Edward Hugh Mainpage: September 2010

Thursday, September 9, 2010

20th Economic Forum (Krynica Zdrój, Poland, 2010)

EU Crisis Zones : Has a Eurozone Domino Effect Been Averted?

It was always known that the eurozone was a less than perfect construction, especially in terms of fiscal policy incentives, yet the magnitude of the crisis that first hit Greece and may yet affect Spain, Portugal, Italy and others still surprised most observers. For the moment the 750 billion euro stabilisation mechanism agreed in May appears to have calmed the markets, but is it enough? Are the stress tests conducted on EU banks credible? What is a proper medium term response and medium-long term strategy to protect the Euro zone and avert a disastrous domino effect. The risks remain high. Are there lessons to be learnt from the non-eurozone countries? Should the euro adoption process be modified? Will Germany and France continue to foot the bill without a reform of eurozone fiscal discipline?

Moderator: Alfred Vanags - Director, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies (BICEPS), Latvia

Speakers:

Agnes Benassy-Quere - Director, CEPII (Center for International Prospective Studies), France

Jochen Bittner - European and NATO Correspondent, Die Zeit weekly, Germany

Pawel Dziekonski - Director, Risk Mangement Division, Deloitte, Poland

Morten Hansen - Head of Economic Department, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia

Edward Hugh - Macro Economist, , United Kingdom

Commentators:

Sergey Kadochnikov - Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Ural State University named after A.M. Gorky, Russia
Valerii Salyvin - Director, Scientific Research Center for Problems of Social Reproduction, Ukraine

Edward Hugh

Born in Liverpool Edward Hugh is a macroeconomist of British origin who has lived in Catalonia for over 25 years. For 20 of those years he lived and worked in Barcelona, but since 2010 he has been living in a small village near the town of Figueres.

Hugh, who studied economics at the LSE in the late sixties before going on to do Masters and Doctoral studies in Manchester, is an expert on the impact of demographic change and migratory processes on economic growth.

His work came to be known to a wider international public following the publication of a New York Times article highlighting his anticipation of the Euro Area crisis.

Since the start of the crisis Hugh has become a reference point for the international press in relation to the difficult economic situation in Spain.

He is an active blogger, and regular contributor to social network platforms like Twitter and Facebook where he is widely followed. He has no political involevment of any kind, and is proud of his reputation as an independent analyst-

In Spain he has recently published a book on the Spanish economy (¿Adios a la crisis?, Deusto 2014), and is a frequent contributor to the Barcelona press.

He is currently working on his next book - No Growth Societies - which will be written and published in English. He is also a regular speaker and participant in Forums and Economic Seminars, within and without Spain, a vocation which has taken him across Europe and the Middle East, from Brussels and Vienna, to Riga and Bergen, to Doha and Tel Aviv.