Publications

Of all the economic implications the European Union has on the world market, few policies have been debated and criticised more than the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Through this…

WP 2017-05.  Discussions on the optimal level of government intervention in the economy have become very intense in recent years, especially following the 2008 financial and economic crisis. The hardships…

The two major Parties in UK have recently concluded their annual conferences. After the positive performance in the last election, the Labour Party appears to have found internal cohesion and…

Although there never seemed much doubt that Mrs. Merkel would be elected for a fourth term as Chancellor of Germany on September 23rd, it is not clear whether she will…

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…

Significant worry has arisen recently over the potential of rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence technologies to automate large sectors of the workforce. As the EU currently advances with the development of…

Until the 1970s, Venezuela was regarded as a relatively well functioning democracy with relatively well-developed market economy. For decades, Venezuela took the top spot in Latin America regarding wealth. Today…

Ten years on from the late summer collapse of first Paribas’ money market funds and then the failure of the UK’s Northern Rock bank, the media have published a raft…

French Europeanism In April, the European establishment and business communities welcomed the election of Emmanuel Macron as President of the French Republic. The election was interpreted as a positive sign…

The purpose of the state pension regime in the UK is to ensure a basic pension to those who have paid reasonable contributions (via national insurance taxation) during their work life. It is essentially a system that attempts to ensure a subsistence income after retirement. The regime is an opt-out system: workers can decide to leave the state pension regime and receive a rebate on national insurance contributions. The current rebate, however, in not enough to incentivise significant numbers of workers to leave the state pension and look for alternative pension funds. Anticipating the pension age increase not only is just a palliative solution to a systemic problem of the pension regime, but it also unfair.