The Future of the Euro: Presentation (August 7, 2015)
ABSTRACT: I have a problem here: This talk was supposed to take place after the spring 2015 revision of the Greek program. It was supposed to use that revision as a springboard to launch into (a) the extent to which the current macroeconomic difficulties of Europe are caused by the euro, (b) the difficulties of burden-sharing within the eurozone, and (c) what the political-economic options were for turning the euro zone into enough of an optimum currency area for the euro to make economic sense for the continent. Clearly, this is all now down the drain: On August 7, we will have to talk about… whatever we think we should talk about. It may be what I originally planned. It may by options for and consequences of Greek exit from the eurozone. It may be the road from 2010 to 2015…
READINGS
- Olivier Blanchard and Francesco Giavazzi (2002): Current Account Deficits in the Euro Area: The End of the Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle? http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Fall%202002/2002b_bpea_blanchard.PDF
- Martin Feldstein (2012): The Failure of the Euro https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/2011-12-13/failure-euro
- Jeffrey Frankel (2008): The Estimated Effects of the Euro on Trade: Why Are They Below Historical Effects of Monetary Unions Among Smaller Countries? http://www.nber.org/papers/w14542
- Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas (2002): Comment on Blanchard and Giavazzi http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Fall%202002/2002b_bpea_blanchard.PDF
- Andrew Rose (2000): One Money, One Market: Estimating the Effect of Common Currencies on Trade http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/arose/Grav.pdf
BIOGRAPHY
J. Bradford DeLong is Professor of Economics at U.C. Berkeley, and was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy of the U.S. Treasury during the Clinton Administration. He is completing “Slouching Towards Utopia?”, an overly-long economic history of the world in the twentieth century.
He is best known for “Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets” (JPE, 1989), “Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy” (BPEA, 2012), “Did JP Morgan’s Men Add Value?” (book chapter, 1991), “The Survival of Noise Traders in Financial Markets” (JF, 1991), “America’s Peacetime Inflation: the 1970s” (book chapter, 1997), “Is Increased Price Flexibility Stabilizing?” (AER, 1986), “Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow’s Economy” (First Monday, 2000), “Meltdown to Moral Hazard: the International Monetary and Financial Policies of the Clinton Administration” (book chapter, 2001), “Have Productivity Levels Converged? Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare in the Very Long Run” (AER, 1989), and “Should We Fear Deflation?” (BPEA, 1989).
He can currently be found on the internet at Twitter:@delong, http://www.facebook.com/brad.delong.77, Equitablog, Grasping Reality, and Bull Market on Medium.