Taking the heat out of energy prices
Instead of higher interest rates, Peter Bofinger urges lower VAT on energy and temporary suspension of the CO2 trading system.
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.
Services, value chains and the global south
Insertion into global value chains in services is no hand-up panacea for the least-developed countries.
Performance-related pay and the gender pay gap
Performance pay might be thought to reward merit—but it mainly rewards men.
Transitions through workplace innovation
Investing in good jobs and employees is crucial to negotiating the green and digital transitions.
The beginning of a new globalisation
This time, Branko Milanovic writes, it is labour—not capital—which will be globalised.
Germany on the way to adequate minimum wages
The hike to €12 is also a strong signal on the planned European minimum-wages directive.
‘They’re taking our jobs’—really?
It is widely believed that migrants have displaced indigenous workers—but it's false.
The Metaverse is a labour issue
The Metaverse has been talked about only in terms of gee-whiz technologies.
Inflation: raising rates is not the answer
As inflation has re-emerged, so have calls for general monetary tightening.
Cutting workplace accidents and diseases to zero
The pandemic has focused attention on health and safety. But workers were already dying just trying to make a living.
The price increases that matter for the poor
Rich-country governments are not adequately addressing the causes of food-price inflation—the world’s poor continue to suffer as a result.
Amazon and the power of big digital platforms
Platform power is often traced to markets, implying anti-trust action. The source, and the solution, lie elsewhere.
First collective agreement for platform workers in Spain
The agreement follows a critical Supreme Court judgment and the ‘riders’ law’ deriving from social dialogue.
Not only a vaccine waiver: WTO reform is urgent
‘Intellectual property rights’ as the foundation of ‘free’ markets is a notion difficult, intellectually, to sustain.
Learning accounts—filling the training gaps
Individual learning accounts can make the right to training tangible for all but EU member states will need to raise their commitment.
Spain’s labour reform: less transience, more balance
While still subject to political negotiations, the labour-market reform agreed by Spain’s social partners should bring more security.
Higher public debt = lower growth?
The pandemic-induced crisis has seen fiscal policy relaxed. Ill-evidenced orthodoxy must not be allowed to reinstate austerity.