Hotel prices in Spain remained in May at 2004 levels according to a National Statistics Institute (INE) report today. This could be a significant reading if price inflation in fact is disappearing from the sector. As the report notes, most of the recent increase in business has come from Spanish nationals. [...]

The FT has a timely piece on the supposed ‘anglo saxon model’. Stereotypes are just that, stereotypes, and more often than not they obscure more than they illuminate:
“Britain’s “Anglo-Saxon model” is believed to have produced filthy hospitals, long queues, a collapsing pension system and draconian welfare-to-work programmes that produce high levels of poverty and inequality.
The [...]

The Economists ‘Buttonwood” gets right to the point. Talking of the problems of funding acquired pension liabilities, he notes:
“There are a couple of weird circularities here. Most of the burden of filling these gaps will fall on the companies themselves, which will depress their profits. That, in turn, will depress share prices, which will make [...]

Just days after new French finance minister Thierry Breton suggested that French growth would be around 2% for 2005, France’s principal statistical agency, INSEE, point out that this is virtually unachieveable given what we already know about growth this year. 1.5% is the INSEE forecast, and even this figure they say has downside risks.
Meanwhile apparently, [...]

The global interest rate cycle seems to be about to peak (of course at the ECB and in Japan it never really got started). The only thing which is surprising about this, is that anyone should be surprised. I am also convinced that Greenspan is nearly done at his end, and pretty much agree with [...]

Paul Krugman has on occassion suggested ironically that Bagdad was only for the boys, that the ‘real men’ would go to Teheran. Well here’s another of those ‘real men’ in the economics field: Paul Betts writing in the FT, with one of those delicious ‘wingnut’ arguments:
“A dose of sado-monetary policy from the European Central Bank [...]

With all the fuss about Italy, I’ve obviously been neglecting poor little Portugal, but Joaquim Almunia hasn’t forgotten about them. According to Business Week:
“The European Union’s head office told Portugal on Wednesday to cut its burgeoning budget deficit and public debt, saying the country’s economic slowdown was no excuse for violating euro-zone rules on sound [...]

Gerhard Schr?der said yesterday that Europe had to choose between two versions of its future: one as a politically united continent able to hold its own in a globalized economy and the other as an enfeebled trading block.
“The core question is: which Europe do we want? Do we want a united Europe capable of [...]

One of the few real IMF success stories, the Turkish economy continues with what Serhan Cevik calls its spectacular normality:
The Turkish economy is now in its fourth year of uninterrupted growth, with an average real GDP growth rate of 7.5% per annum. Indeed, the trend growth rate surged from 3.9% in the 1990s to [...]

Globalisation, of course, isn’t a new phenomenon. Those who have been following my demographic material will not be surprised that the role of migration in human history is a topic which fascinates me. Well, Juan Cole has a very ‘informed’ post today about a piece of genetic research which claims to show that half of [...]