Public outreach

The European Union has constructed a new language around the « voluntary return » of irregular migrants and this is making a complex situation more difficult to grasp. Jean-Pierre Cassarino, a political scientist, studies return migration and warns against the abusive use of « return » in the political debate.

The password is “white” in the competitive private rentals market. Finding a flat can be a real challenge for African immigrants. The economists Bruno Decreuse, Pierre Philippes Combes, Benoît Schmutz, and Alain Trannoy study the insidious racism of neighbouring tenants and landlords that lies at the root of current discriminations.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest HIV rate in the world, but there is a lack of public healthcare systems and huge inequalities regarding healthcare. Besides direct impacts on health, the HIV epidemic has side effects on children’s education, affecting parental behaviour around the risk of getting ill, find the economists Renaud Bourlès, Bruno Ventelou, and Maame Esi Wood.

There’s a message in people’s changes in height size. During the first globalization period, at the end of the 19th century, Filipinos lost up to 1.5 centimetres compared to their grandparents. This may be evidence of the degradation of living standards and nutrition. Economic growth does not pay off for everyone in the same way, as those who lived in colonized areas know.

Today, 2 billion people still lack basic sanitation access. Although that constitutes a health emergency, the proposed solutions are not always appropriate. Authors Alzua and Djebbari show that involving the community in a sanitation program in the Koulikouro region of Mali leads to shifts in collective practices as families build and start using latrines.  

States seek inventors able to revolutionise our future, contributing to progress and new ideas. What fosters and encourages invention? A wide-ranging study presented by Stefanie Stantcheva shows that taxes in the U.S. have a great influence on innovation.

Figures, percentages and graphics illustrate inequalities throughout the world.  But from one place to another, inequalities depict very different situations. How can we study them? The economist Alan Auerbach, professor at the University of California, offers a new approach to the inequalities in developed countries by studying lifetime spending, after taxation and redistribution

Conditional Cash Transfers grant money to poor households with children provided that their members meet certain conditions. A common feature of many CCT programs in Latin America is that payments are targeted to the mother. Could this policy be a way for women to gain autonomy? Marcelo Bergolo and Estefanía Galván find that a CCT program in Uruguay results in women gaining greater responsibility for decisions in specific spheres of household expenditure. On the negative side, however, it has discouraging effects on their formal employment.

The growing support for whistle-blowers’ right to protection illustrates the challenges facing democracy in its attempt to ensure transparency and accountability. With technology allowing new forms of governance, the scope for secrecy and obfuscation of state power has increased. In the attempt to balance the democratic need for transparency against existential threats to security, whistle-blowing is becoming the new standard for accountability.

Combining markets and ethics isn’t easy, and the numerous frauds and scams that intervene at regular intervals don’t help. Should we be looking for more competition to reach efficiency or, on the contrary, seeking market regulation? To respond to this dilemma, economist Marie Claire Villeval uses experimental tools.

In this little country located in Southern Africa, birth complications are not treated and access to contraception remains difficult. Besides having poor access to medical services, traditional beliefs make pregnant women hide their problems, a silence that increases the already high maternal mortality rate.

In April 2019, at the insistence of the civil society, the European Parliament enacted a new agreement for better protection of whistle-blowers. This is potentially good news not only for human rights but also in the fight against corruption. This proposal is bound to take the EU a step closer in its fight against corruption and push the member states to move in a similar direction.

The Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund owns the PSG football team, more than 6 hotels and shares in Lagardère or Total, to name but a few of their assets. That’s enough to attract some concern. However, it’s simply following a world trend since the beginning of the 21st century. More than 45% of existing wealth funds were created between 2000 and 2009. Economists C. Lecourt, J. Amar, and V. Kinon explain what’s behind this “craze”.

Microcredits help microenterprises get started. They are an innovative way to address financial exclusion and unemployment. But business performance is closely linked to entrepreneurial motivation. Renaud Bourlès and Anastasia Cozarenco show that businesses started by « necessity » are less likely to make profits than those that are the result of « opportunity ». So differentiating between entrepreneurial motivations is a challenge for public policies.

Whistle-blowing has been the subject of far-reaching discussions regarding its justification and its legal support. Although there is a range of laws protecting those who blow the whistle, especially in the G20 countries, whistle-blowers are still at risk. Enhancing their protection seems to be a challenge. Examining the issue, political philosophers Manohar Kumar and Daniele Santoro call for better protection backed up by a set of assessments. They reopen the debate through a three-part series of articles.

Econdialog interviewed Ben Kiernan, professor of History at Yale University, about Cambodian history. He explains how its natural resources are a key to understanding the glory of the Angkor Empire. Cambodia was a land of plenty.

From the Angkor Empire to Democratic Kampuchea, Cambodia has been in turn a land of plenty and of poverty, a prosperous and then battered country. Connecting these two stories, historian Ben Kiernan draws a line: Cambodia has always been a master in the art of rice-growing. Since the glacial era, climatic conditions have shaped a fertile land, home to both the Khmer civilisation and modern Democratic Kampuchea.

Going beyond the battle against income inequalities, some look to equal opportunities as a way of offering everyone the same chances and enabling deprived people to escape the poverty trap. Social mobility gives everyone the chance to move upwards. Economists Cowell and Flachaire present a mobility index to add to the existing inequality measures.

When is a mother « the mother of all evils »? According to the book « the origin of happiness », written by A. Clark, S. Flèche, R. Layard, N. Powdthavee et G. Ward, a child’s happiness relies on the mother’s mental health. Misery crosses generations and the consequences last into adulthood. To address this issue, the authors call for more attention to mental well-being and recommend preventing depression from an early age.

While depression continues to grow in developed countries, a new paradigm is emerging: not wealth-creation, but the creation of well-being. Isn’t that every government’s main goal? Meeting this objective means investigating what determines fulfilment. In “The Origins of Happiness” Andrew Clark, Sarah Fleche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward conclude that mental health makes us happier than money.