Political Economy

Basedow, Robert (2021) ‘Why De-Judicialize? Explaining State Preferences on Judicialization in World Trade Organization Dispute Settlement Body and Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement Reforms’, Regulation & Governance.

Begg, I. (2021) ‘One Instrument, Many Goals: Some Delicate Challenges Facing the EU’s Recovery Fund’, CESifo Forum 22.1, 9-13.

Begg, I. (2021) ‘The European Union and regional economic integration: Creating collective public goods – Past, present and future’, European Parliament Think Tank.

Begg, I. (2021) ‘The post Covid-19 new normal, a time for the decidedly abnormal: an opportunity for modern monetary theory?’, Funcas Europe Policy Note.

Begg, I. (2021) ‘New era, new strategy: the ECB’s revised approach to monetary policy’, Funcas Europe Policy Note.

Bob Hanclé, Toon Van Overbeke & Dustin Voss (2021) ‘Crisis and Complementarities: A comparative political economy of economic policies after Covid-19’, Perspectives on Politics June 2021.

Costa Storti C, Bretteville-Jensen A, L, De Grauwe P, Moeller K, Mounteney J, Stevens A: The Double Effect of COVID-19 Confinement Measures and Economic Recession on High-Risk Drug Users and Drug Services. European Addiction Research, 2021.

De Grauwe, P., and Ji, Y., (2021), Toward a sustainable Eurozone, in Pereira, L, Mata, M., de Sousa, M., (eds.), Economic Globalization and Governance. Essays in honor of Jorge Braga de Macedo, Springer Verlag.

De Grauwe, P. and Ji, Y., (2021), 'The quest to stabilize an unstable system by financial engineering', Journal of Common Market Studies. 

De Grauwe, Paul (2021), 'Debt cancellation by the ECB: does it make a difference?', SUERF Policy Brief, no. 55. 

De Grauwe, Paul (2021) 'Inflation risks?', Intereconomics,  

Barr, Nick (2020) The Economics of the Welfare State, 6th edition, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Basedow, Robert (2020) ‘The EU’s International Investment Policy Ten Years on: The Policy-Making Implications of Unintended Competence Transfers’, Journal of Common Market Studies.

Basedow, Robert (2020) ‘The Achmea Judgment and the Applicability of the Energy Charter Treaty in Intra-EU Investment Arbitration’, Journal of International Economic Law 23, no. 1.

Basedow, Robert (2020) ‘The European Union’s New International Investment Policy and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals’. In International Trade, Investment and Sustainable Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Begg, I. (2020) ‘Responses to the COVID-19 Economic Crisis: Challenges for Global Governance’, Global Perspectives 1.1.

De Grauwe, Paul (2020) Economics of Monetary Union, 13th Edition, Oxford University Press. 

De Grauwe, Paul and Ji, Yuemei (2020) 'Structural reforms, animal spirits, and monetary policies', European Economic Review, 124.

Featherstone, Kevin (2020) ‘Enhancing Europe’s Global Power: A Scenario Exercise with Eight Proposals', Global Policy, 11,1, February, pp. 128-142.

Innes, Abby (2020) 'The limits of institutional convergence: why public sector outsourcing is less efficient than Soviet enterprise planning', Review of International Political Economy.

Monastiriotis, Vassilis and Zilic, Ivan (2020) 'The economic effects of political disintegration: Lessons from Serbia and Montenegro', European Journal of Political Economy, vo.65.

Barr, Nick (2019) Gender and Family: Conceptual Overview, Social Protection and Jobs Discussion Paper No. 1916. May 2019, Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 

Schelkle, Waltraud (2019), Independent or lonely? Central banking in crisis. Review of International Political Economy, 26(3), 1-25, 2019. (With Mabbett, D.)

Schelkle, Waltraud (2019) EU Pension policy and financialisation: purpose without power? Journal of European Public Policy, 1-18, 2019.

• Nick Barr, Professor in Public Economics
• Robert Basedow, Associate Professor in International Political Economy
• Iain Begg, Professorial Research Fellow 
• Paul de Grauwe, John Paulson Chair in European Political Economy
• Gianmarco Fifi, Fellow in European Political Economy
• Jonathan Hopkin, Professor of Comparative Politics
• Abby Innes, Associate Professor in Political Economy
• Angelo Martelli, Assistant Professor in European and International Political Economy
• Vassilis Monastiriotis, Eleftherios Venizelos Chair of Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor in Political Economy

Swedish pension system - Nicholas Barr

The Swedish pension system is widely studied and has become an exemplar for other countries. At the request of the Swedish government, Nicholas Barr provided an external evaluation of their system. As a direct result of his report, Sweden is introducing two reforms that assist its 2.25 million pensioners.
- The minimum pension age will rise over time to reflect rising life expectancy.
- The Premium Pension (in which workers choose from over 800 private pension providers) offers too much choice, so the number of funds will be substantially reduced.

These changes matter because they improve old-age financial security. The first reform protects the ability to continue to finance adequate pension benefits. The second, by reducing administrative costs increases net pensions.

Finland, also following recommendations by Barr, increased pension age and introduced more options to combine partial pension with continuing work for its 1.6 million pensioners.

Greek labour market - Vassilis Monastiriotis

As the economic crisis in Greece unfolded in 2010, Vassilis Monastiriotis undertook a programme of research on the adjustment of the Greek labour market to the crisis and to the subsequent policy reforms. In a series of papers, he provided original evidence showing that private sector wage adjustments mirrored those in the public sector, compressing wages in particular at the bottom of the distribution (Christopoulou and Monastiriotis, 2014 British Journal of Industrial Relations and 2016 Oxford Economic Papers); that unemployment adjustments were disproportionately concentrated on the low-skilled (employment sorting on the basis of education – Monastiriotis and Martelli, 2020 International Regional Science Review); and that changes in the minimum wage had a limited impact on employment but sizeable income effects for those earning below-median wages (Georgiadis et al, 2020 Economics Letters). This body of research led to Dr Monastiriotis’ appointment to the Minimum Wage Committee in 2018 and influenced directly the government decision to raise the MW in Greece by 10.8% in February 2019. In line with the predications stemming from his research, the rise in the MW improved individual outcomes for the low-paid and reduced significantly their risk of poverty – raising the wages of an estimated 600,000 individuals (approximately 30% of private sector employees) with no adverse effects on the economy, as unemployment continued to fall uninterrupted and economy-wide wage-costs increased only marginally.