Utopia, you are standing in it!

by Thomas Cooley, Ben Griffy and Peter Rupert

Eurostat released estimates of first quarter GDP for the Eurozone a little over a week ago (here), showing modest growth of 0.5% for the more inclusive measure of European countries. This is the 12th quarter in a row that the Eurozone has exhibited positive growth after suffering nearly two years of negative growth 2011-2013. The truth is, however, that the Eurozone has only barely recovered to its pre-recession levels. Furthermore, this growth has been driven by core economies, with countries on the periphery still years away from a full recovery.

As usual, disaggregated data is not yet available for all countries from Eurostat. As we see from the most recent set of available data, a number of countries have recovered beyond their 2008 peaks:

Notably, the large economies of the UK, France (and Germany, though we don’t have the data) are pulling…

According to Economic Freedom of the World, there are five major factors that determine a nation’s economic performance.

Here’s the recipe for growth and prosperity.

• Rule of law and property rights.
• Small government.
• Stable monetary policy.
• Reasonable regulatory policy.
• Free trade.

This great publication is the first thing I check when I want to see whether a country leans in the direction of markets or whether it is burdened by a lot of statism. And it allows for meaningful comparisons between nations since it relies on global data sources.

But not all economic variables have good data sources that allow apples-to-apples comparisons. It’s very difficult to measure the degree to which various governments interfere with the price system by imposing controls (either minimum or maximum price limits).

Identifying the degree of cronyism in an economy also is a challenge since there are not reliable numbers for the degree…

By Anton Lang ~

Pretend you are in the market for a new car. The salesman tells you it is the latest technology, brand new, and will do everything your old car did, only much better. Believing what he says, you go ahead and purchase this new car. When you get it home and start using it, you find that your new car starts up okay, but not every time. Once it does start, you then find it will only get you to your destination one time in four, or at best, one time in three. You have no idea when it will stop, or, having just stopped, when it will start up again. True, while it is running, it does all your old car did, only now, you don’t know when it actually will be running for long enough to complete your journey. You ask the salesman about the…

New Zealand recently voted to retain its current flag. Therese Arseneau and Nigel S. Roberts, who examined last year’s first flag plebiscite, now assess aspects of the results of the country’s binding run-off referendum that was held in March.

Three months ago we examined the lead-up to, and the results of, the first of two referendums about New Zealand’s flag. In a postal ballot using optional preferential voting, New Zealanders were asked to choose (from among five options) their preferred alternative flag design. Their choice – the Kyle Lockwood black-white-and-blue silver fern flag – was pitted against the current New Zealand flag in a second binding referendum that was held from 3-24 March and was a postal ballot.

The voting paper for the second referendum on the New Zealand flag (click to enlarge)

We ended our article with a prediction of sorts: as political scientists we would be ‘surprised’…

To celebrate the 71st anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allies in May 1945, here’s how the Communist Party of Australia’s Tribune celebrated the victory, compared with the reporting of the victory by the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Daily Worker.

Chabon and his wife, writer Ayelet Waldman, are contributing to and editing the as-yet-unnamed book of essays that will be published to mark the 50th anniversary of 1967’s six-day war, when Israel first entered the Palestinian territories: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, parts of the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip.

Of course, the Golan Heights were seized from Syria during the Six-Day War, and were never ‘Palestinian’ – even in the broadest sense of the term.

The passage conflates the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza (which were controlled by Jordan and Egypt respectively before the war, and now claimed by some Palestinians as part of their future state) with the Golan Heights…