The Gig Economy: Freedom or Precarity?
The gig economy is often presented through two opposing stories. In one, workers escape rigid schedules, choose their own projects, and build careers on their own terms. In the other, platforms replace stable jobs with uncertain tasks, weak protections, and unpredictable income. Both stories contain some truth. Gig work can provide genuine autonomy, especially for […]
Digital Markets and Antitrust Reform
Digital markets have changed how competition works. Search engines, app stores, social networks, cloud platforms, marketplaces, digital advertising systems, and AI services do not behave like many traditional markets. They often grow through data, network effects, platform control, and ecosystem lock-in. This creates new challenges for antitrust law and competition policy. Traditional antitrust tools were […]
Public Debt and Intergenerational Justice
Public debt is often discussed as an economic issue, but it is also an ethical issue. When a government borrows money, it makes decisions that can affect people who are not yet voters, taxpayers, or even born. This creates a serious question of fairness: is it right for one generation to spend now and leave […]
Energy Policy and Market Signals
Energy systems are shaped by more than technology and natural resources. They depend on prices, regulations, investment expectations, infrastructure, consumer behavior, environmental rules, and long-term political decisions. A power plant, transmission line, wind farm, gas terminal, battery project, or efficiency program is rarely built because of one signal alone. It is built because investors, utilities, […]
Taxation and the Moral Limits of Redistribution
Taxation is often discussed as a technical subject: rates, budgets, deficits, public spending, and economic growth. Yet behind every tax system is a moral question. When does the state have the right to take part of what people earn, own, or produce in order to fund public needs or support other citizens? Redistribution makes that […]
Trade Policy in an Era of Protectionism
Trade policy has returned to the center of economic debate. For years, public discussion often framed global trade as a story of liberalization, lower tariffs, and deeper cross-border integration. That picture no longer captures the full reality. Governments still talk about open markets, but they now pair that language with concerns about national security, supply […]
Housing Markets and Regulatory Bottlenecks
Housing shortages are often described as a simple story of high demand and not enough homes. That description is true, but incomplete. In many growing cities, demand has risen for understandable reasons: more jobs, more people, more households living separately, and stronger demand to live near productive urban centers. In a flexible market, rising demand […]
Central Banks and the Problem of Knowledge: Why Monetary Policy Has Limits
Central banks play a central role in modern economic systems. By adjusting interest rates, managing liquidity, and guiding financial markets, they attempt to stabilize inflation, support employment, and maintain financial stability. Yet despite their institutional power and access to vast amounts of data, central banks face a fundamental challenge: they must make decisions about highly […]
The Welfare State and Incentive Structures
The welfare state is often defended in the language of compassion. It promises security against unemployment, illness, disability, and poverty. It seeks to ensure that no citizen falls below a minimum threshold of dignity. In modern democracies, social insurance and redistributive programs have become fixtures of political life, woven into the expectations of citizenship itself. […]
Universal Basic Income: Liberal or Illiberal Reform?
Few policy proposals have generated as much philosophical curiosity and political controversy in recent decades as Universal Basic Income (UBI). The idea is deceptively simple: every citizen receives a regular, unconditional cash payment from the state, sufficient to cover basic needs. No means testing. No work requirements. No behavioral conditions. Just income as a matter […]