Events

The new Beijing leadership has set out an agenda for economic reforms. As China’s economic growth slows down there is now greater expectations on the government to actually deliver needed reforms. But the reform agenda is neither new nor uncontroversial. Much talked about in the past years, intentions to bring forward the reform agenda, especially to open up for more competition in China, have stumbled in the face of domestic opposition. Is this time different?

The demands on Europe's healthcare systems are increasing while the fiscal resources to finance them are scarce. While the economic crisis in Europe have imposed bigger fiscal constraints on healthcare policy, the challenges about the financial sustainability of current healthcare policies have been building up for quite some time. How big are these challenges - and what do they tell us about the future of healthcare policy?

“East is East and West is West, and never the two shall meet”, wrote Rudyard Kipling. Is this true also for international economic policy and security policy – that they are so different from each other that they never can meet?

Global trade negotiations are once again focusing on services liberalisation after a few decades of detours. The current wave of FTAs – notably with TPP, TTIP, TISA and EU-Japan – are driven by prospects of services and investment market access and next-generation disciplines.

The four modes of services have been a fixture of trade negotiations and research, ever since their conception during the Uruguay round. Since then, the developments of servification, trade in value-added, and technology have changed how services are actually traded, and blurred the line between services and goods.

Despite China's economic upgrade, the share of services in the Chinese economy or employment is still similar to some least-developing countries. Many doubt that employment, growth or welfare can be boosted in China without substantive reforms of the services markets.

Trade and innovation hang together. They spur growth in productivity and value added – and generally modernise entire economies from bottom-up. But they are also contested, especially by those that prefers producing comfortably behind barriers to competition and innovation. Countries with high border barriers therefore tend to have high behind-the-border barriers preventing not just trade but investment, innovation, and market-based technology transfers, too. India is a case in point: its comparatively high tariffs have for decades prevented India’s integration in the world economy – and its current regulatory practice now erodes India’s capacity to foster innovation and grow its ideas based economy.

One year after its WTO accession, Russia is becoming increasingly integrated in the world economy. Although Russia’s economy, and especially its export, is still dependent on natural resources, WTO accession has helped Russia to diversify its production and trade profile. Yet the quality of Russia’s institutions for governance is still weak and slows down the reform of the economy. Moreover, weak institutional quality hinders Russia from moving into sectors where it has comparative advantage – and it generally promotes a foreign economic policy that sometimes conflicts with rules and norms of international cooperation.

Migration is now at the centre of the European debate. But why, exactly, has migration – within the EU or to the EU – become so contested? While some argue that migrants “steal jobs” others complain that they live off the welfare state and is a fiscal burden – damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. But what is true – and what is not – about migration and its economic consequences?

The financial and Eurozone crises revealed institutional problems in the European Monetary Union and the design of financial regulations. And there has been considerable activity in the past years – in Europe and globally – to “fix” regulatory problems and create new structures to make the EMU safer. What are the consequences of these changes – have they made the EU better equipped to prevent new crises, and to address them more forcefully when they occur? Or are some of the regulatory and institutional reforms likely to create new rather than alleviate problems?