Avoiding another Eurozone Crisis: Part I | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal
Mike Wickens 07 June 2016
European Monetary Union was designed to promote economic growth, price stability, full employment, and political integration. It can be argued that so far, it has achieved none of these and has in fact made things worse. The Five Presidents' Report contained a set of proposals for making the single currency sustainable, based on giving up more national independence. This column – the first in a two-part series asking whether future crises might be avoided through market forces without the need for the sort of procrustean proposals offered in the Report – examines the causes of the Eurozone Crisis.
...a closer look at the proposals in the Five Presidents’ Report for Fiscal, Banking, and Capital Markets Unions and much closer political integration among Eurozone countries. It goes on to give evidence of the failure of financial markets to price risk correctly prior to the Eurozone Crisis. By pricing risks better, financial markets may be able to provide the discipline required to avoid future crises in the Eurozone without the need for greater political interference in national fiscal policy-making as proposed in the Report.
