CEPR - Centre for Economic Policy Research

Yesterday saw another successful iteration of the Barclays - CEPR Monetary Policy Forum. This year's Forum featured remarks from Boris Vujčić (European Central Bank), Alan Taylor (Bank of England), Frederic Mishkin (Columbia Business School), and Beatrice Weder di Mauro (CEPR President and Geneva Graduate Institute). With timely remarks from all speakers and a panel discussion, the event saw analysis of the Bank of England and European Central Bank's policy. CEPR President Beatrice Weder di Mauro also brought discussion of global imbalances to the fore. Thank you to our partners at Barclays and we look forward to another engaging panel next year. #MonetaryPolicy #CEPR #Economics #Finance #ECB #BoE

Join us online today, 23 June, for the 2026 Barclays-CEPR Monetary Policy Forum. Online | 13:00 - 16:30 BST Featuring remarks from and a panel with: 🔹Boris Vujčić (European Central Bank Vice-President) 🔹Alan Taylor (Bank of England MPC member) 🔹Frederic S. Mishkin (Professor and former Member of Federal Reserve Board) 🔹Beatrice Weder di Mauro (President of the CEPR & André Hoffmann Chair of Economics, Climate, and Nature Finance at the Geneva Graduate Institute) Learn more and join online: https://ow.ly/l6ts50ZfyMn

Brexit ten years on? Two major takeaways: large GDP reductions and minimal change in the number of foreign-born workers in Britain. The UK has been debating why its economy has been so sluggish since the mid-2010s. CEPR Fellow Nicholas Bloom and coauthors find that, as of 2025, Brexit reduced UK GDP by 6-8%, with the impact having accumulated gradually over time. 🔗https://ow.ly/pypM50Zfwbx But what about immigration? Jonathan Portes shows that Brexit made only a modest difference to the number of foreign-born workers in Britain, though it had a large impact on their countries of origin with more non-EU migrants arriving as EU-born workers left. 🔗https://ow.ly/SCJg50Zfwbv How did we get here? Wanyu Chung spoke to Tim Phillips about visual bias of British tabloids in their portrayal of leave vs remain politicians during the referendum campaign and the emotional impact of imagery before and after the vote. 🔗https://ow.ly/xx0450Zfwbu Follow the evolution of the research over time with CEPR ebooks: 🔹Richard Baldwin's 2016 book featured over a dozen leading economists looking forward to determine the best path for the UK and EU: https://ow.ly/ExeX50Zfwbw 🔹Jonathan Portes' 2022 book brought together leading academic researchers on trade, immigration and political economy to assess what we had learned, 18 months on from the Brexit implementation: https://ow.ly/s1G250Zfwbt

In his Financial Times Free Lunch column, Martin E. Sandbu discusses our recent Barcelona report (Stephen Cecchetti, Hélène Rey, Xavier Vives). He writes: "The introduction is as good a guide to the main policy issues as I have seen. In particular, it helpfully directs our focus not so much to the technical possibilities digitisation brings as to what they mean for who is empowered and enriched by the systemic changes that can follow..." Martin continues: "It gives a nuanced discussion of how a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) can be designed to improve longstanding problems with the current system. And it does a good job of surveying both the risks and the opportunities of 'tokenisation' — the representation of claims by digital 'tokens' that can circulate through computer networks in decentralised ways — which the authors rightly point out is the key technological development." Martin is more critical of the report's assessment of the relative prospects of tokenized deposits and stablecoins. He interprets this assessment as reflecting a "preference for preserving the two-tier system," which he does not fully share (nor do we). Lucrezia Reichlin, our distinguished discussant at the online report launch, took a similar position, emphasizing how current euro area plans reflect efforts to protect banks' business models. The report is available here: https://lnkd.in/e_hAyKu3 A recording of the online presentation is available here: https://lnkd.in/etzxyJrs CEPR - Centre for Economic Policy Research University of Bern Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät der Universität Bern Department of Economics – University of Bern

That's a wrap on the second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference in Venice. Day 2, focused on "Globalisation and Fiscal Populism," brought two research presentations and a closing high-level policy panel at Venice International University. 📘 Openness, Integration, and the International Monetary Order Tarek A. Hassan (Boston University and CEPR), Thomas M. Mertens (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco), Jingye Wang (Renmin University of China), Tony Zhang (Arizona State University) Trade barriers can reshuffle the international monetary order. This paper shows that a currency's safety premium and its role as the global anchor currency depend as much on trade openness as on economic size. Find out more: https://ow.ly/L5VN50ZeNCs 📘 Lessons from Populism in Latin America Nicolás E. Magud, Antonio Spilimbergo (International Monetary Fund), Alejandro Werner (Georgetown Americas Institute) Backed by commodity booms, populist regimes in Latin America have tended to stay in power longer, weakening institutions and eroding macroeconomic fundamentals. Find out more: https://ow.ly/EGFp50ZeNCy The conference closed with a High-Level Panel on its central themes, globalisation, fiscal populism, and the future of the international monetary order, chaired by Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan and featuring: - Ricardo Caballero (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) - Maurice Obstfeld (PIIE, University of California, Berkeley and CEPR) - Hélène Rey (London Business School and CEPR) - Andrés Velasco (The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and CEPR) Thank you to all our authors, discussants, panellists and attendees, in Venice and online, as well as to our hosts CESifo. Recordings of both days will be available soon. #EconomicPolicy #FiscalPopulism #GlobalEcon #Venice

Defence spending is rising across Europe and beyond. The UK has committed to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, with ambitions to reach 3.5% over the next decade. That's around £30 billion a year for every additional percentage point of GDP. But what does society get back from that investment? In the latest episode of VoxTalks Economics, Tim Phillips speaks with John Van Reenen (The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)) about whether defence spending can also support economic growth through innovation. History offers some striking examples: nuclear power, GPS, and the internet all originated in military projects. But innovation spillovers don't have to be left to chance. Research on a US Air Force programme found that when the military asked firms what they could build, instead of prescribing solutions, it attracted startups, generated more original patents, and created stronger spillovers into the civilian economy. The lesson? If defence budgets are set to rise, governments should think carefully about how to maximise both security and innovation returns. 🎧 Listen to the episode now: https://ow.ly/8mN550ZeFEb #VoxTalks #Economics

Europe's Innovation Problem Is a Competition Problem In his contribution to CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Tommaso Valletti (Imperial College London and former Chief Competition Economist at the European Commission) offers a provocative reframing of Europe's innovation deficit: the problem is not only one of scale, capital, or regulation, but of market structure. In place of the conventional push for larger "European champions", he proposes three concrete reforms: shifting the burden of proof in merger review so that large acquisitions of young innovators face a presumption of harm; redirecting a portion of Europe's €2 trillion annual public procurement to create genuine demand for European alternatives; and embedding interoperability and open standards into digital markets by design. CEPR's Europe 2050 series adopts a long-term perspective to explore what Europe should aspire to become by 2050. Find out more about the project and read other contributions here: https://ow.ly/ZI8X50Z7Waf.

Day 1 of the Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference has begun at Venice International University with a focus on “Globalisation and Fiscal Populism” 🔴 Follow the livestream throughout the day: https://ow.ly/qnLe50ZezeM The day opened with opening remarks from Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Managing Editor of Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues, followed by two research presentations: 📘Tariffs, Uncertainty, and the Exchange Rate Alfonso Merendino (Università Bocconi), Tommaso Monacelli (Università Bocconi and CEPR) Unexpected increases in U.S. import tariffs can lead to a depreciation of the exchange rate, the opposite of the textbook prediction, with the sign of the response depending on the prevailing degree of structural trade-policy uncertainty. Find out more: https://ow.ly/jUcV50Zezc0 📘 Fiscal populism and monetary policy rules Luis I. Jácome (Georgetown University), Nicolás Magud, Samuel Pienknagura (International Monetary Fund), Martin Uribe (Columbia University) A powerful historical link between left-wing populist regimes, money-financed deficits, and inflation, one that still shapes how today's inflation-targeting central banks set interest rates Find out more: https://ow.ly/XBN450ZeB5H More to come tomorrow. Find out more: https://ow.ly/svFE50ZezCV #EconomicPolicy #FiscalPopulism #GlobalEcon #Venice