EconPol Policy Briefs

Import tariffs introduced by the United States and China in September will see Chinese exporters bear approximately 75% of the costs, with the US extracting a net welfare gain of USD 18.4 billion, according to new research from EconPol Europe. The tariffs affect around 50% of Chinese products imported to the US, with a value exceeding USD 250 billion. The tariffs introduced by China affect around USD 60 billion worth of goods. The research shows these new tariffs, introduced on 24 September, will increase US consumer prices on affected Chinese products by an average of 4.5%, while the producer price of Chinese firms declines by 20.5%.

The lack of cross-border risk sharing in the banking sector is one of the biggest barriers to better integrated financial markets in Europe. In this EconPol policy brief, the authors emphasize the potential of the securitization market for bank-based financial integration. To effectively increase cross-border risk sharing through securitization in the EU, they suggest further improving the existing regulatory framework in order to reduce barriers to a thriving securitization market.  A further recommendation is to introduce explicit incentives for risk sharing, and securitization in Europe entering EU regulation and EU programs.

Extreme poverty in certain global regions remains one of our greatest international challenges: between 2014 and 2016, 800 million people suffered from hunger. Despite this, most EU member states spend less than the required 0.7 percent of Gross National Income (GNI) on development aid and there are high associated administrative costs.

In this EconPol Policy Brief, the authors argue that shifting more financing and management of development aid from member states to the EU would help resolve these problems and reduce costs.

Advances in total factor productivity (TFP) are important for sustaining economic growth in modern economies, in particular in the face of a declining working-age population. In this Policy Brief, we identify investment in research and development, good governance, the capital intensity, a high share of information technology in the total capital stock, and the number of industrial robots per employee as conducive for TFP growth. Based on the empirical results, policies that are beneficial for capital formation in general, investment in computer technology, research and development as well as the use of industrial robots could boost TFP in Europe.

In recent studies the IMF and the OECD claim that inequality has a negative impact on economic growth and conclude that redistribution policies have no adverse growth effects. We argue that this claim is misleading. We show that, for developed countries, the correlation between inequality and growth is positive, not negative. But this correlation cannot be given a causal interpretation.