The Enduring Popularity of the Euro throughout the Crisis
The Enduring Popularity of the Euro throughout the Crisis

Author(s): Felix Roth, Lars Jonung, Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, History, Economy, Supranational / Global Economy, Governance, Economic history, Recent History (1900 till today), Economic policy, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Financial Markets
Published by: CEPS Centre for European Policy Studies
Keywords: Euro support; Crisis; financial and sovereign debt crisis; European Central Bank; Public trust;
Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses the evolution of public support for the euro from 1990 to 2011, using a popularity function approach, focusing on the most recent period of the financial and sovereign debt crisis. Exploring a huge database of close to half a million observations covering the 12 original euro area member countries, we find that the ongoing crisis has only marginally reduced citizens’ support for the euro – at least so far. This result is in stark contrast to the sharp fall in public trust in the European Central Bank. We conclude that the crisis has hardly dented popular support for the euro while the central bank supplying the single currency has lost sharply in public trust. Thus, the euro appears to have established acredibility of its own – separate from the institutional framework behind the euro.

• Details
• Contents