Publications

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.

By prioritising Paris commitments, while ignoring the more practical concerns of freer energy trade, the EU has put politics over economics. The current phrasing of the Renewable Energy Directive punishes states not party to Paris. Consequently, it will make trade with the United States more difficult, drive up the costs of clean energy, and make it harder for EU member states to meet their emissions targets post-2020.

In many markets, there is a common phenomenon that, for a given change in costs, prices tend to rise more quickly when costs increase than they fall when costs decrease. As evident in some recent price rises in the UK energy market, this “rockets and feathers” pricing pattern is often claimed as evidence of collusion and followed by calls for greater regulation. However, there are other more competitive explanations and so care is needed when considering a potential remedy.

The recent EU-Japan free trade agreement will bring significant economic benefits to the EU. More importantly, the Agreement also indicates a change in the EU’s stance toward globalization and trade partnerships. While relationships with historic trade partners (the US and the UK) appear to be deteriorating, the EU seems to have acquired awareness of its essential role of free-trade leader and has now started to turn its interests towards Asia.

Since the introduction of the Euro in 1999 the European Central Bank sets the main refinancing rate for the whole Eurozone and therefore decides at which conditions banks can take…

After the recent disappointing performance in the last elections, the UK government led by Theresa May has revived the Northern Powerhouse project. The project aspires to make the North of…

Electoral victories for Mark Rutte of the Netherlands in March, followed by Emanuel Macron’s presidential ascent in France in May and his landslide Parliamentary victory in June, have encouraged the…

The contrast between the actions of the Spanish and Italian governments in the past two months could hardly be more marked. As we reported in June, the Madrid government allowed…