Economics

Unit Labour Costs for Dummies and German Business Journalists

March 8, 2020 | Gabor Steingart, former editor of the German business daily Handelsblatt, and currently building an editorial ship* to be based in Berlin, has peered beyond the fog of exaggerated discussions on climate change and the corona virus. He has identified rising unit labour costs as Germany’s real problem. It is leading to Germany’s decline, and a loss of competitiveness. A knowledgeable look at what unit labour costs are could sweep aside his concern. …

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EU-Budget Rules Need Reform: Reference to Nonsense Output Gaps Keeps Economy Down

February 12, 2020 | There is a much needed discussion in European policy circles about simplifying the budgetary surveillance process. One possible and much needed reform is to do away with the reference to „structural“ budget deficits, as the „campaign against nonsense output gaps“ has shown. Its protagonists have just issued another damning paper. …

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Competitiveness as Defined by Billionaires and Multinationals

3 October 2019 | Germany has slipped from 3rd to 7th place of the most competitive countries in the world. This emerged from the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2019. In theory, according to the forum, a good ranking means high long-term growth potential. In reality, it measures something quite different – something that is closely related to the interests of this powerful lobby of the largest multinationals.

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What the German government must do now to turn around an unsustainable economy

Germany’s economic output contracted in the second quarter and most indications point to a worsening in the third quarter, which is just halfway through. The culprit is only superficially Donald Trump with his trade wars. The German economy has been on an unsustainable path in several respects. Now the government is called upon to act courageously and intelligently to ensure that a deep restructuring crisis is avoided.

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A leading economist who took Uber’s money and delivered favorable results sees his reputation tarnished

A year ago, I described how the controversial and well-financed ride-hauling platform Uber pays economists with data and money to do Uber-related research. This research invariably leads to favourable results, which can be used to fend off criticism and regulation. One such study has now been ripped apart in the Industrial & Labor Relations Review (ILR), a top journal in labor-economics.

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CEPR vs. NBER: Two approaches for dealing with false research in favor of tuition fees

For international readers, I would like to summarize a piece on false economic research supporting tuition fees, which appeared in German in Handelsblatt on 19 February. As interesting as the fake research itself is the differing reactions of the two main channels, which had been used to publicize it: One was the prestigious Working Paper series of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the US The other was the well-read platform Vox (voxeu.org) of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

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