Articles

It became clear that Ukraine has failed to receive the third and final tranche of the MFA III. Initially, the MFA III at EUR 1.8 bn was agreed in 2015 under a number of conditionalities that envisaged 22 measures in the areas of energy, public financial management, anticorruption policy, etc.

In October, the USAID Leadership in Economic Governance (LEV) Program held its final event. The project lasted for three years and made an important contribution to the policy of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) development in Ukraine.

LFMI launches Employment Flexibility Index 2018 for the EU and OECD. The index is based on the World Bank’s Doing Business data on labor market regulation and covers a set of indicators on hiring, working hours, redundancy rules, and redundancy costs.

Ukraine needs at the very least 5% annual GDP growth to catch up with neighboring countries in economic development. One option would be improved investment climate for higher FDI and domestic-sourced capital investment. Other options are limited given lack of fiscal space and aging capital assets.

With the recent rise of populism and great popluarity of populist politicians in Western European countries, it is more urgent than ever to talk about the fact that the hours of liberal democracies are numbered. However, the recently published ELF study shows a different, more optimistic picture.

Politicians should ask themselves if depriving citizens of their right to choose high quality reasonably priced services while putting private businesses at a competitive disadvantage is the path Lithuania should follow.

The current social pillars are divisive, but the divide is not across the “East-West” lines or even the “liberal-socialist” lines; rather, it goes along the “reality-delusion” lines. Sadly, the proposed social pillars will not make delusional politicians to accept reality

Published in 2015 by the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, the economics textbook Economics in 31 Hours has transformed the way of teaching and learning economics in Lithuania. Already in its fifth edition, the textbook has reached over 53 thousand students in 463 secondary schools and nearly 500 teachers.

Last Saturday, the Nowoczesna party has elected a new leader: Katarzyna Lubnauer replaced Ryszard Petru at the helm of the Polish opposition party, the most liberal one in the country there is. It was high time Nowoczesna stopped being associated chiefly with Petru.

In Poland, liberalism is not very popular. Liberalism is a project that is best descibed as distanced. Every attempt to bring it closer to the people is therefore as challenging as trying to get closer to the sun. Is it therefore possibe to present liberal ideas in such a way so that Poles might stop fearing it?