Publications

How do you know that any institution has too much money? When it does not manage, in spite of best intentions, to spend them all. Then there is room for scaling down the budget. The money will not disappear – it will be spent by the original “donors” instead. We show that the EU is, at least to some extent, such institution.

In all epochs, exports were almost always considered good for an economy. That’s why modern governments have generally stayed away from trying to tax exports. Not so the current Greek government, however. By increasing the tax rate on a vital component of Greek exports it is hoping to raise some “free revenue”. It won’t work.

Most media optimism, both in the US and Europe, continues to focus on the dizzy levels of stock and bond markets, but in our view these index levels have been driven up by professionals front-running QE in the US and Europe.

In the past month, a Bulgarian court appointed two experts to liquidate the assets of CCB (known also by its Bulgarian initials KTB). This marked the end of a rather remarkable story that began in June 2014, when the rest of the Eurozone banking system was enjoying a period of relative calm.

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.

European Parliament has just voted to increase the budget each MEP can spend on their assistants. This can hardly be justified. Worse, it can increase the deluge of new regulations.

International institutions like IMF or World Bank do often give economic policy advice to poorer countries, but generally only after thorough analysis. EU does not specialise in such anaislys, and its diplomats should avoid dispensing such unfounded advice altogether.

There are plenty of reasons to panic about the level of UK government deficits and debt. But Brexit, even if it actually came, is not one of them. We review the relationship between a UK-sans-EU and public finance.

UK might not get a single party government after next month’s election. Again. Moody’s are not worried about the consequences for government finances. They probably should be.

Say you want to pass your wealth to others after you die, since you cannot take it with you. – If you pass it to friends and family, many (18)…

Bank for International Settlements has labelled the impact of recent European quantitative easing as “unprecedented”. Worrying effects are not only the negative interest rates, but also very high price volatilities of asset. This development may soon hit not only economic, but also legal and even political boundaries.

The Austrian federal state of Carinthia continues to suffer from its long engagement with the Alpe Adria bank, which actually predates the recent crisis. Instead of making a quick cut liquidation after a bail-in, it is hoping to recover some assets in a dragged out wind-down process. It is to be seen whether this prolonged exposition to further claims will prove successful.