Blog

2018

A question of sovereignty: on the (im)possibility of Brexit

Adam Standring - 18 December 2018

The chaotic endgame of Brexit shows the promise of reasserted sovereignty coming up against the reality of diffuse sovereignty in the UK.

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Industrial strategy and inclusive structural change

Maria Savona - 17 December 2018

Industrial strategy must pay attention to left-behind places as well as mature sectors and vulnerable categories of workers.

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Beyond dirty development

Hayley Stevenson - 6 December 2018

Reforming subsidies should be a core element of the G20 sustainability agenda.

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The unintended euro and the problem of Italy

Helen Thompson - 30 November 2018

The fate of Italy will determine what kind of monetary union, and with which member-states, can survive.

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The G20 in Argentina

Tony Payne - 23 November 2018

Argentina’s laudable attempts to raise issues vital to Latin America and the wider developing world are likely to fall on deaf ears. But, if the G20 is going to stop drifting from summit to summit and get to grips with genuinely global challenges, it needs to establish a modest but permanent secretariat and appoint an influential secretary-general, writes Tony Payne in this special post published jointly with the LSE Latin America and Caribbean blog.

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Artificial intelligence and the transformation of production and work

John R. Bryson - 20 November 2018

Inclusive prosperity requires an education system to provide people with the skills and experiences to avoid ‘technological unemployment’.

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Inequality in Scotland: despite Nordic aspirations, things are not improving

Gwilym Pryce & Meng Le Zhang - 13 November 2018

20 years after the Scotland Act was passed, how has Scotland fared in its aspiration to reduce inequality?

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Germany’s non-rebalancing of its mercantilist model

Patrick Kaczmarczyk - 12 November 2018

Contrary to recent claims that Germany has ‘quietly rebalanced’ its economy since the Eurozone crisis began, when German policy is viewed from a more long-term perspective, there has been little in the way of meaningful rebalancing

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Reprogramming national economies and the reshoring of manufacturing

John Bryson, Vida Vanchan & Rachel Mulhall - 08 November 2018

Successful industrial strategy requires a long-term policy framework that encourages entrepreneurship and economic activity

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What is the financialisation of food and why should we care?

Merisa Thompson - 07 November 2018

This blog discusses Professor Jennifer Clapp’s recent visit to Sheffield where she presented work from her latest book project and current research on the financialisation of food

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“Gender-sensitive trade”: buzzword or basic principle of post-Brexit trade policy?

Erin Hannah, Adrienne Roberts & Silke Trommer - 25 October 2018

Brexit could provide an opportunity to create a more gender equitable global trading system, but immediate and potentially radical action will be needed

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Damned if we don’t, damned if we do: a sideways look at Ciaran Driver and Grahame Thompson’s Corporate Governance in Contention

Craig Berry - 22 October 2018

Corporate Governance in Contention, edited by Ciaran Driver and Grahame Thompson (Oxford University Press, 2018), offers an exemplary overview of some of the most important debates in scholarship on corporate governance in Europe and North America

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Ethical Certification Doesn’t Eradicate Forced Labour

Genevieve LeBaron - 21 October 2018

In the tea industry, on almost every indicator we used to measure labour standards, certified plantations fared about the same, if not worse, as non-certified plantations

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Does Congressional experience lead to US governors securing higher state funding?

Harry Pickard - 19 October 2018

New research shows that governors who have previously served in Congress prior to taking office as state governor increase the transfers to their state

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Costing the country: Britain’s finance curse

John Christensen - 09 October 2018

The finance industry is not the golden goose claimed by its vast public relations team: it looks much more like a cuckoo in the nest

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Towards a post-crisis moral political economy?

Adam Standring - 08 October 2018

Recent calls for economic justice, and particularly intergenerational justice, suggest a new post-crisis moral political economy could be emerging

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The Schizophrenia of UK (De) industrialisation Policy

Richard Woodward & James Silverwood - 02 October 2018

Far from radically rebalancing the structure of the UK economy, Theresa May’s industrial strategy seems destined to entrench the UK’s deindustrialisation

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The Endemic Problem of Forced Labour in Global Tea and Cocoa Supply Chains

Genevieve LeBaron - 27 September 2018

What do tea and cocoa have in common? Both products are widely consumed by households around the world; the early world market for both industries was intertwined with the history of colonialism; and in today’s global economy, both products are made with forced labour

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What do Global Megatrends mean for the financing of the SDGs?

Gail Hurley - 19 September 2018

How finance is raised and spent must be transformed to effectively meet the enormous challenges of the 21st century

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Book review: Race and the Undeserving Poor

Owen Parker - 17 September 2018

Robbie Shilliam’s brilliant book highlights the historical importance of race in social and welfare policy in Britain and in so doing makes a crucial and timely intervention into contemporary progressive debate

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2008 is dead, long live 2008! Or, how we learned to imagine the unimaginable

Liam Stanley & Tom Hunt - 11 September 2018

What’s changed in the ten years since the global financial crisis in 2008?

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If this is capitalism, where are the price signals?: The glacial effects of passive investment

Jan Fichtner. Eelke Heemskerk & Adam Leaver - 3 September 2018

In the 10 years since the 2008 crash, the ‘passive-aggressive’ tendencies of large index funds have reshaped how modern capitalism operates

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African capitalisms, infrastructure and the role of urban real estate in political settlements

Tom Goodfellow - 22 August 2018

Exploring how capital intersects with contemporary urban forms can help to bring Africa to its rightful position at the forefront of global debates on capitalist transformation.

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#MeToo and Harvey Weinstein: Telling stories of vulnerable bodies

Tom Watts - 17 August 2018

Since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, the #MeToo and #TimesUp hashtags campaign have become internationally recognised as a symbol of resistance against sexual and gender-based violence and abuse. The campaigns inspired people to tell their stories of everyday abuse, assault and discrimination but how much difference can a social media campaign make?

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“I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body”: The political economy of the body & the Weinstein scandal

Sophie Wall - 15 August 2018

Hollywood’s commodification of women’s bodies must be recognised as a contributory factor when questioning the (un)shocking prevalence of sexual violence and abuse. Therefore, to fully understand the political economy of the Weinstein scandal, it is necessary to foreground the body

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Who pays for sexual harassment?

Sylvie Craig - 14 August 2018

Calculating the economic costs of sexual harassment obscures its underlying wrongs – as does the disparagement of people that ‘sleep their way to the top’. The Weinstein scandal calls both of these approaches into question

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The political economy of the Weinstein scandal

Liam Stanley, Ellie Gore & Genevieve LeBaron - 13 August 2018

This blog series introduces some preliminary research from SPERI’s PREPPE programme, a project that asks: What can political economy tell us about the Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement? And what can the Weinstein scandal and #MeToo movement teach us about political economy?

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US investors drive growing top income inequality in Britain

Lukas Linsi, Pascal Jaupart & Jonathan Hopkin - 01 August 2018

New findings show that the Americanization of British firm ownership causes substantial increases in executive pay

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The changing politics of regionalism in Asia-Pacific

Ahmad Rizky Mardhatillah Umar - 30 July 2018

Recent development in the Asia-Pacific region show how regionalism is a ‘dynamic’ political project rather than merely an institution and rule-based political order

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‘Global Britain’ equals Osbornomics squared

Craig Berry - 27 July 2018

The tussle over Brexit within the Conservative Party is actually a debate about the UK’s future place in the global capitalist order. Boris Johnson is merely taking remainer George Osborne’s vision to its logical conclusion, while in pinning her hopes on continental capitalism, Theresa May is arguably the real fantasist

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Unions in the 21st century: adapt to survive, co-opt to grow

Emily Kenway - 27 July 2018

Could a clever campaign make support for unions an integral part of corporate social responsibility?

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Book review: Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union

Owen Parker - 24 July 2018

Harold D. Clarke, Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley’s new book provides a nuanced picture of why people voted as they did in 2016

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Making the unpolishable Brexit turd sparkle?

Matt Bishop - 13 July 2018

The economic logic of hard Brexit has always been a chimera, and our political class is finally waking up to the impossibility of delivering it in any meaningful sense

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Localising pension fund investments: opportunities and challenges

Adam Barber - 09 July 2018

Pension funds could play an important role in achieving a more balanced economy, but new investments should prioritise benefits for members above all else

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The Political Economy of Brexit and the Future of British Capitalism

Scott Lavery, Lucia Quaglia & Charlie Dannreuther - 02 July 2018

Two symposia in New Political Economy bring together academic experts to examine the implications of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in key economic policy areas

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Peace walls and other social frontiers can breed crime and conflict in cities

Gwilym Pryce - 28 June 2018

Identifying social frontiers is the first step to understanding what impacts they have on the people living nearby

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Frankfurt and Paris as financial centres after Brexit

Scott Lavery - 26 June 2018

The City of London is likely to remain as Europe’s pre-eminent financial centre after the UK leaves the EU, but new research shows how Frankfurt and Paris seek to ‘capitalise’ on the fall-out from Brexit

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Understanding vulnerability to forced labour in global supply chains

Genevieve LeBaron - 25 June 2018

Forced labour is prevalent in the tea and cocoa industries and is happening in the context of widespread labour abuse

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Why the smallest states fail to secure special treatment in global trade politics

Courtney Lindsay - 22 June 2018

There are four reasons why Small Island Developing States and Small Vulnerable Economies fail to secure special and differential treatment (SDT) and Preferences as global norms

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What will Brexit mean for UK climate action?

Jeremy F.G. Moulton & James Silverwood - 21 June 2018

Our research reveals that the UK is at risk of letting climate change slip off the agenda at a time when attention and action has never been as important

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Intangible concerns: Goodwill and the risk of pro-cyclicality in corporate America

Adam Leaver - 20 June 2018

Much has been written about the growth of debt since the Great Financial Crisis. But whilst leverage is a worry, much less has been written about the problem of asset quality

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Ahead of the African Union Summit: How to boost East African economies?

Claire Elder - 19 June 2018

This month’s African Union Summit is poised to probe widespread corruption but a closer look at East Africa also reveals other pressing issues, not least rising political uncertainty, economic instability and violence

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The ideological shifts, economics and geopolitics of the Italian election

Lorenzo Genito -  12 June 2018

The agenda of Italy’s new anti-liberal, Eurosceptic and pro-Russian government could have significant ramifications far beyond Italy

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Book Review: Extracting Profit: Imperialism, Neoliberalism, and the New Scramble for Africa

James Chamberlain -  11 June 2018

Lee Wengraf provides an important reminder that Africa’s position within the world economy is heavily determined by its unequal insertion into the global capitalist system and ongoing manifestations of imperialism.

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Three lessons the labour movement must learn from the Fight for 15 at Walmart

Alex J. Wood08 June 2018

Social media, the power of reputational damage and effective communications are powerful tools for trade union organising

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A call for the revival of political and economic education

Antonia Jennings -  07 June 2018

Political and economic education is pitiful, and via political parties, the education system and trade unions, it desperately needs to be revived

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Embracing data is key to the future of unions

Jenny Andrew -  06 June 2018

Learning to read and predict our changing environment through strategic use of data is crucial for the survival of trade unions

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Building up the bundle of sticks. New ideas for union organising

Tom Hunt -  05 June 2018

A new mini-series of blogs, published by SPERI and openDemocracy, will present new ideas for how unions can organise and engage with the workforce

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How does the geographic spread of a bank’s subsidiaries affect its value?

Georgios Efthyvoulou -  04 June 2018

Our new research show that the values of banks in emerging countries are highly responsive to their internationalisation strategies

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Missing: the smallest states are absent in international political economy analysis

Courtney Lindsay -  01 June 2018

Small Island Developing States and Small Vulnerable Economies are not present in the academic literature on international norms. A new two-part blog will consider why

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The politics and economics of Brexit

Simon Bulmer & Lucia Quaglia25 May 2018

Brexit may dominate in the UK but it is just one of several challenges to governance and integration facing the EU

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Book Review: Flawed Capitalism: The Anglo-American Condition and its Resolution

Scott Lavery -  23 May 2018

David Coates’ critique of Anglo-American capitalism is devastating; his optimism about transforming it is welcome. The left must now develop a political strategy capable of overcoming structural barriers to reform

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Italy in an age of authoritarian liberalism: How the recent history of Italian capitalism has been shaped by populists and technocrats

Ernesto Gallo17 May 2018

Italy has its own brand of democracy, which has very little to do with what is in textbooks.. That is why scholars and pundits have so much difficulty coming to grips with it

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Why we need to stop letting economic crises go to waste

Jacqueline Best08 May 2018

There’s a popular adage that we should never let a good crisis go to waste. Yet, arguably, that’s what we’ve been doing for decades now.

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England’s local elections 2018: the unusual case of Sheffield City Region’s mayoral contest

Arianna Giovannini -  01 May 2018

On 3 May, the Sheffield City Region Combined Authority will elect its first ‘metro mayor’. Although the mayor will preside over a devolution deal with no powers and funding (yet), this is a contest that is worth watching.

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Understanding the IMF better

Tony Payne23 April 2018

The Fund does make normatively driven interventions in ideologically charged economic policy debates, but not always from the perspective imagined and often with only limited impact

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Reimagining tax through speculative design: or, how to critique neoliberalism

Liam Stanley -  20 April 2018

If you were given £5m to communicate *something* with all income taxpayers, what message would you want to circulate? What form would it take? How radical would you be?

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Macron’s railway reforms: the ultimate test for French trade unionism

Heather Connolly19 April 2018

Railway trade unions have begun three months of rolling strikes from April-June 2018 against reforms to their employment rights. The outcome of this dispute will be decisive for the government and its ability to make further reforms, and for the very future of the French trade union movement

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From capitalism grounded to grounded capitalism – Part 2

Craig Berry -  18 April 2018

Even on the left, post-crisis regional economic policy in Britain has been underpinned by pre-crisis intellectual paradigms. This post argues that a ‘grounded capitalism’ approach can transform the British growth model while alleviating regional inequalities

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From capitalism grounded to grounded capitalism – Part 1

Craig Berry -  17 April 2018

We can partly situate the grounding of Britain’s pre-crisis growth model in its geographical unevenness – but the left must also situate its response to regional inequalities in a new understanding of capitalism’s spatiality

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A Question of Value: Raising Productivity by Lowering Inequality

Ed Pemberton -  13 April 2018

The focus on low UK productivity overlooks the crucial influence of inequality

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A review of the SPERI series, ‘Revisiting the developmental state’

Rick Rowden -  06 April 2018

Despite many changes in today’s modern global economy developmental states are needed more than ever

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Doing politics differently? Metro-mayors and democratic renewal

Georgina Blakeley & Brendan Evans -  03 April 2018

Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region metro-mayors have been in power just under a year, but has political diversity and participation changed?

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Don’t Panic! (At least not about inflation)

Jacqueline Best - 22 March 2018

Concerns about high inflation – a key narrative underpinning recent financial volatility – are highly suspect

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After Carillion: the function of procurement in public projects

Jon Morris & Andrea Genovese - 20 March 2018

The post-Carillion debates must consider the effectiveness of local authority procurement strategies

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How a new electoral law could shape the 2018 Italian elections

Dario Quattromani - 02 March 2018

Italy’s new electoral law – used for the first time in this weekend’s election – could have a wide-ranging impact on the country’s politics

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The politics of fear: how immigration is dominating the Italian election campaign

Fabio Bordignon, Luigi Ceccarini & Ilvo Diamanti - 02 March 2018

Growing popular concern about immigration could see the centre-right benefit in Sunday’s election

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Globalising cities and their de-globalising hinterlands: Book review

Scott Lavery - 02 March 2018

Global cities at the ‘core’ of the national economy generate deep and de-stabilising patterns of under-development in the ‘periphery'

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USS is the tip of the iceberg. Our pensions system is a hot mess

Christine Berry - 01 March 2018

This week, university staff have been on strike against devastating changes to their pensions, braving the freezing weather to stand on picket lines waving placards with brilliantly dweeby slogans.

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Silvio Berlusconi: what to expect from the comeback king in Italy’s election

James Newell - 01 March 2018

Berlusconi’s reputation as one of Europe’s most remarkable politicians of recent decades remains fully deserved

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The radical left in the 2018 Italian election

Paolo Chiocchetti - 21 February 2018

Torn between centre-left respectability and anti-establishment protest, the Italian radical left struggles to devise a coherent and appealing political project

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Europe (and immigration) among the new Eurosceptics in the 2018 Italian elections

Simona Guerra - 21 February 2018

Populist ‘elites vs the people’ narratives are playing upon rising Euroscepticism and concerns about immigration

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The UK, EU and the distance effect on trade

Patrick Kaczmarczyk - 20 February 2018

Despite the notion of hyper-globalisation, most trade happens with countries in close geographic proximity. Tendencies towards regionalisation and the UK’s strong dependence on EU imports seem to have been forgotten in the Brexit debate

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The intricacies of coalition-making in the 2018 Italian election

Anna Cento Bull & Galadriel Ravelli - 19 February 2018

Italy’s parties are engaging in complex official and unofficial coalition building. The outcome will determine who will form and lead Italy’s next government

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The 2018 Italian election: old faces, new parties, familiar uncertainty

Daniele Albertazzi & Arianna Giovannini - 14 February 2018

Over the coming weeks a new blog series with the PSA Italian Politics Specialist Group will look ahead to the Italian election on March 4th and analyse the results

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Conform or confront? Will young people turn to trade unions to address precariousness?

Craig Berry & Sean McDaniel - 12 February 2018

Our new research published today considers the perspectives of today’s young people on trade unionism – and how unions can respond

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Outsourcing firms and the paradox of time travel

Adam Leaver - 12 February 2018

Analysis of Carillion’s accounts reveals the complex interplay between the firm’s present and future, and sheds new light on which other large outsourcing firms are ‘levered on the future’

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TARGET2 imbalances and the stagnating political economy of Europe

Muhammad Ali Nasir - 09 February 2018

A new approach is needed to respond to secular stagnation and imbalances in the Eurozone

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Gender inequalities and sexual harassment in global value chains

Lara Bianchi - 06 February 2018

To change the dynamics of gender inequality we need to change those of the contemporary global economy

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New shocks and old sins: economic adjustment in the age of automation and Brexit

Gavin Kelly - 31 January 2018

Success or failure in responding to economic adjustment will shape not just the economics, but also the politics, of the post-Brexit era

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How the government’s pro-remain leaflet shaped the EU referendum

Harry Pickard - 26 January 2018

New research shows how the official government leaflet successfully changed voting behaviour in the referendum

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Healthy rivers, healthy cities? The case of Sheffield and its rivers

Jon Morris - 24 January 2018

The UK Government’s new 25-year environmental plan shows the need to increase biodiversity and resilience of our waterways. This has implications far beyond the immediate health of the river system itself

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Beyond the madness: Donald Trump and the resetting of America’s social contract

David Coates - 19 January 2018

Away from the White House chaos an ultra-conservative Republican Party is building an America for the rich and privileged

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Out of time: The fragile temporality of Carillion’s accumulation model

Adam Leaver - 17 January 2018

Carillion is the epitome of the modern financialized firm and its liquidation tells us much about risk in this phase of financialization

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Will Frankfurt become Europe’s leading financial centre after Brexit?

Scott Lavery & Davide Schmid - 16 January 2018

Frankfurt views its ‘stability’ as a key advantage in the battle for jobs and investment with other European financial centres after Brexit

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Fat Cats in paradise: Why private wealth is a political issue

Jacqueline Best  - 15 January 2018

The future of liberal democracy is threatened unless growing inequality and the culture of wealthy entitlement it creates are effectively tackled

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The political economy of forced labour

Genevieve LeBaron, Neil Howard, Cameron Thibos & Penelope Kyritsis  - 10 January 2018

‘Confronting Root Causes: Forced Labour in Global Supply Chains’, a new report that call for innovative approaches to tackle forced labour in global supply chains is published today. The first chapter of the report is republished here.

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Young people and the normalisation of economic crisis in the UK

Craig Berry & Sean McDaniel  - 08 January 2018

Our new research considers the perspectives of today’s young people on the economy, crisis and labour market change – and how they view the prospect of transforming their circumstances through politics

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The hard and soft powers of England’s new metro-mayors

Georgina Blakeley & Brendan Evans  - 03 January 2018

Transport and homelessness show how Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram are using their formal and informal powers in Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region

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