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Brexit, the personal and the political

March 25, 2019 by andrew36 Leave a Comment

Last week I was asked to write, for a German audience, a piece on Brexit that was short and “personal but also political”. This is what I delivered. The German version will be out in mid-April in Magazin Mitbestimmung.

As I write these words it is 1000 days since the 2016 referendum that is propelling the United Kingdom, after almost half a century of membership, out of the EU. It seems like an age. And it is just 10 days before the foreseen Brexit Day on March 29th. Yet confusion still reigns as to the outcome. Despite years of debate, all the options remain on the table: crashing out, leaving amicably with a deal and, after all, staying in. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: Brexit, EU, European elections, European Parliament, Magazin Mitbestimmung, multi-level governance, subsidiarity, UK, UK referendum, Withdrawal Agreement

Macron and Kramp-Karrenbauer: vive la difference!

March 18, 2019 by andrew36 Leave a Comment

(Update 19.03: corrected misspelling of Kramp-Karrenbauer)

Earlier this month something unprecedented, as far as I recall, happened in European politics. The head of state and government of a member state of the EU, France’s Emmanuel Macron, directly addressed the citizens of all the EU countries, simultaneously, in no less than 22 European languages. In doing so he bypassed the usual intergovernmental channels completely and the filtering systems of 28 nationally organised media at least partially.

While the unusual form of the address ruffled some feathers, it drew a high-level response. The general-secretary of the CDU, and likely Germany’s next Chancellor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), issued a response, made available in five languages. Beyond the significance of the fact that Germany’s response came not from Angela Merkel, but the likely next head of government, this exchange constitute shoots of a tree whose stunted growth has long been considered a critical weakness of the EU: a European public space (Öffentlichkeit).

But what of the content? Here the differences are marked, but in the context of the upcoming European elections that may not be a bad thing. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: AKK, CDU, economic governance, EU, European elections, European Parliament, France, Germany, Kramp-Karrenberger, Macron, Meseberg

A balanced wage policy is not what it seems

October 9, 2018 by andrew36 1 Comment

In my many years of experience in Brussels and at the OECD, of all employers’ representatives those from Austria were amongst those that could usually be relied upon for a fair-minded and fact-based exchange on economic-policy issues. This undoubtedly reflected a well-entrenched system of “Sozialpartnerschaft” in the Alpine republic. All the more disturbing, therefore, to hear Karlheinz Kopf, General-Secretary of the Austrian statutory employer federation WKÖ, entirely misrepresent the basis for a sensible wage policy. This cannot stand uncorrected.

In a debate[1] with his counterpart from the Chamber of Labour, Christoph Klein, Mr. Kopf argued as follows: employers recognize the principle that both those who put their capital at risk and those that commit their labour are entitled to share in the gains resulting from higher productivity. Respecting this principle means giving workers nominal wage increases that compensate for price increases plus one half of productivity increases. This, he claimed, is the way to ensure that capital and labour benefit equally from technical progress.

That may sound reasonable, but it is either breathtakingly ignorant in macroeconomic terms or is a clever but dishonest way to achieve the opposite effect, namely a permanent shift in income away from workers and in favour of capital. In fact the correct formula for a wage policy that achieves a balanced distribution of gains is inflation compensation plus a (real) increase fully in line with productivity gains. This is easily shown. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: Austria, Chamber of Labour, distribution, golden wage rule, inflation, Klein, Kopf, Markus Marterbauer, productivity growth, wage policy, WKÖ

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Recent Posts

  • Brexit, the personal and the political
  • Macron and Kramp-Karrenbauer: vive la difference!
  • The UK after the draft agreement with the EU27
  • A balanced wage policy is not what it seems
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  • Is the troika responsible for the Greek fire tragedy?
  • Debt rescheduling and the power of exponential growth
  • Merkel and Macron in Meseberg
  • Analysis of the proposal „A constructive approach to Euro Area reform“
  • Unemployment in the Euro Area passes a milestone

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Links to content I am involved in

  • My articles on Social Europe
  • IMK (EN pages)
  • iAGS - independent Annual Growth Survey
  • FMM - Research Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policy
  • Hans-Böckler Stiftung

Recommended links

  1. Mainly macro (Simon Wren-Lewis)
  2. Paul Krugman
  3. econoblog101 (Dirk Ehnts)