Social Europe articles on politics

The global system of financial regulation is extraordinarily complex. Partly for that reason, it is little understood. In order to explain it to my students at Sciences Po in Paris, I have devised a kind of wiring diagram that shows the connections among the different bodies responsible for the various components of oversight. It makes […]

For David Cameron, cutting spending in a highly unequal society works because it doesn’t affect those who matter to him. This used to be called class politics. The prime minister’s speech at the lord mayor’s banquet last year was notable in part because its main message, that “we need to do more with less. Not just now, […]

A few years ago, Richard Anker, a former ILO official, wrote an important paper on the historical evolution of the notion of ‘living wages’ and different ways of measuring them. This paper is one example of a growing realization that mandated minimum wages, however effectively enforced, can diverge significantly from ‘living wages’ that can sustain […]

Until recently, there has been very little analysis of women’s role in the economy. Two centuries ago, Mary Wollstonecraft published her proto-feminist A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and in 1869 John Stuart Mill, inspired by his wife Harriet, wrote The Subjection of Women in support of female suffrage. But new evidence is emerging of the cultural […]

Two new studies show, once again, the magnitude of the inequality problem plaguing the United States. The first, the US Census Bureau’s annual income and poverty report, shows that, despite the economy’s supposed recovery from the Great Recession, ordinary Americans’ incomes continue to stagnate. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, remains below its level a quarter-century […]

On the occasion of the centenary of the outbreak of the war in Europe, it is my great privilege to give this address to the graduating Masters class of 2014, and to continue the historic ties between Cambridge and Louvain. A century ago, our two universities stood in solidarity against the common threat of war […]

The right to free movement is one of the founding principles of the European Union, however it has also been a source of controversy, particularly among Eurosceptic parties across Europe. In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, Jonathan Portes, Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, discusses the economic costs and benefits […]

As the eurozone debates how to escape the stagnation trap in which it finds itself, one question has become increasingly important: Can governments credibly commit to trim public spending in the future while avoiding immediate cuts? Fortunately, the answer is a qualified yes: there are ways to ensure that fiscal accommodation now is followed by […]

Since the onset of the euro-crisis, the old debate pertaining to the supra-national stabilisers in the euro-area has gained new relevance. While economic textbooks have long stipulated that countries forming a monetary union need an alternative mechanism for dealing with asymmetric shocks and even the early feasibility studies on Economic and Monetary Union EMU had […]

Europe is losing momentum in greening its economy, and its former leadership in this area is eroding rapidly. Indeed, after a 60% drop in clean energy investment in 2013 compared to the 2011 peak, Europe has become the global laggard in this regard. Alongside this collapse in clean energy investment, due mostly to austerity and […]

For decades, people have been predicting how the rise of advanced computing and robotic technologies will affect our lives. On one side, there are warnings that robots will displace humans in the economy, destroying livelihoods, especially for low-skill workers. Others look forward to the vast economic opportunities that robots will present, claiming, for example, that […]

You might have heard about recent reports stating that global inequality is decreasing. This is a nice example of constructing the comparison according to the result you would like to see. Yes, inequality between countries has declined but the most important comparison is what is happening to inequality within countries as this tells you how the distribution system, that […]