Category Archives: The dismal science

Neoliberal Capitalism, Its Crisis, and What Comes Next

The fundamental contradictions of neoliberal capitalism are pushing it to the breaking point.

2015: A Failing Fiscal Policy

Although the case study is the UK, this post is yet another example of how counterproductive austerity is, from both an economic and a social perspective.

How the Labor Cost Competitiveness Myth is Making the Eurozone Crisis Worse

A new article makes a devastating attack on a fundamental belief driving Eurozone policy, that the member economies need to be made more “competitive,” meaning labor needs to be squeezed, for the currency union to achieve more growth.

Labor Market Policy: Parts of the Picture are Missing

The standard empirical evaluations of labour market policy only consider the direct effects of single programmes on their participants. This column argues that this fails to capture important aspects of real-world labour market policy – policy regimes and strategies. Using Swiss data, it employs a novel empirical approach that concurrently examines the effects of supportive and punitive policies (‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’). Policy regimes are shown to exert economically relevant effects, and accounting for these effects is crucial when designing labour market policy.