In light of increasing income inequality and wealth inequality in many Western democracies, some social scientists believe that democracy is in jeopardy. Do the rich have a disproportionally high influence…
The collection of tariffs on imports not only involves direct costs, which is the price of the tariff itself, but also numerous indirect costs. Civil servants, as an example, employed…
“This state is not for free,” said the recently-elected leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, promoting a mandatory year of service in the military or in the social…
The extent of the climate change is significantly affected by the size of the world population. A larger population increases the use of resources and more greenhouse gases are emitted.…
WP 2017-04. In many countries around the world, lottery services are provided by government-owned firms that are equipped with (regional) monopoly privileges. The official argument for lottery monopolies by state-owned…
A successful integration of asylum migrants arriving in Europe will largely depend on their success on the European labour arket. In a new Policy Paper we investigate the labour market barriers faced by asylum migrants in Germany, France and the UK. We recommend a full elimination of barriers explicitly created against labour market entry of asylum migrants, and removal of labour market regulations which hit asylum migrants especially hard.
Germany Income per capita is not only high in Germany, it is also relatively equally distributed in the population. OECD data indicate that only a few small countries have income both higher and more equally distributed than Germany. In other large European countries like France, UK, Italy or Spain, income is lower (on average) and more unequally distributed. This international comparison suggests that higher income does not have to result in higher inequality. A contributing factor to this could be that state institutions of a higher quality can positively influence not only the wealth of a nation, but also redistribute it during slow growth.
An age-old phenomenon: Some unemployment exists and politicians want to fight it by creating conditions for new jobs. The usual recipe involves expanding government spending and investment programs. Figures for OECD countries show that places with low taxation of labour tend to exhibit low unemployment low and high levels of individual annual work hours. For politicians this serves as a much more promising recipe for politicians: the best way of “creating conditions for new jobs” and lowering unemployment is to reduce the tax burden on labour.
The Greek bankruptcy of 2010 was the latest impetus for reviving the debate on robustness of governments’ budgets in the Eurozone. It became clear that in order to assess the long-term fiscal health, it is not enough to look at the much used public debt-to-GDP ratio. Additional indicators need to be considered which take a broader picture.
The Greeks have voted and the left-wing Syriza emerged as the clear winner. There will now follow intensive discussions about Greek reforms and the relationship between Greece and the rest of the world. The labour market is one of the core battlegrounds in Greece. It is very difficult for the country’s unemployed to re-enter the labor market. This is borne out not only by the high unemployment rates but also by data on duration of holding current job. In no Eurozone country has the average employed worker held his or her job as long as in Greece. It is not clear whether the new government has either the incentive and/or the means to adjust the privileges of labour market insiders for the benefit of current outsiders.