News Archive

Does activism affect the acquisition and asset sale decisions of firms that are only indirectly affected by activists? Has activism grown sufficiently in importance that it influences the equilibrium in corporate asset markets, and what is its impact on the liquidity and efficiency of these markets? These are the questions posed by EconPol researcher Ulrich Hege and his co-author Yifei Zhang in this EconPol opinion examining the rise of shareholder activism and its international expansion.

How can a faster implementation of structural reforms fostering the process of economic convergence in Europe be achieved? In our latest policy brief, EconPol researchers discuss the rationale and potential adverse effects of providing financial incentives for structural reforms and present a proposal of national convergence roadmaps. Although these proposals deviate from the Commission proposal in some key dimensions, they reflect the fact that ensuring progress towards convergence targets is primarily a responsibility of the individual member states - not of the EU or European institutions and bodies like the European Commission and the Eurogroup.

A modern general equilibrium trade model to simulate the effects of the Chinese-American trade dispute finds that both economies lose, but China loses absolutely and relatively much more. In our latest policy brief, the authors analyse the potential impacts of an escalating trade war and find that while the bilateral tade balance of the US with China improves, it deteriorates with the EU and forebodes further transatlantic conflict.

In our latest working paper, António Afonso and João Tovar Jalles assess, via system GMM, how Stock Flow Adjustments (SFA) affect the debt-to-GDP ratio in 65 countries (covering developed and emerging and low-income countries) between1985-2014. They find that SFAs positively contribute to the change in the debt-to-GDP ratio with a coefficient close to one.

In July 2017, Louis Rouanet argued that the bail out of two Italian banks, Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza, would be a ‘deathblow to the European Banking Union’. EconPol researcher Timo Wollmershäuser agrees, and says the correlation between risk premia for sovereigns and banks has since sharply increased to the high levels observed before the start of the Banking Union.