Banks, Governments, and the ECB in the ‘Euro Crisis’

Prof Martin Hellwig

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

About the Speaker

Martin has published extensively in many areas of economics and finance. His 1990s publications on systemic risk and financial regulation were the first to expose some of the mechanisms that would be detrimental in the crisis of 2007–2009. His book The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do About It, co-authored with Anat Admati from Stanford, was published by Princeton University Press in 2013. He is a former President of the European Economic Association and the German Economic Association. He has also been active in policy work, including positions as president of the German Monopolkommission and as the first Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board, in charge of macro-prudential surveillance in the European Union.

Research Seminar Abstract

The lecture will analyse the causes and the development of the “euro crisis” of the past decade. The focus will be on the respective roles of banks, member state governments and the central bank, on flawed governance and on internal contradictions of the European Monetary Union. The lecture will also discuss the role and the limitations of “banking union” (creation of a single supervisory mechanism and a single resolution mechanism) in improving governance, as well as its contributions to the rise of nationalist populism in the member states of the EU.