On May 25th, 2018, one of the most sweeping changes to the regulation of the internet, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), came into effect. While it has been only a few weeks since the new privacy policies have been enacted, there are already noticeable changes to (...)
“Do good and talk about it” became compulsory last year with the introduction of the new European CSR directive for companies with more than 500 employees. The keyword is Corporate Social Responsibility. Companies are compelled to provide annual reports about their charitable commitments. In (...)
Background to the looming standoff between Italy and the ECB
Italy’s new government continues to confirm its commitment to fiscal policies which have triggered sensationalist reports in mainstream media questioning whether Italy can remain a Eurozone country. The alliance between Italy’s 5 (...)
Scotland has recently imposed a price-floor on all alcoholic products, requiring retailers to charge at least £0.50 per unit (equal to 8g of pure alcohol, according to the UK government). The intention behind this imposition is to restrict the affordability of cheap, highly alcoholic drinks, in (...)
A paper by economists Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza and Luigi Zingales (GSZ) has recently made headlines and received widespread approval within the academic community. Their contribution, titled Long-term Persistence, provides the empirical test of a hypothesis put forward in 1993 by American (...)
On this 5th of May, the author of the Capital would have blown his 200 candles. Embittered by the communism theorist’s admirers, Nicolas Lecaussin explains how his idea was contradicted by facts.
A Romanian who became French, Bogdan Călinescu lived his adolescence under Ceaușescu’s dictatorship. (...)
Despite our regular reports highlighting some of the challenges facing those tasked with managing the euro, public concern about government debt levels appears to have subsided to its lowest level since 2008. This low level of public awareness is due to a combination of factors; the natural (...)
WP 2018-05. Executive Summary.
IREF is a free-market oriented think tank based in France. It promotes ideas, debates, events, and rigorous academic research. IREF supports research projects that lead to the production of original papers of academic quality of at least 7,000 words. This support is not a prize to published (...)
With martial rhetoric the US president Donald Trump is threatening with new trade barriers. Europeans follow a similar policy albeit at a more moderate tone. The European Union also imposes often hefty tariffs on steel and aluminium from China – the justifications are surprisingly similar. On (...)
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