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Intereconomics goes open access

Another reason to celebrate in 2020!

As of January 2020, Intereconomics changed its publishing model with Springer Nature to Gold Open Access. All articles are now freely available online at no extra cost to our authors. Intereconomics and its parent organisation, the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, support the digitalisation of the study of economics and Open Science to make academic knowledge freely accessible to everyone. Print subscriptions are also available through the ZBW.

Forum

The Rise of Populism: Case Studies, Determinants and Policy Implications

New political parties and peoples’ movements have been on the rise in Europe and worldwide for over a decade. In order to examine the changes in the political landscape, particularly the rise of populist sentiment across Europe, Intereconomics and the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), invited renowned academics, policy advisors and regional experts to present their ideas at the 9th annual joint conference in November 2019 in Brussels. In this Forum, Sir Paul Collier, Mario Pianta, Evgenia Passari, László Andor, Thiemo Fetzer, Daphne Halikiopoulou and Karl Aiginger look at the common economic determinants and consequences of the current political climate and question the role that the EU may have played against the backdrop of country cases and regional studies.

To the Forum

Editorial

Populism, Protectionism and Paralysis

While some may argue about where justified market-oriented economic policies end and protectionism begins, there has been a clear move towards nationalist and protectionist economic policies almost everywhere in the Western world in recent years, says Marcel Fratzscher in his Editorial. This shift is directly linked to the pervasive anti-European populist and nationalist sentiment of late that stems from, among several factors, growing economic and social inequality. To address this, Fratzscher recommends that national governments create more opportunities for Europeans to benefit from globalisation and technological change.

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The Rise of the Right

The AfD's Winning Forumula - No Need for Economic Strategy Blurring in Germany

Western European Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) have addressed the dispersed socio-economic status of their electorates by blurring their economic positioning. Matthias Diermeier analyses the rise of the German PRRP Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between 2013 and 2017 and the role of its economic policy platform. In contrast to its European peers, the AfD shows few signs of economic strategy blurring. The party offers clear antiredistribution policies that are matched by AfD voters’ preferences: even the least affluent AfD supporters have stronger preferences for lower redistribution than the most affl uent non-AfD supporters.

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Forum

Achieving Socio-Economic Convergence in Europe

In his conference keynote, Sir Paul Collier examined the origins of European populism which he identified as two socio-economic divergences: spatial divergence and educational divergence. These two factors are intertwined due to the tendency of the best-educated young people growing up in declining cities, regions and countries to migrate to metropoles, Collier says. The failure of public policy to encourage convergence, has led to a chain of events that have widened the social and economic gaps and made it more difficult to find solutions. In his Forum contribution, Collier offers a number of promising policy initiatives, starting in the womb, that would help to shrink and heal these divides.

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Letter from America: Election 2020

The Politics of Inequality

As the first issue of 2020 goes to print, the Democratic candidates running for the US presidency are preparing for the first primary contest of this election year: the Iowa Caucuses. This year, our Letter from America segment will examine issues at the heart of the 2020 campaign. In James Galbraith and Jaehee Choi's contribution, The Politics of American Inequality looks at a topic that has been central to our annual conference and this Forum: rising inequality. Galbraith and Choi postulate that while rising national inequality has had no clear cut effect on the popular vote, rising inequalities within American states have become a decisive factor in determining state-by-state outcomes and thus the presidency.

For more on issues of great debate during the 2020 election campagin in the US, check out Barry Eichengreen's recent contribution, Addressing Inequality: The Wealth Tax. Eichengreen explains the impetus for a wealth tax, considers its possible implementation and whether or not it is an effective tool to address inequality.

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