Question 1: How much lower will the potential level of GDP in the Eurozone in 2025 be due to Covid-19 relative to pre-Covid forecasts?
Answer:
2% or less
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
Forecasting levels of output four years out is hard. So many bad and good policies, lucky and unlucky shocks could happen until then. See https://personal.lse.ac.uk/reisr/papers/18-wrong.pdf
Question 3: Using not only the policy tools that have been part of the UK policy mix thus far but also policy tools implemented in other countries, to what extent does the government face a tradeoff between saving lives and preserving livelihoods?
Answer:
Small tradeoff
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
The tradeoff was not there back in March, since controlling the virus was needed to both save lives as well as to preserve economic activity. Now, uncertainty is lower (even if the danger is as high), and the marginal pain of economic losses is higher. So there possibly is a tradeoff.
Question 2: How much will the new lockdown measures introduced on Thursday November 5 hurt UK economic activity this year relative to a counterfactual with the milder measures adopted over the summer?
Answer:
Large damage
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
Previous stocks of savings have been depleted. Uncertainty is high because the government's credibility is low so, according to the media, many do not believe the lockdown will only last until early December. And, again from media reports, it seems harder to get people to comply, as they have adjusted their risk tolerance, in which case the government restrictions will bind behavior, unlike back in March.
Question 1: How much of the decline in GDP experienced to date would have been avoided in the absence of any lockdown measures or other policy interventions (such as fiscal support)?
Answer:
A small portion of the decline
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
Back in March, by the time the UK government imposed a lockdown, people had already been voluntarily withdrawing from contact with other isolating. The people led, the government followed. There would have been a large tumble in GDP even without the lockdown, as the experience in Sweden suggests.
Question 3: Which of the following best reflects your opinion on the following statement? “The ECB should explicitly recognize unemployment and/or economic growth as a secondary aim, secondary to its price stability mandate.”
Answer:
Disagree
Confidence level:
Very confident
Comment:
First, the "economic policies in the Union" are broader than unemployment. Especially important for a central bank is the integrity of the euro-area, financial stability, and the capital market union. Second, in practice, the ECB has shown its current mandate is consistent with acknowledging trade-offs between inflation and real activity. Third, such a strong shift to unemployment as a dominant goal (as the Fed set in its review) risks re-living the mistakes of the 70s.
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).
Post Covid-19 Potential Output in the Eurozone
Question 1: How much lower will the potential level of GDP in the Eurozone in 2025 be due to Covid-19 relative to pre-Covid forecasts?
Lockdowns and UK Economic Performance
Question 3: Using not only the policy tools that have been part of the UK policy mix thus far but also policy tools implemented in other countries, to what extent does the government face a tradeoff between saving lives and preserving livelihoods?
Question 2: How much will the new lockdown measures introduced on Thursday November 5 hurt UK economic activity this year relative to a counterfactual with the milder measures adopted over the summer?
Question 1: How much of the decline in GDP experienced to date would have been avoided in the absence of any lockdown measures or other policy interventions (such as fiscal support)?
Should the ECB Reformulate its Inflation Objective?
Question 3: Which of the following best reflects your opinion on the following statement? “The ECB should explicitly recognize unemployment and/or economic growth as a secondary aim, secondary to its price stability mandate.”
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