The World Bank recently forecast that remittances to developing countries will total more than US$450 billion this year, a bit bigger than Venezuela’s economy and more than double a decade a go. Given…
When we think about income and wealth inequalities we are tempted to lay blame on the old way of doing things. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty picks out inherited money as a driver…
Mario Draghi did get round to announcing a much-anticipated new round of quantitative easing (QE) in the end, but never have nine minutes felt so long. The world tuned into the European Central Bank press…
Harald Sander, Cologne University of Applied Sciences (CUAS)
The European Central Bank is due to decide whether and how to undertake quantitative easing (QE) via large-scale purchases of government debt on secondary markets. For Germany - as the Eurozone’s largest…
Modern capitalism has a massive structural flaw in one of the cornerstones of its existence. The corporations which form the predominant business structure and which are the main instrument for dividing…
By backing a new Charter for Budget Responsibility, the main political parties in Britain want to persuade you that they’re legally obliged to balance the books within three years. Fortunately, it’s not…
The chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has delivered the financial package he hopes will convince voters to deliver a Conservative majority in May 2015. Here, our team of academic experts responds…
Not too long ago, cynics were wondering if David Cameron’s fears over the global economy were a ploy to shift blame for any flaws in the UK’s performance as we near the May 2015 general election. However…
There is a nice weather map cartoon by Matt featuring the UK characterised by the varied intensity of dinner table house price conversation. And it is not just that we are obsessed with property values…
Taken at face value, David Cameron’s warning this week about risks in the global economy sounds like it might be wonderfully prescient. Here’s the country’s economic chauffeur, carefully checking his instrument…
When discussing the state of the economy, politicians deploy two key tricks. First, get your excuses in early. Second, take all the credit for any good news but blame others for any bad news. David Cameron…
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of…
As the US economy emerges from recession, the prospect of the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates grabs the attention of the financial markets more and more. US rates have been close to zero for…
The long and slow-stunted recovery of the eurozone economies is a major source of concern for the IMF and international bankers. Six years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers signalled the onset of the…
Jean Tirole has won a deserved Nobel prize. The French economist from Toulouse 1 Capitole University has made some significant contributions to almost all fields in economics, but it is his work in the…
In a world where too many go to bed hungry, it comes as a shock to realise that more than half the world’s food production is left to rot, lost in transit, thrown out, or otherwise wasted. This loss is…
Unpredictability is omnipresent in life, from dealing playing cards, through contracting an illness or getting promoted, to the rise or fall of equity markets. For those attempting to make the calls on…
Even Angela Merkel now seems to agree that austerity has run its course. When Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, together with other European leaders, led a fresh charge against the ill-fated policy…