Europe’s competition policy has successfully contained the rise in concentration and excess profits, and the EU should not follow the US in weakening its approach. Instead, the EU needs to strengthen its trade policy to be more assertive on reciprocity in market access and control of industrial subsidies.

Since 2018, the US administration has implemented several measures limiting free trade with China and other countries. Using cross-country data and a general equilibrium model, this column argues that a trade war hurts not only the targeted countries but also the country imposing the tariffs.
Column first published in VOX.

The world trading system is facing an existential crisis. This calls for a significant update of the rulebook, dealing with dissatisfactions regarding negotiation and rules, surveillance, as well as adjudication.

The sharp drop in commodity prices has had a sizeable impact on Latin America's short term growth prospects. The decline in terms of trade has also revealed, once again, the low productivity of the region's economies. Investing in infrastructure could help Latin America simultaneously address these short and long term challenges.

With Brexit and the election of D. Trump, tariffs and exchange rates are back at the centre stage of policy debates. This column revisits the assumptions economists make when estimating how tariffs and exchange rates affect exporters’ performance.

A key driver of productivity is ease of resource allocation. This column uses firm-level data for France to show that misallocation has a spatial dimension: resource allocation and the associated effect on productivity are related not only to firms’ characteristics, but also to the environment in which they operate. Denser commuting zones seem to offer a better match between employers and employees, leading to more productive firms.

IMF cuts global growth forecasts following Brexit vote. Paul Krugman has taken a different point of view by arguing there is no reason to worry in the immediate future. This opposition reflects clearly two different opinions on the short-term consequences of uncertainty.

This column reports the nature and the amplitude of economic cycles in the Euro area since 1970, with a focus on the role of financial factors in generating these cycles.

Following the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, modern industrial countries appear to be coming back to a moderate growth trajectory, as was the case for the last three decades.

While European external surpluses are accumulating and domestic demand is slacking, insisting on improving the Union’s external competitiveness, as some in the Commission are presently doing, is paradoxical. For Europe, the paramount risk is not losing its competitiveness. It is not recovering cohesion and growth.