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The European Commission’s Scoreboard of Macroeconomic Imbalances – The Impact of Preferences on an Early Warning System

The European Commission’s Scoreboard of Macroeconomic Imbalances is a rare case of a publicly released early warning system (EWS). That allows for analyzing the preferences of the involved politicians with regard to the two potential errors of an EWS – missing a crisis and issuing a false alarm. This is done for the first time for EWS in general by using a standard signals approach including a preference-based optimization approach to set thresholds. It is shown that in general, the thresholds of the scoreboard are set low (resulting in more alarm signals) as compared to a neutral stand.

15. November 2012

Authors Tobias Knedlik

Suggested Reading

The European Commission’s Scoreboard of Macroeconomic Imbalances – The impact of preferences on an early warning system

Tobias Knedlik

in: External Publications, 2013

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The Impact of Preferences on Early Warning Systems - The Case of the European Commission's Scoreboard

Tobias Knedlik

in: European Journal of Political Economy, 2014

Abstract

The European Commission’s Scoreboard of Macroeconomic Imbalances is a rare case of a publicly released early warning system. It allows the preferences of the politicians involved to be analysed with regard to the two potential errors of an early warning system – missing a crisis and issuing a false alarm. These preferences might differ with the institutional setting. Such an analysis is done for the first time in this article for early warning systems in general by using a standard signals approach, including a preference-based optimisation approach, to set thresholds. It is shown that, in general, the thresholds of the Commission’s Scoreboard are set low (resulting in more alarm signals), as compared to a neutral stand. Based on political economy considerations the result could have been expected.

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