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This week’s IGM European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Rising inequality is straining the health of liberal democracy.

B) Enacting more redistributive expenditures and policies would be likely to limit the rise of populism in Europe.

C) European governments should allocate more resources to policies that would be likely to limit the rise of populism in Europe, even if it means higher public debt or lower public spending in other areas.

  

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Having companies run to maximize shareholder value creates significant negative externalities for workers and communities.

B) Appropriately managed corporations could create significantly greater value than they currently do for a range of stakeholders – including workers, suppliers, customers and community members – with negligible impacts on shareholder value.

C) Effective mechanisms for boards of directors to ensure that CEOs act in ways that balance the interests of all stakeholders would be straightforward to introduce. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

A substantial source of the value of decentralized private cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, arises from their convenience for use in illegal activities. 

With the Eurozone economy weakening, many commentators are calling on the European Central Bank (ECB) to provide fresh stimulus. But what if the diverse monetary policy tools used by the ECB since the financial crisis have reached the limits of their effectiveness in promoting recovery? Could European governments contribute to stimulating the economy by increasing public spending or reducing taxes? And should fiscal policy now be focused more on raising demand by ‘loosening the public purse strings’ than on reducing public debt?

 

The recent World Cup success of the US women’s national soccer team was swiftly followed by calls for equal pay, and a reminder of the gender discrimination lawsuit that has been filed by the players against the sport’s national governing body, US Soccer. We invited our US panel to express their views on the economics behind this controversy.

 

Christine Lagarde, currently head of the International Monetary Fund, has been nominated to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank (ECB). The announcement came as part of a package of appointments to other key roles in European institutions: the president of the European Commission; the president of the European Council; and the European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy.

 

In May, the US Treasury published a report to Congress on the macroeconomic and foreign exchange policies of major trading partners of the United States. As Stanford economist and former Chicago Booth professor John Cochrane noted on his blog, this made clear reference to the possibility of currency manipulation: