he People’s Party of Canada (PPC), a cousin of the populist movements springing up in many advanced democracies, got badly trounced in the recent federal election. Maxime Bernier, the self-styled populist leader and founder of the PPC, even lost his seat in Beauce, Quebec, in the process. The PPC polled less than 2 percent of the popular vote, finished sixth among national political parties, and is now expected to close shop.
The PPC’s stark failure stands in contrast to populist success in other Western...
Eric Protzer, Paul Summerville - letter to Financial Times
Benedict Mander’s report “Chile’s inequality ignites unrest” (October 22) effectively articulates some of the frustrations behind the protests in Santiago: growth that is not inclusive, and a sense of being left behind. But like so much commentary on contemporary political unrest, it then makes the leap of assuming this anger can be chalked up simply to inequality of income and wealth.
This is a common mistake. In fact, behavioural science shows that people do not systematically dislike unequal...
It is now customary to blame economics or economists for many of the world’s ills. Critics hold economic theories responsible for rising inequality, a dearth of good jobs, financial fragility, and low growth, among other things. But although criticism may spur economists to greater efforts, the concentrated onslaught against the profession has unintentionally diverted attention from a discipline that should shoulder more of the blame: public policy.
Economics and public policy are closely related, but they are not the...
Indonesians head to the polls for presidential and legislative elections on April 17, in what is traditionally billed as a clash of titans in the world’s third largest democracy. This time around, voters will find familiar names on the presidential ballot, as Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, faces Prabowo Subianto in the same billing as the 2014 election, with the one exception of Jokowi now having the incumbency of the presidency behind him. If current polls hold, the election appears less of a rematch than a watered-...
Wishing a problem away is seldom an effective strategy. While the international community has had its attention focused on other issues, the Venezuelan catastrophe has deepened. If current trends continue, it will only get worse.
A day’s work at the median wage now buys 1.7 eggs or a kilogram of...
Trying to combat income inequality through mandated wage compression is not just an odd preference. It is a mistake, as Mexico's president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will find out in a few years, after much damage has been done.
Suppose two people hold different opinions about a policy issue. Is it possible to say that one is right and the other wrong, or do they just...
Five years ago, Albania faced a truly ominous situation. With Greece and Italy reeling from the euro crisis, remittances and capital inflows were falling and the economy suffered a severe slowdown. The fiscal deficit ballooned to over 7% of GDP, financed to a large extent by arrears, as access to external financial markets had collapsed and domestic interest rates were sky high.
When Adam Smith wrote ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in 1776, the richest country in the world was four times richer than the poorest one. Today, Singapore is over 110 times richer than Burundi. What could possibly explain such an extreme divergence of the wealth of nations?
Economists have shown that these differences are too large to be explained by differences in the availability of land or capital – including human capital. So, they ascribe it to differences in the productivity with which land and capital are used,...
When presenting his economic stabilisation plan on August 17, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro proudly argued that no government has ever done it this way. He should have wondered why. Venezuela is undergoing an economic collapse without precedent outside of war or the fall of the Soviet Union.
This is accompanied by hyper-inflation. Annual inflation is running at over 80,000 per cent and the IMF has predicted it will hit 1m per cent this year. The price of the dollar has added three zeroes in 15 months.
Venezuela is in the news again. Through unprecedented treachery, President Nicolás Maduro awarded himself victory in the presidential election on May 20. Given that the blatantly pro-government electoral council had delisted the three main opposition parties and disqualified two major political leaders, much of the opposition boycotted the process. The two other candidates who participated did not recognize the result, given the many violations that took place. Neither did the United States, Canada, the European Union and most...
