In the years 2019/20, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom reminded of the “peaceful freedom revolutions” (H.-D. Genscher), which took place 30 years ago and which were most symbolically manifested in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the German reunification, in the form of various events and publications. However, this revolutionary democratic change did not spread across the whole continent.

Many extraordinary events took place in 2020. What do you think about how they will reshape the world in the rest of the decade? In light of the global pandemic, I see three significant changes in the making. First, the preparedness of the state for emergencies will improve. Health systems were unprepared for such a health crisis, while the state emergency infrastructure was underdeveloped and in poor condition. Going forward, the political elite will need…

Economic time series exhibit periodically recurrent movements at the daily, weekly, and monthly levels. Also known as seasonality, it has been usually treated as a nuisance to be removed prior to analysis. Often, data is already deseasonalised by data providers since it distracts from medium-term time trends and long-term cycles. Moreover, seasonality disappears when data are aggregated to a yearly basis – it is a phenomenon at work at shorter time frames. It is an…