European Union

June 1, 2017

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 hand, the type of employment that is being generated following the crisis and, on the other hand, the medium-to-long term sustainability of this job creation.
May 28, 2017

Nanny State Index Summary

The EPICENTER Nanny State Index is the only comprehensive league table of lifestyle regulations. The latest data suggest that the EU is becoming a worse place to eat, drink, vape and smoke because of overregulation.
May 1, 2017

Superindex

According to the latest IBL Super Index, the degree of internal divergence within Eurozone countries keeps increasing. This means that the gap between Eurozone periphery countries, such as – for example – Italy, and other comparable countries in the European Union is widening.
April 1, 2017

Skill Mismatch: the New Challenge for Spain

As the Spanish economy recovers, rethinking education reform should be a top priority. Spanish workers are Europe’s most overqualified, but also suffer from the greatest skill mismatch, lacking the skills necessary for their jobs.
February 1, 2017

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 raise the quality of provision, to make it more affordable and to support parental labour market attachment.
January 1, 2017

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 widely accepted that the strategy of attempting to pick winners and promoting national champions was fundamentally flawed.
January 1, 2017

Free to Move

People greatly overestimate the immigrant share of the population and many wrongly believe that openness to migration harms Britons’ job prospects, burdens public finances and services and makes housing prohibitively expensive.