Touching on the territorial debate in Spain, Alejandro Esteller, professor of the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and director of IEB’s research program in tax systems analysis, offers us a new Info IEB highlighting the advantages of fiscal decentralization based on its ability to adjust to the peculiarities of each Autonomous Community (AC) in Spain.

In large metropolitan areas, the public transport network is essential for proper and smooth mobility and hardly has a substitute. Following the impact of COVID-19, public transport in the metropolitan area of Barcelona faces the challenge as to whether it will be able to continue to guarantee such mobility. On the one hand, individuals have been shifting toward less mobility—a result of distrust of movements in general and, in particular, of public transport. The use of private transport in the de-escalation is increasing. On the other hand, controlling the epidemic requires maintaining restrictions on the level of public transport use, which greatly diminish its ability to absorb mobility flows. How can the city of Barcelona deal with this problem? To what extent has mobility through public transport been delimited in Barcelona so that it does not become saturated? These questions have been analysed in the new Info IEB by IEB researchers and professors of the UAB Anna Matas and Javier Asensio.

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has led to an emergency situation unprecedented in recent history, which has jeopardized health and the economy on a global scale. The Spanish economy and its energy sector in particular are no strangers to this reality. The impact has been analysed in a study carried out by the Chair of Energy Sustainability and presented in this IEB Info.

The study provides key insights related to the level of government preferred by Spanish citizens for the management of the pandemic, the relationship between trust in institutions vs success in crisis management, and the rise of technocracy as a model of government in the face of rather ideological policies.

The Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB) has published the third of its analyses on the impact of Covid-19. In the latest Info IEB revolves around banking, authored by Antoni Garrido Torres, Professor of Economics at the University of Barcelona (UB). The author observes at the onset that European banks currently maintain much higher liquidity and capital levels than they had before the financial crisis. Moreover, in anticipation of market tensions, the ECB has adopted a package of measures that will inject more liquidity and capital into the system, which is fundamental at the moment. The big question is if these measures will ensure sufficient funding in the eurozone, which will depend heavily on the duration of the crisis. Given this, it should not be ruled out that more heterodox measures, such as deficit monetisation, should be taken.

The IEB researchers Gemma García and Esteban Sanromá have made a forecast based on a hypothetical scenario with respect to the duration of the confinement period. They have differentiated the intensity of the impact by branch of economic activity. Briefly, they specify that the primary sector and the food industry will not experience direct declines; in the manufacturing industry, they differentiate among the industries for which demand falls, is simply postponed or deferred, and for those that have registered increases. For most of the service industry, sharp declines are expected given falling demand.