The folly of the central banks of Europe

The current financial crisis will probably lead to an unnecessarily deep recession. This column suggests that European central banks, misguided by outdated econometric models, should have cut rates faster and deeper in a coordinated fashion. They should now scrap these models and agree on a large, coordinated cut of 2 percentage points.

VoxEU.org is a policy portal set up by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in conjunction with a consortium of national sites, including the Italian site LaVoce, the French site Telos and the Spanish site Sociedad Abierta. Vox aims to promote research-based policy analysis and commentary by leading scholars. The intended audience is economists in governments, international organisations, academia and the private sector as well as journalists specializing in economics, finance and business.

• Primary Source