politics, economy and employment & labour
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher that publishes content examining issues in politics, economy, society and ecology. This archive brings together Social Europe articles on the economy.
A democratic society is characterized by the people’s electoral will. The quality of democracy is determined by the sovereign action of its citizens and the level of human rights protection. It is worth mentioning that Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human and Civil Rights (1789) notes: “Any society in which no provision is […]
Ever since the financial and sovereign debt crisis, the political and economic implications of Germany’s unbalanced economy have lured the attention of academics, policy institutions, the public and politicians across Europe and beyond. Frequent are the pleas made to the German political establishment to rebalance its export-oriented economic model, increase fiscal expenditures and thus rein in the world’s largest current […]
I realise I have not written much about Greece since the open letter to Angela Merkel that Thomas Piketty, Jeffrey Sachs, Dani Rodrik, Heiner Flassbeck and I wrote in July 2015 (see here and here). Nothing has changed to alter the views I expressed then. The excess borrowing, some of which they kept secret, of Greek governments before […]
While it’s hard to come up with numbers, the delocalisation and outsourcing of production and other economic activities to low-cost countries have resulted in the loss of jobs and reduced purchasing power of workers in developed countries. The next wave of job loss is expected to be due to technology and, in particular, automation and […]
After the 2008 global financial crisis, a consensus emerged that the public sector had a responsibility to intervene to bail out systemically important banks and stimulate economic growth. But that consensus proved short-lived, and soon the public sector’s economic interventions came to be viewed as the main cause of the crisis, and thus needed to […]
Some progressive economists are now arguing for the idea of a Job Guarantee Program (JGP), and their advocacy has begun to gain political traction. For instance, in the US, Bernie Sanders and some other leading Democrats have recently signaled a willingness to embrace the idea. In a recent research paper I have examined the macroeconomics […]
Joseph Stiglitz recently dismissed the relevance of secular stagnation to the American economy, and in the process attacked (without naming me) my work in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. I am not a disinterested observer, but this is not the first time that I find Stiglitz’s policy commentary as weak as his […]
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, some economists argued that the United States, and perhaps the global economy, was suffering from “secular stagnation,” an idea first conceived in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Economies had always recovered from downturns. But the Great Depression had lasted an unprecedented length of time. Many believed […]
“The biggest policy mistake of the last decade” is the title of an article by Ryan Cooper, and the mistake is of course austerity (it is a very US focussed piece, so Brexit is not on the map). Cooper goes through all the academics who gave reasons why austerity was necessary and how their analysis later […]
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winner for economics, has recently written an article titled “Can the euro be saved?”. He wrote: The euro may be approaching another crisis. Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy, has chosen what can at best be described as a Eurosceptic government. This should surprise no one. The backlash in Italy […]
Defying common sense as well as business and financial elites, US President Donald Trump seems to relish the prospect of a trade war. On July 6, his latest trade restrictions – 25% tariffs on about $34 billion of Chinese imports – took effect. They were promptly met by retaliatory tariffs on an equivalent volume of […]
Over the last two years, economic expansion in the euro area has gathered pace. So far, improving economic conditions and falling unemployment has only translated into higher wages to a limited extent: Since 2013, GDP per capita has expanded on average by 1.2% annually while real wages have risen by just 0.7%. The conventional explanation […]
