It is common for governments these days to provide fiscal transfers to capitalists, whether through reduced corporate tax rates, or by providing direct cash subsidies, to encourage greater investment by them and thereby stimulate the economy. During Donald Trump’s first…
Trump’s victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in…
There’s no doubt that the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States sets the stage for further expansion of fossil fuel production in the US, especially of natural gas, of which the US has emerged…
The Kazan summit of the BRICS countries was a historic one for several reasons: first, it created a new category called “partner nations” as a step towards full membership, and accepted 13 such new “partner” countries, among whom were Cuba…
For some time now, global economic news reporting has been dominated by the growth slowdown in China. The tone of that reporting is conflicted. On the one hand, there is a barely suppressed sense of satisfaction or “schadenfreude” (pleasure derived…
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize, the Nobel for “Economic Sciences”, has always been controversial. This is true of the 2024 award to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson as well. Typically, the economics Nobel is awarded to mainstream economists for…
This year’s Nobel Prize in economics (the Riksbank Prize to be more precise) has been awarded to three US-based economists for their research into what promotes or hinders the growth of wealth among nations; and they assign a crucial role…
Several international organisations are now engaged in the business of measuring what they call “poverty”. The World Bank has been in it for some time, but now we have a new measure of “Multidimensional Poverty” brought out by the UNDP…
The latest World Employment and Social Outlook Report (update for September 2024) from the International Labour Organisation highlights some disturbing trends. Importantly, it identifies a significant decline and then stagnation in the share of labour income in GDP, for the world as…
In early October, in a show of pique, a European Commission proposal to impose additional tariffs of up to 35.3 per cent (on top of the pre-existing 10 per cent) on electrical vehicles (EVs) imported from China, was passed by…
