Europe between financial repression and regulatory capture. Bruegel Working Paper 2014/08, July 2014

From the Introduction. In the long shadow of the euro-area crisis, the relationship between governments and their banks has been brought to the the centre of the policy debate in Europe by the implementation of regulatory reforms, the risks associated with financial fragmentation, and the fight to sustain the flow of credit to governments and corporates. The attempt to interpret the patterns of pressure and influence running between governments and their financial system has led commentators to rediscover and give new life to concepts originating from academic debates of the 1970s such as “regulatory capture” and “financial repression”. Government agencies have been frequently described as being at the mercy of the financial sector, often allowing financial interests to hijack political, regulatory and supervisory processes in order to favouring their own private interests over the public good1. An opposite view has instead pointed the finger at governments, which have often been portrayed as subverting markets and abusing the financial system to their benefit, either in order to secure better financing conditions to overcome their own financial difficulties, or with the objective of directing credit to certain sectors of the economy, “repressing” the free functioning of financial markets and potentially the private interests of some of its participants2

Niemcy wobec wieloletnich ram finansowych unii Europejskiej na lata 2014-2020. Uwarunkowania i interesy. Raport OSW, pazdziernik 2011. = Germany and the multiannual financial framework of the European Union for the period 2014-2020. Considerations and interests. OSW Report, October 2011

No abstract.

Global and regional financial safety nets: lessons from Europe and Asia. Bruegel Working Paper 2013/06 [07?], November 2013

The Asian financial crisis (1997) and the European crisis (2009) have both contributed to the development and deepening of regional safety net arrangements. This paper analyses the relationships between global and regional financial safety nets, and uncovers the potential tensions and operational challenges associated with the involvement of several institutional players with potentially different interests, analytical biases and governance. The G20 has acknowledged the importance of these new players for the international monetary system, but the principles for cooperation between the IMF and regional financing arrangements are far too broad and ad hoc to contribute to a coherent and effective architecture. This paper tries to establish some lessons learned from the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the current European crisis in order to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, equity and governance of these arrangements. In particular, it proposes changes to the IMF articles of agreement to allow for lending or guarantees to regional arrangements directly and it establishes some key desirable features and practices of regional mechanisms that should be adopted everywhere to ensure some global consistency, particularly in the field of macroeconomic surveillance, programme design and conditionality.

The role of politicians in inciting financial markets to attack the eurozone. EuropEos Commentary No. 4, 21 June 2010

While acknowledging that the sustainability of sovereign debt is a serious issue that must be confronted, this EuropEos Commentary finds that financial markets have blown the problem completely out of proportion, leading to a full-scale confidence crisis. The authors present evidence suggesting that politicians’ public disagreements and careless statements at critical junctures may have added oil to incipient fire. By creating the impression that domestic political interests would take precedence over orderly management of the Greek debt crisis, they raised broader doubts about their ability to address fundamental economic divergences within the area, which are the real source of debt sustainability problems in the medium term.