Question 1: Which of the following actions is the most advisable approach for European Central Bank to address the environmental impact of its bond-purchasing policies?
Answer:
Banning bond purchases from industries with current negative environmental impact
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
Saving the environment and stopping climate change is an existential challenge for humanity. All countries and all institutions, including the ECB, must contribute to this goal.
Question 2: How much lower will the potential growth rate of GDP in the Eurozone in 2025 be due to Covid-19 relative to pre-Covid forecasts?
Answer:
No different
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
While there is much uncertainty about the speed of recovery over the next 1-4 years, there is no reason to expect a decline in the growth rate of potential output over a longer period.
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:
Obviously, there is a lot of uncertainty. But households and firms have been forced by the Covid crisis to upgrade their IT skills and equipment, and new ways of organizing office work, production and distribution have been invented. In addition, the crisis could accelerate the transition to greener technologies. This could partly offset the negative effects of higher corporate and government debt. The medium- to long-term damage could therefore be fairly moderate.
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:
Neither agree nor disagree
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
This might make the job of the ECB too "political" and contentious. It seems better to keep the simple price stability mandate. We all know that, in crisis times, we can trust the ECB to fight for growth and employment. Just think of Draghi's "whatever it takes" speech.
Question 2: Would you support increasing the ECB’s inflation target to a higher rate of inflation than the current 2% target?
Answer:
Oppose
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
This is not the time to open that Pandora's box. All efforts by European policy makers should focus on overcoming the Covid crisis and boosting long-term growth (through structural and fiscal reforms), which would increase real equilibrium rates.
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).
The ECB’s Green Agenda
Question 1: Which of the following actions is the most advisable approach for European Central Bank to address the environmental impact of its bond-purchasing policies?
Post Covid-19 Potential Output in the Eurozone
Question 2: How much lower will the potential growth rate of GDP in the Eurozone in 2025 be due to Covid-19 relative to pre-Covid forecasts?
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?
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.”
Question 2: Would you support increasing the ECB’s inflation target to a higher rate of inflation than the current 2% target?
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