The Euro has had benefits, especially for core countries. But for peripheral countries the effect has been adverse as exemplified by Greece where an extreme adverse shock could not be partially offset by exchange rate flexibility. In the absence of great labor mobility and larger fiscal transfers from the rest of the EU, the hit on real incomes in Greece was extremely hard and destabilizing.
Question 2: Do you agree that the different behaviour of UK real wages relative to Eurozone wages during the Great Recession is in large part due to the UK having different labour market policies?
See previous answers. The New Deal and active labour market policy reforms from the mid 1990s onwards have been particularly important in keeping those on benefits actively seeking jobs. See “Evaluating the Employment Impact of a mandatory job search assistance programme” (with Richard Blundell, Monica Costa Dias and Costas Meghir) Journal of the European Economics Association (2004) 2(4) 569-606. http://cep.lse.ac.uk/textonly/people/vanreenen/papers/0305.pdf and more recently “Can helping the sick hurt the able?” (with Nitika Bagaria and Barbara Petrongolo), CEP Discussion Paper 1347 http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1347.pdf for causal evidence.
The UK did relatively well compared to other countries in terms of employment rates during the Great Recession. It is highly likely that this was related to greater real wage flexibility which helped "price workers into jobs". I discuss this in “The UK Productivity and Jobs Puzzle: Does the Answer Lie in Wage Flexibility?” (with Joao Pessoa), Economic Journal (2014). See http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/special/cepsp31.pdf. The magnitude of the shock and weak recovery was magnified by poor policy choices such as weak financial regulation pre-recession and premature austerity post recession
But as the recovery continued we would expect to see more robust growth which has not happened. This suggests there are ongoing structural problems of low productivity. See http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/growthCommission/documents/pdf/LSEGC-Report.pdf for a policy related discussion
Question 2: Do you agree that quantitative well-being analysis should play an important role in guiding policy makers in determining macroeconomic policies?
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).
Juncker's State of the Union Address
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Question 2: Do you agree that the euro has had more benefits than costs?
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Question 1; Do you agree that euro membership should be compulsory for all EU member states?
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Wages and economic recoveries
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Question 2: Do you agree that the different behaviour of UK real wages relative to Eurozone wages during the Great Recession is in large part due to the UK having different labour market policies?
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Question 1: Do you agree that lower real wage growth was beneficial for employment levels during the Great Recession?
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Happiness and well-being as objectives of macro policy
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Question 2: Do you agree that quantitative well-being analysis should play an important role in guiding policy makers in determining macroeconomic policies?
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