• Opinion piece by Simon Tilford
    International Herald Tribune, 28 September 2009

    A popular Continental misconception about Britain is that it is some kind of ultra-free economy where there is limited social welfare and where the market has been introduced into every aspect of life.

  • Insight by Simon Tilford, 22 September 2009

    The governor of the Bank of England (BoE), Mervyn King, has had a mixed financial crisis. He assumed that financial stability flowed from monetary stability – which we now know is not the case – and was very slow to recognise the extent of the crisis.

  • Opinion piece by Simon Tilford
    The New York Times, 16 July 2009

    Is the brief flowering of economic liberalism in Europe over? It is too soon to read the last rites, but the prognosis is not good.The financial crisis, the subsequent discrediting of the Anglo-Saxon economies and the passing of the most economically liberal European Commission there has ever been have put liberal economic thinking on the defensive.

  • Insight by Simon Tilford, 03 April 2009

    The good news first. The summit delivered more than expected. The trebling of the funds available to the IMF goes well beyond anything expected and is very welcome.

  • Bulletin article by Philip Whyte, 01 April 2009

    Since the 1980s, many of the largest economies in the EU have developed unenviable reputations for protracted economic downturns followed by sluggish recoveries.

  • Bulletin article by Katinka Barysch, 01 April 2009

    Is a new iron curtain threatening to divide the European Union? Hungary’s prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, raised the spectre last month, when he warned that the eastern members were descending into economic mayhem while the richer EU countries were looking on unsympathetically.

  • Insight by Katinka Barysch, 01 April 2009

    Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, threatens to walk out of the London G20 summit unless France gets its way on tougher financial regulation. The toppled Czech Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, who happens to hold the EU presidency, describes the US fiscal stimulus as “the road to hell”.

  • Opinion piece by Philip Whyte
    The Times, 13 March 2009

    Nicolas Sarkozy stung us when he claimed last month that Britain, unlike France, “has no industry”. Since the implosion of the financial sector, it has become an article of faith that the British economy is paying for its excessive reliance on services.