INTERECONOMICS, Vol 44, No. 5, September/October 2009
Selected articles contributed by CEPS free in PDF; others may be purchased individually (or the entire contents of the journal) from http://www.intereconomics.eu
Forum: The Impact of the Financial and Economic Crisis on World Trade and Trade Policy
by Louise Curran, Hubert Escaith, Jean-Jacques Hallaert, Claude Barfield, Simon J. Evenett, Georg Koopmann
The articles of the forum can also be downloaded separately:
by Karl Aiginger
The financial crisis has affected the real economy in stages yet nevertheless at an unexpected rate and with all regions being affected simultaneously. It advanced almost independently of the regions’ exposure to the actual initial causes, among them the subprime crisis, innovative financial products, dubious microeconomic incentives, inefficient regulation and macroeconomic imbalances. The following analysis asks how national economic structures can be made more resilient to a shock (be it a financial crisis or another turbulence) and how economic policy can act in order to stabilise the economy before and after such a shock.
by Ignazio Angeloni
Judgements on the outcome of international meetings depend largely on what one expects to begin with. Expectations regarding the G20 summit that took place last week in Pittsburgh were not very high; with the crisis apparently over, the window of opportunity for ambitious policies seemed to have closed and many felt that the meeting would revert to routine or concentrate on details.
by Ralf Boscheck
In a 2008 article in the EU’s Competition Policy Newsletter, Peter Lowe, Director General of the EU Commission’s Directorate Competition, synthesised the experience of his office with regard to the design of competition policy institutions for the 21st century. A year earlier, he had co-authored another article, appearing in the same venue, recapitulating the Commission’s lessons learned from the Energy Sector Inquiry and the need for effective unbundling of energy transmission networks. The reader of both, at first astounded by the apparent gap between policymaking reality and reflections upon it, soon detects a rather pragmatic approach to shaping regulatory agendas. But are there limits to expediency?