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Paul Collier

Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. His latest book is ‘Exodus: Immigration and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century’ published by Penguin and Oxford University Press.

Paul Collier

Meeting The Migration Challenge And Reforming Capitalism Through Mutual Solidarity

Paul Collier 25th July 2018

How would you characterise the migration issue today? How has it become such a hot topic, and how do you think it’s likely to develop in the future? At the moment, obviously, public policy on migration and refugees is a complete mess. It’s a broken system. In fact, it doesn’t really deserve the word ‘system’. […]

Migration Cannot Be Cast In Terms Of Individual Rights

Paul Collier 8th December 2016

The Jungle in Calais is closed and the deal with Turkey is in place. Is the refugee crisis over? Not at all. The refugee crisis is first and foremost about refugees, not about migration to Europe at all. It became very salient once refugees or some refugees, a relatively small minority, started moving to Europe […]

Beyond The Boat People: Europe’s Moral Duties To Refugees

Paul Collier 15th July 2015

Part of the world is still awash with conflict and poverty. Europe is a haven of peace and prosperity. Unsurprisingly, many people whose home is in the former wish to live in the latter. European policy towards these desires is catastrophically muddled. Yet solutions are not difficult. I will focus on displaced Syrians who comprise […]

On Exits And Hegemony

Paul Collier 11th May 2015

Greece is again hovering at the exit door of the Eurozone; Scotland is again hovering at the exit door of the United Kingdom. The impetus for these unanticipated phenomena is the same: hegemony generates potent antibodies. From the 1980s I have been witness to hegemony through the Structural Adjustment Programs of the IMF in Africa. […]

Good And Bad Nationalism

Paul Collier 10th March 2015

Nationalism has come to be associated with attempts by majority ethnic groups to exclude and persecute minorities. Not only is this detestable, it is quite clearly an abuse of the term: an attempt to appropriate for one component of a society, a designation which by definition must include the whole. In effect, exclusionary nationalism asserts […]

Democracy And The Erosion Of The Centre Ground

Paul Collier 7th January 2015

According to the simple two-party voting model of Anthony Downs, democracy privileges the centre ground: parties compete to attract the median voter. This is no longer working: the centre ground is losing political power to the extremes. Across Europe, new populist-extremist parties have broken in: Greece, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Scotland and England. […]

Banks, Bonuses And BankSlaughter: How To Make European Banks Less Dangerous

Paul Collier 13th November 2014

In trying to make the banking system less dangerous, European and global regulators are trying three approaches. First, they have just undertaken stress tests. Second, they have specified new requirements for the banks to hold more capital and fewer risky assets. Third, they have tried to weaken the incentives for frontline dealmakers to expose their […]

Illegal Migration To Europe: What Should Be Done?

Paul Collier 9th September 2014

There is a real and present danger of overt hostility of majority populations towards the minorities established in the EU. An important factor fuelling rising hostility is the sense that immigration is out of control, most visibly manifested in the rapid increase in illegal and dangerous forms of entry. Migration policies are in evident need […]

Rent-Seeking, Living Standards And Inequality

Paul Collier 16th July 2014

Rent-seeking is the activity of generating and allocating transfers between economic actors. It results in waste and inequality. The rise of rent-seeking, with its epicentre in the accountancy, legal and banking professions, has been seriously damaging. In the OECD the damage is most evident in the USA, where rent-seeking has faced fewer policy impediments than […]

Scotland And Oil: Avoiding A Disastrous Precedent

Paul Collier 13th May 2014

In September the Scots will vote on secession. For decades, the key slogan of the Scottish Nationalist Party has been ‘Its Scotland’s oil’. Yet this claim has never been subject to serious scrutiny. I will argue that it is spurious: ethically, legally, and practically. The philosopher of justice, John Rawls, grounded justice in those social […]

What Is Europe About?

Paul Collier 12th March 2014

At its foundation the European project was primarily about peace. Following the murderous preceding decades this was rightly the overriding priority. It was also about power: squeezed between the imperial powers of USA and the USSR unity was essential. These goals determined the path: rights would shift from nations to a United States of Europe […]

Why Coal Production Must End

Paul Collier 10th January 2014

Germany is now producing more coal than for twenty years. This has occurred in a society that prides itself on its concern about climate change and has the largest Green party in Europe. Underlying this evident disconnection between concern and behaviour is an international failure to link the challenge of tackling climate change to big, […]

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

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