose such restrictions – will ultimately render such schemes unworkable. The second model would involve independent local intervention schemes, which European Union countries outside the banking union are likely to call for. This will require building capacity in local debt markets, and clarifying creditor hierarchies. Exposure to banking risks will ultimately need to be borne by host-country investors. Bail-in capital issued by subsidiaries to their parents cannot be a substitute because it would expose the home country to financial contagion from the host. To sustain cross-border linkages, banking groups and their supervisors will need to make bank recovery plans more credible, and to strengthen cooperation in resolution colleges (platforms that bring together all relevant parties in resolution planning and execution). Within the banking union there is no justification for the various ring-fencing measures that have impeded the flow of capital and liquidity within banking groups.
Topic:
Governance, European Union, Regulation, Banks, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Europe

34. New risks to global financial stability

Author:
Hung Tran
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The post-2008 financial regulatory reform has strengthened the banking system, bringing the bank-generated liquidity expansion under control. However, central-bank liquidity has been growing significantly for more than a decade, and financial mediation has moved from banks to non-bank financial institutions, and from lending to capital-market transactions. This new system has created new financial imbalances and distortions and pose new areas of vulnerability that require appropriate policy responses. In “New Risks to Global Financial Stability” author Hung Tran, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Business & Economics program, assesses the global financial system weaknesses and outlines steps to promote financial stability. Tran updates a framework, first developed by the Committee on the Global Financial System, to recommend policy responses along three lines of defense: prevention of excess liquidity; strengthening domestic policy measures; and cooperative provision of central-bank liquidity.
Topic:
Regulation, Finance, Economy, Business, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Canada, North America, and United States of America

35. Jokowi’s second term: economic challenges and outlook

Author:
Siwage Dharma Negara
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Abstract:
After winning the 2019 election, President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo’s has a great opportunity to bring the Indonesian economy into a stronger footing. Jokowi’s economic policies achieved mixed outcomes in his first term (2014–2019). He hasn’t delivered a promised 7% economic growth, but steady 5% growth is perceived as a commendable achievement, given slowing global growth, rising uncertainties, and low commodity prices. Macroeconomic stability has been well maintained, and Indonesia’s creditworthiness has improved during this first term.
Topic:
Politics, Economy, Economic growth, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Indonesia, Asia, and Southeast Asia

36. Responding to Economic and Ecological Deficits

Author:
Jonathan M. Harris
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Macroeconomic theory was shaken up in the wake of the financial crisis, with neoclassical approaches proving inadequate to analyze or respond to the need for policy action. Despite efforts to return to more conventional macro perspectives, a continuing re-evaluation of economic theory has important implications both for traditional economic concerns such as employment and inflation, and for ecological issues and the climate crisis. An emerging “green Keynesian” approach combines a radical Keynesian analysis with ecological priorities such as drastic carbon emissions reduction. One important aspect of this reorientation of theory is the analysis of economic and ecological deficits. In the years since the financial crisis, both economic and ecological deficits have increased. This poses a challenge for “green Keynesian” policy. It is therefore necessary to have effective analyses to measure and respond to ecological deficits, as well as policy measures to deal with economic deficits. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring ecological deficits, and a new perspective on economic deficits and debt. Since there is no single unitary measure for depletion or degradation of different kinds of resources, it is necessary to measure different kinds of deficit for different resources, with a goal of reducing all of these to zero or replacing them with surpluses. The analysis involves exploring the specific economic implications of reducing both ecological and economic deficits, which involves re-conceptualizing economic growth and "degrowth", and provides an alternative to current U.S. policies under the Trump administration, which are contributing to widening both deficits.
Topic:
Climate Change, Debt, Financial Crisis, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Global Focus

37. Europe 1957 to 1979: From the Common Market to the European Monetary System

Author:
Joseph Halevi
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This essay deals with the contradictory dynamics that engulfed Europe from 1959 to 1979, the year of the launching of the European Monetary System. It focuses on how the macroeconomic frame- work of stop-go policies in the 1960s ended up privileging external – intra-European - exports at the expense of domestic demand. The paper offers a very tentative explanation as to why stop-go policies, by weakening domestic demand, did not put an end to the to the ‘long boom’ earlier as they should have. The French crisis of 1968-69 leading to the demise of De Gaulle is discussed at length, as is the renewal of the German export drive in the wake of a nominal revaluation of the D-Mark in 1969. Finally, the revival of labor struggles in Italy in the same year is put in the context of the structural weaknesses of the Italian economy as analyzed by the late Marcello de Cecco. The conclusion is that European countries had neither the political culture nor the institutional mechanisms to coordinate mutually advantageous policies. Their so-called cooperation was an exercise in establishing hegemony while defending the interests specific to the dominant economic groups of each country. The essay then deals with the formation of the EMS as an expression of efforts to establish and enforce economic dominance.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, History, Monetary Policy, Capitalism, Common Market, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Europe

38. From the EMS to the EMU and...to China

Author:
Joseph Halevi
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
The paper highlights the position of German authorities, showing that they were quite lucid about the fundamental weaknesses inherent in a process that separated monetary from fiscal policies by giving priority to the centralization of the former. Instead of repeating the well known critiques levelled against the EMU – for which readers are referred to the unsurpassed treatment by Stiglitz, the essay highlights the splintering of Europe in the way in which it has unfolded during the 1990s and in the first decade of the present millennium. In particular the early economic and political origins of the terminal crisis of Italy are located between the late 1980s and the 1990s. France is shown to belong increasingly to the so-called European periphery by virtue of a weakening industrial structure and persistent balance of payments deficits. The paper argues that France regains its central role by political means and through its weight as an active nuclear military power centered on maintaining its imperial interests and posture especially in Africa. The first decade of the present millennium is portrayed as the period in which a distinct German economic area had been formed in the midst of Europe with a strong drive to the east with an increasingly powerful gravitational pull towards the People’s Republic of China.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Political Economy, History, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Europe, Asia, Germany, and Global Focus

39. Synthetic MMT: Old Line Keynesianism with an Expansionary Twist

Author:
Lance Taylor
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
Expansionary macroeconomic policy with a strong redistributive component is an attractive proposition, most recently launched on the basis of Modern Monetary Theory or MMT. The Theory is a synthesis of familiar ideas, newly relevant but scarcely path-breaking. Its basics – Chartalist or fiat money, functional finance, and models based on consistent national accounting – come straight from Maynard Keynes, Abba Lerner, and Wynne Godley. Functional finance is the heart of fiscalist Keynesianism built upon automatic stabilizers for the business cycle. MMT’s job guarantee proposal is one more stabilizer which could be a modest helpful supplement to the system which exists. National accounting comparisons of a possible MMT package with the 2008 crash and the Trump tax cut are presented with emphasis on autonomous shifts in demand. The package could have problems with debt sustainability and external balance. Inflation is unlikely if wage repression in the USA is not reversed. But strong wage increases are presumably a goal of MMT.
Topic:
Economics, Monetary Policy, Finance, Economic Theory, Macroeconomics, and Money
Political Geography:
United States

40. Big Tech Acquisitions and the Potential Competition Doctrine: The Case of Facebook

Author:
Catherine Ruetschli and Mark Glick
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
The Big Tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, have individually and collectively engaged in an unprecedented number of acquisitions.When a dominant firm purchases a start-up that could be a future entrant and thereby increase competitive rivalry, it raises a potential competition issue. Unfortunately, the antitrust law of potential competition mergers is ill-equipped to address tech mergers. We contend that the Chicago School’s assumptions and policy prescriptions hobbled antitrust law and policy on potential competition mergers. We illustrate this problem with the example of Facebook. Facebook has engaged in 90 completed acquisitions in its short history (documented in the Appendix to this paper). Many antitrust commentators have focused on the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions as cases of mergers that have reduced potential competition. We show the impotence of the potential competition doctrine applied to these two acquisitions. We suggest that the remedy for Chicago School damage to the potential competition doctrine is a return to an empirically tractable structural approach to potential competition mergers.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Communications, Law, Digital Economy, Macroeconomics, Monopoly, and Antitrust Law
Political Geography:
United States