The Political Economy of Structural Reforms in Europe

Reforms in labour and product markets play a central role in government policies. The Political Economy of Structural Reforms in Europe takes stock of current frontier work. It brings together leading contributions from academia, the central banks in Europe, and the OECD to argue that structural reforms can make a fundamental contribution to improve economic performance across Europe.

The Political Economy of Structural Reforms in Europe brings together theoretical and empirical studies that address the potential role of structural reforms in restoring macroeconomic stability, resuming economic growth, addressing income inequality, and grappling secular stagnation. It throws new light on the determinants and effects of structural reforms and on how these shape the European integration experience.

Nauro F. Campos is Professor of Economics at Brunel University London and Research Professor at ETH-Zurich. His main fields of interest are political economy and European integration. He has taught at the Universities of Bonn, Brunel, CERGE-EI (Prague), Newcastle, Paris 1 Sorbonne, and Warwick. He was a Fulbright Fellow at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), a Robert McNamara Fellow at The World Bank, and a CBS Fellow at Oxford University. He is a Research Fellow at IZA-Bonn, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the (Central) Bank of Finland, a Senior Fellow of the ESRC Peer Review College, and was a visiting scholar at the IMF, World Bank, European Commission, University of Michigan, ETH, USC, Bonn, UCL, and Stockholm. From 2009 to 2014, he was seconded as Senior Economic Advisor/SRF to the Chief Economist of the Department for International Development. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (Los Angeles) in 1997.
Paul De Grauwe is John Paulson Professor at the London School of Economics. He was a member of the Belgian parliament from 1991 to 2003, and is currently a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels and CEPR fellow in London. His research interests are in the economics of monetary unions and behavioural macroeconomics. His book publications include: The Limits of the Market (Oxford University Press, 2017) 2017, The Economics of Monetary Union, (Oxford University Press, 11th Edition 2016), and Lectures on Behavioral Macroeconomics (Princeton University Press, 2012).


Yuemei Ji is a lecturer in Economics at the University College London. She obtained her PhD from the University of Leuven, and was previously a visiting fellow at the European Institute at LSE, the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and the National Bank of Belgium. She lectures primarily on European macroeconomics and international macroeconomics, and her research interests cover international macroeconomics in general and the European Monetary Union during the post-crisis period in particular. She has done extensive research on the causes of Eurozone debt crisis and its impact on the austerity policies in the Eurozone.

Introduction, Nauro F. Campos, Paul De Grauwe, and Yuemei Ji
1. Structural Reforms, Growth and Inequality: An Overview of Theory, Measurement and Evidence, Nauro F. Campos, Paul De Grauwe, and Yuemei Ji
2. When do countries implement structural reforms?, Antonio Dias da Silva, Audrey Givone, and David Sondermann
3. The Dynamics of the Regulation of Labour in Developing and Developed Countries since 1960, Nauro F. Campos and Jeffrey B. Nugent
4. Growth, unemployment and wages in EU countries after the Great Recession: The Role of Regulation and Institutions, Jan Bruha and Oxana Babecka Kucharcukova
5. Reforming the Labor Market in Good and Bad Times: Any Differences, Britta Gehrke and Enzo Weber
6. Short-Run Costs of Structural Reforms: What Role for Fiscal Policy?, Rana Sajedi
7. The Quantification of Structural reforms in OECD Countries: A New Framework, Balazs Egert and Peter Gal
8. Labour Market Regulations and Growth: Growth Accounting Evidence, Oleg Badunenko
9. Labour Market Regulations and Capital Intensity, Gilbert Cette, Jimmy Lopez, and Jacques Mairesse
10. Services Market Liberalization, Economic Governance, and Trade Agreements, Matteo Fiorini and Bernard Hoekman
11. Europe's Long-Term Growth Prospects: With and Without Structural Reforms, Kieran McQuinn and Karl Whelan
Conclusion, Nauro F. Campos, Paul De Grauwe, and Yuemei Ji