Olivier Blanchard

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Peterson Institute

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C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute
Chief Economist, International Monetary Fund (2008-15)
President-elect of the American Economic Association (2016- present)
Officier de la Légion d’Honneur (2008)

Voting History

Ride Sharing

Question A: Consumers will be better off, on balance, if European cities treat firms that provide ride-sharing platforms (such as Uber) as substantively different from taxi firms, and thus not necessarily warranting the same regulation.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	8		Uncertain	6

Question B: Assuming that taxi and ride-sharing companies were treated as substantively similar — including requirements that they operate on an equal footing regarding safety, insurance and taxation — letting ride-sharing services compete without restrictions on prices or routes would raise consumer welfare.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	8		Agree	7

Question C: Regardless of how ride-sharing services are treated, existing regulations for traditional taxi firms in many European cities harm consumers by limiting competition.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	1		Agree	7

France’s Labor Market

Question A: Revising France’s labor market policies — by reducing employment protection, decentralizing labor negotiations to the firm level, and making training programs more accessible and responsive to labor demands — would, all else equal, increase productivity in France’s economy.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7	those reforms are the right ones and should be implemented. Based on past empirical evidence, they should work. But one can never be sure.	Agree	7

Question B: Reducing employment protection would reduce the equilibrium unemployment rate in France.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	9	Such a reform changes the nature of unemployment (shorter duration, higher flows) for the better. Net effect on the rate is ambiguous.	Agree	7

ECB Asset Purchases

Question A: The ECB's asset purchases over the past two years have reduced the threat of deflation in the euro area as a whole.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	Hard to see how monetary expansion, in whatever form, would do nothing for activity or inflation. Cannot think of strong perverse effects	Agree	7

Question B: If the economic outlook in the euro area becomes less favorable, then increasing the ECB's asset purchase program (in size or duration) would substantially increase the euro area's economic growth over the following five years.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	one may disagree with ``strongly''. but it would work in the right direction.	Uncertain	6

Diversified Investing

In general, absent any inside information, an equity investor can expect to do better by holding a well-diversified, low-fee, passive index fund than by holding a few stocks.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	This is a no brainer. The only qualification is that the diversified portfolio may not be exactly the market portfolio.	Strongly Agree	9

Aging

Question A: Without changes in policy, a rising share of people who are over age 65 will exert a substantial downward influence on per capita real GDP in western European countries.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	The direct effect is nearly by construction. The indirect effects, on pay as you go, on fiscal balance, are well documented	Agree	7

Question B: In European countries where the share of those over 65 is rising, there are net social benefits to adjusting retirement ages for state-financed (including pay-as-you-go) pension systems upwards, so that revised retirement ages better reflect longer life expectancies.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	increase in retirement age, given increase in life expectancy and state of health, seems the least painful way to adjust.	Agree	8

City of London

Question A: All else equal, there are substantial advantages to having much of Europe’s human capital and infrastructure for international financial activity clustered in a single city, as they are at present in London.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	7

Question B: All else equal, Britain’s rules on hiring, firing and working hours are significantly more conducive to financial activity than those in other large European countries.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	8		Agree	7

Italy’s Banks

Question A: Setting the EU rules aside, and assuming it would take 2.5% of Italy’s GDP to recapitalize its banks, the Italian government would improve financial stability in Europe if it injected this amount of public funds into its banks.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	9	if italy's debt is sustainable at 130%, it is surely sustainable at 132.5% if the financial system is functioning better.	Agree	7

Question B: If Italy were to inject public funds into its banks without imposing losses on at least some claimants, an important cost would be the effect on future incentives (economic or political) in Europe.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	9	this is the old moral hazard argument. i believe it is relevant, but of marginal importance empirically.	Agree	8

Privatization in Central and Eastern Europe

On the whole, the shift from state to private ownership of many industrial assets in central and eastern European countries after communism has increased productivity in those countries.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	This is a no brainer.	Strongly Agree	8

Migration Within Europe

Question A: Freer movement of people to live and work across borders within Europe has made the average western European citizen better off since the 1980s.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	7		Agree	8

Question B: Freer movement of people to live and work across borders within Europe has made many low-skilled western European citizens worse off since the 1980s.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	8		Disagree	6

Trade Within Europe

Question A: Freer movement of goods and services across borders within Europe has made the average western European citizen better off since the 1980s.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	8		Strongly Agree	8

Question B: Freer movement of goods and services across borders within Europe has made many low-skilled western European citizens worse off since the 1980s.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	8		Disagree	7

Congestion Pricing

In general, using more congestion charges in crowded transportation networks — such as higher tolls during peak travel times in cities, and peak fees for airplane takeoff and landing slots — and using the proceeds to lower other taxes would make citizens on average better off.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree	10	no brainer for an economist, so long as redistribution implications taken care of.	Strongly Agree	8

Local Tax Incentives

Question A: Giving tax incentives to specific firms to locate operations in a country typically generates domestic benefits that outweigh the costs to the country providing the incentives.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain	9	it depends on the demand elasticity. There are cases where it is greater than one, but cases where it is less. ``typically'' is too strong	Uncertain	6

Question B: Europe as a whole benefits when European cities or countries compete with each other by giving tax incentives to firms to locate operations in their jurisdictions.

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Disagree	10	well known case of tax competition driving rates to zero. Zero rates are not optimal.	Disagree	7

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	8	I do not see the benefits which compensate the loss of full access to the EU market.	Agree	8

Vote	Confidence	Comments	Median Survey Vote	Median Survey Confidence
Agree	6	Again, loss of full access to UK market is a minus, although small. Political implications re EU construction can go one way or the other	Agree	7

This panel explores the views of European economists on vital public policy issues. It does this by polling them on important policy questions, by including a way for them to explain their answers briefly if they wish, and by disseminating these responses directly to the public in a simple format.

To that end, our panel was chosen to include distinguished experts with a keen interest in public policy from the main areas of economics, to be geographically diverse, and to include older and younger scholars. As with the IGM’s US panel, the experts are all outstanding researchers in their fields. The panel includes recipients of top national and international prizes in economics, fellows of the Econometric society and the European Economic Association, members of distinguished national and international policymaking bodies in Europe, recipients of significant grants for economic research, highly accomplished affiliates and program directors of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the National Bureau of Economic Research, and past and current editors of leading academic journals in the profession. This approach not only provides a set of panelists whose names will be familiar to other economists and the media, but also delivers a group with impeccable qualifications to speak on public policy matters in Europe and beyond.

Questions for the European IGM Economic Experts Panel are emailed individually to all members of the panel. They are phrased as statements with which one can agree or disagree. The experts are also asked how confident they are in their knowledge of the issue associated with the question (10 being highest). Each panelist responds electronically at his or her convenience. Panelists may consult whatever resources they like before answering. They may also include brief comments with their responses, or provide links to relevant sources.

It is important to explain one aspect of our voting process. In some instances a panelist may neither agree nor disagree with a statement, and there can be two very different reasons for this. One case occurs when an economist knows a lot about a topic and yet sees the evidence on the exact claim at hand as ambiguous. In such cases our panelists vote "uncertain". A second case relates to statements on topics so far removed from the economist's knowledge that he or she does not feel well placed to judge. In this case, our panelists vote "no opinion".

Panelists suggest many of the questions themselves. Members of the public are also welcome to suggest questions (see link below). Although IGM faculty members are responsible for deciding the final version of each question, we send a draft of the question to the panel in advance and invite them to point out problems with the wording if they see any. This process helps us to reduce vagueness or problems of interpretation.

The panel data are copyrighted by the Initiative on Global Markets and will be analyzed for an article to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

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