Clark Center Forum

 

 

This week's IGM European Economic Experts Panel statements:

A)    Holding labor market institutions and job training fixed, rising use of robots and artificial intelligence is likely to increase substantially the number of workers in advanced countries who are unemployed for long periods.

B)    Rising use of robots and artificial intelligence in advanced countries is likely to create benefits large enough that they could be used to compensate those workers who are substantially negatively affected for their lost wages. 

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

If the US reduced its fiscal deficit, then its trade deficit would also shrink. 

This week's IGM European Economic Experts Panel statements:

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.

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

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel Statements:

A)    The US should increase spending now on roads, railways, bridges and airports (including new projects, maintenance or both).
 
B)    The advisability of increasing federal spending on roads, railways, bridges and airports is independent of whether the US also enacts tax cuts that substantially lower revenues. 

This week’s European Economic Experts Panel statements:

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.

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

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

Because labor markets across different sectors are connected, rising productivity in manufacturing leads the cost of labor-intensive services — such as education and health care — to rise. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A) Since 1980, whenever substantial growth effects have been required to make a tax reform plan revenue neutral, the actual outcome has invariably been a fall in tax revenue as a share of GDP.

B) The tax reform plan proposed by President Trump this week would likely pay for itself through higher economic growth. 

This week’s European Economic Experts Panel statements:

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

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.