Publications

Ulrich Storck (January 2015): The outcome of the upcoming general election in May is anything but predictable. Polls are suggesting that neither Tories nor Labour are going to win an overall majority. Meanwhile the support of UKIP and the SNP is growing and a coalition is more likely. And beside these upcoming events there is the question of a possible Brexit. In his outlook, the author takes a look at the possible outcomes of the general election in May and the different choices and paths for the United Kingdom.

Henning Meyer (December 2014): The digital revolution associated with the Second Machine Age is likely to create major public policy challenges. Inequality in particular, already back at record levels, will be further increased by technological progress and unemployment is likely to rise at least in the transitional period as digital agents become more and more capable. Against this backdrop, policy-makers should think about measures to reduce inequality, incentives to re-allocate the remaining work and ways to safeguard meaningful employment with a public job guarantee.

Scenario Group EU and East 2030 (2014): Four scenarios for relations between the EU, the Russian Federation, and their Common Neighbourhood in 2030 were developed by a multinational Scenario Group over the summer of 2014. The scenarios do not attempt to predict the future, but offer different visions of possible and plausible futures. They can be helpful in enabling decision-makers and stakeholders to adapt their strategies in order to achieve or avoid a certain scenario.

Marc Saxer (October 2014): To overcome the transformation crisis, Thailand’s political, economic, social and cultural order needs to be adapted to cope with the complexity, diversity and permanent conflict of a pluralist society. Such innovation faces resistance by those who are invested in the status quo. Saxer argues that only a broad societal change coalition can build the political muscles needed to implement the necessary paradigm shift. Only a political platform based on inclusive compromise enables social groups with diverging interests and worldviews to join forces to struggle together for a new social contract.

Markus Schreyer (November 2014): The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently being negotiated between the EU and the United States is a matter of political and public controversy. More objective discussion requires that both the opportunities and the risks be evaluated transparently and properly. It is clear that any positive growth and employment effects should not be overestimated and the risks of adverse effects on prosperity should not be underestimated.

Sabine Stephan (November 2014): It is often argued that the transatlantic free trade agreement will open up substantial growth and employment opportunities to the participating countries. In her paper Stephan presents the findings of the three most influential investigations – the study by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and two studies by the ifo Institute – in terms of their expected growth and employment effects. Stephan argues that even with extraordinarily optimistic assumptions the expected growth and employment effects are tiny.

László Andor (January 2015): In this new paper, published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the Social Europe Journal (SEJ), former EU Commissioner László Andor examines the discussion about mobility within the European Union with a specific focus on the United Kingdom. Responding to a tone of debate that he considers “distorted and unfair”, Andor proposes several ways in which migration could be managed better without the need for treaty change to “cap” numbers.

Alice Martin, Helen Kersley, Tony Greenham (December 2014): The report shows how rising economic inequality was a major cause of the financial crisis. This is the conclusion of an emerging body of research into the links between inequality and the growth in scale and influence of the financial sector. To reduce the risk of future crises, the report argues that financialisation needs to be rolled back and policies to reduce inequality have to be implemented.

Giacomo Corneo (November 2014): The increase of income and wealth concentration threatens the European project of a good society. In his essay, Corneo argues that capital taxation alone cannot stop this process, but a combination of moderately higher capital taxes and a novel role of public capital will do. He believes the governance of public capital requires carefully designed institutions: a sovereign wealth fund and a special public investment agency called Federal Shareholder. Corneo is Professor of Public Finance and Social Policy at the Free University of Berlin, and managing editor of the Journal of Economics.

Michael Dauberstädt (October 2014): EU discourse these days tends to conceive of convergence in terms of the Maastricht criteria. By contrast, this volume concentrates on the alignment of economies in terms of economic growth, income and social conditions. In the period under examination, from 1999, the findings are not clear-cut, but the majority of growth indicators point on convergence. Growth on Europe's southern periphery was weaker and since 2009 has even been negative, due to austerity. The driver of the catch-up process was productivity, which increased rapidly in the poorer countries. Income distribution in the member states varies considerably. There are also substantial differences with regard to social protection ratios.