Articles

Lack of jobs remains the key problem of the Slovak economy despite the currently declining unemployment rate. Government policies keep coming up with new labour market measures but these often prove ineffective, generating only temporary jobs by selectively supporting chosen jobseekers.

One thing is certain: Polish politics will change radically after the October elections. At the moment, a conservative and populist government seems likely. The strategy to secure the postulates of leftist and liberal movements can no longer rely on the “lesser evil” argument. It’s high time for new initiatives.

Just like every year, INESS released the Bill for Government services few days ago. Although such information should be ideally provided by the government itself, Slovak government is somewhat reluctant to inform the society on costs of the functioning of the state. This is precisely why INESS decided to take up this task.

New Economic School – Georgia has the pleasure to invite you to Summer University. This years\' edition devoted to the topic of Public Choice: The Necessity of Limiting of Government Power will be held in Bakuriani, Georgia, on August 8-14, 2015.

The real problem of the minimum wage concerns a very different group of people. Yet you will not see these people in newspapers or TV and they are not part of government negotiations at all. They are the unemployed people. Hence, what economists argue as some “redistribution problems” between employers and employees is not at the core of issues with minimum wage.

Last winter, the polls of trust for Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski varied between strong 60 to 80%. Almost no one could have predicted that only four months later he will lose the elections to a young, 43 years old, unknown presidential candidate of the radically right Law and Justice party. Komorowski, supported by the Civic Platform, was defeated twice. And this means that we have entered a completely new age of Polish politics.

Iceland does not have much chance to go wrong. The current system is sufficiently large a disaster to require trying something else. They experienced capital controls, hyperinflation and there are financial crisis on average every 15 years. The currency suffers from chronic degradation. It would be nice to take a chance on an experiment in a country where the changes of a poorly performing financial system cannot be impeded by too powerful bankers and politicians.

The Slovenian experience with privatisation has been marked by two phenomena. First, the Slovenian State did not exit enough business – there was widespread failure to privatise. Second, the privatisation campaigns that were undertaken suffered from several severe problems – there was widespread privatisation failure. Both phenomena were related even though the precise relationship can be modelled in several ways.

On Friday, May 8, 2015, the Civil Development Forum (FOR) together with many international partners such as the Austrian Economics Center, Liberty Fund, 4liberty.eu, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and European Students for Liberty with the assistance of Polish organizations and media partners, held the Warsaw edition of the Free Market Road Show 2015.

During the Free Market Road Show 2015 in Warsaw, organized in cooperation with Civil Development Forum (FOR), we asked Mrs. Barbara Kolm, President of the Friedrich A. v. Hayek Institute in Vienna, Austria and Director of the Austrian Economics Center which is responsible for organizing of this extraordinary international conference tour, what all the fuss is about?