Political Economy

If you look up the word 'unilateralism', you would see it defined as "the process of acting, reaching a decision, or espousing a principle unilaterally." And we often hear of the US choosing to act using unilateralism or multilateralism on…

What to make of the Hesse election I have a wide assortment of political economy stories to present today. I can't pack them all into one newsletter. So I am going to break out a few into separate posts. I want to start with the news out…

I've written two posts about the history of support for the EU. And I covered the ground through the EU-15 period when Austria, Finland, and Sweden entered the EU. Today, I want to continue the post series with the introduction of the…

So, yesterday I parsed the EU sentiment data from the EU's early expansion period. And what we saw was rising support for the EU right up until 1991. But after that time, support for the EU collapsed and has never recovered. I want to look…

Since 1974, the European Commission has published a twice-yearly comprehensive poll to gauge sentiment on various social and economic issues in the European Union. Today, I downloaded every one of these polls and have been busy parsing the…

China’s debt problems have emerged so much more rapidly and severely this year than in the past that a growing number of analysts believe that this may be the year that China’s economy breaks. There is no question that China will have a…

Ok I tried. I went into the political arena. And doing so reaffirmed for me why I steer clear. This is just a brief note to tell you why. Let me frame it this way: What if I told you that I thought a lack of civic responsibility of…

Okay, let me go right to Peter's comment from yesterday about fixing the system using the Arizona piece as a jumping-off point. I'm going to be talking about the US here. But some of what I say is probably relevant elsewhere as well.…

Back in early July, I wrote a post on the politics of the German refugee crisis. And the conclusion at that time was that Horst Seehofer was bluffing about blowing up the governing coalition. In retrospect, this proved right. But in the…

Are Trump voters racists? Those of you who have been reading my posts for some time know that I don't believe racism is the defining element behind a rise in populism across the developed economies. I certainly believe populist politicians…