Publications

Economists are often accused (especially by other disciplines) of exaggerating the virtues of the market and of systematically downplaying the chances of a successful government intervention. In this view, economists are “market believers” and “state sceptics”, which is then reflected not only in research, but also in teaching and policy advice.

It is true that economists deal with the causes and consequences of state failure more intensively than other social scientists. Economic analysis of government failure has become an important research program over the course of the second half of 20th century.

Nevertheless, the label of unilateral market orthodoxy does not really stick. A look at the ngram statistic (courtesy of Google’s digitization project) reveals that the term “market failure” appears in the literature much more frequently than “government failure”. Given the prominent role played by the state in our economic system, it is apt to ask: Why is government failure so little discussed?

The imagination of EU governments to come up with new kinds of tax is apparently inexhaustible. Tax on meat is now being prepared, as an answer to alleged “problems” with meat production and consumption. But taxes are generally bad solutions to “problems”, especially when those problems are created by other government activities.

It’s not just USA who is raising minimum wages significantly. New or increased minimum wages are spreading all across the EU, too (e.g. Germany, UK, Portugal..). If we take McDonald’s as a symbol of “minimum wage jobs”, which governments are working the hardest to deprive such workers of any job at all?

If it wasn’t obvious already, Greeks do their taxes differently.. They rely more than is customary in OECD on the less visible taxes of VAT and Social Security. Income tax revenue (from people and companies) is much less prominent. If they are risking a lot less, it time to try to actually lower the income tax rate?

New retail tax in Hungary discriminates big business, which just happens to coincide with the finance minister’s nationalistic interest. New retail tax in Czechia favours big business, which just happens to coincide with the finance minister’s business interest. Curious thing, Coincidence…

You’ve heard of Bitcoin. Is it primarily a currency or a service? Its users probably could not care less; for many it will be both. Yet a distinction is necessary.…

Two recent stories from Greece reveal very different treatments of Germans paying taxes in Greece – depending on whether they are people or corporations.

Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the 21st century” was dubbed as “blockbuster”. But for a group of French intellectuals under the lead of IREF, a free market institute in Paris, it was important to demonstrate that the French economist’s “Capital” did not deserve its commercial success. “Anti-Piketty” is a collection of essays by renowned international economists and historians, critical of Thomas Piketty’s volume.

Ultra Low Interest Rates have destabilized the global Economy whose capital markets now show signs of Illiquidity.

Stress testing of banks by central banking authorities has come to prominence as reliance on the traditional accounting standards has waned. Europe’s banking system was successfully stress tested last October, but we were not impressed.

Greece failed to pay a 1.5 billion installment by the end of June. The rhetoric has long portrayed the lenders as fat cats living off Greece’s misery. Varoufakis had his sight on 1.9 billion which he called “ECB’s profiteering on poor Greeks” and should be “returned” to the Greeks to cover the IMF payment. In reality, the sum not only would not solve anything, its interpretation is plainly wrong. But it’s great propaganda for the referendum.