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Henning Meyer

Henning Meyer is Editor-in-Chief of Social Europe and a Research Associate of the Public Policy Group at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also Director of the consultancy New Global Strategy Ltd. and frequently writes opinion editorials for international newspapers such as The Guardian, DIE ZEIT, The New York Times and El Pais.

Henning Meyer

A democratic model for Facebook

Henning Meyer 11th December 2018

Facebook is regularly in the news as a force disrupting democratic politics across the globe but what if democracy could be the model to save Facebook? The social network connecting 2.2 billion people has had a rocky time of late. From the alleged malevolent interference by foreign actors in the last US Presidential election via […]

Understanding The SPD’s Grand Coalition Dilemma

Henning Meyer 14th February 2018

Observers of German politics are witnessing a rather puzzling drama. More than four months after the election there is still no new government and the last hope to form one hinges on a membership ballot of the Social Democratic party. If party members vote down the coalition agreement, new elections are unavoidable. They would take […]

Understanding The Digital Revolution And What It Means

Henning Meyer 12th June 2017

The digital revolution, used here as shorthand for broader technological change, is one of today’s most hotly debated topics in politics, economics and business. It makes politicians wary about which preparatory policies to pursue, economists ponder productivity increases and trade unions think about the future of work. We are undoubtedly faced with large-scale disruptions in […]

No Need For Basic Income: Five Policies To Deal With The Threat Of Technological Unemployment

Henning Meyer 27th March 2017

The potential threat of technological unemployment is one of the most hotly debated economic issues of our times: in boardrooms and trade union offices but also increasingly amongst policy-makers. The catch-all term ‘digital’ may have been added to numerous political concepts in recent years but beyond such branding there has been very little debate of […]

Five Filters Moderate The Technological Revolution

Henning Meyer 15th July 2016

The technological revolution is one of today’s most hotly debated topics in politics, economics and business. It makes politicians wary about which preparatory policies to pursue, economists ponder vast productivity increases and the future of labor and business leaders think about how to make use of the new possibilities in their organisational environments. We are […]

Here Is Why Brexiters Are Completely Wrong On Trade

Henning Meyer 22nd February 2016

The fight for the UK to remain a member of the European Union is now fully on. The country will have a momentous decision to make on 23rd June this year. I unfortunately won’t have a vote on my future as a German living in the UK, the country I have lived and paid my taxes […]

Five Reasons Why A Basic Income Won’t Solve Technological Unemployment

Henning Meyer 4th February 2016

There has been a buzz recently about the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and why it could be a solution to technological unemployment. VOX reported a few days ago that Y Combinator, a start-up incubator, is about to start a five-year research project on how a UBI could work. Noah Kulwin over at re/code […]

The Work And Inequality Challenge Of The Digital Revolution: How Should Governments Respond?

Henning Meyer 13th August 2015

After more than half a decade of debate dominated by the global financial crisis, 2014 saw a departure from this singular focus. Thomas Piketty started a global discussion about historical patterns of inequality and their negative repercussions. And looking to the future rather than back in time, The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and […]

How The German Government Gained 100bn From The Greek Crisis

Henning Meyer 11th August 2015

I have long been mulling over how much money the German government has actually saved as a result of the Greek/Eurozone crisis. It has been clear that crisis-driven capital inflows into Germany have led to higher demand for government bonds. As a result prices went up and yields down. If you manage a debt stock of […]

Can Proportional Representation Save The ‘United’ Kingdom?

Henning Meyer 11th May 2015

I will be writing about the Labour Party and its political soul-searching in the coming weeks. But I want to make a more general point right at the beginning of this process that will have a significant impact on how Labour, and indeed the Conservative majority government, should position itself in the new political landscape […]

A Sovereign Wealth Fund For The Eurozone?

Henning Meyer 19th November 2014

Social Europe Journal has just published its latest Research Essay “Public Capital in the 21st Century” by Giacomo Corneo. The main argument of the paper is that the state should become a kind of investment state in order to make sure that high returns on capital do not further increase inequality but benefit the wider public. […]

If You Look At One Graph About Inequality Look At This!

Henning Meyer 29th September 2014

You might have heard about recent reports stating that global inequality is decreasing. This is a nice example of constructing the comparison according to the result you would like to see. Yes, inequality between countries has declined but the most important comparison is what is happening to inequality within countries as this tells you how the distribution system, that […]

Eurofound advertisement

#AskTheExpert webinar—Key ingredients for the future of work: job quality and gender equality

Eurofound’s head of information and communication, Mary McCaughey, its senior research manager, Agnès Parent-Thirion, and research manager, Jorge Cabrita, explore the findings from the recently published European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) in an #AskTheExpert webinar. This survey of more than 70,000 workers in 36 European countries provides a wide-ranging picture of job quality across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups and by gender in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It confirms persistent gender segregation in sectors, occupations and workplaces, indicating that we are a long way from the goals of equal opportunities for women and men at work and equal access to key decision-making positions in the workplace.


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Let’s end involuntary unemployment!

What is the best way to fight unemployment? We want to know your opinion, to understand better the potential of an EU-wide permanent programme for direct and guaranteed public-service employment.

In collaboration with Our Global Moment, Fondazione Pietro Nenni and other progressive organisations across Europe, we launched an EU-wide survey on the perception of unemployment and publicly funded jobs, exploring ways to bring innovation in public sector-led job creation.


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Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

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Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


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The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


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