Human Capital And Trade Deficits
Michael Mandel had an interesting take on the US trade deficit in Business Week earlier this month (btw: he also has a weblog). His opinion is that the US trade deficit isn’t as big a deal as people...
View ArticleA modest proposal for CAP reform
I’ve been in Canada for the last month, getting in my last family visit before settling in to the serious business of either going back to school or collecting unemployment checks. My family is large –...
View ArticleAfrican Migrants ‘Dumped’ In The Desert
The scandal of recent days surrounding the ‘policing’ of the EU’s southern frontier in Ceuta and Melilla continues. Yesterday Spanish TV was full of images and reports from a group of 500 or so...
View ArticleSpain’s Immigration
As Spanish commenter Pepe would probably say, ‘hot labour’ is moving into Spain at a nifty clip: 2% of the total population per annum. In 2004 the number increased by 700,000. Last year, although we...
View ArticleHot Labour Anyone?
This post has one sovereign virtue: apart from in the current sentence it will not refer, either directly or indirectly, to the Catalan Statute. The topic it does deal with however is probably equally...
View ArticleWho is my neighbour?
Who was the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany? Diagramme his family tree (paternal and maternal) back to the 14th century. Germans have been shocked lately to discover that a lot of...
View ArticleXenophobia and human nature
There has been some cricket chirping on AFOE the past few days, so allow me to make a little bit of noise here and chase them away. Amnesty International has a new report out, called Russian Federation...
View ArticleItaly’s Supply Constraint
The OECD estimates the current potential capacity growth rate of the Italian economy at 1.25% a year. Actually I suspect even this very low number is over-optimistic. Growth since 2002 has been as...
View ArticleSpain’s postnational local election?
Richard Corbett MEP directs us to this BBC report on Spain’s rash of political parties dominated by immigrants from other European countries, especially Germany and Britain. In one municipality, San...
View ArticleGreece: citizenship for children of immigrants?
In between trying to deal with one of Europe’s worst economic crises and a crippling series of strikes, the Papandreou government in Greece has introduced a new immigration law. It would allow the...
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