Sovereign spreads and the frailty of the eurozone
The failure to provide for risk-sharing in the eurozone architecture has sustained chronic mistrust, reflected in sovereign spreads.
Economy
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher driven by the core values of freedom, sustainability, and equality. These principles guide our exploration of society’s most pressing challenges. This archive page curates Social Europe articles focused on economic issues, offering a rich resource for innovative thinking and informed debate.
Industrial policy: is there a paradigm shift in Germany and what does this imply for Europe?
A paper from the German economy minister on a national industrial policy has gone down like a lead balloon. Peter Bofinger argues it needs to be reflated—and coloured green—at a European level.
‘Gendering’ the EU budget
There is a clear case for making gender equality a more visible part of the EU budgetary process.
Fighting for a Europe of tax justice
An outgoing green MEP reflects on a decade of working for tax justice in the European Parliament and the challenges for her successors.
To the postcapitalist city … via Amsterdam circa 1619
What makes the 21st century city the harbinger of a postcapitalist world is that for the first time in modern history the network can transcend the market.
The good life after work
To manage the latest wave of automation, we must have ends that are more compelling than merely wanting more products and services.
Unequal Europe—collating the data
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a website collating the sources of data on inequality across the European Union and exploring evidence-based policy prescriptions? Now there is.
Inequality: from redistribution to predistribution and beyond?
Soaring income inequality inevitably raises discussion of more progressive taxation. But a more fundamental focus on the ownership of capital is needed.
Austerity is hurting women’s health
A close look at how the austerity practised in the UK since 2010 has affected women’s health shows a gender lens must always be applied to see the full picture.
How to tax a multinational
For too long, multinational corporations—and digital firms in particular—have used existing rules to avoid paying taxes in countries where they do much of their business.
Output gap nonsense
Adam Tooze explains how a false exactitude in economics has led to a terrible politics in the EU.
A Social and Green New Deal to reverse the populist tide
The setback to the immediate plans of those seeking the UK’s exit from the European Union provides a window of opportunity to go on the offensive for an anti-populist, continent-wide alternative.
How the market is betraying advanced economies
The idea that ‘the market’ must be the organising principle for collective decision-making should be abandoned.
Modern monetary theory: the dose makes the poison
Can government deficits be financed directly by central banks, as modern monetary theory suggests? The question should not be if but how much.
The sustainability imperative—how really to assess the European economy
The European Semester process of macroeconomic country analysis by the European Commission has been driven by economic orthodoxy in support of austerity—when sustainability should be the watchword.
The new spirit of postcapitalism
Capitalism emerged in the interstices of feudalism and Paul Mason finds a prefiguring of postcapitalism in the lifeworld of the contemporary European city.
‘Full and good employment’ and reviving the European ideal
The logic of a Euro-Keynesian recovery, towards socially useful full employment, leads inexorably to a rediscovery of wider European political ambition.