Is Europe Disintegrating? Macroeconomic Divergence, Structural Polarisation, Trade and Fragility

Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch, Philipp Heimberger, Jakob Kapeller and Bernhard Schütz

No 136, wiiw Working Papers from The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw

Abstract: This paper analyses economic developments in the eurozone since its inception in 1999. In doing so, we document a process of economic divergence and polarisation among those countries that joined the eurozone during its first two years, which fits a typical ‘core – periphery’ pattern. We show how this polarisation process first manifested in increasing current account imbalances before the crisis, before it translated unto the level of general macroeconomic development after the crisis. Empirically, we demonstrate how this divergence is tied to a ‘structural polarisation’ in terms of the sectoral composition of eurozone countries specifically, the emergence of export-driven growth in core countries and debt-driven growth in the European periphery coincides with differences in technological capabilities and firm performance. Pushing for convergence within Europe requires the implementation of three intertwined policy programmes macroprudential financial regulation, active industrial policies aiming at a technological catch-up process in periphery countries, and progressive re‑distributional policies to sustain adequate levels of aggregate demand throughout the eurozone.

Keywords: polarisation; European Monetary Union; industrial policy; financial regulation; growth trajectories (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B5 E6 F45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages including 1 Table and 6 Figures
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as wiiw Working Paper

Downloads: (external link)
https://wiiw.ac.at/is-europe-disintegrating-macroe ... agility-dlp-4273.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Is Europe disintegrating? Macroeconomic divergence, structural polarization, trade and fragility (2017)
Working Paper: Is Europe disintegrating? Macroeconomic divergence, structural polarization, trade and fragility (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wii:wpaper:136

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://wiiw.ac.at

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in wiiw Working Papers from The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Customer service ().