politics, economy and employment & labour
GDP figures are often in the public eye but they are insufficient measures for well-being. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains why we need to look beyond GDP. Just under ten years ago, the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress issued its report, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add […]
Far from settling the question of the United Kingdom’s future, the 2016 Brexit referendum and subsequent negotiations with the European Union have triggered a full-blown identity crisis and culture war in Britain. Two years after the UK electorate voted by 52% to 48% to withdraw from the EU, it is safe to say that former […]
There are only a few months left until the United Kingdom formally exits the European Union. So far, the debate about Brexit has been framed mainly in economic terms. Should the UK crash out of the bloc without a mutual exit agreement, the damage will likely be significant. And, as matters stand, such an agreement is […]
On October 21, Poland will hold local elections, which will be followed by the European Parliament elections in May 2019, national parliamentary elections next fall, and a presidential election in May 2020. Taken together, these four elections may be the country’s most important votes since 1989. As the European Union’s largest former communist state, Poland […]
Labour advocates have long complained that international trade agreements are driven by corporate agendas and pay little attention to the interests of working people. The preamble of the World Trade Organization Agreement mentions the objective of “full employment,” but otherwise labour standards remain outside the scope of the multilateral trade regime. The only exception is a clause, […]
European security currently rests essentially on the NATO alliance and the principle of mutual defence, and on cooperation between national intelligence services working to prevent violence against people and national assets. But in an era when threats come from domestic extremists as well as hostile state and non-state actors seeking to undermine democratic institutions, this […]
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 […]
“There are two sides at the moment in Europe. One is led by Macron, who is supporting migration. The other one is supported by countries that want to protect their borders.” This is how Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán described the European political landscape during his August meeting with the Lega party’s Matteo Salvini, the strongman in the […]
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 […]
Tensions over immigration continue to dominate European politics. In Italy, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, a populist firebrand, is monopolizing the public’s attention with almost daily outbursts against immigrants. Likewise, Salvini’s German counterpart, Horst Seehofer, created a crisis in the governing coalition in order to secure new measures against asylum seekers trying to enter Germany from […]
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 […]
