Greece

This week's IGM European Economic Experts Panel Statements: A) Assuming it exits its third bailout program this summer without an immediate restructuring or other debt relief, Greece is unlikely to default on its sovereign debt in the coming decade. B) Greece would be better off if it had decided to exit the euro between 2011 and 2015. C) If Greece had defaulted on (or restructured) its private debt in 2010, while also staying within the euro, that combination would have been better for Greece than either exiting the euro or proceeding as it has actually done.

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel Statement: Imposing new US tariffs on steel and aluminum will improve Americans’ welfare.

This week's IGM European Economic Experts Panel Statements: A) Bitcoins are more similar to gold than they are to currency. B) Bitcoins are more similar to gold than they are to Dutch tulips in the 1630s.

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel Statements: A) By providing electronic benefit cards to choose and buy groceries at stores, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program currently does more for its recipients' well-being than it would if the program directly provided a smaller array of foods to its recipients, while commensurately reducing the amount they could spend on groceries of their own choosing. B) By providing electronic benefit cards to choose and buy groceries at stores, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program currently does more to raise food security and reduce hunger than it would if the program directly provided a smaller array of foods to its recipients, while commensurately reducing the amount they could spend on groceries of their own choosing.

This week's IGM European Experts Panel statement: The US spends roughly 17% of GDP on healthcare, according to the OECD; most European countries spend less than 12% of GDP. Higher quality-adjusted US healthcare prices contribute relatively more to the extra US spending than does the combination of higher quantity and quality of US care (interpreting quantity and quality to reflect both greater American healthcare needs due to underlying population health and the delivery of more or better healthcare services to Americans).

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel statement: The biggest reason for the measured slowdown in US productivity growth since the mid-2000s is that productivity increases have gone mismeasured, including new and better products and services that have been insufficiently captured by real output data.