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.
Economy
Analysis and debate on the European economy: growth and investment, fiscal and monetary policy, trade, industry and inequality.
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.
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.
EU competition policy: a more holistic approach needed
The European Commission looks at mergers only through the narrow, consumer-price lens of its competition policy. The wider public interest is not being served.
The apogee of capitalism and our political malaise
At the heart of the crisis of trust in politics lies the corrosion of public service by the ethos of private gain.
European recovery: we need both joint debt and taxes
Carlo D’Ippoliti adds to the Social Europe debate on a European recovery, contending that the proposals by Varoufakis and Piketty each have merits and should be synthesised.
Green money without inflation
Funding an ecological transition in Europe via ‘green money’ bonds would be economically justifiable.
Could Europe face the next recession?
The eurozone lacks the scaffolding to withstand the symmetrical shock of the next recession, which could imperil the euro itself.