Question 2:Do you agree that the German government should increase public spending given its persistently large current account surplus and given that it is part of the Eurozone?
There is a domestic reason why Germany might want to increase public spending, growth is at merely 0.1%. Our knowledge of the spillover effects of fiscal policy are still limited enough that I would be wary of advocating a fiscal stimulus for this purpose alone. Public spending is indeed largely on non-tradables, so that spillovers are likely to come from indirect forces. The most likely channel is through an appreciation of the German real exchange rate. And if the objective is a German revaluation, other policies are available and more direct. This include wage policy and tax policy.
It is hard to avoid the observation that the growing current account surplusses of Germany coincided with the advent of the Euro and the widening current account deficits in the European periphery. Given how matters have evolved in southern Europe, it's hard to think of this as a benign improvement in the allocation of capital within Europe. Now that that current account deficits in the European periphery have largely reversed, however, it is no longer clear to what extent this is an intra-European problem anymore. Having said this, if there were a global rebalancing that caused Germany to reverse its current account surplus by 8% of GDP, it is very hard to predict how things would unfold.
The CFM surveys informs the public about the views held by prominent economists based in Europe on important macroeconomic and public policy questions. Some surveys focus specifically on the UK economy (as the CFM is a UK research centre), but surveys can in principle focus on any macroeconomic question for any region. The surveys shed light on the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement among these experts. An important motivation for the survey is to give a more comprehensive overview of the beliefs held by economists and in particular to include the views of those economists whose opinions are not frequently heard in public debates.
Questions mainly focus on macroeconomic and public policy topics. Although there are some questions that focus specifically on the UK economy, the setup of the survey is much broader and considers questions related to other countries/regions and also considers questions not tied to a specific economy.
The surveys are done in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
German Council of Economic Experts' view of ECB policy
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Question 1: Do you agree that exceptionally loose monetary policy by the European Central Bank is no longer appropriate?
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German current account surpluses
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Question 2: Do you agree that the German government should increase public spending given its persistently large current account surplus and given that it is part of the Eurozone?
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Question 1: Do you agree that German current account surpluses are a threat to the Eurozone economy?
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Are academic economists ‘in touch’ with voters and politicians?
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Question 7: Voters did not know that there was near-unanimity among economists.
Do you agree that this was an important reason for a majority of UK voters going against the near unanimous advice of the economics profession?
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Question 6: Economists did not explain the reasons for this consensus in sufficiently clear language.
Do you agree this was an important reason for a majority of UK voters going against the near unanimous advice of the economics profession?
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