The OECD estimates the current potential capacity growth rate of the Italian economy at 1.25% a year. Actually I suspect even this very low number is over-optimistic. Growth since 2002 has been as follows: 2003 - 0.1%: 2004 - 0.9%: 2005 - 0.1%. To be sure forecast growth for this year is somewhat higher, [...]

…below the fold.
But first an introduction. I’m guestblogging from Amsterdam and my site can be found here. Very much honored to post at the Fistful (I would be, they’ve got visitors), although in all honesty they might be better served by a Francophone blogger.
As it is, they are grossly misunderestimated by the French part [...]

From the BBC News site comes this disconcerting news:
Europe is falling behind Asia in terms of education and skills, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
It blames France and Germany which are criticised for mediocre education systems and their inherent class bias.
And further on:
“Europeans from difficult socio-economic backgrounds don’t [...]

The Czech Republic is booming apparently. Both per-capita GDP and fertility are definitely on an upswing, although surprisingly perhaps, for once I am not going to try and suggest that these are connected:
The Czech republic has joined Slovenia among new member states with higher levels of wealth per capita than old member Portugal, according to [...]

Morgan Stanley’s Eric Chaney has what I consider to be a very sensitive and perceptive analysis of the economic backdrop to the French urban unrest:
Turning to economic causes, many analysts have pointed to mass youth unemployment as the main cause of the political unrest in low-income suburbs. The numbers are striking: the French [...]

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 [...]

A right royal row is brewing at the ECB. Basically the old guard theorists of the ‘one size fits all’ monetary policy are being challenged by more pragmatic observers of day to day realities. For the moments it is the politicians who are making the running (but there are plenty of competent economists in Germany [...]

Rumaging around the OECD website this morning looking for the original documentation on the spate of comparative pensions articles which have been hitting the press in the last couple of days I came across something which I consider truly, truly interesting.

Read more… or [...]