The SAFE Policy Center organizes and cordially invites you to attend a panel discussion on
U.S. and EU Fiscal Policies: On Different Wavelengths
Jeffrey Frankel, Harvard Kennedy School
Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Ministère de l’Economie et de la Finance, Paris
Jakob von Weizsäcker, Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Berlin
Moderator: Hans-Helmut Kotz, SAFE and Harvard University
Watch the video on our youtube channel
In response to the Covid-19 Pandemic, fiscal policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic engaged in extraordinary fiscal relief and stabilization efforts. Initial programs, relative to GDP, were roughly on the same wavelength. After the second wave, however, approaches seem to diverge. The new U.S. administration has launched a second $2 (US) trillion stabilization program and is about to implement another $2 trillion medium-term infrastructure program. In Europe, substantial national responses are supposed to be complemented by a €750 billion Recovery plan, €390 billion as grants. While further discretionary interventions are foreseen at the national level and the Stability and Growth Pact is suspended for a second year, the general approach has become more cautious, mainly as an upshot of concerns about debt sustainability. Macroeconomic policies, evolving on different trajectories between the US and Europe, should come with international reverberations.
These diverging approaches and their implications will be discussed by three outstanding panelists: Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard Kennedy School, a pre-eminent expert on issues of international policy coordination; Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, currently chief economist in the French Finance Ministry, renowned for, inter alia, her work on international policy coordination as well as European public policy topics; and Jakob von Weizsäcker, chief economist in the German Finance Ministry, a former Member of the European Parliament, as well as one of the thought-provoking co-inventors of the blue-bond, red-bond proposal for issuance of common European debt. The policy web panel is a part of the SAFE Policy Lecture Series aiming at fostering debates on policy-relevant issues.
Presentation by Agnès Bénassy-Quéré (pdf)
Presentation by Jeffrey Frankel (pdf)
