The European Central Bank between the Financial Crisis and Populisms

​In light of the handover from the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi to Christine Lagarde in November 2019, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the events which unfolded since the euro area sovereign debt crisis in 2010 up until today. The book focuses on the far-reaching implications of the last decade, shedding light on a wide spectrum of political, economic and financial aspects of the European poly-crises and how monetary policy reacted to these challenges. The book places particular emphasis on the tensions that the supranational central bank was subject to during this period, and on their outcomes in terms of the policies, their legitimacy, and their public reception. As such, this book will be relevant not only to understand the political implications of the past crisis but also, and foremost, in understanding "what is next".

Corrado Macchiarelli is currently a Principal Economist at the UK National Institute of Economic and Social Research and a Senior Lecturer (Assoc. Professor) in Economics and Finance at Brunel University London, UK. He is also a part-time Lecturer in Economics on the B.Sc. in International Political Economy and Global Business at New York University in London, and a Visiting Fellow in European Political Economy at the London School of Economics (LSE), UK, where he was previously a Postdoc. During Spring/Summer 2019, he was a Visiting Scholar in Economics at Harvard University's Centre for European Studies.  During the past five years, Macchiarelli has been working as part of an LSE-based team of experts for the European Parliament in the context of the Parliament’s Monetary Policy Dialogue with the European Central Bank (ECB). Previously, he was an Economist in the ECB’s Euro Area Macro Division, working chiefly in the ECB’s Working Group of Forecast on Potential Output.  

Mara Monti is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE European Institute, London, UK. She spent her carrier as a journalist in the financial field. She completed an MSc (Econ) in Politics of the World Economy at the LSE and graduated in Economics cum laude at Bologna University, Italy. During her carrier, she tracked the financial crisis, starting in the US with the subprime bubble, followed by the Lehman default and the European sovereign downfall. Furthermore, she wrote a comprehensive series of articles about domestic  financial and banking scandals. She has written extensively about the sovereign crisis and bailout in Greece, Ireland and Spain, the ECB’s monetary policy and its non-conventional instruments. As a Visiting Fellow at the LSE, she has written extensively on the issue of banking crises and the monetary union. 

Claudia Wiesner is Professor of Political science at Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Germany, and an Adjunct Professor in Political Science at Jyväskylä University, Finland. She also holds the Jean Monnet Chair at Fulda University. During spring 2020, she is a DAAD Visiting Fellow at New York University; in 2019, she was Visiting Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Centre for European Studies at Harvard University, USA. Previously she was Acting Professor for Comparative Politics at Hamburg, Bochum and Marburg University, Germany. She has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI), Italy, and the Berlin Social Sciences Centre, Germany. Her primary research interests lie in the comparative study of democracy, political culture and political sociology in the EU multilevel system. She chairs the ECPR Standing Group “Political Concepts”, has led several research projects and international cooperation networks, and was visiting fellow at universities in the US, France, Finland, Greece, and Spain. 

Sebastian Diessner is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy, and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE European Institute, UK. He holds a research stipend from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and completed his doctorate at the LSE with a thesis on the political economy of central banking in Europe and Japan. His research on central bank independence and accountability has been published in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Common Market Studies and Socio-Economic Review. He co-authored a recent policy report on the accountability of the ECB towards the European Parliament, titled From Dialogue to Scrutiny, which was presented to the Parliament in 2019.