Скачать или смотреть Public debt after the pandemic: some burning questions

An ACES roundtable discussion with Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Barry Eichengreen, and Waltraud Schelkle, moderated by Paul van den Noord.

The pandemic and the associated lockdowns produced the deepest and most disruptive downturn in the European economy since World War II. This prompted the European Commission to suspend temporarily all constraints on debt and deficits embedded in the European fiscal framework. The ensuing surge in public debt raises several burning questions: (i) what is the place of public debt in a well-functioning system of economic and fiscal governance? (ii) to what extent has the level of desirable and sustainable debt changed in view of pandemic recovery spending and low interest rates?, and (iii) how should these issues be considered in the current debate about fiscal rules?

The Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES), an interdisciplinary centre of excellence on contemporary Europe based at the University of Amsterdam, organizes an online roundtable where three renowned experts are invited to discuss these questions. In view of their outstanding expertise the invited speakers are Agnès Benassy-Quéré (French Treasury, Paris School of Economics and Bruegel), Barry Eichengreen (University of California, Berkeley, US), and Waltraud Schelkle (London School of Economics, UK). The event includes brief introductions by the speakers and an online interaction with the audience via the moderator, Paul van den Noord (Amsterdam School of Economics and ACES).

This event is a follow-up to an earlier event on 29 September this year, featuring Marco Buti (European Commission), Jean Pisany-Ferry (Bruegel, Peterson Institute and European University Institute) and Roel Beetsma (Amsterdam School of Economics and European Fiscal Board). They explored the European Union’s fiscal future post-COVID – a return to “normal” or a leap to something new – and how the EU could grasp this moment as a unique opportunity to address some of the fiscal framework’s long-standing weaknesses. ACES will return to this question in spring 2022 once the European Commission releases its proposals for reform of the fiscal framework.

About the speakers:

Paul van den Noord (moderator) is an Affiliate Member of the Amsterdam School of Economics (University of Amsterdam) and Theme Group leader at ACES. He spent most of his career at the OECD in Paris, from 2010 to 2013 as Counsellor to the Chief Economist, following a secondment to the European Commission in Brussels from 2007 to 2010. In 2013 Paul joined a financial institution in London and Geneva and returned to his alma mater in 2018. He has held positions as Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Agnès Bénassy-Quéré is Chief Economist at the French Treasury, and member of the Bruegel board. She was a Professor at the Paris School of Economics - University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, and the Chair of the French Council of Economic Analysis. Agnès is a Member of the French macro-prudential authority and of the Banque de France’s Board. Her research interests focus on the international monetary system and European macroeconomic policy.

Barry Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1987. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London, England). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (class of 1997). His most recent book is In Defense of Public Debt with Asmaa El-Ganainy, Rui Esteves and Kris Mitchener (Oxford University Press 2021).

Waltraud Schelkle is Professor in Political Economy at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Free University Berlin. Her book The Political Economy of Monetary Solidarity: Understanding the Experiment of the Euro was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. She is co-PI of a European Research Council Synergy project on 'Policy crisis and crisis politics: Sovereignty, Solidarity and Identity in Europe post-2008'.