The Political Economist

It's holiday season, and the Olympic games have just started, I know, but I read this great piece in last week's the Economist and I just had to share it with my readers. It is possibly one of their best briefing articles to date, as it tackles a very important contemporary phenomenon of a newly arising political divide across the developed world (that was the cover of the entire issue, pictured below). The left vs right is passé, so 20th century. The new distinction is open vs closed. Or in other words, liberal vs national-socialist (OK, maybe not that far away from early 20th century).  One group is against immigrants, in favor of closing the borders, advocates protectionism, and fears competition (a typical merger between left and right collectivism), while the other group is for open borders, in favor of free trade, in favor of competition and against protectionism. One group advocates and feeds from fear - fear of immigrants and foreign competition taking away dome...

A recent paper published in PNAS by Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton (last year's Nobel prize winner ) reported a stunning finding: there has been a significant increase in mortality and morbidity among middle-aged non-Hispanic white men and women in the US over the past 15 years . The causes have been attributed to suicide, and drug and alcohol abuse. The graphs below summarize the findings: Mortality in selected countries, 1990-2013. USW stands for US white. USH stands for US hispanics. Source: Case & Deaton (2015) "Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 112(49) December 8th 2015. Mortality by cause, US white non-Hispanics, 49-54. Source: Case & Deaton (2015) "Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(49) Dec...

After hearing the results of the Brexit referendum on early Friday morning, my initial reaction was this comment on Facebook: After cooling down over the next few days and reading about Brexit from a number of perspectives, I have to say that everything I said initially - still holds. I will carefully explain each point. First, the democratic deficit problem . This is, sort of, my PhD topic, meaning that I'll be writing quite a lot about it over the next few years. Before explaining why this outcome is a deficit of democracy we must first define the concept of democratic deficit (or perhaps even - democracy failure ). Basically, the democratic deficit concept concerns the interaction between politicians and partial interest groups, a legitimate consequence of electoral competition and political freedom to express and fight for one’s interests, and whether or not this interaction results in adverse economic outcomes (in my PhD I will be focusing on linking the failures of ...

An interesting chart from the Economist about the perception and reality on the total number of Muslims in European countries. It's striking how big the overestimation gap is in the selected countries (do have in mind that these are the official figures; perhaps there are undocumented Muslim immigrants that increase the actual numbers, but I sincerely doubt that the real numbers are anywhere near the perception).  The Economist So why is there such a huge overestimation (between 3 to 8 times!) in Europe about the total number of Muslim population in their countries? In general, the anti-immigration sentiment rests on the same concept: that there are too many immigrants (many of which without any legal documents), "taking our jobs". The perception on the total number of minority immigrants in Western countries is very similar to this one from above . Their numbers are vastly overestimated.  Perhaps the reason for this is that minority immigrants tend to cluster...

This is becoming a sort of a post-Christmas tradition on the blog - each year in the weak after Christmas I offer a wrap up of the year by evaluating my last year's predictions . Once again, I have to say, it was a good year in terms of what I got right (I managed to even beat my own predictions from 2014 : 85% compared to last year's 75%), but there were a few events that went under my radar (the Greece situation triggered by Syriza's victory, and the refugee crisis).  The title of last year's predictions was: "2015: Back to Realpolitik and back to growth" . My main prediction was that most economies in the West would return to having steady rates of economic growth (which came true), and that debates over the economy will be overshadowed by the return of realpolitik and muscle-flexing between Russia and the West. I've also stated that "low oil prices will be the key in prompting a stronger recovery", which they were, and I managed to exclu...

As you may have noticed, blogging has been particularly slow over the past few months. From the beginning of the year as well, compared to previous years. This is due to a number of commitments I have bestowed upon myself (including a lot of new research I've been doing), and it will likely continue until the end of the year, so expect regular blogging to continue as it has in the past as of 2016. In the mean time I will write an occasional comment on a burning issue, but due to many outstanding obligations I will again be rather slow. It will be quality, not quantity in the next few months.  So, let's recap what has happened over the summer, and what awaits in the forthcoming months. Keeping up with the Greeks A whole number of things happened in Greece. The most important one was the referendum on the new austerity package  ("the bailout referendum") in July which the Greeks overwhelmingly rejected. In the immediate aftermath their Finance Ministe...

At some point in the middle of 2014, opinion polls in the UK revealed that immigration became the most important issue in Britain (see graph below), surpassing even the debates on the economy (probably because the economy is now in a better shape than before, with 2014 growth around 2.6% ). What best showed this change in sentiment was the homepage of the British Office for National Statistics (ONS) during the autumn of 2014, where the first figure you could see was that of net migration (which was around 300,000 in 2014). During the 'good old times' of the stagnant recovery (2009-2013), the first thing you could see when you entered the ONS website were the GDP growth estimates, followed by numbers for the CPI, budget deficit, business investments, etc. For quite some time the main page didn't even feature data for the debt and deficit. You had to dig around to find them. Obviously the Britons are bemused with the popularity of the UK Independence Party , particularl...