Reports of Professor Enrico Colombatto
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Relevance beyond the crisis: Globalization is not going away
Contrary to the popular narrative, the COVID-19 crisis has not convinced companies that globalization is a bad move. In fact, the lesson of the pandemic is that firms need to broaden their supply chains and diversify their providers. Governments, however, will take advantage of the situation to push nationalization and ...
Reforming capitalism: A fight built on envy
It has become common to blame capitalism for climate change and wealth inequality. However, the premises underlying the debate around the issue are profoundly misguided – the current system is far from aligned with free-market prescriptions. But despite their skewed view of reality, advocates of government intervention are likely to ...
Relevance beyond the crisis: Strategies for the euro
Pumping still more liquidity into Europe’s pandemic-frozen economy hardly addresses underlying problems, but this happens to be the most politically palatable strategy that Brussels could pursue. How EU leaders go about financing the massive new outlays, however, is a tricky question. The most likely borrowing scheme will have long-term consequences ...
COVID-19 and the future of central banking
As the coronavirus pandemic freezes large swaths of the economy, the world’s three most important central banks find themselves under tremendous political pressure to flood the markets with easy money again. Their approaches may prove significantly different.
Europe after the crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic is dealing body blows to the world economy, but it is not the root cause of concerns about Europe’s future. Brussels’ and Frankfurt’s stock responses to the impending crisis – money printing, easy credit and massive public expenditure – only bring Europe closer to socialist-style centralization.
Britain will thrive after Brexit only if it dares to reform
Leaving the high-cost, bureaucratized European Union is not enough for the UK to unleash its entrepreneur potential, boost its share in global trade and return to high growth. To bring benefits, Brexit would need to be followed by bold liberal reforms: cutting taxes, rolling back government spending and reducing excessive, ...
Learning the lessons of wasteful education spending
The OECD’s recent education scores underline once again how poorly schools are educating today’s youth – even despite significant spending increases. The results will probably spur further calls for more education funding so that students can stay in school even longer. Doing so, however, may not necessarily give students better ...
The Chinese challenge and Europe’s dithering
Europe is hesitating in the face of the Chinese technological challenge. The current tensions between Washington and Beijing open plenty of opportunities to cooperate with China. At the same time, however, the U.S. administration is putting pressure on its allies, counting on a common front against Beijing. Choosing either side ...
