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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 4h

Ignazio Visco writes for #Europe2050 to argue that Europe lacks the institutions to turn private wealth into productive investment. He proposes a permanent European safe asset built by transferring the portion of national debt into a common European debt-management vehicle. cepr.org/publications...

Europe is not short of savings, its households hold one of the world's largest stocks of private financial wealth, but Ignazio Visco (former Governor, Bank of Italy) argues in this contribution to CEPR's Europe 2050 series that it lacks the institutions to turn that wealth into productive investment. Too much of it sits in deposits and low-risk domestic assets while innovative, technology-intensive firms struggle to find late-stage financing and increasingly turn to foreign investors instead. Visco's central proposal is a permanent European safe asset, built by transferring the portion of national debt exceeding the Maastricht threshold of 60% of GDP, more than €4 trillion in total, into a common European debt-management vehicle that continuously refinances it through highly liquid securities. Crucially, this is not debt mutualisation: a "tax lock" mechanism would keep each member state responsible for servicing its own share through dedicated revenue streams, addressing fears about moral hazard that have stalled previous proposals such as Blue Bonds or Blanchard and Ubide's fixed-share Eurobond scheme. He argues that political resistance to financial integration is often self-defeating, since the countries most concerned about fiscal discipline are precisely those with the strongest interest in a credible, well-designed common safe asset. Drawing a direct parallel with the Cecchini Report, which built momentum for the 1992 Single Market by quantifying the "cost of non-Europe", Visco calls for a similar exercise for finance, then sets out a three-stage sequence: first removing barriers through convergence in insolvency and tax procedures, then deepening the Savings and Investment Union via the proposed 28th regime, and only then introducing the safe asset as culmination rather than starting point. His closing argument is what he calls the sovereignty paradox: in a world of continental-scale capital markets, pooling financial capacity may be what allows member sta...

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 30/09/2026

@baldwinre.bsky.social writes for #Europe2050 contending Europe should not try to restore the old, American-led trading order, but instead become the strongest centre of gravity in the new one by playing to its strengths of economic mass, rule-based order & predictability. cepr.org/publications...

Twenty-five years from now, Richard Baldwin (IMD Business School) argues, the world trade system will not have collapsed but been rebuilt, into three blocs, Europe, the US and China, none strong enough to dominate the others. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series as a "future history" looking back from 2050, he contends Europe should not try to restore the old, American-led order but instead become the strongest centre of gravity in the new one, using what he calls trade clout: economic mass multiplied by rule quality multiplied by predictability, all three levers within Europe's own control. He credits Europe's advantage partly to social cohesion, arguing a "muscular social policy" that keeps both winners and losers from economic change invested in the project gives Europe a stability the US bloc lacks, where populist swings remain a structural feature rather than a passing phase. Reviewing the EU's actual conduct since the tariff shock of April 2025, accepting an asymmetric deal with Washington rather than retaliating, building deterrent "bunkers" like the Anti-Coercion Instrument without firing them, and striking a rapid run of trade deals with India, Mercosur and Mexico, he reads this as disciplined strategy rather than weakness, given Europe's continued security dependence on the US. He traces the wider pattern to what he calls domino regionalism, in which countries outside the US-China conflict organise themselves into a "system of solar systems" with the EU as its largest sun, and sets out ten steps to reinforce this: completing the single market, enlarging to Ukraine and the Western Balkans, pursuing interoperability rather than merger with the CPTPP, and organising a "leadership herd" to negotiate a transparency and disciplines compact on Chinese industrial subsidies. His closing argument is that none of this is fully achievable without the last item on his list: an independently defended Europe, since trade policy can never be entirely autonomous while ...

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 29/09/2026

We're pleased to announce that CEPR's podcast, VoxTalks Economics presented by @talknormal.co.uk, is a finalist for a Signal Award two years in a row! Visit the link below to cast your vote for the Listener's Choice. Voting is open through 15 October. ow.ly/EFNy50ZSGQv @signalawards.bsky.social

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 29/09/2026

The 1st Women in International Trade (WIT) European Conference starts tomorrow in Gerzensee, Switzerland. Programme: cepr.org/events/1st-w... Partners: @kiel.institute and the CAGE Research Centre Organisers: @estherboler.bsky.social, K Erhardt, @martinamagli.bsky.social @martasantamaria.bsky.social

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 29/09/2026

P Aghion, @abergeaud.bsky.social , S Bunel, and A Roulet argue that there is no reason to expect that the net effect of AI on employment will be negative. However, as the direction of AI is yet unknown, they push for European-level "labour-enhancing" industrial policy. cepr.org/publications...

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 28/09/2026

Thank you to all of the attendees, speakers, and organisers for joining us in Barcelona for the 2026 joint workshop on Incentives, Management and Organization (IMO) and Entrepreneurship, Strategy and Firm Dynamics (ESF)!

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 28/09/2026

CEPR Discussion Papers Week Ending 27/09/2026 - ow.ly/ClqU50ZS94u

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 28/09/2026

The private sector has been slow to build in front-end interfaces that would let Europeans use the TIPS system. @agnesbq.bsky.social argues that the forthcoming digital euro will break the deadlock, neutralising the network effects entrenching Visa and Mastercard. #Europe2050

In August 2025, two European judges on the International Criminal Court lost access to Paypal, Visa and Mastercard after being sanctioned by the US administration over arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré (Banque de France) treats this as the wake-up call it should have been: as of 2026, thirteen of the euro area's 21 member countries remain entirely reliant on non-EU networks for card payments, and even the domestic schemes that do exist are not interoperable across borders. This is despite the euro area having had a sovereign instant payment system, TIPS, since 2018, now extended to Sweden and Denmark; the problem, she argues, has been a private sector too slow to build the front-end interfaces that would let citizens actually use it at the till or online. Her central case is that the forthcoming digital euro, expected around 2029, can break this deadlock precisely because it will be legal tender: merchants will have to accept it, neutralising the network effects that entrench Visa and Mastercard, while a "waterfall" mechanism keeps wallets useable for payments without turning them into a competing store of value that drains bank deposits or the data banks rely on. She then extends the argument to wholesale finance, where a second wake-up call is looming: if tokenised securities end up settling in privately issued stablecoins rather than central bank money, the ECB could lose its role as lender of last resort over wholesale transactions, with financial stability and seigniorage both at risk. Her account of the Eurosystem's response, the Pontes and Appia projects, an expanding TIPS network reaching India and Switzerland, and participation in the BIS's Agorà initiative, reads less as a wish list than a project tracker: the infrastructure exists or is being built, and the outstanding question is less technical than one of urgency and adoption.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 28/09/2026

Join us on 16 October for an insightful conversation on European competition with Anthony Whelan, Director General of DG Competition, @cristinacaffarra.bsky.social & @tomasoduso.bsky.social 📆5:00 PM - 6:30 PM (CEST) | Online Register now: ow.ly/uWVn50ZS7Qk

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 25/09/2026

📢 #CallForPapers - CEPR-IO Virtual Gathering PhD candidates at European institutions are invited to submit their job market paper between 26 and 30 October to present at the next CEPR-IO Virtual Gathering. ow.ly/I1kS50ZRkzW Organisers: Daniel Ershov, João Montez, & Jiekai Zhang #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 25/09/2026

Sandra Sequeira & Hillel Rapoport propose a three-tier system for migration policy for Europe: cities testing and reporting what they can absorb, states setting aggregate numbers informed by that evidence, & multilateral arrangements coordinating training & credential recognition. ow.ly/EWep50ZRpEn

Migration policy is being decided under conditions unusually hostile to deciding well, with debate narrowed to how many immigrants to admit rather than on what terms. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Sandra Sequeira (LSE) and Hillel Rapoport (Paris School of Economics) identify five myths they argue are distorting Europe's approach. First, that the public has turned decisively against migration: two decades of survey data show attitudes have been broadly stable or rising since 2002, with support conditional on integration outcomes rather than hostile outright, even as media coverage of a declining irregular flow creates an illusion of consensus opposition. Second, that guest worker programmes offer an easy win-win: historically they outlive the conditions that justified them, prove hard to close once opened, and undermine their own fiscal rationale by keeping workers in low-discretion jobs below their skill level, since anyone genuinely expected to leave has little incentive to invest in language or credentials. Third, that migration solves ageing: stabilising Europe's dependency ratio through migration alone would require inflows several times larger than anything now contemplated, and each new cohort simply ages into the dependent population it was recruited to support. Fourth, that quantity and quality can be cleanly separated: restrictive rhetoric aimed at attracting only the highly skilled disproportionately repels exactly those workers, who have more destination choices, producing what the authors call a "vicious circle of xenophobia" in which a more low-skilled composition then fuels the populism that drove skilled migrants away. Fifth, that policy experimentation is politically unfeasible: it is in fact happening across Europe, from Spanish regularisation to Irish and Italian pilots, but almost never designed to be evaluated, leaving governments to learn, if at all, from data collected years later for other purp...

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 25/09/2026

@lucafornaro.bsky.social writes for CEPR's #Europe2050 and argues that Europe's transformation into an innovation leader depends less on structural reform alone than on getting the macroeconomic mix right. Robust productivity and strong demand can be mutually reinforcing. ow.ly/PqH850ZQZF9

The European Union faces a choice: keep competing in low-tech sectors by compressing wages, or become a genuine technological leader through innovation. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Luca Fornaro argues that this transformation depends less on structural reform alone than on getting the macroeconomic mix right. His starting point is the "European stagnation trap" of the 2010s, when fiscal austerity and a monetary policy constrained by the zero lower bound produced a decade of weak demand and depressed investment, business investment took ten years just to recover its pre-2008 peak, and the productivity gap with the United States widened as a result. Fornaro's central argument is that robust productivity growth and strong demand can be mutually reinforcing rather than in tension: faster productivity growth is disinflationary, which gives central banks room to support demand without stoking inflation, which in turn encourages the business investment that drives further productivity gains. He argues this "virtuous cycle" means the composition of any economic expansion matters as much as its scale, with booms driven by high-tech, tradable sectors proving far more sustainable than those driven by construction or credit expansion in non-tradables. On fiscal policy, he points to evidence that public R&D investment can be self-financing, given estimated returns of 140 to 210%, and argues that high-debt countries in particular stand to benefit from redirecting spending towards such high-return public goods rather than treating debt as a reason to retrench. His final concern is that public debt overhangs risk splitting the EU into a fiscally sound bloc that invests and grows, and a fiscally stagnant one that cannot, with capital flowing from the latter to the former and widening the divide; joint EU-level financing of public goods, he argues, is one way to guard against this two-speed outcome.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 25/09/2026

Join CEPR and @piie.com for the launch of the 29th Geneva Report. 30 September from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM EDT The report authors, Valentina Bruno, Steven B. Kamin, Cédric Tille, and Ángel Ubide, in conversation with moderator Caroline Atkinson. Register to join online: cepr.org/events/genev...

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 24/09/2026

Join us online for the next session of the Virtual Seminar on Monetary Economics. @ludwigstraub.bsky.social will present the paper "Exchange Rates and Monetary Policy with Heterogeneous Agents: Sizing up the Real Income Channel". 1 October 2026 | 17:00 CEST 🔗 ow.ly/4Yms50Z2zqW

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 23/09/2026

Abebe Aemro Selassie argues that Europe is cutting aid, narrowing legal migration channels, & overlooking Africa for investment precisely when demographics argue for closer ties. Europe's disengagement is a choice, and Africa can look elsewhere for partners. cepr.org/publications... #Europe2050

By 2050, one in four people on earth will be African, and the continent will account for nearly 80% of the net increase in the world's working-age population between now and mid-century. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Abebe Aemro Selassie (Blavatnik School of Government) argues that Europe is walking away from the partner best placed to help it navigate this shift, cutting aid, narrowing legal migration channels and overlooking Africa for investment, at precisely the moment the demographic arithmetic argues for closer ties. The numbers are stark: the EU's working-age population will shrink from around 285 million to 230 million over the next 25 years, while Africa's grows by more than 700 million, a "demographic scissors" that leaves one continent short of workers and the other short of jobs for them. Selassie is careful not to oversell migration as a fix on its own, he estimates Europe would need some 150 million additional workers just to preserve its current ratio of active workers to retirees, and argues legal pathways could plausibly cover only 10-15% of that shortfall, but he insists Europe should build predictable channels now, before ageing rivals from Canada to the Gulf states intensify competition for the same mobile labour. He identifies climate finance as a second natural area for partnership: renewable energy projects in Africa cost two to three times more to finance than identical projects in Europe, purely because of currency and sovereign risk, a gap EU-backed guarantees and local-currency lending could narrow substantially. Finally, he argues Europe and Africa share an interest in defending a rules-based trading order against being squeezed as price-takers between Chinese manufacturing dominance and American financial and technological power, and should negotiate jointly rather than separately, including calibrating instruments like the EU's carbon border mechanism to reflect African im...

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 23/09/2026

In their contribution to CEPR's #Europe2050 initiative, Marco Buti, Ivo Maes, & André Sapir argue that the EU's incremental, technocratic fixes have run their course and only explicit, citizen backed institutional reform can equip the EU to act. ow.ly/33sq50ZQ6y7

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 23/09/2026

The CEPR Virtual Industrial Organisation Seminar #VIOS Series starts up again on 30 September at 15:00 CEST featuring Karam Kang presenting: 'Inefficiencies in Local Infrastructure: Evidence from Drinking Water in California' Discussant: Claire Lim Register: cepr.org/events/event... #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 23/09/2026

📢 #CallForPapers - 2027 WEFIDEV - RFS - CEPR Conference 📆6-8 May 2027 |📍 Milan, Italy ⌛Deadline: 15 November 2026 Theoretical and empirical submissions on financial markets in low and middle-income countries are invited. ow.ly/nwon50ZQ2Ty

To promote research on issues in this important area, the WEFIDEV network in Finance and Development, the CEPR, and the Review of Financial Studies will convene a research conference on finance and development.
The conference will be held in person on May 6th through 8th in Milan, Italy and will be hosted at the SDA Bocconi School of Management at Bocconi University. This will be the third annual conference in finance and development featuring a dual submission option with the RFS.

We invite the submission of empirical – both experimental and non-experimental – as well as theoretical work on financial markets in low and middle-income countries. We encourage submissions from early-career scholars including PhD students, and underrepresented groups.

The program will be organised by RFS Executive Editor Tarun Ramadorai of LSE, Imperial College Business School and CEPR, RFS Editor Viral Acharya of New York University and CEPR, and program chairs Giorgia Barboni, Kim Fe Cramer, Sean Higgins, and Nicola Limodio, along with the programme committee.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 22/09/2026

Next week on the Autumn #WE_ARE Seminar Series, we will be focusing on Microeconomics & Applied Microeconomics! 🎙️Viola Salvestrini 📄Gender Diversity and Decision-Making in Teams 🎤Anne Boring Register 👉 ow.ly/KCRs50ZQeuF ⏰Monday 28th @ 4.15pm (GMT) #EconSky #WomenInEcon

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 22/09/2026

@jafrieden.bsky.social & @stefwalter.bsky.social argue that Europe's problem is political: there is no consensus among member states about how far and how fast to integrate. Rather than waiting, Europe should move in coalitions in areas of high payoff and high political friction. ow.ly/iECq50ZQ5OU

The EU was built for a rules-based, Western-led international order that now looks like a relic. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Jeffry Frieden (Columbia) and Stefanie Walter (University of Zurich and Bruegel) argue that Europe's problem in confronting an adversarial United States, an assertive China and a hostile Russia is not primarily economic but political: there is no consensus among member states, or within them, about how far and how fast to integrate. Drawing on survey data spanning the Eurozone crisis and party positions across the EU27, they show that political feasibility varies enormously by issue, from near-unanimous support for expanding the ESM to near-universal rejection of Commission pre-approval of national budgets, and that this feasibility rarely lines up with where the economic payoff from integration is largest. Their answer is differentiated integration: rather than waiting for unanimity, Europe should let coalitions of the willing move first in areas of high payoff and high political friction, such as a European safe asset or joint defence of the eastern border, while leaving areas like welfare or education policy at the national level and treating others, from grid integration to joint procurement, as low-hanging fruit. They point to Schengen's evolution from five founding members to near-universal EU membership as the template: a successful club creates its own momentum, making it increasingly costly for holdouts to stay outside. Beyond institutional design, they argue Europe's leaders need three habits it currently lacks: crafting reforms with built-in flexibility and lock-in effects rather than one-size-fits-all treaties, being honest with voters about the genuine trade-offs of compromises rather than pretending them away, and communicating in language citizens can actually parse, given that Commission press releases are, on average, harder to read than academic journal abstracts.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 22/09/2026

We'd like to congratulate CEPR VP and Distinguished Fellow @pgourinchas.bsky.social, the recipient of the 2026 Bernhard Harms Prize awarded by @kiel.institute. Pierre-Olivier has been an established member of the CEPR community since 1998. Full statement: ow.ly/eQk050ZPFlZ

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 22/09/2026

#CallForPapers International Seminar on Trade (ISoT) – 3rd Edition 20-21 May 2027 | Munich, Germany Deadline: 10 Jan 2027 Organisers: Costas Arkolakis, Carsten Eckel, Lisandra Flach, Gianmarco Ottaviano, Claudia Steinwender, Daria Taglioni cepr.org/events/inter... @econmunich.bsky.social @cesifo.org

The Journal of International Economics, LMU Munich, ifo, CESifo, World Bank, and CEPR are pleased to organise the 3rd edition of the “International Seminar on Trade” (ISoT). The conference will feature a keynote address by Kalina Manova (UCL and CEPR).
20-21 May 2027 - ifo Institute, Munich, Germany
The organisers invite submissions for the 3rd edition. By submitting a paper in response to this call, authors agree that it may also be considered for publication in a special issue of the Journal of International Economics. Paper submitted to ISoT must therefore not be under consideration for publication in another journal.
The refereeing process for the special issue will be overseen by two Guest Editors, who will be Kalina Manova (UCL, CEPR) and Pol Antras (Harvard University, CEPR).
Organising Committee: Costas Arkolakis, Carsten Eckel, Lisandra Flach, Gianmarco Ottaviano, Claudia Steinwender, and Daria Taglioni.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 21/09/2026

Europe has spent a quarter of a century building a financial architecture it has never agreed to finish. Florian Heider, Loriana Pelizzon, & Claudia Schaffranka set out 10 specific decisions that could keep a genuinely convergent Europe reachable within 15 years. ow.ly/mIZ350ZPBUS #Europe2050

Europe has spent a quarter of a century building a financial architecture it has never agreed to finish. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Florian Heider, Loriana Pelizzon and Claudia Schaffranka (all SAFE, Goethe University Frankfurt) argue that the usual framing of the choice ahead, completion versus collapse, is a false binary. The likelier outcome, they contend, is a third state they call mediocrity: an architecture in which every institution formally exists, every directive has been transposed, and none of it binds. Twenty-seven insolvency regimes, no common safe asset, and a Banking Union missing its deposit insurance pillar leave capital and liquidity trapped inside national borders, even as European households export around €300 billion a year into more liquid American markets. Mediocrity has genuine beneficiaries, from national supervisors to domestic banks with captive deposit bases, which is precisely why it persists: each element of completion imposes concentrated, immediate costs on organised incumbents while its benefits are diffuse and go to firms and savers who do not yet exist. But the authors insist mediocrity is not a stable resting point. It is a state built for calm conditions that decays into fragmentation under stress, and the conditions that made it survivable for twenty-five years are ending: tokenisation, stablecoins and AI are standard-setting contests that Europe cannot win by abstaining, and a fragmented Europe's fallback is not national self-sufficiency but deeper dependence on American capital markets and dollar-denominated digital money. They set out ten specific, largely already-drafted decisions, from a permanent EU safe asset to completing deposit insurance, that could keep a genuinely convergent Europe reachable within fifteen years, arguing that this is a hard ask but a precise one: not what Europe should aspire to, but which of ten known files it is prepared to conclude.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 21/09/2026

23 September @17:00 CEST International Macro History Online Seminar #IMHOS 🗣️Barry Eichengreen presents 'Money Beyond Borders' Chair: Rui Esteves ✍️ cepr.org/events/event... #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 21/09/2026

The winter conference in December 2025 of the EP:PEGI brought together economists to discuss Ukraine's wartime economy and reconstruction. That work is now out on Oxford University Press (Vol. 41, Issue 125): ow.ly/ihla50ZKl9f

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 18/09/2026

CEPR congratulates Michael Kremer on his appointment as Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. Michael joined CEPR as a Research Fellow in 2006 and is currently a Fellow in two programme areas. We are delighted to see him recognised with this appointment. Full statement: ow.ly/LPpF50ZP6Iq

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 18/09/2026

📢 #CallForPapers - 27th CEPR-JIE Conference on Applied Industrial Organization 📆27-28 May 2027 | 📍 @tilburg-university.bsky.social ⌛Deadline: 22 November Organisers: @florianederer.bsky.social, @kleintob.bsky.social, Jeanine Miklós-Thal, & Nicola Pavanini ow.ly/WgWU50ZP5Y3 @erc.europa.eu

The 2027 CEPR-JIE Conference on Applied Industrial Organization will take place in Tilburg, Netherlands, hosted by the Tilburg University, on Thursday 27 and Friday 28 of May 2027.
The Applied IO conference series seeks to contribute to the understanding of the breadth of topics analysed within the field of Industrial Organization, including demand analysis, productivity, competition in the short- and long-run, innovation, investment, and auctions.
The programme will cover a wide range of topics in Industrial Organization. In addition, for this edition of the conference, we will organise a dedicated session on Housing and Mortgages and we welcome submissions on the topic.
Scientific Committee: Florian Ederer (Boston University Questrom School of Business), Tobias Klein (Tilburg University), Jeanin Miklós-Thal (University of Rochester), Nicola Pavanini (Tilburg University).

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 18/09/2026

Updated information - all relevant dates remain the same.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 17/09/2026

Register for online or limited in-person attendance for a high-level conference: "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once? Demography, Human Capital, and Economic Transformation". The conference will be held at the World Bank's Paris Office on 1-2 October. RSVP by 25 September. ✍️ ow.ly/VOvy50ZOIOJ

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 17/09/2026

Join us online today and tomorrow (17-18 September) for the 12th Monash-Paris-Warwick-Zurich-CEPR Text-As-Data Workshop! Details on how to join and the programme can be found here: us10.campaign-archive.com?e=[UNIQID]&u... #EconSky #EconConf

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 15/09/2026

📢 #CallForPapers - 3rd CEPR Applied Micro-Economic History Workshop 25-26 February 2027 |📍Berlin Deadline: 31 October Organisers: P Ager, N Boberg-Fazlic, S Braun, B Caprettini, S Lehmann-Hasemeyer, @cathrinmohr.bsky.social cepr.org/events/3rd-c... @kiel.institute & @dfg.de

We are pleased to announce the 3rd CEPR Applied Micro-Economic History Workshop organised with the support of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
The workshop will take place on 25 and 26 February 2027 in central Berlin and will be hosted by the Kiel Institute.
We welcome submissions from all areas of applied micro-economic history, including, but not restricted to, migration, trade, innovation, inequality, political economy, and long-run development. Papers should be submitted as complete manuscripts; extended abstracts will only be considered in exceptional cases.
The submission deadline is 31 October 2026 at 18:00 GMT.
Organisers: Philipp Ager (University of Mannheim & CEPR), Nina Boberg-Fazlic (University of Mannheim & CEPR), Sebastian Till Braun (Kiel Institute for the World Economy & CAU Kiel), Bruno Caprettini (University of St Gallen & CEPR), Sibylle Lehmann-Hasemeyer (University of Hohenheim & CEPR), Cathrin Mohr (Kiel Institute for the World Economy & Hamburg University).

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 15/09/2026

The VDEV-CEPR-BREAD Seminars are back! The series features invited speakers in the area of Development Economics. Starting on 22 September, the sessions will take place virtually, bi-weekly on Tuesdays at 4PM CET / 3PM GMT / 10AM EST / 7AM PST. Register and learn more: ow.ly/rT3E50ZNGvx #EconSky

Organisers: Jenny Aker, Nicolás de Roux, Garance Genicot, Suanna Oh, Nishith Prakash, Anthony Wambugu

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 14/09/2026

L Bini Smaghi & M Marcussen argue Europe's policy debate has focused overwhelmingly on the goal while paying far less attention to how it will be financed. They propose systematic ex ante financeability assessment and apply the lens to the EU's proposed budget. cepr.org/publications... #Europe2050

Europe's strategic agenda, closing the innovation gap, decarbonising competitively, and reducing security dependencies, comes with a price tag of at least 4.5% of GDP annually into the 2030s, rising to over €1.2tn a year once full defence spending is included. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi (Euro50 Group, UCL) and Michala Marcussen (Société Générale) argue that Europe's policy debate has focused overwhelmingly on defining this destination while paying far less attention to how it will actually be financed. Their central proposal is a systematic ex ante financeability assessment, evaluating not just funding volume but whether financing can generate genuine risk-bearing capacity without creating new strategic dependencies, built around five dimensions: economic rationale, risk management, loss absorption, scalability and strategic autonomy. Applying this lens, they find the EU's own budgetary firepower falls well short, with the proposed 2028-2034 budget likely covering only 10-30% of investment needs, and identify a series of blind spots in the current debate: the underappreciated role of public investment in unlocking private capital, the risk that scarce EU funding pushes innovative firms to seek capital abroad and lose European ownership in the process, and the mistaken assumption that European households save cautiously out of risk aversion when the binding constraint is more often liquidity, given how much wealth is tied up in illiquid, leveraged housing. They are equally sceptical that private capital markets alone can close the gap, noting that America's own risk-sharing capacity rests heavily on public and quasi-public backstops that Europe's securitisation and safe asset debates have largely overlooked. Their conclusion is that unlocking investment demand and building financial risk-bearing capacity are equally urgent tasks, and that neither will happen by default.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 14/09/2026

CEPR Discussion Papers Week Ending 13/09/2026 - ow.ly/FkY350ZNb1V

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 14/09/2026

#CallForPapers - Financial Stability in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Finance Deadline: 2 November 2026 18-19 March 2027 | Deutsche Bundesbank , Munich Tobias Berg, Jean-Edouard Colliard, Rainer Haselmann, Loriana Pelizzon, Javier Suarez ow.ly/imeT50ZLe3R #EconSky #EconConf

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 14/09/2026

📢Final Reminder! #CallForPapers - @kiel.institute -CEPR-World Bank African Economic Development Conference (AEDC) 28 - 29 Jan 2027 | Rome, Italy Submit a paper by 15 September, 2026. cepr.org/events/kiel-... #EconSky #EconConf

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 11/09/2026

Emmanuelle Auriol argues that economic immigration to Europe must become a normal instrument of policy rather than an exception. To achieve this, she proposes a three-track compact that lets national sovereignty coexist with a genuinely European labour market. #Europe2050 #EconSky ow.ly/Gqu150ZMvmI

Europe's debate on immigration is usually organised around emergencies: a border arrival, an asylum dispute, a shortage in one occupation. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Emmanuelle Auriol (Toulouse School of Economics) argues that this short-term framing obscures the question that actually matters by 2050: whether Europe will have enough workers, carers, engineers and taxpayers to sustain its prosperity and strategic autonomy. With the EU's old-age dependency ratio set to approach 50% by mid-century, she argues that economic immigration must become a normal instrument of policy rather than an exception, though not through open borders: the goal should be managed openness, with predictable volumes, enforceable rights and real sanctions against abuse. Auriol proposes a three-track compact: a genuine European Talent and Graduate Route built around the new EU Talent Pool, with an automatic three-year graduate permit so international students are not lost just as their economic contribution begins; dynamic national shortage lists covering essential work at all skill levels, not only exceptional talent, backed by portable short-term and circular permits that let workers change employer within their sector; and a sustained attack on irregular employment itself, following Japan and Finland in verifying work authorisation and sanctioning employers rather than relying on border enforcement alone. Legal channels and enforcement, she argues, must be introduced together: offered separately, each backfires. Member states would keep control over admission volumes, while the EU supplies the shared infrastructure, from skills recognition to recruitment fee rules, that lets national sovereignty coexist with a genuinely European labour market.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 11/09/2026

The full programme of the Frontier Research on Fiscal Policy conference is now available! Over two days we will hear from three keynote speakers & enjoy four presentation sessions, all hosted at @eui-eu.bsky.social on 15-16 October. View the programme: cepr.org/events/front... #EconConf #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 10/09/2026

Join us online for the next session of the Virtual Seminar on Monetary Economics. @ygorodnichenko.bsky.social will present the paper "Monetary Policy According to Households: Perceptions, Reactions and Channels". 17 September 2026 | 17:00 CEST 🔗 ow.ly/4Yms50Z2zqW #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 09/09/2026

New CEPR #ebook! Globalization at the Crossroads: PSE-CEPR Policy Forum Keynotes Isabelle Méjean: 'Trade Policy under Geopolitical Stress' @pantras.bsky.social 'The Remains of the Trade: The US-China Trade War and its Aftermath' Gita Gopinath: 'The Third Wave: Addressing Global Imbalances' #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 08/09/2026

CEPR welcomes Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas as Vice President for Research and Refet Gürkaynak as Vice President for Special Projects. Their appointments are part of a series of changes across CEPR's senior leadership, Advisory Board & research programmes. Read the full press release: ow.ly/xnjK50ZKH6b

CEPR is pleased to announce the appointment of Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas (University of California, Berkeley) and Refet Gürkaynak (Bilkent Üniversitesi) to CEPR’s senior leadership team as Vice President for Research and Vice President for Special Projects, respectively.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas will help shape CEPR’s research agenda and priorities, while Refet Gürkaynak will lead the development of the Centre’s central banking community and the next phase of the Europe-Asia Initiative.

Their appointments coincide with Hélène Rey stepping down as Vice President to join the Bank for International Settlements – BIS. We thank Hélène for her important and lasting contribution to CEPR, notably through her leadership of the Women in Economics Initiative. She will remain closely involved as a Distinguished Fellow and member of the Advisory Board.

Read the full press release: https://ow.ly/xnjK50ZKH6b

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 08/09/2026

📢 #CallForPapers BIS – CEPR – GERZENSEE – SFI Conference on Financial Intermediation 2027 Study Center Gerzensee | 2-5 May 2027 ⌛Deadline: 20 Nov 2026 Organisers: Christoph Basten, Diana Bonfim, Sebastian Doerr, @fuster.bsky.social, Emilia Garcia-Appendini, Thomas Nellen ow.ly/58mA50ZKxmo #EconSky

BIS - CEPR - Gerzensee - SFI Conference on Financial Intermediation 2027

Hosted by the Study Center Gerzensee (Foundation of the Swiss National Bank).
When: 2–5 May 2027
This conference brings together globally leading researchers to present their latest work on financial intermediation and related areas, covering both empirics and theory.
The conference is committed to promoting diversity in the covered topics (including non-bank financial institutions, macro-finance, climate/green finance, household finance, and fintech), in the modelling techniques and data sets employed, and in participants’ background.
Deadline: 20 November 2026
Organisers: Christoph Basten, Diana Bonfim, Sebastian Doerr, Andreas Fuster, Emilia Garcia-Appendini, Thomas Nellen

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 07/09/2026

Absent greater safeguards, Europe is exposed to dollar runs via multi-country stablecoin issuance outside its control. A new CEPR #PolicyInsight argues for contingent redemption measures that will confer Europe greater strategic independence. cepr.org/publications... #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 07/09/2026

CEPR Discussion Papers Week Ending 06/09/2026 - ow.ly/lfY250ZKjI6

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 07/09/2026

9 Sep @17:00 CEST International Macro History Online Seminar #IMHOS @kevinhorourke.eurosky.social presents 'The International Transmission of Commodity Shocks: High-Frequency Evidence from Futures Markets in the Interwar Period' Chair: @kwandschneider.bsky.social cepr.org/events/event... #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 07/09/2026

The next session of the CEPR Advanced Forum in Financial Economics #CAFFE 8 September @ 14:00 CEST. Melissa Prado presents "Socially Responsible Investing and Multinationals' Environmental Harm: Evidence from Global Remote Sensing Data" Register: ow.ly/nYNE50ZKhXu #EconSky

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 03/09/2026

Join the @safefrankfurt.bsky.social & CEPR RPN EFA webinar series on Financial Regulation in the Era of Fragmentation, AI & Geopolitics. 14 September @ 16:00 CEST: What needs to be done to improve the efficiency of the resolution framework of the banking union ow.ly/7rqn50ZIJCc #EconSky

SAFE and the EFA RPN welcome you to the third session of the SAFE- CEPR EFA RPN Webinar Series, that will take place on September 14, 2026 at 4pm CEST.

Ruth Walters from BIS will present the paper What needs to be done to improve the efficiency of the resolution framework of the banking union. Ioannis Asimakopoulos, a financial regulation practitioner at Herbert Smith Freehills and affiliated researcher at SAFE, will discuss, and Tobias Tröger from SAFE will moderate.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 02/09/2026

@jnbarrot.bsky.social argues Europe is not condemned to disappear between Washington & Beijing. Europe should use this time of great-power rivalry to build the strategic muscle to act independently, based in sovereignty, international law & cooperation. cepr.org/publications... #Europe2050 #EconSky

Much of the debate about 2050 assumes the world's trajectory is already fixed: a rivalry between an incumbent and a rising superpower that will eventually force every nation to pick a side. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Jean-Noël Barrot (Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, French Government) argues that this equation has an unknown variable: Europe. Tracing the erosion of the post-1945 order, from the "exorbitant" security, monetary and commercial dividends the United States drew from multilateralism to China's methodical accumulation of economic, diplomatic and military power, Barrot warns that the world risks drifting either into rival spheres of influence or into direct confrontation between two nuclear-armed powers. His central claim is that Europe is not, as some in Washington and Beijing would prefer, condemned to disappear from this picture. Drawing a deliberately limited historical parallel with Macedonia's rise during the Peloponnesian War, he argues that Europe can use this period of great-power rivalry to build the "strategic muscle" to act independently, anchored in sovereignty, international law and cooperation. He sets out three mutually reinforcing pillars for European power by 2050: security, meaning the capacity to defend European territory and interests with allies where possible and alone where necessary; prosperity, built on protecting the Single Market from unfair competition, deepening it to continental scale, mobilising European savings for European investment, and diversifying partnerships beyond China and the United States; and democracy, defended through resilience to disinformation and protection of citizens' freedom of judgement as AI and deepfakes blur the line between political debate and foreign interference. Europe's task, he concludes, is not to choose a side in someone else's rivalry but to keep open a third path.

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Centre for Economic Policy Research @cepr.org · 01/09/2026

Eric Monnet argues that Europe needs a common credit policy. Most of the institutions already exist - what is missing is the will to make them visible, coordinate them around shared objectives, and hold them properly to account. cepr.org/publications... #Europe2050 #EconSky

Europe has pooled its monetary sovereignty and is steadily strengthening fiscal coordination, but a third pillar of economic management, credit policy, has been left to fragment along national lines. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Eric Monnet (Paris School of Economics) argues that credit policy has not disappeared, with EU countries still hosting more than thirty national development banks and public institutions supplying around a third of European venture capital funding. What has been lost is coordination and democratic accountability, a far cry from the ambition behind the European Investment Bank's founding in the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Monnet points to real costs of this fragmentation: national promotional banks vary enormously in firepower, so new flexibility on state aid for clean technology tends to favour whichever states already have the deepest public balance sheets. His conclusion is that Europe does not need to invent a common credit policy from scratch, since most of the institutions already exist. What is missing is the will to make them visible, coordinate them around shared objectives, and hold them properly to account.

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