Analysis and debate on the European economy: growth and investment, fiscal and monetary policy, trade, industry and inequality.
Nicola Countouris and Valerio De Stefano
The pandemic made us all familiar with ‘social distancing’. Employers are starting to glimpse a future where ‘contractual distancing’ is normalised.
A ‘helicopter money’ stimulus of direct payments to individuals, as in the US, would be neither well targeted nor transformatory in Europe.
The arcane notion of ‘monetary dominance’ lay behind the last eurozone crisis. Unless challenged, it could underlie another one.
Branko Milanovic warns that the post-pandemic world could see further polarisation in a now global labour market.
Between 2017 and 2019, income disparities in Europe decreased. The pandemic stopped that decline.
Legal amendments will not only recognise ‘riders’ as employees but require algorithm transparency from platforms generally.
Jayati Ghosh begins a new Social Europe column by pricking Europe’s conscience on its pandemic-related responsibilities towards the developing world.
If the 2008 crash brought on a ‘mancession’ of lost jobs, the sectors most hit by the pandemic employ mainly low-paid women workers.
The UK’s highest court has delivered another benchmark judgment on gig workers. But the battle is not over.
Sofia Fernandes and Klervi Kerneïs
The pandemic has proved not to be an equal-opportunity destroyer of economic and social wellbeing.
The Federal Labour Court ruled late last year that a crowdworker was indeed an employee, despite the platform’s contrary claim.
Work in the social sciences on algorithmic systems can inform how unions address their impact on the power balance between workers and employers.
Peter Bofinger identifies the cryptocurrency’s Achilles heel.
Spreads in a single market with a single currency distort trade flows and competitiveness. The European Central Bank should close them.
A surprising global trend in the pandemic is reduced inequality across countries—but the convergence reflects losses at the top, not gains at the bottom.
Security of supply for medical and pharmaceutical goods must become a high political priority—with industrial policies promoting reshoring.