Suchergebnisse

The paper explores the financial accounts database of Eurostat, a rich set of
data that is largely unexploited. It describes the main financial
developments at EU level during the 1990-2010 period, both in terms of
institutional agents and financial products. The paper provides evidence on
the consequences of asset price inflation for wealth distribution between
institutional agents and argues that the conceptual scheme of the ?double
monetary circuit? of existing and recycled savings helps in describing and
explaining the observed patterns of financialisation.

Before the 2008 crisis, national fiscal policies were used passively within the European Union to reduce budget deficits and public debt, and the common monetary policy was used actively to control inflation via the interest rates. This policy mix represented the only form of macroeconomic policy coordination between EU member states. It was presumably conceived as a temporary arrangement in a transitional phase where a number of sovereigns were becoming subsovereigns. The crisis revealed the unsustainable character of this temporary solution in the absence of a new federal sovereign, a fact that was clear to many observers already before the creation of the euro. The crisis should raise awareness that the time has now come for a substantial reorientation of EU macroeconomic policy. The suggestion made here is that two complementary objectives should be assigned to EU macroeconomic policy coordination. First, fiscal policy should be coordinated around full employment deficits in a functional finance logic and in such a way as to exploit the working of Harrod's foreign trade multiplier so as to reach full employment at the EU level. Fiscal stabilization at the national level should be compensated by a budgetary impulse coming from a deficit created at the federal level or by an equivalent result achieved by the use of national fiscal policy instruments. Second, the rate of income growth should at the same time be targeted to exceed the rate of interest on government debt, the latter being sufficiently under the control of monetary policy. As it is well known, public debt sustainability problems disappear automatically in this case. Other targets established following the same logic could usefully complement these two objectives, such as the coordination of wage policies across the EU. Adapted from the source document.

In two recent contributions Alain Parguez and Jean-Gabriel Bliek argued in favor of assigning a full employment objective to European economic policies and their coordination (Bliek and Parguez (2007) and Parguez (2007b)). Their argument is based on the approach of the monetary circuit, whose treatment of full employment is the object of this article. The approach is presented here as emblematic of ?out of equilibrium? models, i.e. models where the equilibrium conditions of pure competition are not fulfilled. A forthcoming contribution will show how the description of economic reality suggested by the circuit can help interpreting recent macroeconomic developments in the US, Canada, Japan and the EU and will discuss some empirical studies confirming its relevance for policy analysis.

A contribution appeared in the previous issue of Panoeconomicus reviewed the theoretical arguments brought by Alain Parguez and Jean Gabriel Bliek in support of their idea of assigning a full employment objective to European economic policies and their coordination (Bliek and Parguez (2007) and Parguez (2007b)). Without pretending at exhaustiveness, this contribution reviews and partly extends the empirical evidence they presented in support of their argument with reference to selected macroeconomic developments in several countries and different historical periods, in particular for the US, Canada, Japan and the EU. It confirms the descriptive power of the circuit and its relevance for the discussion of alternative economic policies, in particular in the field of employment. Together with the previous article, it shows that the circuit can be used to update economic policy thinking, nourishing also the necessary democratic debate amongst police alternatives. .