Political Economy

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Snapshot,
Yannos Papantoniou

The finance minister who steered Greece into the common currency club argues that the country’s problems today are not an inevitable result of having adopted the euro -- and they can be resolved without abandoning it.

Snapshot,
Brendan Simms

Margaret Thatcher re-established the United Kingdom as a major force on the international scene. But she failed to see that the best hope for Europe's future was integration.

Comment, May/June 2013
Steven N. Kaplan

Much of the outrage over economic inequality in the United States has centered on the high compensation and lack of accountability that corporate executives supposedly enjoy -- allegedly the result of boards at public companies. The truth, however, is that American CEOs now earn less and get fired more than in the recent past.

Essay, May/June 2013
Mark Blyth

The results of Europe’s experiment with austerity are in and they’re clear: it doesn’t work. Here’s how such a flawed idea became the West’s default response to financial crises.

Essay, Mar/Apr 2013
Jerry Z. Muller

Inequality is rising across the post-industrial capitalist world. The problem is not caused by politics and politics will never be able to eliminate it. But simply ignoring it could generate a populist backlash. Governments must accept that today as ever, inequality and insecurity are the inevitable results of market operations. Their challenge is to find ways of shielding citizens from capitalism's adverse consequences -- even as they preserve the dynamism that produces capitalism's vast economic and cultural benefits in the first place.

Snapshot,
R. Daniel Kelemen

The collapse of the eurozone no longer seems likely, thanks to its members' decisions to coordinate their fiscal policies more closely. But it is exactly that tighter integration that has made many Euro-skeptic Brits want to opt out of the EU altogether.

Snapshot,
Milan Vaishnav

The Hindu-nationalist leader Narendra Modi's recent election sparked a good deal of controversy. It also sparked an open and substantive debate about economics, liberalism, and social welfare in Gujarat and across all of India -- a rarity in developing democracies and a positive thing as India gears up for nationwide elections in 2014.

Snapshot,
Robert Greenstein

To get out of its economic hole, the United States needs to cut spending and increase revenue. But policymakers must not let new taxes harm low-income working families, who have the fewest resources to contribute to reducing the deficit anyway.

Snapshot,
Martin Feldstein

If the United States avoids increasing government spending as a share of GDP, it could actually lower tax rates since, given the U.S. tax structure, revenue generated by income taxes rises faster than GDP. What the country really needs now is to broaden its tax base.

Snapshot,
Stephen Kinsella

For once, Ireland is projecting confidence and implementing painful austerity measures to get its fiscal house in order, which is allowing it to borrow money despite its many economic problems. Other debt-ridden European countries, however, would be wrong to conclude that they can do the same.

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