The monetary policy changes that led to price increases

The relationship between the money supply, demand for money, and price levels is a dynamic force within the economic landscape. It’s important to note …

Profit-driven sustainability: The market forces behind ESG compliance

Politicians often forget that it is profit that drives firms in a society built upon the tangible benefits of capitalism, and that it is …

Implementing tax competition in Spain

The elimination of the wealth tax by the Regional Government of Andalusia to attract high-income taxpayers triggered different reactions. Some autonomous communities (ACs) decided …

Copying Denmark’s Nordic neighbours

This briefing summarises a recent analysis by the CEPOS, which investigates how Denmark can become one of the economically freest countries in the world …

Greedflation?

The last three years have brought many old ghosts to Europe. The COVID-19 pandemic was the biggest health crisis since the Spanish flu, wars …

Trapped by Taxation: How Inheritance Tax Impedes Economic Mobility

Equality of opportunity is a key foundational principle of liberalism. The most widely accepted definition of equality of opportunity among liberals is the absence …

Ticking Time Bomb: The Impending Collapse of the Pension System

Charles Ponzi became famous in the 1920s for running a $20 million fraud, whereby clients would be promised succulent profit margins from a risk-free …

The EU’s Debt Dilemma

The EU is in an existential debt crisis. This crisis is often overlooked, and if it is not brought under control, it may lead …

Inflation Reduction Act: How protectionism affects US–EU relations

The Inflation Reduction Act signed by the Biden administration in the autumn of 2022 could be one of the most expensive climate legislation in …

Should British free-marketeers deprioritise tax cuts?

What does it mean to be a liberal?
The basic programme of liberalism has been remarkably consistent over the centuries, but the emphasis has …

Tackling Europe’s Cost of Living Crisis

This paper analyses how excessive taxation and regulations are worsening inflationary pressures in eight European countries. As a result of heavy state intervention, European …

The failure of windfall taxes

The energy sector is in dire need of investments. However, the new government-imposed taxes in Slovakia are instead adding to the financial burden already …

Let the price mechanism do the work!

The French government has introduced a policy that makes it mandatory for parking lots with over 80 parking slots to have a roof with …

EU Minimum Wage Will Harm Subsidiarity and Low-Income Earners

The briefing reviews the newly passed directive on adequate minimum wages in the EU and investigates its potential negative impacts on traditional collective bargaining …

EU minimum wage – Harming workers & the union’s subsidiarity

On 4 October 2022, the European Council adopted a directive to push EU member states to streamline the rules by which they set the …

Meddling with the price mechanism will become a costly lesson

Inflation is soaring and the Danes are currently seeing their economic prospects being eroded by events beyond their control. The enthusiastic money-printing at the …

Why demand-side support trumps energy price caps

Imagine you buy 10 cans of beer every week, at a price of €2.50 each.
Due to a shortage of hops, the price of …

Austerity & Tax Reform in Greece

In response to the debt crisis, the Greek government implemented excessively high tax rates in an attempt to save the country from financial collapse. …

Reducing Red Tape for Polish Businesses

The standard of living crisis has been exacerbated by rising inflation and regulatory costs that have increased prices for the average consumer. As of …

Out of Pocket

This paper examines the tax and regulatory policies fuelling inflation across five European countries. The detailed analysis of high price levels in Germany, Italy, …

Time to question the entrepreneurial state and the mission economy

The EU and its member states are increasingly adopting a mission-oriented approach to tackling today’s pressing challenges. This line of thinking has been inspired …

What is the trajectory of global inflation?

Over the previous year we have heard constant talk of the transitory nature of inflation and the reasons why it will be transitory. In …

The realities of France’s fragile economy

It is well known that high production taxes and social contributions in France have been stifling the economy for some time. Prior to the …

Minimum Corporate Income Tax: When Fallacies Lead to Failures

The European Union is debating a directive that would place a minimum effective corporate income tax (CIT) of 15 percent on large-scale company groups. …

The Minimum Corporate Tax Directive and EU Challenges Today

At the end of 2021, the European Commission released a “Proposal for a council directive on ensuring a global minimum level of taxation for …

How to identify and avoid gold-plating EU regulations

Preventing gold-plating is once again reinstated by the EU as an important measure to reduce barriers to the single market. Gold-plating is not in …

The Reform of Fiscal Discipline Rules should not be rushed

Fiscal Rules of the European Union
Olaf Scholz, the new German Chancellor, visited French President Emmanuel Macron on 14 December to discuss questions regarding …

The decline in poverty and the increase in the number of billionaires go hand in hand

The Index of Economic Freedom, which is compiled every year by the Heritage Foundation, shows that the most capitalist countries have an average per capita …

The economic damage inflicted by production taxes

Production taxes in France have long been a contentious issue closely linked to employment and wage growth. France currently sets one of the highest …

Can Adoption of the Danish ‘Flexicurity’ Model Reduce EU Youth Unemployment?

The pandemic has not only had a disproportionate effect on youth employment as young people were more than twice as likely to lose their …

Keynesian economics and the Italian Recovery Plan

The Italian government has recently presented the RRP (Recovery and Resilience Plan) to Parliament. On 30 April, it was sent to Brussels for initial …

Global inequality at lowest level for 140 years

The world has become a much better place in recent decades when it comes to poverty and prosperity: extreme poverty has been significantly reduced …

Mind the Gap: Pay Transparency Provisions in the EU

The European Commission seeks to strengthen the principle of equal pay for work of equal value between men and women through pay transparency and …

Taxation Matters

As the International Tax Competitiveness Index states, the structure of a country’s tax code is an important determinant of its economic performance. A well-structured …

A Global Minimum Corporate Tax Won’t Come Without a Cost

What was once a pipedream in academic circles, a global minimum corporate tax might soon be a reality that could change the way the …

G7 deal on multinational tax fails to live up to the hype

The G7 agreement on new principles for taxing multinationals is not the ‘breakthrough’ that many are claiming. It probably will not make a lot …

We’ve got a serious pan-European constitutional problem

Debt mutualisation across EU Member States has recently been brought to the forefront of discussion. Firstly, because of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) balance-sheet operations, …

Taxing Capital – An International Comparison

The taxation of capital—at both the individual and the corporate level – is much debated and affects economic growth by lowering the incentives to …

Who ends up paying taxes?

Tax shifts are widespread – often at the expense of the consumer – but governments do not always seem to be aware of the …

Towards a new fiscal policy

In February, the Bank of Spain published its statistics on the Spanish public debt, indicating that state liabilities reached 117.08% of GDP at the …

Market Monetarism in the EU: The Case for Nominal GDP Targeting

Monetary policy could become a problem for the Eurozone as we recover from the pandemic. Given the huge increases in the volatility of money, …

Index of Liberalisation 2020

The Index of Liberalisation unveils which countries rank best in economic liberalisation and provides insight on countries with the infrastructure to rebound quicker following …

Spain’s Minimum Vital Income – a deceiving UBI

The COVID-19 crisis has not only led to a health disaster, but has also profoundly affected our economies and lifestyles. The European economy has …

The economic cost of Catalonia’s hypothetical independence

Since the 2017 constitutional crisis in Catalonia, the momentum to secede from Spain has grown, but the potential economic impact has not been thoroughly …

The Unemployment Trap in Lithuania

Prior to the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak, the Lithuanian economy had been enjoying a rapid growth. Yet, while the number of available …

Minimum Wage Wars in Europe

At the end of October, the European Commission proposed a Directive to introduce adequate minimum wages across the EU. Although the end objective is …

Credit Day 2020

This year Credit Day for the European Union falls on the 17th of December. This is the day which, on average, EU member states …

Getting quickly out of crises – what do we know?

Coronavirus has resulted in a major economic crisis, and caused immense damage to both the economy and people’s lives. This damage is both a …

Economically free countries have fewer and less severe economic crises

With most of the world in a deep economic crisis due to coronavirus and the government reactions to it, knowledge of effective crisis policy …

Towards a more autonomous EU

The European Council President Charles Michel envisions a more “autonomous” (i.e. economically self-sufficient) EU. However, this pursuit of economic independence, under the guise of …

Reforming tax policy in Europe after Covid

The post-COVID world poses significant challenges for taxation policy. Our recent panel discussion with FNF was based on the recent publication of the …

The future of European Tax Competition Essay Prize

As the International Tax Competitiveness Index states, the structure of a country’s tax code is an important determinant of its economic performance. A well-structured …

International Tax Competitiveness Index

The International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI) seeks to measure the extent to which a country’s tax system adheres to two important aspects of tax …

Decentralise financing to improve the rule of law

The new Commission report on the rule of law in the EU has found that ‘there are serious challenges, cases where the resilience of …

Is populism endangering economic freedom?

Nationalism and populism have permeated the sphere of global politics in the 21st century, and the EU is no exception. This particular change in …

Labour Regulation in Europe during Covid-19

The regulation of labour and employment lies at the heart of any debate on economic freedom. State intervention into the labour market, and especially …

Challenges related to fair minimum wages

This position paper is a response to the European Commission’s second phase consultation with social partners. The EC’s initiative has a general objective of …

Rent controls: the revenge of Econ 101

One of the frustrating things about being an economist is that people listen to you when they shouldn’t, and refuse to listen to you …

Maximum taxation, minimal benefits for France

For the fifth consecutive year, France has been the champion of taxation, with the average French citizen paying more than half of their income …

Aiming at a common market, not redistribution

In 2018 the European Commission presented its proposed EU budget as “new,” “modern” and “focused.” However, in terms of its expenditure and revenue the …

An Open Letter on the EU Budget

The negotiations on the European Union’s multi-annual financial perspective for 2021-2027 are underway. The European Commission’s recently updated budget proposal with suggested measures regarding …

Inflation: The next threat?

The policy reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic will increase budget deficits massively in all the world’s leading countries. The deficits will to a significant …

“Next Generation EU” spending plan: Towards strengthening or weakening the EU in the long run?

While the media, right and left-wing parties and the average newspaper reader celebrate in anticipation of “helicopter money” from Brussels, or otherwise the so-called …

Do low emissions zones really work?

At the moment, the general sense of alarm caused by the supposed consequences of climate change is something that is shared by all Western …

The fake American stimulation: an economic analysis of Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act

We almost pity American federal and state elected officials for having to deal with the situation caused by COVID-19. Overnight, social media users have …

The Road to Post-Pandemic Recovery

Thus far, three recovery programs have been proposed in response to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The first recovery program was …

Coronabonds are not necessary

To overcome the Covid-19 crisis, the European Central Bank is considering pooling debt issuances among the countries of the Eurozone in what has recently …

The problems of financing through European mechanisms

There has been a great deal of debate recently – not just in the media, but also in academia and among economic analysts – …

Responses to COVID-19 of governments in selected countries

The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious challenge for societies around the world. In response to it not only individuals are changing their behaviour, but …

Coronabonds offer the wrong path

The German newspaper ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ published an open letter by well-known artists about an initiative to issue Coronabonds in order to share the burden …

Could ‘Lombardy Bonds’ be the answer to the Eurozone debt puzzle?

At the last Eurogroup meeting, Eurozone finance ministers agreed to set up a ‘Recovery Fund’ to help trigger an economic rebound once the lockdowns …

Why do Germany and the Netherlands oppose coronabonds?

In recent weeks, the global impact of the coronavirus has brought a huge number of new questions to the fore. For the time being …

Arguing against price controls in the face of COVID-19

Periods of economic crisis are a breeding ground for all sorts of populist ideas, often ideas that had been discarded in the past due …

Is the European Commission to blame for the absence of European champions?

Following the veto of the Alstom-Siemens merger, the European Commission has been criticised for preventing the creation of “European champions” of comparable size to …

The pursuit of a more popular EU may be a risky and hazardous business

Britain has left the EU. Politicians in Brussels and Member States are seeking a mission for The Union that has broad public appeal in …

The harmful effects of negative interest rates

Over the past month, six eurozone banks have dropped below the European Central Bank’s (ECB) capital requirements. As a result, they have been told …

Rent controls: How they damage the housing market, the economy and society

Rent controls are now being discussed in cities like Berlin, London, and New York. Sweden has had rent controls since 1942. There are at …

If we want to be green, trains should be taxed and not subsidised

The argument made by many such as George Monbiot that the protection of the environment requires the destruction of capitalism has no credibility given …

Employment Flexibility: Policymakers Reluctant to Respond to Market Needs

The Lithuanian Free Market Institute and its partner organisations have published the third annual Employment Flexibility Index which ranks 41 EU and OECD countries …

Universal Basic Income: Is it a good idea?

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is currently the subject of much interest and discussion in the UK, with support and opposition …

Employment Flexibility Index 2020

For the third year in a row, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute and its partner organisations present the Employment Flexibility Index, that ranks a …

Competing interests: lessons from the international tax competitiveness index

According to the 2019 International Tax Competitiveness Index (ITCI) rankings, Estonia holds the most-competitive position for the sixth year in a row, while France …

Taxing High Incomes

This report compares top effective marginal tax rates on labour income in 41 OECD and EU countries.
The top effective marginal tax rate is …

The Problem with European Champions

Free market liberals will have shuddered at the news that European Commission officials have drawn up far-reaching plans for a new €100 billion fund …

Reducing Shadow Economies

Across Europe, shadow markets constitute a significant portion of the economy. According to some estimates an average of 16 percent of GDP in EU …

Flightless Birds

The Dutch government has recently drafted a bill in order to “charge consumers and businesses for environmentally polluting behaviors”– seeking to implement a €7 …

The fiscal union: a necessary step for the EMU

The 2008 crisis exposed the grave flaws of the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Most economists were not able to predict such economic …

Macron’s malaise

Macron is right: Brussels cannot continue with business as usual after the European Parliament elections. In his recent open letter to the citizens of Europe, …

The Mass Demonstrations in France is a Reaction to the Effects of Interventionism, Not Liberalism

Mass protests of the “yellow vests” have been taking place in France since 17 November 2018. The catalyst of the demonstration was a fuel …

Free to work: Employment regulations in 2019

The Employment Flexibility Index of LFMI quantifies a great divergence in employment regulations between EU countries. Of the 41 countries included in the index …

Liberal White Smoke in Spain

The National Convention of the People’s Party (PP) which took place earlier this month may well become a turning point in the economic landscape. …

Commission consulting on move to qualified majority voting (QMV) on taxation

On 20th December, the European Commission launched a (relatively brief) consultation on moving from unanimity to qualified majority voting (QMV) in the Council on …

Who are the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ protestors?

The French ‘Gilets Jaunes’ started their protests a month ago and since then the global media landscape has interpreted their actions and demands in …

Paranoid Android. Everything the Commission got wrong in its war on Google

The Commission’s decision to fine Google for unfair practice was based on a misunderstanding of the Android ecosystem and a mistaken definition of the …

Credit Day: improving appetite for fiscal responsibility

13 December marks Credit Day across the European Union. This is the day when, on average, European countries’ central governments exhaust their annual tax …

In Lithuania one in two would consider shadow activity in financial hardship

The shadow economy in Lithuania remains pervasive despite economic growth, and as many as one in two people would consider informal consumption and undeclared …

Shadow economy: Understanding drivers, reducing incentives

The aim of this publication is to present and analyse the results of representative population surveys into public perceptions of the shadow economy and …

Ageing Europe

Even though the ageing of the European population is not a new phenomenon, its potential effect on European Welfare systems is often under-estimated. According …

Why large corporations are not as greedy as they appear to be

For too long, studies have underestimated the positive externalities of large companies by solely focusing on factors such as corporate earnings. It is about …

Fixed-term Employment for Long-term Competitiveness

Labour market flexibility may be characterized by the market participants’ abilities to deviate from standard labour regulations and typical forms of employment. Such possibilities …

The Social and Fiscal Contribution of French Top 40 Companies

The social and fiscal contribution from large companies in France and worldwide remains largely unrecognised. Traditional accounting and financial presentations do not provide for …

Why the EU’s digital turnover tax is a bad idea

The European Commission has proposed a tax on revenues raised from certain digital activities. However, this is essentially a political gesture with only weak …

The Price Women Pay

Political classes on both sides of the Channel were waiting patiently for the end of the EU Parliament’s recess, and for Brexit negotiations to …

Spanish flu: Pedro Sanchez’s malignant economic policy threatens Spain’s recovery

Having recovered from the recession that was brought about by the financial crisis, Spain’s economy is improving, but vulnerable. With the advent of Pedro …

The French Tax Burden: Is it all worth it?

French workers shoulder a far greater tax burden than the rest of their European neighbours. While the rest of the continent celebrated their Tax …

Spain’s economic revival

Is Spain due to become a more influential power within the European Union? The country is expected to become a net contributor to the …

Lithuania reforms its tax and pension system

In late June, the Lithuanian Parliament adopted a law that consolidated the employer and employee base for social security contributions and significantly cut the …

Labour Migration and Employment Flexibility

Economic migrants rarely displace local labour force. Immigrants are more likely to complement existing labour force creating opportunities for growth and bringing needed skills. …

Flexicurity in the XXI. century

 
As the world is undergoing a third industrial revolution with the field of computer science rapidly expanding, one aspect of the labour …

Offshore bet

The popular account of offshore financial centres as hotbeds of tax evasion is an outdated caricature that bears little resemblance to how OFCs operate. …

The post-Soviet transition to a not so free market economy

 
Lithuania has implemented a far-reaching economic reform program aimed at facilitating the shift from a centrally-planned economy to a free market one. …

EU Measure Doesn’t Capture Poverty

The EU member states have agreed that 20 million people should be lifted out of poverty by 2020. However, the measure that the European …

What have the Swiss ever done for us?

This article was first published under the title “Danke, Schweiz” in the Basler Zeitung, a Swiss daily newspaper. Translation by the author.
Classical liberal …

Robocalypse Now?

It is claimed that robots, algorithms and artificial intelligence are going to destroy jobs on an unprecedented scale. These developments, unlike past bouts of technical …

Lithuania Commemorates the First Respect for Taxpayers Day

Today, on May 11th, Lithuania commemorates the first Respect for Taxpayers Day. On this occasion, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) has launched The Charter …

The Case for Vocational Training – A German Perspective

American economist Bryan Caplan recently published “The Case Against Education” in which he explains how the United States needs to reform its current education …

A Universal Basic Income (UBI): a price worth paying to cut regulations?

Suppose the government redistributed to every adult Briton a basic, unconditional income of £10,000 from tax revenues. Would aggregate employment levels a) rise, b) …

Higher Education and the importance of apprenticeships: United Kingdom & Germany

In 2017, youth unemployment (young people between 15-24, without work or enrolled in education) in the EU as a whole was on average of …

Every promise is debt

Every euro of new debt today is a euro that is going to be paid by Italians through higher taxation, tomorrow. Until 4 March …

The Human Freedom Index across Europe: Personal and Economic Freedom

How free do you think your country is? Would you believe that Estonia ranks better than the United States? Seven European countries made the …

Statutory regulation vs private regulation

The EU’s second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) came into force earlier this month. According to the European Securities and Markets Authority …

Super Index 2017

According the latest IBL Super Index, Italy is the sick man of Europe. Despite relatively rosy macroeconomic projections for the whole EU, the gap …

Extreme disparity in European labour markets: an Employment Flexibility Index

The recent Employment Flexibility Index uses data provided by the World Bank’s Doing Business Labour Market Regulation Questionnaire to compare labour market regulations.
The …

Employment Flexibility Index 2018

Denmark, the UK, and Ireland are the leading countries in the 2018 edition of LFMI’s Employment Flexibility Index. Portugal, Luxembourg, and France are the …

2017 Index of Liberalisations: a summary

The 2017 IBL Index of Liberalisations aims to shed light on the degree of openness of the 28 Member States by examining ten different …

Credit day: debt and deficit in a bipolar EU

6 December marks Credit Day across the European Union. This is the day when, on average, European countries’ central administrations will exhaust their annual …

Fair and efficient? On the EC’s proposals for corporate tax reform in the digital single market

In the wake of the Ecofin meeting that took place in Tallinn on September 15-16, the European Commission published a communication on “A Fair …

The day European Union governments spent the last of their annual revenues

EU central governments use up their resources December 6 on average, 25 days before the end of the year. This is almost seven days …

How the local government VAT exemption promotes tax increases in the EU

The author wishes to thank Oskar Henkow, Rebecca Millar, Anna Sandberg Nilsson and Anders Ydstedt for valuable comments.
Summary

As a general rule, …

The consequences of restricting the Posted Workers Directive

Posted workers are temporarily sent from one member state to another, usually for projects of short duration. There were 1.1. million posted workers in …

A Joint Open Letter on the Posting of Workers

Posting of workers plays an essential role in the Internal Market and the cross-border provision of services. Simply put, posting of workers allows a …

£50bn is too steep for a Brexit divorce bill

The Sunday Times has claimed that the Prime Minister is ready to approve a financial settlement of ‘up to £50bn’ when the UK leaves …

Swedish Employment Subsidies and their effects on the Displacement of Jobs

Since the refugee crisis of 2015, the Swedish government has made strong efforts to implement a particularly ineffective policy. Through so-called “public relief jobs”, …

Displacement Jobs – On the Swedish Employment Subsidies

The Swedish labor market makes use of twelve different forms of employment subsidies involving three percent of the entire active work force.
In this …

The Air Berlin-Lufthansa deal breaches EU competition laws and hurts Germans consumers

On 15 August, Air Berlin was forced to file for bankruptcy after the withdrawal of funding from Abu-Dhabi based Etihad Airways, which holds 29 …

A Response to EU Public Consultation on the Most Effective Methods in Formal and Informal Teaching and Learning

The European Commission sought public opinion on the importance of equipping young people with shared values and on how education and non-formal learning can …

Excessive labour market regulation will not help to combat inequality

On 28 September 2017, the European Parliament Employment and Social Affairs Committee (EMPL) will vote on an initiative by Spanish MEP Javi Lopez (S&D) …

The CCCTB is not the corporate tax reform the EU needs

According to the Commission, the new CCCTB initiative is the most ambitious corporate tax reform ever proposed in the EU. However, despite the most …

The tax burden of workers in the EU: a summary

First published in 2010, the 2017 Tax Burden study by the Institut économique Molinari measures the tax and social security burdens on individual employees …

Tax Freedom Day 2017

The purpose of this study is to compare the tax and social security burdens of individual employees earning typical salaries in each of the …

Position on EU Initiative on Restrictions on Payments in Cash

The European Commission has launched a legislative initiative on cash payment restrictions aimed at exploring the rationale for the introduction of upper limits on …

CCCTB round 2: an exercise in unification or polarisation?

Originally suggested and then subsequently shelved in 2011, the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base is a policy designed to create a unified set of …

Minimum income policies in the EU: a misguided proposal

The European Parliament Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs are currently promoting a new legislative proposal …

Is the Spanish job creation model fragile? The case of tourism

The situation on the Spanish labour market is being debated by specialists and policy makers with respect to two central questions: on the one …

Spanish Tax Freedom Day

In 2017, the average Spaniard will have worked 178 days in order to fulfill their tax obligations. In other words, Tax Freedom Day, calculated …

The ambiguity of the Commission’s “Harnessing Globalisation” paper

On May 10, 2017, the European Commission published its reflection paper on Harnessing Globalisation. It is the second paper in a series initiated by …

Education 4.0

Current schooling systems are badly equipped to deal with rapid technological innovation and changing work patterns such as the sharing economy and the rise …

The Istituto Bruno Leoni Index of Globalisation: a summary

On 28 March, EPICENTER’s Italian partner, the Istituto Bruno Leoni (IBL), published its Index of Globalisation. The index covers 39 countries, including members of …

Getting the State out of Pre-School & Childcare

Decisions on childcare arrangements were largely a private matter until the 1990s. A political consensus has since arisen that government action is needed to …

Marginal tax rates of high income earners — Interview with Jacob Lundberg

Being a commonly significant factor in workers’ decisions on hours and promotions, a country’s marginal tax rate indicates more than the mere proportion of …

Greece needs institutional reform, starting with the public sector

The challenge for Greece is how to reduce taxes without lowering government revenue in a stagnant economy that is under tight fiscal monitoring by …

The importance of an anti-lobbying clause

The composition of civil society at the EU level is largely dictated by which groups the European Commission chooses to fund. Furthermore, citizens have …

Regulations and complexity harm EU labour mobility

Labour market mobility in the European Union is increasing, but it remains too low to provide sufficient internal socio-economic adjustments. This situation reflects non-policy …

Why the EU’s public image problem cannot cloud the discussions on our future

Attempting to start a debate ahead of the EU’s summit commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the European Commission published a …

The gender pay gap is not a problem. It is the result of free choices

Justine Greening, the women and equalities minister, is being criticised because she has rejected most of the 17 recommendations of the Women and Equalities …

A few points on Europe’s desperate need for a capital markets Union

Since the European Commission’s Action Plan on Building a Capital Markets Union in 2015, strengthening and integrating capital markets across the Union has been …

How Economically Free are the EU Member States?

The Heritage Foundation recently posted its Index of Economic Freedom for 2017, the 23rd annual index of its kind. The Member States of the …

The taxation of high-income earners: An international comparison

The effective marginal tax rate is the total tax on the last euro earned, taking into account income tax as well as social contributions …

Posted Workers Directive and Proposed Revisions

The European Union has ensured free movement between Member States for posted workers with the 1996 Posting of Workers Directive; that is, it has …

Would a Return to a National Currency without Institutions Work?

Part 3 of our Greek economy series. For Part 1 and Part 2 as well.
 
Some economists like Stiglitz claim that Greece should give …

The Istituto Bruno Leoni 2016 Index of Liberalisations: a summary

Last month, EPICENTER’s Italian partner, the Istituto Bruno Leoni (IBL), published the 10th edition of its ‘Index of Liberalisations’ report.
 
The study, led …

Davos 2017: The forum’s turn to the disenfranchised

The rise of protectionism and populism around the globe shaped this year’s conversations at the World Economic Forum. Overlapping with Donald Trump’s inauguration, the …

Homer Economicus: The Simpsons and Economics

“Homer Economicus. The Simpsons and Economics” is a book edited by Joshua Hall, currently Associate Professor of Economics at West Virginia University, and published …

Labor Flexibility Beats Unemployment: A Closer Look at the Labor Market in Denmark

Despite Bernie Sanders’ efforts to identify Denmark with some sort of democratic socialist utopia where a highly-interventionist government regulates all the nooks and crannies …

The Solution to the Spanish Pension System

It is increasingly evident that public pensions are going to be hard to sustain in the future: the ratio of workers to pensioners is …

There’s one international system that President Trump should withdraw from

Following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, the European press has been presenting him as an isolationist. Under President Trump, they claim, …

Balancing the economy: The hand of government or the invisible hand?

The past record of industrial policy in the UK is a catalogue of waste and ineffectiveness. By the end of the 1970s it was …

The economics of Christmas: the true value of Christmas presents

As the festive season approaches, it’s time for economists’ annual disquisition on the efficiency of gift-giving. This tradition was inaugurated, more than twenty years …

Personal Pensions in the European Union

The development of personal pensions at the national and cross-border levels is hindered by high compulsory payments to public pension funds, restrictions on the …

The spectre of another lost decade

On Sunday night, following a shock negative result in a referendum on the constitutional reform he had championed, Matteo Renzi, Italy’s Prime Minister, announced …

The Effect of Corporate Tax Base Harmonization in the EU

The European Commission (EC) has renewed its proposals on the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) initiative. The initiative refers to two proposals by …

Give the people what they want

In a previous post, entitled “The changing narrative of the Euro crisis”, Diego Zuluaga argued that, while Eurozone reform was justified, European policymakers “should …

Initiatives Against Posted Workers – Protectionism in Disguise

Posting of workers plays an essential role in the internal market of the European Union. Drawing on the fundamental values of the free movement …

The Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base relaunched

 
The European Commission has rebooted its proposal for a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base. The CCCTB aims to tax multinationals operating in more …

Death by infrastructure spending

Diego Zuluaga // 13.09.2016
 
Infrastructure investment is often presented by policymakers as a silver bullet in times of recession or sluggish growth. Public …

Beware the Commission’s rotten Apple ruling

The European Commission has ordered Ireland to recover €13bn worth of allegedly unpaid taxes from Apple. Reception of the decision has been mixed, with …

Beware the Commission’s rotten Apple ruling

7 September 2016
The European Commission has ordered Ireland to recover €13bn worth of allegedly unpaid taxes from Apple. Reception of the decision has …

The EU and economic freedom: a complicated relationship

Diego Zuluaga // 03.08.2016
 
The Wednesday Briefing is a weekly free-market commentary on topical economic issues by our Head of Research, Diego Zuluaga. …

The EU and economic freedom: a complicated relationship

3 August 2016
The European Union is all things to all people. To proponents on the right, it is a force for international cooperation, …

Ever freer union? Economic freedom and the EU

3 August 2016
By performing an econometric analysis on the Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of the World: Annual Report 2015,” it is found that …

The Tax Burden of Typical Workers in the EU 28

Insitut Économique Molinari // 01.08.2016
 
This July, the Institut Économique Molinari published the sixth edition of their annual EU-wide tax burden study. The …

Radical, but not equal: assessing corporate tax reforms

27 July 2016
A tax on turnover would tax profitable and loss-making firms equally, potentially posing an insurmountable hurdle to struggling firms, and eliminating …

Help! Keynes is back!

Nathalie Janson // 19.07.2016
 
Since early 2016, with the return of market turbulence and uncertainty over global growth, discreet calls for expansionary monetary …

Spain’s new labour market: a success story for free marketeers

Diego Sánchez de la Cruz // 18.07.2016
 
The introduction of a higher degree of flexibility in the Spanish labour market has created one …

Corporation tax reform: theory, evidence and avoidance

06 July 2016
There are efforts at national, EU and international levels to put forward significant reforms to the corporate tax system. The 20th century …

Government Yet Again Tells Lithuanians Not to Work

Dominykas Šumskis // 05.07.2016
 
With Lithuanian Parliamentary elections approaching, Lithuanian MPs, like magicians, are pulling out of a hat the same old populistic …

The Authoritarian Populism Index: Main Findings

16.06.2016
The Authoritarian Populist Index (TAP) includes both right- and left-wing populist parties and covers all national elections in 33 European countries, from 1980 …

The invisible effects of commission fee caps

François Bethaz and Michele Pisano // 16.06.2016
As of 9 June 2016, the new European rules on inter-bank commission fees for card-based payment transactions …

Seven years of Greek Crisis: Highlighting the Need for an Independent Monitoring Body

Michael Iakovides // 13.06.2016
A lot has been said about the Greek crisis, and the abysmal track record of successive Greek governments. On the …

France: the hottest economy you’ve never heard of

08 June 2016
France badly needs economic reform. But we shouldn’t let negative news headlines blind us to the fact that the French economy …

The IMF gets it wrong on ‘neoliberalism’

Diego Zuluaga // 03.06.2016
An article from the IMF’s magazine, entitled ‘Neoliberalism: Oversold?’, has been making the rounds on social media. This is not …

Flat tax and income inequality

Zilvinas Silenas // 01.06.2016
Piketty’s publication has reignited the debate over taxation. Proponents of higher taxation seized the opportunity to increase taxes. Even some …

Will the French avoid €11 million in additional taxes on palm oil?

Patrick Coquart // 23.05.2016
After several failed attempts since 2012, the “Nutella tax” appears to have been abandoned in France.
In January 2016, while …

The Swedish Gender Equality Paradox

Karin Svanborg Sjövall and Nima Sanandaji // 19.05.2016
The Swedish gender equality discussion is characterized by a remarkable paradox. While Sweden, along with the …

Pricking the balloon on Eurozone deflation

18 May 2016
As growth rates in the Eurozone gather steam, policymakers’ concerns are increasingly shifting to low inflation. According to Eurostat, consumer prices …

Pricking the balloon on Eurozone deflation

Diego Zuluaga // 18.05.2016
As growth rates in the Eurozone gather steam, policymakers’ concerns are increasingly shifting to low inflation. According to Eurostat, consumer …

An Interview with F. A. Hayek’s Student, Kurt Leube

Rosamaria Bitetti // 16.05.2016
“When I turned 15, my parents gave me a copy of “The Road to Serfdom”. Some of the ideas in …

Shadow economy is caused by bad government decisions, not “bad” people

Vytautas Žukauskas // 10.05.2016
Over the past year, the shadow economy in Lithuania has decreased from 27% to 26% of the GDP. This is …

Bans on homesharing won’t redress Berlin’s housing shortage

4 May 2016
A law banning short-term apartment rentals just came into force in Berlin. The measure, which was passed in 2014 but only …

Bans on home-sharing won’t redress Berlin’s housing shortage

Diego Zuluaga // 04.05.2016
A law banning short-term apartment rentals just came into force in Berlin. The measure, which was passed in 2014 but …

Tax and labour market reform in Spain: a work in progress

Diego Sánchez de la Cruz // 03.05.2016
When former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his Socialist party (PSOE) took office in early …

Austerity: A User’s Manual

Paolo Belardinelli // 29.03.2016
The mayhem in financial markets we have observed in the last few months gave renewed prominence to the issue of …

Lithuania Ranks 13th in Worldwide Index of Economic Freedom

Lithuanian Free Market Institute // February 2016
Lithuania’s level of economic freedom has been steadily improving. The country has jumped up by two positions …

How Italy is doing, without the romance

Giacomo Lev Mannheimer // 03.02.2016
The founder of Public Choice theory, Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, called it “politics without romance”. Buchanan wanted to show …

The French State of Emergency

Greta Gietz // 28.01.2016
With the migrant crisis preoccupying Europe’s media and public debates, France’s “economic and social emergency” is easily forgotten.
France reported …

A statist agenda would destroy all the gains Spain has made since joining the EU

Diego Zuluaga // 11.01.2016
In many ways, Spain is the EU’s poster child. The country’s determination to be part of the European project was …

Could Italy’s economic stagnation also be due to a failure to protect property rights?

Giacomo Lev Mannheimer // 08.01.2016
Every year, several international organisations and think tanks monitor the index of economic freedom of different countries worldwide. Sometimes …

Searchers and planners in economic development

Diego Zuluaga // 08.12.2015
Last week in London, William Easterly delivered the Institute of Economic Affairs’ 24th Annual Hayek Lecture. Easterly, a Professor at …

Reforms and growth: The 2015 IBL Index of Liberalisations

Diego Zuluaga // 01.12.2015
EPICENTER’s Italian partner, Istituto Bruno Leoni, just released its 2015 Index of Liberalisations report. This study, first conducted in 2007 …

Index of Liberalizations 2015

Istituto Bruno Leoni, November 2015
The Istituto Bruno Leoni’s Index of Liberalizations aims at identifying both the barriers to competition and the best practices …

Shadow Economies in the Baltic Sea Region 2015

The Lithuanian Free Market Institute // 25.11.2015
A new report by the Lithuanian Free Market Institute looks at perceptions and prevalence of the shadow …

The Eurozone’s deposit insurance scheme creates more problems than it solves

Diego Zuluaga // 25.11.2015
The European Commission has released its plan for an EU-wide deposit insurance scheme that will, at first, back up and …

Shadow Economies in the Baltic Sea Region 2015

Lithuanian Free Market Institute, November 2015
A new report by the Lithuanian Free Market Institute looks at perceptions and prevalence of the shadow economy …

Taxation and its negative impact on business investment activities

Gabriel A. Giménez Roche, November 2015
In its latest study, the Institut économique Molinari shows that corporate taxation continues to slow down economic recovery …

Corporate taxation slows down economic recovery in France

Institut Economique Molinari // 23.11.2015
In its latest study (in English and French), the Institut économique Molinari shows that corporate taxation continues to slow …

Governments should undertake their own corporate tax inversions

Diego Zuluaga // 20.11.2015
The U.S. Treasury has announced measures to prevent American companies from merging with foreign firms and shifting their tax domicile …

The Effect of Harmonisation of the Corporate Tax Base in the EU

Lithuanian Free Market Institute, November 2015
The European Commission has re-launched the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) initiative. CCCTB refers to a proposal …

Deregulation and reforms are the missing ingredient in the recovery

Diego Zuluaga // 11.11.2015
Writing in the Financial Times (“In the long shadow of the Great Recession,” 10 November), Martin Wolf meditates on the …

French government will end year by going deeper in debt

Cécile Philippe and Nicolas Marques, November 2015
According to Eurostat data, the French government will have used up all of its resources by November …

Spain’s unemployment problem – a taxing issue

Diego Zuluaga // 05.11.2015
One of the consequences of the Eurozone crisis has been to popularise the extremely high levels of unemployment now prevalent …

The right to housing: a threat to property rights?

Nicolò Zanon, November 2015
In this IBL Occasional Paper, the author – a Justice of Italy’s Constitutional Court – discusses the legal and economic …

The dark side of Italy’s postal privatisation

Massimiliano Trovato and Alberto Mingardi // 28.10.2015
On the Cato at Liberty blog, Chris Edwards shared some hopeful thoughts on the fate of postal …

The CCCTB: we know it’s bad, but is it likely?

Diego Zuluaga // 25.10.2015
Here in EPICENTER, our authors have consistently opposed the Commission’s proposal for a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base – better …

Little to look forward to in EU corporation tax

Diego Zuluaga // 22.10.2015
We found out yesterday that, according to the European Commission, the tax rulings entered into by Starbucks and Fiat with …