Bulletin July 2007

IN THIS ISSUE...

Reality check
Just a week after the mutual back-slapping of the July 2006 annual G8 summit St Petersburg, a despairing Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, officially suspended the talks, amid furious finger-pointing and name-calling by those very same countries. In a series of three CEPR Discussion Papers, Simon Evenett argues that the EU should seize on the faltering of the Doha Round as an ideal opportunity to re-think its trade policy.

For a few dollars more
While go-getting Americans slave away for faceless corporations sixty hours a week before slumping exhausted into bed, their European cousins manage to fit their careers around civilised lunches, siestas and long vacations. Europeans, the argument goes, simply value their leisure-time more highly. A new CEPR Discussion Paper challenges that received wisdom.

Don't blame it all on globalisation - workers should look closer to home for why they are losing out
While globalisation is often blamed for workers losing out on wages, a new CEPR Discussion Paper demonstrates that the privatisation of once state-owned industries, and the resulting focus on profits as opposed to employment levels, has also contributed to the fall in the share of GDP taken home by workers.

Regression to the mean
Parents' power to influence their children is a fraught issue of family life and public policy. Mums and Dads fret about the company their offspring may fall into outside the bosom of the family; teachers blame parents for their unruly charges; and politicians anxious about bad behaviour often assume parenting is at fault. A new CEPR Discussion Paper suggests, however, that parents' ability to pass on cherished social values such as altruism to their children may be much weaker than is often supposed.