Economics and politics - comment and analysis

What is an international imbalance? 

In the Financial Times, Martin Wolf noted a few days ago that imbalances in international trade are back on the political agenda. Although Wolf reaches entirely reasonable conclusions regarding mercantilism, he nevertheless states that it is nonsense to claim that the US trade deficits can be eliminated solely through trade or exchange rate policy. …

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Who is missing the mark on competitiveness within the EMU – or just how fierce European competition for industrial goods really is

Today saw yet another interesting and extremely important statistic that has gone unnoticed by both the media and so-called economic science. As it does every month, Eurostat published the trend in producer prices for the manufacturing sector. The latest available figure is for February, …

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Milei’s Argentina: Real downturn, continuing high inflation and rising unemployment

Heiner Flassbeck and Patrick Kaczmarczyk
Things have gone quiet around Argentina. The mainstream European press, which euphorically celebrated the president with chainsaws during his election, has largely remained silent two years after that election. Isolated reports of success, such as those published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in December 2025, …

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