The Political Economist

As 2014 is coming to an end, this is a good time to wrap up the year and look back at some of the events that passed us by, but most importantly it's a good time to present a quick overview of  the predictions I've made in the beginning of the year and assess how good they were.  I actually had quite a lot of hits, and only a few misses this year. I won't be modest in saying that I'm getting pretty good at this. Perhaps reading Bueno De Mesquita's "The Predictioneer's Game" , and Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise"  rubbed off some of its magic on me?   Here goes ( the predictions for 2014 were made on January 2nd 2014 ): The Hits:  1. "next year a stronger recovery should finally kick off in most of the Western world. Emerging markets will grow too, however less dynamically than before...In America the energy boom will reignite the recovery momentum...America's stronger growth will rub off on Europe as wel...

As I've stated in an earlier post , my recent trip to Germany has been full of positive experiences. Most importantly I gained insight into why Germany (i.e. its formal institutions) feels so strongly about the agenda for structural reforms and why it opposes any alternatives, particularly looser monetary policy and the idea that Germany should stimulate its economy to raise European aggregate demand. A country that was once called the " Sick man of Europe ", was the first to undergo painful reforms. Back in 2003 they started with preparation and implementation of the so-called Agenda 2010, which I covered on several occasions in the blog (see here or here ). The Agenda carried a series of reforms, but the most notable and important ones were the labor market reforms (i.e. Hartz reforms), because of which Germany was able to cushion the blow of the 2008/09 crisis. Germany had the lowest increase in unemployment (virtually none) of all European countries during the cr...

I've spent the entire last week in Germany, as a part of a delegation of Croatian economists and economic experts, organized by the  Konrad Adenauer Stiftung  (KAS). The idea was to visit the main economic and political institutions in Germany and open a dialogue on the problems facing Croatia, but primarily to learn about the experiences of the German solutions/responses to the crisis through the conceptual framework of their Social market economy (i.e. the German ordoliberalism ). We have visited a series of institutions, starting with the Bundesbank and the ECB in Frankfurt, and ending with the Ministries of Finance , Economy and Energy , Labour and Social Affairs , and even the Office of the Chancellor , all in Berlin. In the middle we visited a series of other noteworthy institutions like BaFin (the regulator of financial services), the Council of Economic Experts, DIW institute, the banking association, a few members of parliament and so on. I plan to write a separate...