Al jaren wordt gezegd dat ons pensioenstelsel moet worden hervormd. Maar elke poging verzandt in een stellingenoorlog tussen vakbonden en werkgevers.
Opinie, Knack, 8 juli 2009.
maandag 13 juli 2009
Nuttige lessen uit Parijs
Zoals gewoonlijk worden de adviezen van de Oeso flagrant genegeerd door de regering. Onze bewindslieden zouden meer durf moeten tonen, vindt RUBEN MOOIJMAN. Lees het volledige artikel hier.
The case for doing nothing
The first thing to note about the financial crisis is that the federal government never had any business intervening in the personal decision of whether you want to own a home. There is no rational economic argument, or any argument I know of, that says the market of buying and selling homes is imperfect in some way, requiring government action. Construction firms have plenty of incentive to build homes and sell them. People who have the wherewithal have plenty of incentive to buy homes if they so choose. For the government to intrude into homeownership was an off-budget, nontransparent, backdoor attempt at redistributing income. And when the policy became a way of transferring income to people who couldn't afford those homes, it was doomed to failure. Read the complete article here.
Innovation, Imitation and Competition
In a general equilibrium framework, it is known that imitation may actually promote innovation (Aghion et al., 1997). The same effect is demonstrated with a standard oligopoly model in which one firm has the ability to develop technologies while all other firms imitate and obtain a fraction of it for free. Competition is shown to dampen innovation, while imitation may stimulate it if imitation is strong and competition moderate. The findings have implications for policy toward intellectual property rights protection, as weak protection may promote rather than impede technology innovation.
The document is available here.
Productivity and the crisis: Revisiting the fundamentals
Most narratives of the crisis start with problems in the financial sector that then spilled over into the real economy. This column looks at the real side first and shows that labour productivity growth declined significantly in the years prior to the crisis, particularly in the US construction sector. Financial markets may have failed in that they didn’t detect the deterioration of structural productivity trends in the early 2000s.
Read the full article here.
Woonbeleid Vlaamse gemeenten krijgt onvoldoende van Steunpunt Ruimte en Wonen
A modest step
World leaders aspire to limit climate change, but they offer few details of how to do so. Read the complete article in The Economist here.
Emissions des riches, couic !
La placidité du corps social à l'égard des hautes rémunérations est fascinante. Le système financier s'est affaissé, l'économie traverse sa plus grave crise depuis des décennies, le chômage suit une courbe ascensionnelle ; mais tranquillement, toute honte bue, les classes dirigeantes, responsables de la situation, continuent à s'allouer des revenus extravagants. Fascinant, vraiment.
Pour lire la suite, cliquez ici.
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