Life in the Eurozone With or Without Sovereign Default?

Florence, 14 April 2011

The European University Institute and the Wharton Financial Institution Center are organizing a conference entitled “Life in the Eurozone With or Without Sovereign Default?” to be held at the EUI in Florence on Thursday, April 14, 2011. The conference will bring together leading economists, lawyers, historians and policy makers to discuss the current economic situation in the Eurozone with particular emphasis on the issue of sovereign default. There will be three panels, one keynote speech and one dinner speech. The first panel will consider the current situation including the German constitution, EU law, the constraints (if any) on the ECB to buy up Eurozone government debt, the European Financial Stability Fund, and the current situations in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. The second panel will cover how Eurozone sovereign bankruptcy might work including the European Stability Mechanism, collective action clauses, banking regulation given risky sovereign debt, the prevention of banking crises (priority structure, deposit insurance, government guarantees), the sovereign equivalent of debtor-in-possession financing and central bank liquidity operations with credit risk in sovereign debt. The final panel will consider alternatives to sovereign bankruptcy including the possibility of leaving the Eurozone temporarily, an historical comparison of suspension of the Gold Standard, Argentina and other recent defaults, and the long run solution of Eurozone wide bonds or fiscal authority.