European Research Network for Cross-Border Scientific Cooperation on Financial and Economic Issues in Europe
Project period: March 2017 - December 2021
Research Areas:
Task
In the coming years, the European Union will face a wide range of economic and fiscal policy challenges. This means that governments and European institutions will increasingly be in need of scientifically sound analyses and reform proposals. Contributing the findings of the social sciences to resolving the pressing economic and fiscal policy issues in the European Union is the aim of this network, newly founded in spring 2017 by the ifo Institute and its eight European partners: EconPol Europe – European Network for Economic and Fiscal Policy Research.
EconPol Europe is a unique collaboration of policy-oriented research institutes and non-university research institutes that will contribute their scientific expertise to the debate over the future shape of the European Union. In addition to the ifo Institute, which acts as the coordinator of the network, the other eight founding members are the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS; Brussels, Belgium), the Centre d’Études Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII; Paris, France), the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS; Vienna, Austria), theToulouse School of Economics (TSE; Toulouse, France), the University of Oxford (Centre for Business Taxation; Oxford, Great Britain), the Università di Trento (Department of Economics and Management; Trento, Italy), the VATT Institute for Economic Research (VATT; Helsinki, Finland) and the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW; Mannheim, Germany). In January 2019, EconPol Europe has welcomed five new associate partners: CERGE-EI (Prague), CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (The Hague), Instituto Universitario de Economia at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Madrid), the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich (Zurich) and REM at the School of Economics and Management of the Universidade de Lisboa (Lisbon). The foundation of EconPol Europe was made possible by an initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Finance.
EconPol Europe’s core research activities in the coming four years will be in the following areas:
1) Sustainable growth and best practice
2) EU policy reform and the EU budget
3) Capital markets and financial sector regulation
4) Governance and macroeconomic policy in the European Monetary Union
Methods
For all the research topics, current and appropriate theoretical and empirical methods will be used. Owing to the diversity of the issues to be addressed, both macro- and micro-econometric methods will be employed.
Data and other sources
National statistical offices, Eurostat, OECD Stat, IMF, World Bank, individual data at the company and consumer levels.
The data underlying the individual research results will be made available promptly, if feasible, in the Economics and Business Data Center (EBDC) of the ifo Institute and LMU Munich.
Results
The results of the network will be made accessible to the general public promptly via independent platforms and will be published on the specially created website of the network:
Publications
Essential for the success of the network is its dissemination concept and the transferring of the research results to the general public. A new series of publi-cations has been created. These include the EconPol Working Paper Series, EconPol Policy Reports and EconPol Policy Briefs. EconPol Europe will also report its findings to the media and the public in press releases, contributions to social media platforms, publication alerts, a network newsletter as well as a range of newspaper articles and blog entries.
