New Books In Economics

Crisis Cycle: Challenges, Evolution, and Future of the Euro (Princeton UP, 2025) John Cochrane Luis Garicano Klaus Masuch PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2025 Launched 26 years ago, the euro was never expected to have an easy life but it wasn't supposed to be this hard. A three-year solvency crisis, a string of bailouts, and a rescue by the European Central Bank (ECB) was followed by threats of deflation, negative interest rates, massive purchases of government debt, a global pandemic, a European land war, and an inflation surge. The euro area emerged from these tests but may not survive the next without reforms during this period of relative calm. In Crisis Cycle, economists John Cochrane, Luis Garicano, and Klaus Masuch call for critical reforms to rebuild the system's incentive structure and stop the ECB's unsought mission creep. "A beautiful ship was constructed," they write. "Out at sea, it ran into severe storms. Its captain and crew patched the holes as best they could. Now though it is time to ret