CER Ditchley podcast series: Five challenges for Europe

In November, the CER took 49 of Europe's top economists and political commentators to Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire for a conference on ‘Five challenges for Europe’. This CER podcast series offers an insight into the discussions of that weekend.

Episode 1: Europe’s demographic time bomb
Hervé Boulhol, Senior Economist for Pensions & Population Ageing at the OECD, and Gemma Tetlow, Chief Economist at the Institute for Government, discuss Europe's demographic time bomb.

Episode 2: Europe’s role between the US and China
Alicia García Herrero, Senior Fellow at Bruegel, and Martin Sandbu, European Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, discuss Europe's role between an increasingly protectionist and belligerent US, and the ever-growing technological superiority of China.

Episode 3: Gridlock in the eurozone
Jean Pisani-Ferry, Professor at the Hertie School of Governance & Sciences Po, and Ángel Ubide, expert on central banking, European affairs, finance, and macroeconomic policy, discuss whether monetary policy has run out of road, or whether there is more that Christine Lagarde can do.

Episode 4: The political economy of climate change
Åsa Löfgren, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Gothenburg, and Richard Tol, Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, discuss whether the EU should use its market power to force other countries to fight climate change.

Episode 5: Growing regional divergence
Cinzia Alcidi, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, and Jens Suedekum, Professor of International Economics at the Dusseldorf Institute for Competition Economics at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, discuss Europe's growing regional divergence and how the EU should respond.