During the 1970s and 1980s, Belgium and Italy accumulated huge amounts of public debt. In the early 1990s, at the time of the Maastricht Treaty, public debt reached a peak of nearly 140 percent of GDP in Belgium and nearly 130 percent in Italy. After Maastricht, both countries made major fiscal...

We investigate how university governance affects research output, measured by patenting and international university research rankings. For both European and U.S. universities, we generate several measures of autonomy, governance, and competition for research funding. We show that university...

Jean Pisani-Ferry and André Sapir believe that the euro has proved attractive as a fair-weather currency for countries and investors well beyond its borders. But it still remains to be seen if its governance is strong enough for it to succeed as a stormy-weather currency. The authors already...

The financial crisis exposed Europe's inadequacy in developing an effective banking resolution framework that could bring together national authorities and set guidelines for their coordination. The European Commission, through its assessment of state aid cases, managed to avoid single market...

André Sapir produced this short paper at the request of Commissioner Mandelson for the Expert Seminar on Trade Defence Instruments at the European Commission.

This paper discusses the creation of a European Banking Union. First, we discuss questions of design. We highlight seven fundamental choices that decision makers will need to make: Which EU countries should participate in the banking union? To which categories of banks should it apply? Which...

Jean Pisani-Ferry and André Sapir call for more focused guidelines in Lisbon 2, an explicit methodology for evaluating National Reform Programmes, and better ownership of these programmes to encourage national debate on key areas of underperformance in member states. This paper, prepared at the...