That’s the dilemna posed by the latest paper from Laurence Kotlikoff Hans Fehr and Sabine Jokisch: Will China Eat Our Lunch or Take Us to Dinner. Simulating the transition paths of economies in the U.S., EU, Japan, and China the paper develops a dynamic, life-cycle, general equilibrium model to study their interdependent demographic, [...]

The EU Observer reports today on how some states are decidedly tardy in producing their Lisbon Agenda action plans:
Embassies are due to hand in their national plans, consisting of 30-40 page dossiers with statistical annexes, by the weekend, with EU experts flying back and forth to member states in the past few weeks to help [...]

Bloomberg this morning has a review of the pros and cons of Marty Feldstein as Alan Greenspan’s successor. One thing they don’t touch on is what the implications might be of having someone at the head of the US Federal Reserve who is pretty much convinced the Euro can’t work.
“Marty has something of [...]

UK property prices have been hovering dangerously around the zero price growth mark for the last couple of months. Year on year growth is of course dropping substantially and we are now just below the 3% annual mark. Definitely one to keep watching.
UK house price inflation fell in August according to the Office of the [...]

In Brazilian football this seems to be the case, quite literally!
For all that they say about detesting corruption in public life, most ordinary Brazilians do not see it as something with a direct impact on their own lives. But one scandal has caused personal offence to millions.
�I was knocked sideways,� says Catarina Pedroso, an 18-year-old [...]

I think this is no longer news, but the OECD held a press conference yesterday to inform us that we are all living longer, but we still aren’t working longer, and that somehow these two facts don’t fit with our existing pension arrangements. Well perhaps it isn’t exactly news, but it still needs to sink-in [...]

The filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Saturday by Delphi, the No. 1 U.S. car-parts supplier, is making waves, both in the stockmarkets and in the news columns. Stephen Roach had a whole GEF post devoted to the issue yesterday. This morning it is the turn of the FT, which has a (subscription [...]

Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel has just said that Macedonia has “real chances” to become the next candidate for EU membership.
This would be no big deal — the Slovenes have long had a soft spot for the Macedonians — except that Rupel is wearing two hats right now; he’s also Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE. [...]

German media are now reporting that the SPD has agreed to let the largest parliamentary faction put forward the candidate for Chancellor. For three weeks, the Social Democrats had been arguing that as the largest party represented in the Bundestag, they had the right to name the candidate. (Germany’s Christian Democrats come from two parties, [...]

The scandal of recent days surrounding the ‘policing’ of the EU’s southern frontier in Ceuta and Melilla continues. Yesterday Spanish TV was full of images and reports from a group of 500 or so Africans who were bused and dumped in the desert hundreds of kilometres from reasonable sources of food ands water. The EU [...]