News and views from the Blavatnik School of Government community 
After the local election of the state of Hesse last October, Angela Merkel announced that she would step down as head of the conservative party (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), but remain Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany until 2021, thereby retiring step by step. With the recent election of […]
How does a country go from the being the richest of its region to absolute collapse? Why have people been protesting daily for over two months? Moreover, why do people continue to demonstrate when over 60 people have been killed by State security forces? How bad can the situation get? […]
The EU is under siege. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria has tested the single-border principle at the core of the union. The ongoing financial crisis in Greece has strained the single currency. The United Kingdom will soon hold a referendum on whether […]
Over the last few decades, the International Monetary Fund has learned six important lessons about how to manage government debt crises. In its response to the crisis in Greece, however, each of these lessons has been ignored. The Fund’s participation in the effort to rescue the eurozone may have raised […]
At the peak of the Netherlands’ “tulip mania” in 1637, one tulip bulb sold for 5,500 guilders per bulb—roughly the cost of luxurious house in Amsterdam, or $25,000 today. More than three and a half centuries later, economists continue to debate why tulip prices skyrocketed to stratospheric levels in the 1630s, much in the same way that the 2008 Global Financial Crisis remains a source of contention. Why have financial systems been so vulnerable to crises, and what role has regulation played?
The recent economic crisis has revealed, amongst other things, that certain political systems in southern Europe seriously struggle to deliver good governance. Political elites in Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain have not only proven incapable of delivering prosperity to their people but have presided over (and in some cases profited […]
In finance and beyond, how is global cooperation failing from its own prior wins? The 2008-2009 financial crisis was arguably the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. Why, then, has regulatory reform in key countries and at the global level been so piecemeal? Measures that have been agreed on, […]
When Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global financial crisis erupted five years ago, many glimpsed a silver lining: the promise of more effective global economic governance. But, despite a flurry of early initiatives, the world remains as far from that goal as ever. The Financial Stability Board (FSB), established after the G-20 […]