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Ngaire Woods

Ngaire Woods is dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

Ngaire Woods

Global health governance from the grassroots

Ngaire Woods 2nd June 2021

To be better prepared for future pandemics, global agreements must shape responses grounded firmly in local communities.

Britain’s post-Brexit choices

Ngaire Woods 13th November 2019

Assuming the UK does eventually leave the EU, its next government will need to negotiate new relationships with the rest of the world.

Overcoming Crisis Of Globalisation: Rebuild Politics, Rethink International Cooperation

Ngaire Woods 16th July 2018

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about globalisation being pushed back. How would you characterise the situation? I think there was always a deal that permitted globalisation to go ahead. If you think about the 1950s and ‘60s, governments promised their citizens that they would open up the borders but they would protect their […]

How To Steal The Populists’ Clothes

Ngaire Woods 19th April 2018

“Don’t get mad, get even.” That aphorism needs to become the new norm in democratic politics across Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Rather than complaining about populist successes, established political parties should take a page from the populist playbook. Three lessons, in particular, cry out for attention. The first lesson is to connect to […]

International Cooperation 2.0

Ngaire Woods 26th February 2018

After decades of serving as the backbone of a rules-based global order, the United States, under President Donald Trump, is touting an “America First” agenda that extols narrow economic nationalism and distrust of international institutions and agreements. But a new type of international cooperation may be emerging – one that works around Trump. To be […]

When Welfare Sabotages Lives

Ngaire Woods 16th January 2018

As Christmas approached last year, the United Kingdom accelerated the rollout of a social security scheme only Ebenezer Scrooge could have loved. The “universal credit” program replaces six different welfare benefits – such as the child tax credit and the housing benefit – with one. The goal is to incentivize employment, and to create an […]

The Case Against Free-Market Capitalism

Ngaire Woods 20th October 2017

Free-market capitalism is on trial. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn accuses neoliberalism of increasing homelessness, throwing children into poverty, and causing wages to fall below subsistence level. For the defense, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May cites the immense potential of an open, innovative, free-market economy. Similar “proceedings” are taking place around […]

A Brexit Strategy For A Weak UK Government

Ngaire Woods 13th June 2017

As Prime Minister Theresa May seeks to form a new government, following an election in which her Conservative Party lost its parliamentary majority, she knows that, within days, she will also need to get down to the nitty-gritty of negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union. Preparations for the Brexit negotiations have been underway for […]

The New Xenophobia

Ngaire Woods 16th January 2017

Democratic governments in the West are increasingly losing their bearings. From the shift toward illiberalism in Poland and Hungary to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States’ presidential election, a particularly lethal strain of populism is infecting societies – and it is spreading. The appeal of populism […]

Why Don’t We Trust Our Leaders?

Ngaire Woods 23rd August 2016

In developed democracies today, political leadership is increasingly up for grabs. Voters, clearly tired of the status quo, want change at the top, leaving even major parties’ establishments struggling to install leaders of their choosing. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party MPs have been stymied in their efforts to unseat Jeremy Corbyn as leader. In […]

Confronting The Global Threat To Democracy

Ngaire Woods 9th June 2016

Across the world, populists are attracting votes with their promises to protect ordinary people from the harsh realities of globalization. The democratic establishment, they assert, cannot be trusted to fulfill this purpose, as it is too busy protecting the wealthy – a habit that globalization has only intensified. For decades, globalization promised to bring benefits […]

Six Key Lessons The IMF Ignored In The Euro Crisis

Ngaire Woods 28th July 2015

Over the last few decades, the International Monetary Fund has learned six important lessons about how to manage government debt crises. In its response to the crisis in Greece, however, each of these lessons has been ignored. The Fund’s participation in the effort to rescue the eurozone may have raised its profile and gained it […]

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

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.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


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ILO advertisement

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.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

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.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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.


WATCH HERE

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