Today, we dive into the aftermath of the French parliamentary elections – a pivotal event that has captured the attention of financial markets and the broader public across Europe.

To help us navigate the complexities of the outcome and the future implications, we have a special guest, Hadrien Camatte. Hadrien is an expert on the French economy at Natixis and has been meticulously following every twist and turn of this election.

Before joining Natixis, Hadrien honed his expertise at a central bank in Paris and the French Treasury, where he held various positions.

We dive into the transformative world of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on the financial sector and central banks. AI's rapid advancements and diverse applications are creating a veritable AI bonanza, reshaping the economy and financial systems globally.

Join us as we explore these changes with Hyun Shin from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Hyun Shin co-leads the Monetary and Economics Department at BIS and is a member of its Executive Committee. With a distinguished academic career, including positions at Princeton, the LSE, and Oxford, Hyun provides unique insights into the future of AI in finance.

Tune in for an enlightening conversation that uncovers the implications of AI as a general-purpose technology and its potential to transform central banking around the world.

Don't miss this episode—subscribe now and stay ahead in the AI revolution! 🎧

The neutral rate is relevant for understaning the stance of monetary policy and for the fiscal outlook, as it determines the financing conditions for government debt. We explain how the neutral rate is defined, discuss its economic determinants and provide estimates of how it has changed since the pre-pandemic period. Increased government debt supply appears to have excerted substantial upward pressure on the neutral rate.

We make reference to the following papers:

Thiago Ferreira and Samer Shousha titled “The supply of safe assets and global interest rates” , Journal of International Economics, 2023.

Atif Mian, Ludwig Straub, and Amir Sufi. titled “What explains the decline in r*? Rising income inequality versus demographic shifts.” Proceedings of the Jackson Hole Symposium, 2021.

We review the fiscal position of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, discuss the need for consolidation and how it could be implemented with minimal harm to output.

Provided wage growth moderates and inflation develops as expected, the ECB will start cutting interest rates in June. We discuss the uncertainties around this outlook and recent headwinds on the inflation front.

We discuss with Prof. Harald Fadinger (University of Mannheim) how the EU taxes the carbon content of imported goods via its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

We critically review the effectivenes of CBAM to prevent "carbon leakage", i.e., the international reallocation of production to locations with low carbon prices, and its effect on the international competitiveness of EU firms. CBAM appears to perform badly on both of these and a number of other fronts.

We also discuss alternative approaches for international carbon price adjustments, partly based on research by Harald and his coauthors:

"Designing Effective Carbon Border Adjustment with Minimal Information Requirements. Theory and Empirics", by A. Campolmi, H. Fadinger, C. Forlati, S. Stillger and U. Wagner.

We discuss with Veronika Grimm (German Council of Economic Experts) about lifting Germany's long-run growth potential. We focus on measures that increase labor supply, human capital formation and the role of long-run electricity prices.

The @ecb is getting close to cutting interest rates: it signaled following it March 7 Governing Council Meeting its readiness to start cutting rates in June, if everything goes according to plan.

We talk about recent trends and future challenges for productivity growth in the French economy. Our guest, Alain Durré, is Head of the Macroeconomics and Europe Division at the Bureau of the French Prime Minister and Rapporteur Général of the French National Productivity Board.

Euro Area inflation fell like a rock: from the peak of 10.6%, reached in October 2022, it dropped to levels below 3% a year later. We analyze how much of this decline can be attributed to policy tightening by the ECB. We find that the direct effect of ECB policy is likely small. ECB policy may have had important indirect effecta via anchoring inflation expectations, but quantifying this effect is difficult.

The podcast makes reference

Speech by ECB's Philip Lane, The ECB's hiking cycle: an interim assesssment, https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2023/html/ecb.sp230216_1~f8cf2cd689.en.html

Adam Shapiro, Decomposing Supply and Demand Driven Inflation, Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransciso, https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/working-papers/2022/10/decomposing-supply-and-demand-driven-inflation/

We present the main academic insights about how government debt should evolve over time, if the government seeks to maximize social welfare. We discuss (i) how to deal with positive/negative expenditure surprises, (ii) how refinancing risk, due to interest rate risk, impacts optimal government debt dynamics, and (iii) the optimal long-run level of government debt.

The academic papers we mention are:

Barro, R. J., On the Determination of Public Debt, Journal of Political Economy, 1979, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/260807

Aiyagari, S.R., A. Marcet, T.J. Sargent, J. Seppälä, Optimal Taxation without State-Contingent Debt, Journal of Political Economy, 2002, https://doi.org/10.1086/343744

Adam, K., Government Debt and Optimal Monetary and Fiscal Policy, European Economic Review, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2010.11.003

Adam, K. and M. Grill, Optimal Sovereign Default, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2017, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26156466.pdf

We talk with Bernard Dadah (Head of Commodity Research, Natixis) about critical minerals. What are these? How big of market do they have? Who mines and refines them? What can the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) achieve?

In today's epsiode, we dive deep into the economic dynamics shaping the Eurozone focusing on a critical issue: inflation expectations.

We uncover what financial markets can reveal about the of future inflation and also discuss evidence coming from investor and household surveys.

We're thrilled to have Ricardo Reis join us today. Ricardo is the A.W. Phillips Professor at the London School of Economics and an esteemed expert on inflation expectations and inflation-linked financial instruments.

We discuss with the ECB's Director General for Economics Oscar Arce about the Euro Area's macroeconomic outlook, the ECB's past forecast errors, the way forecasts are produced at the ECB and the difficulties associated with producing macroeconomic projections.

A true tour de force through the topic!

We review the ECB's assessement of the economic situation & the outlook for policy rates going forward.

We take stock of Germany's recent underperformance relative to its European peers and analyze its sources. We identify (real) household income dynamics as one of the main drivers.

We review and critically discuss the decisions taken by the ECB after the suprisingly benign November inflation numbers.

We discuss how various forms of uncertainty affect the conduct of optimal monetary policy. We provide a summary of key insights from the academic literature, some of which are quite surprising. We explain how to make sense of them.

We make reference to the following academic papers:

Indicator variables for optimal policy,  LEO Svensson, M Woodford - Journal of Monetary Economics, 2003 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393203000308

Indicator variables for optimal policy under asymmetric information, LEO Svensson, M Woodford,  Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

Volume 28, Issue 4, January 2004, Pages 661-690

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188903000393

The learning cost of interest rate reversals, Martin Ellison, Journal of Monetary Economics, Volume 53, Issue 8, November 2006, Pages 1895-1907

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393206001498

We discuss with Professor Lars Feld (Advisor to the German Finance Minister) about what led to the Constitutional Court Ruling on the Debt Brake, what it implies for German federal budget and the Green Transition going forward.

Euro Area labour markets show astonishing resilience: unemployment rates are hovering around record lows despite serious adverse shocks having hit the Euro Area economy. We explore different explanation for this pheonmon and discuss whether it can last.

In October 2023, the European Council agreed on a reform of the European electricity market. We shed light on what went wrong in electricity markets in the past & critically review the main elements of the reform, together with Professor Andreas Loeschel, Chair of Resource Economics and Sustainability at the Ruhr University, Bochum, and Chairman of the German Governments’ Expert Commission for Monitoring the Energy Transformation.

We discuss with Prof. Jean-Marie Meier (Wharton School) about technology transfer to China: (i) what coercive methods does China deploy to force a transfer?, (ii) how do Western CEOs' incentives contribute to technology transfer? Based on Jean-Marie's latest research finding, we provide surprising insights, in particular on the latter mechanism.

Jean-Marie Meier's research paper is available here:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949536#new_tab

We discuss the decisions taken by the ECB Governing Council and provide perspective on them.

In today's episode we dive into the complex world of state-based international lending. Recent years have seen a resurgence in cross-border state lending, highlighted by the significant financial support Ukraine has received from Western countries and China's growing role as a global lender. Additionally, central bank swap lines have become a common feature after the 2007/08 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joining us is Christoph Trebesch from the Kiel Institute. Christoph is the Head of the Research Center on International Finance and Macroeconomics and a Professor of Macroeconomics at Kiel University. He will share his expert insights on this critical topic. Don’t miss it!

We discuss with Guntram Wolff, CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), about the prospects for a European Geopolitical Strategy. What would a Geopolitical Strategy consist of? What could be its guiding principles? How could it be implemented?

We discuss with Tobias Linzert about central bank frameworks for liquidity provision, in particular, how they changed following the financial crisis and how they might evolve going forward. Tobias is Adviser and Analytical Coordinator at the ECB’s Directorate General Market Operations.

We discuss the possible factors driving the recent strong increase in long-term government bond yields in the Euro Area. We disucss how monetary factors, fiscal developments and gobal factors have influenced bond yields dynamics.

Economists have a long tradition of opposing industrial policies measures, but advanced economies often use industrial policies to influence economic outcomes. We discuss with Professor Nathan Lane from Oxford University about what is known about the effects of industrial policies, when they work and when not.

Artificial Intelligence has made new inroads into areas of work that were reserved exclusively for humans: conversational interaction, pattern recognition & prediction, and writing & teaching. We discuss with Carl Benedikt Frey about the implications of AI technologies for labor market outcomes going forward. Carl Benedikt is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Director of the Future of Work Program at the Oxford Martin School.

We review the main decisions taken by the European Central Bank at its policy meeting on Sept. 14, 2023 & provide perspective on them.

We kick off the fall 2023 season in our "Week in Europe" series by discussing the cyclical and longer-term outlook for the Euro Area growth. We present positive and negative factors affecting growth dynamics and discuss mechanisms through which recent negative supply shocks might give rise to long-term scarring implications for Euro Area GDP.

The paper we mention in the podcast is:

"The Scars of Supply Shocks: Monetary Policy Implications", by Luca Fornaro and Martin Wolf.

Working paper version (no paywall)

https://crei.cat/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/TSS-2.pdf

Publishes version:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393223000417

In the heart of Europe, as national governments engage in intense negotiations over the reform of fiscal rules, the future of the continent's economic stability will be determined.

Olivier Blanchard, a Senior Research Fellow at the Peterson Institute, former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund and Professor of Economics at MIT, joins us to shed light on the diverse views and proposals shaping this crucial reform.

Various economic commentators have called for the ECB to raise its inflation objective, but central bankers in the Euro Area are reluctant to engange in a discussion about the target. We discuss both views and add insights from recent academic research about what constitutes an optimal inflation target for the Euro Area.

We discuss how trade integration affects labor market outcomes: who are the winners & losers from international trade? Where did the gains from trade end up? And how long-lasting are the effects of trade-induced labor market displacements? Our guest in this episode is Prof. David Dorn from the University of Zurich, see here for his latest research: https://www.ddorn.net/

Join us today as we delve into the results of the European elections and their far-reaching consequences. We have the pleasure of speaking with Sophia Russack from the Centre of European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels. Sophia is an expert in European politics and policy making, making her the perfect guest to shed light on the European election outcomes and their implications. Don't miss this insightful discussion! Tune in now!

The ECB has revised inflation forecasts strongly upwards, particularly for core inflation. We review the new ECB forecasts and the main decision taken by the ECB Governing Council. We also discuss the outlook for interest rates going forward.

We discuss about the new insights generated by so-called Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) models. HANK models allow taking into account household heterogeneity when analyzing monetary policy. Ben Moll is one of the founding fathers of this model classs and Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.

For readers wishing to read up on this topic, here is a non-technical summary of the insights: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/03/modern-monetary-policy-kaplan-moll-violante

We discuss the contributions of Nobel Prize winning Economist Robert E. Lucas Jr. to economics, together with Juan Pablo Nicolini, his former student, coauthor and friend. We review the main aspects of his work but also hear interesting anecdotes from Juan Pablo about his life and personality. Robert Lucas died May 15, 2023 in Chicago.

Euro area manufacturing activity was surprisingly weak over recent months: we put the pullback in historical perspectiv and discuss possible factors behind it, in particular whether recent weakness is a harbinger of more structural issues in the manufacturing sector.

We discusss the main channels through which Euro Area monetary policy generates income inequality in the cross-section of households and their quantitative importance. We also discuss why the ECB should care about inequality implications of its policies and whether the current rate increases generate effects that are symmetric to the effects generates by the rate cuts during Mario Draghi's ECB presidency.

We review the main decisions taken at the ECB's May 2023 Governing Council meeting & discuss the outlook for policy rates going forward.

We discuss what one can learn from the ongoing contraction in Euro Area money growth for output growth and inflation going forward. We discuss the various interpretations of the quantity theory of money and then analyze to what extent the resulting implications are born out by the data.

We discuss with the Global Head of Short-Term Liquidity Management of Groupe BPCE, the second-largest cooperative banking group in France, about liquidity managment & regulation, recent banking sector stress and the ECB's approach to liquidity provision.

We discuss whether recent stress in the banking sector will adversely affect Euro Area economic growth. We look at the latest indicators, their pandemic dislocations and academic research on the importance of financial shocks for business cycles (Jermann & Quadrini, Macroeconomic Effects of Financial Shocks, American Economic Review, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.1.238 )

We discuss with Ignazio Angeloni about the state of banking supervision in the Euro Area. What kind of information do supervisors have access to and how do they use it? Ignazio Angeloni is a former member of the ECB's Supervisory Board. He coordinated the establishment of the so-called Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) at the ECB.

The ECB has cut rates by 0.25% in its June meeting for the first time in many years. This happened despite forecasts of inflation having been revised slightly upwards. We review the reasoning behing this decision and the outlook for rates going forward.

We review the main ECB decisions and the challenges that lie ahead in terms of inflation and financial stability.

The international trade order established by the World Trade Organization seems to be falling apart. We discuss with Harald Fadinger from the University of Mannheim about the reasons behind this development and how Europe should react to it.

We critically review the fiscal situation in Europe and the key elements of the fiscal reform proposal put forward by the European Commission.

We discuss how the Euro Area construction sector will perform given the record speed at which interest rates have been increasing. Can it derail the Euro Area economic recovery?