The free-market orthodoxy advocated across Europe after the 2008-09 financial crisis of reducing the size of government when people weren’t spending and companies weren’t investing was questionable at best. Indeed, it was decried for years by renowned economists such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Yanis Varoufakis. Fast forward eight years and governments and international organizations can point to renewed growth when advocating cutting back on public services. More...

The historic Paris Agreement hinges on the average global temperature of our planet increasing no more – and preferably substantially less – than 2° above pre-industrial levels. But to achieve this, the world’s countries are going to have to do far more than they pledged to do in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). More...

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement has led to a fragmentation in the US effort to see through the energy transition, with some states supporting it and others remaining committed to intensive fossil fuel use. This predicament presents the European Union with a unique opportunity to become the global leader in green energy technologies. More...

For a few years now, artificial intelligence has become a subject of debate far beyond the field of digital technology alone, doubtless because there is a sense of the whole scope of its economic and social consequences. Indeed, the laboratory technology has undergone a qualitative leap – with machine learning in particular – that has allowed it to be incorporated in several processes that until recently still required human intervention. Translation, voice recognition, and classifying images and videos are some of the first areas of experimentation and progress. Others will follow, although the technology is fallible and progress remains uncertain. More...

That the EU is at a crossroads there is no doubt. The UK’s historic decision to quit the Union came as a bitter blow to Brussels, reeling as it was from the debt crises that had rocked Portugal, Ireland, Spain and, most of all, Greece from 2010 to 2015. More...

When it comes to inequality the focus tends to be on widening income disparities, with the astronomical wages and salaries of celebrities, sport stars and the titans of industry regularly cited as proof of the cavernous divide between those at the top of the pyramid and those at the bottom. More...

The difficulties Germany has had with its energy transition could well push policy makers to scale down their ambitious goals in the wake of the September 24 elections. Indeed, greening Europe’s largest economy has proven trickier than the country’s success with renewable energy sources would suggest. More...

Discounting is the usual method used to compare the future value to a present value. This is a key parameter for evaluating the socio-economic impact of public investment projects decades in the future.
The use of the discount rate when determining the socio-economic impact of projects varies widely depending on the country, as is the case with the US, the UK and France. More...

An economy’s ability to use labour, capital and other resources efficiently is the essence of productivity. And it is when this efficiency increases that a country’s economy expands. As such it is central to maintaining living standards and ensuring individual well-being. More...