The European Central Bank (ECB) and Housing Inequalities: Conceptual and Legal Considerations [ongoing PhD research project]

Speaker Alberto Pagliari, PhD candidate at University of Glasgow School of Law.

About the event

This is a PhD work-in-progress presentation by Alberto Pagliari, who is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow School of Law. He will be presenting his ongoing PhD research project; please see a brief abstract below.

This is part of a series of presentations, hosted by Edinburgh Commercial Law PGR Reading Group, which are designed to allow PGRs to share their research experiences, connect with other researchers, learn from one another, and receive feedback and questions from their peers and researchers. These sessions will allow members of the reading group and participants to learn about each other's research while also providing a comfortable and relaxing setting to strengthen their communication skills in research.

Refreshments will be provided.

Abstract 

Monetary policy consists of the set of instruments conferred on the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) to ensure price stability in the Euro area. Traditionally conceived as a predominantly technical competence, legal scholars have recently started to examine its inherent distributional effects, particularly in light of the ESCB’s resort to unconventional monetary policy measures. Asset purchases and prolonged low interest rates affect credit conditions, asset prices, and wealth distribution, with significant consequences, inter alia, for housing affordability and inequality. The European Court of Justice has incidentally acknowledged the existence of distributional effects, characterizing them as indirect and unavoidable spillovers that do not affect the legality of monetary policy measures adopted to ensure price stability. This presentation questions whether legal analysis can remain confined to such a tolerance-based approach when distributional effects are not merely incidental, but significant in magnitude and persistent over time. It situates housing-related distributional effects within the ESCB’s mandate, examines the ECB’s role in the broader EU constitutional and institutional framework, and explores whether other legal provisions beyond Article 127 TFEU may inform the interpretation and exercise of the ECB’s powers.

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