Saraceno, Francesco, (2016), “Unemployment: EMU Policymakers Focus On The Wrong Problem”, Social Europe Journal, 9 February Last week François Hollande lifted the veil on the much-awaited measures for tackling French unemployment (3.6m/10.6%), defined as a “national emergency”. The plan made the news mostly for the pledge to soften the famous 35-hour working week, which nevertheless remains vague. Besides that, the plan consists of two legs: the first is an attempt …Read More

Janssen, Ronald, (2016), “Collective Bargaining And Rising Inequalities: Do The OECD And IMF Get It?”, Social Europe, 3 February. In a paper published in spring 2015, the IMF’s research department made the case for trade unions and collective bargaining as a powerful tool to keep inequalities in check. Whereas previous literature and statistics were already showing the existence of such a link, the IMF paper went even further by pointing out that …Read More

Rodrik, Dani, (2016), “The Return of Public Investment”, Project Syndicate, 13 January The idea that public investment in infrastructure – roads, dams, power plants, and so forth – is an indispensable driver of economic growth has always held powerful sway over the minds of policymakers in poor countries. It also lay behind early development assistance programs following World War II, when the World Bank and bilateral donors funneled resources to …Read More

Alvaredo, Facundo, Atkinson, Tony, Morelli, Salvatore, (2015),“The importance of wealth concentration and why it is so difficult to measure”, Voxeu, 8 December. The concentration of personal wealth has received a lot of attention since the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. This column investigates the UK and finds wealth distribution to be highly concentrated. The data seem to suggest that the top wealth share has increased in the UK …Read More

Stiglitz, Joseph, (2015), “How Inequality Kills”, Social Europe Journal, 8 December This week, Angus Deaton will receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.” Deservedly so. Indeed, soon after the award was announced in October, Deaton published some startling work with Ann Case in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – research that is at least as newsworthy as the Nobel ceremony. Relevant Posts Alfani, Guido, Ryckbosch, Wouter, (2015), “Income inequality …Read More

Cohen-Setton, Jeremie, (2015), “The puzzle of technical dis-employment and productivity slowdown”, Bruegel, 7 December What’s at stake: Larry Summers made an important speech a few weeks ago at a Peterson Institute conference on the productivity slowdown arguing it is hard to see how recent technical change could both be a major source of dis-employment and not be associated with productivity improvement. Relevant Posts Caliendo, Marco, Schmidl, Ricarda, (2015), “Youth Unemployment and Active …Read More

Adam, Klaus, Tzamourani, Panagiota, (2015), “Distributional consequences of asset price inflation in the Eurozone”, Voxeu, 3 December. Central banks’ unconventional monetary policy measures are often accompanied by asset price changes. This column investigates the distributional effects associated with asset price increases. The findings show that house price increases lead to a significant decrease in net wealth inequality in the Eurozone, whereas equity price increases lead to a significant rise in inequality. Bond …Read More