politics, economy and employment & labour
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher. We use the values of freedom, sustainability and equality as the foundation on which we examine society’s most pressing challenges. We are committed to publishing cutting-edge thinking and new ideas from the most thought-provoking people. This archive page brings together Social Europe articles on the economy.
Joseph Stiglitz, American economist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, has come out with a new book, The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe. In recent weeks Stiglitz has appeared in several features in the press, advocating «a smooth exit» from the euro. Still, he expects «the end of the single currency does […]
Joe Stiglitz, thank you very much for joining us today. Let’s dive in right at the deep end. People might be forgiven for not following the Eurozone crisis and the euro crisis too closely, and it’s been rumbling on for years. Just to get us started, what in your view are the key problems of […]
It is widely agreed that globalisation has brought immense benefits. But it is also recognised that these benefits are not equally distributed. Last week’s Apple decision demonstrates the complexity of the issue of distributing the benefits of globalisation. The Irish Government, faced with a windfall of some €13 billion, appears to have sided with the […]
The UK (and maybe the world) faces severe and worsening economic conditions due to Brexit. Many commentators do not seem to understand that there are time lags in the economy’s response to Brexit and that it is far too soon to assess its probable impact. In its latest Inflation Report the Bank of England, however, sets […]
International conflicts are inevitable when governments challenge the excesses of multinational corporations. Emotions are running high after the EU commission ordered the Irish government to claw back €13 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple, with the US government threatening retaliation. Following Britain’s decision to leave the world’s largest trading block and declarations by French and German […]
Economic globalisation has accelerated enormously. With the advances in information technology and international trade policies, it now permeates almost every sector of the economy as well as our whole way of life. At the same time, tariffs and technical trade barriers have been massively dismantled through wide-ranging market liberalisation, and worldwide competition has been ratcheted […]
The Ventotene summit among Prime Minister Renzi, Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande took place recently. Crucial issues were on the agenda: the geo-political conflicts at the borders of the European Union; internal security; migratory flows; economic growth. A strong wind of rhetoric about relaunching the ideals of the founding fathers of a united Europe animated […]
Most people are more worried by government debt than about taxation. “But it’s trillions” a friend of mine recently expostulated about the United Kingdom’s national debt. He exaggerated a bit: it is £1.7 trillion ($2.2 trillion). But one website features a clock showing the debt growing at a rate of £5,170 per second. Although the tax take is far […]
The process of globalization is in retreat. The latest victim of the global economic slowdown is international trade: after tumultuous growth in the last 26 years, disrupted only temporarily by the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the estimated volume of goods and services traded globally has been stalled for more than 18 months around $13 trillion. […]
Eight years after the 2008 crisis governments and central banks – despite a plethora of policies and approaches – have failed to stimulate enough demand to produce sustained and strong growth. In Japan, so-called Abenomics promised 2% inflation by 2015; instead, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) expects it to be close to zero in 2016, […]
The Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen recently gave a talk in Lisbon about inequality that demonstrated one of the virtues of being a scholar of economic history. Eichengreen, like me, glories in the complexities of every situation, avoiding oversimplification in the pursuit of conceptual clarity. This disposition stays the impulse to try to explain more about the world than we […]
Rising income and asset inequality has been a growing concern worldwide. It stifles economic recovery and growth; it is a source of the increasing political protests against elites. In the European Union, it remains stubbornly at the same level it had reached by 2010. It had attained its nadir in 2009, after clear progress in […]
Italy is once again in the spotlight. As its banking system undergoes a slow-motion implosion – the country’s banks are weighed down by €360 billion of bad loans, of which €200bn are deemed insolvent – all eyes are now on the Renzi government. How did we get to this point? Though there have been some […]
The vote for Brexit has led to a significant increase in uncertainty in both the political and economic spheres. Whilst the UK economy was already projected to slow down over the next five years, the vote is likely to lead to even greater economic deterioration, especially if the new government continues to pursue Mr. Osborne’s […]
‘Uber is in reality a socialist project of sharing aimed at providing ordinary people with more economic opportunities and improving their lives,’ reads a concluding sentence of a policy vision presented to members of parliaments in Europe by lobbyists of Uber. While the socialist ambitions of the company may be a tough sell, the initial […]
As the world reels from the Brexit shock, it is dawning on economists and policymakers that they severely underestimated the political fragility of the current form of globalization. The popular revolt that appears to be underway is taking diverse, overlapping forms: reassertion of local and national identities, demand for greater democratic control and accountability, rejection […]
It is clear after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primaries that voters are revolting against the relatively open economic policies that have been the norm in the US and Britain since the second world war. Populist opposition to international integration is on the rise in much of continental Europe and has always […]
In economic policy, timing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. The euro zone crisis has been evolving for over seven years, making it difficult to time policy proposals. Now, the shock of Brexit has created a definitive political opportunity for reforming rather than patching the euro. With that in mind, I would like to revive […]
Britain isn’t the only country holding a referendum this month. On June 5, Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected, by 77% to 23%, the proposition that every citizen should be guaranteed an unconditional basic income (UBI). But that lopsided outcome doesn’t mean the issue is going away anytime soon. Indeed, the idea of a UBI has made […]
The Euro crisis has painfully exposed the weaknesses of the European economic policy regime and the peripheral Euro area countries have been suffering a deep depression. So how do Europe’s elites want to reform that regime? Are they questioning the neoliberal model or merely modernising it? To get a glimpse of the future of the […]
By the time British citizens went to the polls on June 23 to decide on their country’s continued membership in the European Union, there had been no shortage of advice in favor of remaining. Foreign leaders and moral authorities had voiced unambiguous concern about the consequences of an exit, and economists had overwhelmingly warned that leaving the […]
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