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…
Public spending
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.
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…
As we recently pointed out, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Phillip Hammond, was left aside by the Conservative party during the last campaign for parliamentary elections. With him,…
On the 8th of June UK citizen will vote to elect a new Parliament in a snap election called by current Prime Minister Theresa May. The very short campaign so…
Greece is in dire need of structural reforms, both in terms of public finances and real economy. Privatizations, especially if accompanied by appropriate liberalization policies, can improve the efficiency and…
The English translation of “Anti-Piketty”, a collection of essays by renowned international economists and historians, critical of Thomas Piketty’s volume, Capital in the 21st Century has been recently published by…
Rule Flouting Politicians and the Willingness to Cooperate The market oriented democracy in the West enjoys a historically unprecedented period of wealth and peace today. This success is based primarily…
Greece’s government debt keeps Europe busy for almost 7 years now. The government debt ratio adds up to almost 180% of the GDP. According to Transparency International, Greece is ranked…