Transatlantic Economic Challenges in an Era of Growing Multipolarity

Shifts in global economic dominance are by nature tectonic and never precipitated by single events. The Great Recession of 2008–09, however, has presented the European Union, its common currency the euro, and the United States with new global challenges. The transatlantic partnership has dominated the world economy since the early 20th century and, based upon US and European values and interests, has designed and sustained all its principal global political and economic institutions. But countries outside the European Union and United States now account for about half of the world economy, and in the aftermath of the Great Recession their share is growing rapidly. Hence their increasing role and concomitant demands for greater influence over global economic governance pose a series of challenges and opportunities to the European Union and the United States, as illustrated by the eclipse of the G-8 by the G-20.

The contributions in this volume by subject area experts from the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Bruegel ponder how or whether the rise of outside actors of potentially equal, or even greater, economic weight will invariably force a rethinking of not only how the European Union and the United States should conduct policy externally towards the new rising economic poles, but also of the substantive contents of the EU-US bilateral economic and political relationship.

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, senior fellow, has been associated with the Institute since 2002. Before joining the Institute, he worked with the Danish Ministry of Defense, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector. He is a graduate of the Danish Army's Special School of Intelligence and Linguistics with the rank of first lieutenant; the University of Aarhus in Aarhus, Denmark; Columbia University in New York; and received his Ph. D from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He is author of The Accelerating Decline in America's High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy (2007), coauthor of US Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries (2009) and Transforming the European Economy (2004), and assisted with Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology (2006).

Nicolas Véron, visiting fellow since October 2009, is also a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic policy think tank he helped cofound in 2002–04. A French citizen and graduate of Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Paris, he has held various positions in the public and private sectors, including as corporate adviser to France's labor minister (1997–2000), as chief financial officer of the publicly listed internet company MultiMania / Lycos France (2000–2002), and as an independent financial services consultant. Since 2008 he has been a member of the CFA Institute's Corporate Disclosure Policy Council, and since July 2013 a board member of the derivatives arm of DTCC (the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation), a global financial infrastructure company.

Guntram Wolff is the Director of Bruegel. His research focuses on the European economy and governance, on fiscal and monetary policy and global finance. He regularly testifies at the European Finance Ministers' ECOFIN meeting, the European Parliament, the German Parliament (Bundestag) and the French Parliament (Assemblée Nationale) and is a member of the French prime minister's Conseil d'Analyse Economique. Guntram Wolff is also a member of the Solvay Brussels School's international advisory board of the Brussels Free University. He joined Bruegel from the European Commission, where he worked on the macroeconomics of the euro area and the reform of euro area governance. Prior to joining the Commission, he was coordinating the research team on fiscal policy at Deutsche Bundesbank. He also worked as an adviser to the International Monetary Fund.