Tag archive for ‘labour market’
Labour Market Reforms and Public Finances Consolidation in Europe
The debate on the strategies that would help the Eurozone governments to face off the current public debt crisis and steer their public finances back onto a sustainable path has been raging on. One of the main criticisms that the current EU initiatives have been receiving is that they do not adequately address the issue [...]
Tough Challenges Ahead as Austerity Measures Hit Europe
As Europe struggles to get to grips with the global financial crisis, we are seeing governments apparently determined to outdo each other in the severity of their austerity packages. Next in line will be the new British government, which later this month will set out what promises to be very harsh measures for cutting the [...]
The End of Social Europe?
As a further round of economic crisis unfolds, many European social democrats seem frozen like a hare in a car’s headlights. They have nothing new to say about how to deal with fiscal deficits – except that the cuts must not occur all at once and that the most vulnerable must be shielded. Otherwise, economists [...]
Good Capitalism… and what would need to change for that
The ongoing financial crisis points unmistakably to the glaring weaknesses of the present economic system. An event that seemed relatively manageable in economic terms – the real estate bubble in the United States – has brought the globalised economy to the brink of a new depression, reawakening memories of the world economic crisis of 1929.
The [...]
Six Things that didn’t cause the Crisis – But really ought to have
Experts, soothsayers and pundits have been falling over themselves to list the factors that combined to produce the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. (My ha’penny’s worth is here). A partial consensus has emerged on some issues (excessive deregulation of the financial sector, current account imbalances) while debate continues to rage on others (such [...]
The Return of the Market Radicals
Apparently now is the time when market radicals dare to come out of the trenches again, not just in the Anglo-American sphere. An article by two German economists on the website of DER SPIEGEL (only in German, sorry) today made me want to bang my head against the wall.
“The far-reaching application of short-term hours has [...]
