IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/revpoe/v26y2014i2p171-189.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Euro Crises and Euro Scams: Trade not Debt and Deficits Tell the Tale

Author

Listed:
  • John Weeks

Abstract

The euro crisis has been typically presented as excessive fiscal deficits leading to the accumulation of unsustainable public debts. This debt and deficit diagnosis applied most notably in Greece and Italy, but also in Portugal and Spain (the 'PIGS'). Implicit in much of the analysis, and occasionally explicit, is the suggestion that these were not only profligate but also lazy PIGS that spent beyond their means and abandoned a commitment to international competitiveness. This article demonstrates that the German export-led growth strategy generated large trade and current account deficits throughout the eurozone in the 2000s. When the global financial crisis struck the continent in 2008, these trade-based deficits proved unsustainable. With the exception of Greece, neither public debts nor fiscal deficits represented a major problem among eurozone countries prior to 2008. The analysis leads to measures that could have avoided the crisis of sovereign debt entirely, as well as corrected the unsustainable trade balances in the euro zone. These policies were not seriously considered, with the result that in the second decade of the 21st century the future of the common currency is in doubt.

Suggested Citation

  • John Weeks, 2014. "Euro Crises and Euro Scams: Trade not Debt and Deficits Tell the Tale," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 171-189, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:26:y:2014:i:2:p:171-189
    DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2014.881009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09538259.2014.881009
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09538259.2014.881009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heiner Flassbeck & Friederike Spiecker, 2009. "Cracks in Euroland and no way out," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 44(1), pages 2-3, January.
    2. Shaikh, Anwar, 1974. "Laws of Production and Laws of Algebra: The Humbug Production Function," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 56(1), pages 115-120, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mirdala, Rajmund & Semančíková, Jozefína & Ruščáková, Anna, 2019. "Determinants of Export and Import Functions in the EU Member Countries," MPRA Paper 99535, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Engelbert Stockhammer & Syed Mohib Ali, 2018. "Varieties of Capitalism and post-Keynesian economics on Euro crisis," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 44(3), pages 349-370.
    3. Mirdala, Rajmund & Ruščáková, Anna, 2015. "On Origins and Implications of the Sovereign Debt Crisis in the Euro Area," MPRA Paper 68859, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kronenberg, Tobias, 2010. "Finding common ground between ecological economics and post-Keynesian economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 1488-1494, May.
    2. Jochen Hartwig, 2017. "The Comparative Statics of Effective Demand," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 360-375, July.
    3. Chia-I Pan & Tsangyao Chang & Yemane Wolde-Rufael, 2015. "Military Spending and Economic Growth in the Middle East Countries: Bootstrap Panel Causality Test," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(4), pages 443-456, August.
    4. Ali Raza Cheema & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2015. "The Relationship between Disaggregate Energy Consumption, Economic Growth and Environment for Asian Developing Economies," PIDE-Working Papers 2015:115, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    5. Matthew K. Heun & João Santos & Paul E. Brockway & Randall Pruim & Tiago Domingos & Marco Sakai, 2017. "From Theory to Econometrics to Energy Policy: Cautionary Tales for Policymaking Using Aggregate Production Functions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-44, February.
    6. Fabrizio Ferretti, 2008. "Patterns of technical change: a geometrical analysis using the wage-profit rate schedule," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(5), pages 565-583.
    7. Jesus Felipe & Rana Hasan & J. S. L. McCombie, 2008. "Correcting for biases when estimating production functions: an illusion of the laws of algebra?," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 32(3), pages 441-459, May.
    8. Yashin, Pete, 2017. "Optimal Equilibrium State in Two-Sector Growth Model," MPRA Paper 76524, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Luigi L. Pasinetti, 2000. "Critique of the neoclassical theory of growth and distribution," Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 53(215), pages 383-431.
    10. Jacek Osiewalski & Justyna Wróblewska & Kamil Makieła, 2020. "Bayesian comparison of production function-based and time-series GDP models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1355-1380, March.
    11. Luigi L. Pasinetti, 2000. "Critique of the neoclassical theory of growth and distribution," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 53(215), pages 383-431.
    12. Carey W. King, 2021. "Interdependence of Growth, Structure, Size and Resource Consumption During an Economic Growth Cycle," Papers 2106.02512, arXiv.org.
    13. Mario Holzner, 2006. "Real Exchange Rate Distortion in Southeast Europe," wiiw Balkan Observatory Working Papers 68, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    14. John E King, 2016. "Book review: Anwar Shaikh, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 27(4), pages 548-553, December.
    15. Jesus Felipe & F. Gerard Adams, 2005. ""A Theory of Production" The Estimation of the Cobb-Douglas Function: A Retrospective View," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 31(3), pages 427-445, Summer.
    16. Fix, Blair, 2015. "Putting Power Back Into Growth Theory," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(2), pages 1-37.
    17. Juan E. Jacobo, 2022. "Back to the Surplus: An Unorthodox Neoclassical Model of Growth, Distribution and Unemployment with Technical Change," Papers 2211.14978, arXiv.org.
    18. Filewod, Ben, 2024. "What can we learn from industry-level (aggregate) production functions?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 122388, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Eric Kemp-Benedict & Crystal Drakes & Timothy J. Laing, 2018. "Export-Led Growth, Global Integration, and the External Balance of Small Island Developing States," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-25, June.
    20. S K Mishra, 2007. "Globalization and Structural Changes in the Indian Industrial Sector: An Analysis of Production Functions," The IUP Journal of Managerial Economics, IUP Publications, vol. 0(4), pages 56-81, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:26:y:2014:i:2:p:171-189. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CRPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.