David Howarth and Helen Kavvadia have published a new article in the Journal of Economic Policy Reform. The European Investment Bank (EIB) was officially part of a coordinated European Union (EU) strategy to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, despite the worst socio-economic crisis to hit most European countries since the Second World War, the EIB failed to deviate from a set path that delimited acceptable forms of lending. This article applies a historical institutionalist analysis to explain how and why the EIB continued to engage in principally low risk lending activities via the commercial banking sector, and failed to significantly increase lending to the public health sector. Click here to read this open access article.
