Amid authoritarian and illiberal forces buffeting social democracies, it is helpful to renew appreciation for their political architectures, especially the central role developed over a century and a … Read More
Columns & Interviews
The New Turkey: Erdoğan’s Personal Fief
After a series of steps towards liberalization between 2002 and 2012, Turkey's AKP government showed its teeth in 2013: it announced plans to build a shopping mall on Gezi Park – one of the last green … Read More
OECD Meets Piketty: An Alternative Economic Narrative
Today’s profits are not tomorrow’s investments A picture can say more than a thousand words. This is certainly true for the set of graphs (see below) that the OECD published in its latest Economic … Read More
Stamping Out Fraud In Hiring Practices Across Europe
Reports in the media of workers hired from other European Union countries undercutting the pay and conditions of local workers have stirred controversy over many years. While EU companies are allowed … Read More
Mission Thinking: A Problem-Solving Approach To Fuel Innovation-Led Growth
The world is afflicted by problems that people experience in their daily lives: clean air in congested cities, a healthy and independent life in old age, access to digital technologies that improve … Read More
The Populists’ Euro
The majority of Italians want two things: new political leadership and the euro. The question is whether they can have both.The point about new leadership is uncontroversial. The country’s two … Read More
Blogs
Germany’s Minimum Wage Has Reduced Wage Inequality
Wages grew and wage inequality fell in most EU countries in 2015. Germany is not one of the countries where wages rose most but it did have the largest reduction in wage inequality. Our analysis shows … Read More
Inequality And The Crisis In The European South
Austerity, coupled with wage and pension cuts, increased taxes on incomes and property, a severe recession, high unemployment and poverty rates, especially in Greece, are often regarded as the cause … Read More
Europe’s Curse Of Wealth
I have already written before (in a tweet) that no one who travels through Western Europe, especially in Summer, can fail to be impressed by the wealth and beauty of the continent as well as by its … Read More
Austerity: A Cyclical Tale
Historians are often tempted to think that events of the past return to the present under new clothes in a cyclical way. The Greek historian Thucydides was probably the first to propose this cyclical … Read More
The Post-Crisis EMU: A True OCA?
It is no secret that the Eurozone is not a complete Optimum Currency Area (OCA). Chief among its shortcomings is the uneven level of integration between its monetary and economic aspects. When the … Read More
Why We Need European Safe Assets
It has become conventional wisdom that low and stable inflation contributes to economic stability and most central banks in the advanced nations pursue some type of inflation targeting (Svensson … Read More
Talks & Conversations
The Body Market, What Money Can’t Buy
Should you be able to sell your organs, or sell your body for sex? “The Body Market” explores the markets for selling your body parts and potentially your dignity. The director of the London School of … Read More
The Walrus Quota, What Money Can’t Buy
Market mechanisms may be efficient, but they may also change the meaning of the goods exchanged. Should we pay children to read, or pay countries to take our share of refugees? Does having tradable … Read More
Davos-Man Is Finally Being Challenged
Journalist and author of the best-selling book Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner, described in the New York Times as " a sprawling, engaging and at times infuriating feminist polemic", Katrine Marcal, in … Read More
Portugal: From Sick Man To Poster Boy
As finance minister, Mário Centeno is a key figure in Portugal at a time when the Portuguese economy is "especially interesting and, in many ways, especially successful": with unemployment halved from … Read More
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