61st Economic Policy Panel: Riga

The Economic Policy Panel met this weekend at the Bank of Latvia in Riga.

Papers here.

Update on Greece

FT Big Read here.

Bulow and Rogoff here.

Peter Doyle here.

Roy Geary: Father of Statistics in Ireland

This radio programme looks back at the remarkable career of Roy Geary, featuring interviews with Brendan Whelan and Dermot McAleese: here.

A New Start for the Eurozone: Dealing with Debt

The CEPR has published a new report on the eurozone (I am one of the co-authors).

Outline: This report, the first in the Monitoring the Eurozone series, addresses the measures Eurozone countries need to take to guard against returning financial instability that could threaten a sustainable recovery. The authors consider stock operations, lending structures and regulatory changes in protecting sovereign debt on a national and Europe-wide level.

 

Report is here.

VOX summary is here.

When is macroprudential policy effective?

BIS paper here.

Abstract:

Previous studies have shown that limits on loan-to-value (LTV) and debt-to-income (DTI) ratios can stabilise the housing market, and that tightening these limits tends to be more effective than loosening them. This paper examines whether the relative effectiveness of tightening vs. loosening macroprudential measures depends on where in the housing cycle they are implemented. I find that tightening measures have greater effects when credit is expanding quickly and when house prices are high relative to income. Loosening measures seem to have smaller effects than tightening, but the difference is negligible in downturns. Loosening being found to have small effects is consistent with where it occurs in the cycle.