B-15
Crisis, Change and Continuity: (re-)Establishing Macroeconomic Governability in Europe and Beyond

Discussants:
Vivien Schmidt and Bob Hancke
Session Organizers:
Benjamin Braun and Ronen Mandelkern
Moderator:
Bob Hancke
Friday, 3 July 2015: 4:00 PM-5:30 PM
TW1.1.04 (Tower One)
The 2008 financial meltdown and the Great Recession that followed it produced intensive stress on national, international and supra-national institutions of economic governance. In recent years this stress was strongly felt in Europe, and particularly within the European Monetary Union. The proposed panel aims to explore the dynamic interplay between the financial and economic crisis and institutional change in macroeconomic governance in Europe and beyond.

The institutional aspects of the crisis – in terms of both circumstances and consequences – are still very much debated. Political economists are still in disagreement on what has been the role of institutions in setting the stage for the crisis and its unfolding since 2008. There is also no agreement regarding the institutional consequences of the crisis, that is, on whether it was followed by institutional change (and if yes of what kind) or continuity.

The proposed panel aims to engage in this debate and explore the interaction between the crisis and macroeconomic governance. To do so, the panel offers reassessment of pre-crisis institutional arrangements, their influence of the political-economic evolution of the crisis, and the way they have been reshaped following the crisis.

The papers in the panel focus on: the role played by the European Monetary Union in shaping Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and the imbalances between the EMU's Northern and Southern member states (Aidan Regan); the interaction between change and continuity in macroeconomic policies and governance following the crisis in developed economies and Israel in particular (Ronen Mandelkern); the ongoing effort of the European Central Bank to reshape financial markets by reviving the securitization market (Benjamin Braun).