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Barry Eichengreen


Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and formerly Senior Policy Adviser at the International Monetary Fund.

Barry Eichengreen

Draghi’s wake-up call: Will Europe act or snooze?

Barry Eichengreen 16th October 2024

Mario Draghi urges deeper integration to tackle Europe’s economic challenges, but will leaders respond in time?

The Populists’ Euro

Barry Eichengreen 19th June 2018

The majority of Italians want two things: new political leadership and the euro. The question is whether they can have both. The point about new leadership is uncontroversial. The country’s two ruling populist parties, the League and the Five Star Movement (M5S), together commanded 50% of the vote in the March 4 general election, and, […]

Two Myths About Automation

Barry Eichengreen 12th January 2018

Robots, machine learning, and artificial intelligence promise to change fundamentally the nature of work. Everyone knows this. Or at least they think they do. Specifically, they think they know two things. First, more jobs than ever are threatened. “Forrester Predicts that AI-enabled Automation will Eliminate 9% of US Jobs in 2018,” declares one headline. “McKinsey: […]

The Euro’s Narrow Path

Barry Eichengreen 19th September 2017

With Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the French presidential election, and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union enjoying a comfortable lead in opinion polls ahead of Germany’s general election on September 24, a window has opened for eurozone reform. The euro has always been a Franco-German project. With a dynamic new leader in one country and a […]

Is Germany Unbalanced Or Unhinged?

Barry Eichengreen 15th May 2017

For US President Donald Trump, the measure of a country’s economic strength is its current-account balance – its exports of goods and services minus its imports. This idea is of course the worst kind of economic nonsense. It underpins the doctrine known as mercantilism, which comprises a hoary set of beliefs discredited more than two […]

The Age Of Hyper-Uncertainty

Barry Eichengreen 9th January 2017

The year 2017 will mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Age of Uncertainty. Forty years is a long time, but it is worth looking back and reminding ourselves of how much Galbraith and his readers had to be uncertain about. In 1977, as Galbraith was writing, the world was still […]

Globalisation’s Last Gasp

Barry Eichengreen 22nd November 2016

Does Donald Trump’s election as United States president mean that globalisation is dead, or are reports of the process’ demise greatly exaggerated? If globalisation is only partly incapacitated, not terminally ill, should we worry? How much will slower trade growth, now in the offing, matter for the global economy? World trade growth would be slowing […]

The Brexit Alarm

Barry Eichengreen 15th April 2016

I have no special expertise on the question of whether Britain should leave (or “Brexit”) the European Union. True, I did live in the United Kingdom until a bit less than a year ago. And here in California, we have our own Brexit-like debate, with a movement to place a proposal to secede from the […]

Why The World Economy Needs Fiscal Policy To Overcome Stagnation

Barry Eichengreen 18th March 2016

The world economy is visibly sinking, and the policymakers who are supposed to be its stewards are tying themselves in knots. Or so suggest the results of the G-20 summit held in Shanghai at the end of last month. The International Monetary Fund, having just downgraded its forecast for global growth, warned the assembled G-20 […]

The Crisis Europe Needs

Barry Eichengreen 15th October 2015

It’s hard to be optimistic about Europe. Last summer, a political cage match between Germany and Greece threatened to tear the European Union apart. In country after country, extremist political parties are gaining ground. And Russian President Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine, in the EU’s backyard, has turned the common European foreign and security policy […]

Saving Greece, Saving Europe

Barry Eichengreen 14th July 2015

Whatever one thinks about the tactics of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government in negotiations with the country’s creditors, the Greek people deserve better than what they are being offered. Germany wants Greece to choose between economic collapse and leaving the eurozone. Both options would mean economic disaster; the first, if not both, would be […]

We Are A Matter Of Weeks Away From A Greek Default Unless A Deal Can Be Reached

Barry Eichengreen 22nd May 2015

With no agreement yet reached between Greece and its creditors, there are doubts over whether the country will be able to make a scheduled debt repayment to the International Monetary Fund in early June. In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, Barry Eichengreen discusses whether a compromise is still possible, what a default would mean for […]

Losing Interest

Barry Eichengreen 14th April 2014

Two of the world’s most prominent economic institutions, the International Monetary Fund and Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, recently warned that the global economy may be facing an extended period of low interest rates. Why is that a bad thing, and what can be done about it? Adjusted for inflation, interest rates have been falling for […]

The Fed, The Dollar And The Damage Done

Barry Eichengreen 13th February 2014

The US Federal Reserve is being widely blamed for the recent eruption of volatility in emerging markets. But is the Fed just a convenient whipping boy? It is easier to blame the Fed for today’s global economic problems than it is to blame China’s secular slowdown, which reflects Chinese officials’ laudable efforts to rebalance their […]

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WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

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Cohesion Policy

S&D Position Paper on Cohesion Policy post-2027: a resilient future for European territorial equity”,

Cohesion Policy aims to promote harmonious development and reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union, and the backwardness of the least favoured regions with a particular focus on rural areas, areas affected by industrial transition and regions suffering from severe and permanent natural or demographic handicaps, such as outermost regions, regions with very low population density, islands, cross-border and mountain regions.

READ THE FULL POSITION PAPER HERE

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What kind of impact is artificial intelligence (AI) having, or likely to have, on the way we work and the conditions we work under? Discover the latest issue of HesaMag, the ETUI’s health and safety magazine, which considers this question from many angles.

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Ageing workforce
How are minimum wage levels changing in Europe?

In a new Eurofound Talks podcast episode, host Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound expert Carlos Vacas Soriano about recent changes to minimum wages in Europe and their implications.

Listeners can delve into the intricacies of Europe's minimum wage dynamics and the driving factors behind these shifts. The conversation also highlights the broader effects of minimum wage changes on income inequality and gender equality.

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Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

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