PERG blog: October 2011

Oct 25, 2011

'TED Eye-Opening' Talks for PolSci Students

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), is now offering what they call '12 Eye-Opening TED Talks for Political Science Students' on their website on varied topics, including sub-Saharan Africa, voter apathy, and ethnic conflicts. You can also find economics and development related talks, amongst many others, on their website. TED was launched as a conference series in 1984 and is commited to spreading ideas.

Oct 7, 2011

FT: Visegrad Four are Less Vulnerable to Crisis

A 'Special Report' on the Visegrad countries in Friday's Financial Times argues that the region is less vulnerable and may be in a better position to 'deal with problems' than many eurozone countries. Articles also touch upon the difficulty of moving from emerging to developed economy and the limitations of FDI-based development without an increase in R&D spending and improving education. Plus, everything you wanted to know about Czech viticulture...

Oct 5, 2011

Turning Britain into a CME

Could a Liberal Market Economy (LME) become a Coordinated Market Economy (CME)? Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's Labour Party seems to think so. On 27 September, at his party's annual conference Mr. Miliband is reported to have set out his vision for implementing a Rhineland variety of capitalism in Britain, rewarding production over speculation and services, and introduce corporatist elements to capital and labour relations. A fairly hostile take on this in the Economist is attached below. In any case, this will not happen any time soon: the plan envisages 20 years of transition and the next elections may only take place in 2014 or 2015...

Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/21530975

Read more on Turning Britain into a CME

Blog editors

Andrej Nosko .: Energy Policy :. Andrej is a PhD student at department of Political Science at the Central European University in Budapest, researching 'Coping with Energy Import Dependence: Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary'. More information at: http://www.nosko.sk/

Lucia Kurekova .: Migration in EU :. Lucia is a PhD Candidate at the Department of International Relations and European Studies at CEU. In her research she specializes on political economy of post-communist transition and has done research on foreign direct investment in emerging economies, car industry in Visegrad and varieties of capitalism in CEE. Her dissertation investigates labor migration in the enlarged European Union. In the past, Lucia taught at the Comenius University in Bratislava and worked as a teaching assistant at CEU. She has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank.

Katka Svickova .: Knowledge and Skills :. Katka is a PhD student at the Department of International Relations and European Studies at Central European University in Budapest. Her research is focused on the role of skills and skill-creation policies in economic upgrading and development of Central and Eastern European countries.

Zdenek Kudrna .: Banking and Finance :. Zdenek is a PhD student at the Central European University in Budapest and researcher at Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. His research is focused on financial reforms in emerging economies that are guided by international standards. He has been a consultant to the World Bank and UNDP and served as adviser to the Minister of Finance of the Czech Republic.

PERG blog