Episodes
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Civil society plays an important role in skills development. In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Rebecca Christie and Duygu GĂŒner are joined by two stakeholders from the civil society sector: Deputy Secretary General and Head of Policy of the European Association for the Education of Adults, Raffaela Kihrer and Sertaç Yerlikaya, the country manager of 42 Ä°stanbul, a coding school in TĂŒrkiye, Director of TĂŒrkiye Open Source Platform and Country Coordinator for the World Economic Forum's "Closing the Skills Gap Accelerator" programme.
They discuss the need for cooperation and partnership among different stakeholders (industry, academia, government and civil society) in skills development, the role of civil society in building this partnership, and the importance of advocating for more involvement of civil society to help close the skills gap.
This is part of a special Skills series of The Sound of Economics, where we discuss how we can utilise upskilling and reskilling initiatives to protect vulnerable groups of the workforce, how to build a resilient workforce and how to create a better functioning EU labour market.
Relevant publications:
Life skills and participation in adult learning, EAEA policy paperPartnerships and cooperations in adult education, EAEA background paperThis podcast was produced within the project âFuture of Work and Inclusive Growth in Europeâ, with the financial support of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. -
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Rebecca Christie is joined by Ester Barendregt, Zsolt Darvas and Jeromin Zettelmeyer to discuss how to finish the new fiscal rules for the European Union before next year's European elections. They speak about whether the emerging fiscal rules might help or hurt efforts to fund the green transition.
Also on the agenda is the latest developments towards fiscal rules reform, with the speakers giving their feedback on the current proposals. They also debate how to balance debt and environmental sustainability and whether there is enough political will to achieve fiscal rules reform.
Relevant publications:Zettelmeyer, J. (2023) âAre the emerging EU fiscal rules green enough?â, Bruegel First Glance, 16 November, available at https://www.bruegel.org/first-glance/are-emerging-eu-fiscal-rules-green-enoughDarvas, Z., L. Welslau and J. Zettelmeyer (2023) âA quantitative evaluation of the European CommissionÂŽs fiscal governance proposalâ, Working Paper 16/2023, Bruegel -
Episodes manquant?
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In this episode of ZhĆngHuĂĄ Mundus, Yuyun Zhan sits down with Alicia GarcĂa-Herrero and Giuseppe Porcaro, founders of the podcast and newsletter series, to reflect on their journey exploring China's economic dynamics and its implications for Europe.
The hosts candidly discuss their motivations behind launching the podcast, explaining their original aims of providing a global audience with a nuanced understanding of China's international impact. They also discuss Europe's transformation and assertiveness in global affairs, expressing hopes for a more proactive approach, especially in areas like industrial policy and strategic foresight.
This episode is part of the ZhĆngHuĂĄ Mundus series of The Sound of Economics. ZhĆngHuĂĄ Mundus is a newsletter by Bruegel, bringing you monthly analysis of China in the world, as seen from Europe. Sign up now to receive it in your mailbox! -
The future of work has become a prominent topic for research and policy debate. However, the debate has focused entirely on paid work, even though people in industrialised countries spend on average comparable amounts of time on unpaid work. This ranges from simple daily chores like sweeping the floor and cooking, to more complicated and controversial issues like robots looking after kids or the elderly.
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro sits down with Ekaterina Hertog and Fabian Stephany to investigate the road less travelled, Ekaterinaâs research on the potential and the willingness of people to automatise unpaid domestic work. Around this topic, they discuss the aspect of work/life balance, the gender aspect, the question of services oriented towards the domestic work market and more.
This was produced within the project "Future of Work and Inclusive Growth in Europe" with the financial support of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. -
Geopolitical conflicts like Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine and the recent Israel-Hamas war have added uncertainties to the global energy and financial markets.
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, our podcast host Rebecca Christie sits down with Senior fellows Simone Tagliapietra and Nicolas Veron to talk about the intersections of war and markets. Together they discuss the energy and financial implications of the Israel-Hamas war and the ongoing EU budget debate on the blocâs financing needs such as the green transition and investments. They also explore how Europe may navigate through current geopolitical conflicts and keep its resistance moving forward. -
The 15 October Polish elections showed that the opposition leader Donald Tusk, former European Council president and a former Polish prime minister, has a decent chance of forming a new coalition government to take over from the right-wing Law and Justice Party that has been in power since 2015.
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, recorded 20 Oct., our podcast host Rebecca Christie sits down with Non-resident fellow Marek Dabrowski, a former deputy finance minister during Polandâs transition away from communism, and visiting fellow PaweĆ Karbownik, who has been an adviser to Tusk in Brussels and during the campaign.
Together they unpack how the elections turned out and what might happen next: what political and economic challenges the new government will be facing, the progress it might have in the standoff over the EU budget. They also discuss how Poland will play a more important role in policymaking as the EU looks toward new rounds of enlargement in coming years. -
China's growth model, marked by excessive investment and a high savings rate, has led to the accumulation of local government debt and a skewed balance between consumption and investment.
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro and Alicia GarcĂa-Herrero explore this debt burden with Michael Pettis, exposing the structural problem in Chinaâs growth model which over-relies on investment.
This episode is part of the ZhĆngHuĂĄ Mundus series of The Sound of Economics. ZhĆngHuĂĄ Mundus is a newsletter by Bruegel, bringing you monthly analysis of China in the world, as seen from Europe. Sign up now to receive it in your mailbox! -
There is a huge skill mismatch and skills shortages in the EU labour market. In 2022, despite the all-time high employment rate (74.6%), we are still seeing the highest job vacancy rate of 2.9%, which more than doubled compared to 2012 (1.3%).
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro discusses the importance of skills-based hiring with Duygu GĂŒner and Mona Mourshed. How can this practice help remove the barriers between workers and the job market and how can it further assist digital transformation in our economy? They also discuss how to motivate workers as well as employers to adopt this new system.
This is part of a special Skills series of The Sound of Economics, where we discuss how we can utilise upskilling and reskilling initiatives to protect vulnerable groups of the workforce, how to build a resilient workforce and create a better functioning EU labour market.
Relevant publications:
Launching a Tech Hiring Revolution, Report by Generation
Gotti, G., T. Schraepen and D. GĂŒner (2023) âTechnology Adoption dashboardâ, Bruegel Datasets
The Midcareer Opportunity: Meeting the Challenges of an Ageing Workforce, Report by Generation
This podcast was produced within the project âFuture of Work and Inclusive Growth in Europeâ, with the financial support of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. -
What can we learn from other forms of intelligence and personhood, and how can we change our societies to live more equitably with one another and the non-human world?
In this episode of Read with Bruegel series, Giuseppe Porcaro welcomes James Bridle to discuss his latest book âWays of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence.â
They discuss the effects of Artificial Intelligence and new technologies on our society, economics, politics and everyday life. They delve into the relationship human beings have with the other beings we share the planet with. They also discuss the contribution of art and of artistic practices and why we should build more bridges between artists, economists, and political scientists. -
The EU has been using trade policy to export its standards on competition policy, environmental protection and human rights among other policy areas, which has famously become known as âThe Brussels Effectâ. But this could eventually get in the way of trade deal negotiations. For example, the EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement is bogged down by Amazon deforestation concerns since 2019.
But can the EU afford to prolong the trade deal negotiations with Latin America countries, given Latin Americaâs increasingly important role in global economics, from the reconfiguration of the global supply chains to being a key component for critical raw materials, which is a strategic emerging consumerâs market and an indispensable natural resource for the planet?
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro invites Alan Beattie, Alicia GarcĂa-Herrero and David Kleimann to discuss the state of play of EU-LATAM trade relations and how the EU should proceed to showcase its commitment to trade openness and economic engagement. -
At the start of the Covid-19 crisis, the European Commission suspended the fiscal rules that applied to member states to allow countries to use fiscal policy domestically to deal with health emergency. This suspension was further extended when Russia invaded Ukraine and cause a great energy crisis in the European Union.
The suspension is now meant to be lifted in 2024 when the rules will come back into full operation. In this three-year period, the European Commission has also tried to update and modernise the fiscal framework in a proposal they put forward in April 2023.
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Maria Demertzis invites Jeromin Zettelmeyer and Zsolt Darvas to evaluate this proposal. As they present in a recent paper, in this framework, medium-term fiscal adjustment requirements would be determined by country-by-country debt sustainability analysis (DSA), the 3 percent deficit ceiling and simple rules requiring minimum deficit and debt adjustments (âsafeguardsâ). These elements are controversial, with some EU countries (and us) preferring a DSA-based approach, while others prefer to stick to simple rules.
Relevant publicationsDarvas, Z., L. Welslau and J. Zettelmeyer (2023) âA quantitative evaluation of the European CommissionÂŽs fiscal governance proposalâ, Working Paper 16/2023, BruegelThe economic governance review and its impact on monetary-fiscal coordination, Zsolt Darvas, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, In-Depth analysis, European Parliament -
On 13 September 2023, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, delivered this yearâs State of the Union address before the European Parliament. This is the last address of her current mandate. In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro hosts AndrĂ© Sapir, Simone Tagliapietra and Jeromin Zettelmeyer to evaluate von der Leyenâs address regarding the European Green Deal, industrial policy, economic security, Ukraine and more.
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European banking supervision has developed and matured by moving from being predominantly rules-based and heavily codified, to becoming more risk-focused and adaptable to rapidly changing economic circumstances.
Backstage at the Bruegel Annual Meetings 2023, Giuseppe Porcaro and Nicolas VĂ©ron speak with Sharon Donnery, Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Ireland, to discuss the evolution of European banking supervision, the increasingly central role of risk assessment, as well as the prospects for the near future. -
This yearâs BRICS annual summit delivered the headline announcement of the groupâs expansion: in January 2024, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates will join the grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa .
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro and Alicia GarcĂa-Herrero are joined by Jim OâNeill, who coined the acronym BRIC, to discuss how the grouping has developed since its formation in 2009, the reasons behind this new expansion and the consequences it may have on the global economic and geopolitical landscape. -
China has become a world leader in making and buying Electric Vehicles (EV), somehow under the radar. In fact, China today produces 54% of total EVs globally and with an even higher share for EV batteries.
How did China get there? In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro sits down with Alicia GarcĂa-Herrero and Zeyi Yang to explore Chinaâs EV industry. Together they discuss the countryâs rapid rise in the market, its advancement on battery technology, as well as geopolitical implications with a growing chorus calling for de-risking.
This episode is part of the ZhĆngHuĂĄ Mundus series of The Sound of Economics. ZhĆngHuĂĄ Mundus is a newsletter by Bruegel, bringing you monthly analysis of China in the world, as seen from Europe. Sign up now to receive it in your mailbox! -
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the international balance of power. In the field of defence, beyond weaponry, AI is instrumental for various Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) tasks at the strategic, operational and tactical level, as well as automated reasoning, logistics, training, and much more.
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro invites Sarah Shoker to discuss the evolving role of AI in defence.
They highlight AI's role in foreign policy decision-making and prediction, but stress that balanced human judgment is crucial due to AI's limitations. Speakers urge caution in AI integration, complementing, not replacing, human reasoning. International cooperation for responsible AI norms and regulations is also needed. -
The forced mass-scale shift to work-from-home during the COVID-19 pandemic has changed both employeesâ and employersâ perspectives on work location, demonstrating that more jobs could be done remotely than we could have imagined before.
Since we emerged from the pandemic, there is an ongoing debate about a full-scale return to office, as well as hybrid and remote work.
Employee surveys across different countries consistently indicate that employees prefer to remain working remotely and do not want to return to the office full time. At the same time, many companies are trying to bring their employees back to the office.
In this episode of The Sound of Economics, Giuseppe Porcaro speaks to Tatiana Andreeva about her latest work researching employersâ experience of working fully remotely during the pandemic and their approaches to returning to the office following the pandemic.
Relevant publication:
Mulcahy, D., and T. Andreeva (2023) âEmployer perspectives on employee work location: collaboration, culture and controlâ, Working Paper 05/2023, Bruegel
This was produced within the project "Future of Work and Inclusive Growth in Europe" with the financial support of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. -
The Sound of Economics is bringing you a summer 2023 special series, 'Read with Bruegel.' In this series, we have the pleasure of hosting renowned authors who will discuss various economic issues based on their insightful books. We hope this conversation will inspire you to explore their books and offer you some food for thought during your summer break.
In this episode of the series, Nicolas VĂ©ron welcomes Ulrich Bindseil to discuss his latest book âCentral Banking before 1800: A Rehabilitationâ.
VĂ©ron and Bindeil ponder the definition of central banking, whilst analysing pre-1800 central banking and the role of numerous other institutions across the European continent. They discuss the long and colourful history of central banking before 1800, from which important lessons for today's debates can be drawn. -
The Sound of Economics is bringing you a summer 2023 special series, 'Read with Bruegel.' In this series, we have the pleasure of hosting renowned authors who will discuss various economic issues based on their insightful books. We hope this conversation will inspire you to explore their books and offer you some food for thought during your summer break.
In this episode of the series, Simone Tagliapietra welcomes Daniel Yergin to discuss his book âThe New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nationsâ.
The global energy order is being shaken by climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine and the rising tension between the West and China over critical raw materials. The discussants explore how these developments shape global supply chains, international co-operation and the course of technological advancement. They delve into what energy security might entail in different parts of the world and how varying national priorities can influence the speed of the green transition. -
The Sound of Economics is bringing you a summer 2023 special series, 'Read with Bruegel.' In this series, we have the pleasure of hosting renowned authors who will discuss various economic issues based on their insightful books. We hope this conversation will inspire you to explore their books and offer you some food for thought during your summer break.
In this episode of the series, Bruegel Senior fellow Maria Demertzis welcomes Agathe Demarais, Global forecasting director, Economist Intelligence Unit, to discuss her latest book âBackfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interestsâ.
From Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine to Iranâs COVID response and Chinaâs cryptocurrency ambitions, they discuss how sanctions are transforming geopolitics and the global economyâas well as diminishing U.S. influence. They also exchange views on global fragmentation and how to save multilateralism and cooperation. - Montre plus