economy

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    Europe Who benefited from Brexit?

    One of the main arguments for Brexit was that Britain would be able to negotiate its own trade deals with other countries on its own. Nearly 5 years after Brexit has come into effect the UK has only negotiated trade deals with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and as this video explains none of...
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    Debate Do Americans or West Europeans make more money when everything is taken into account

    Ashton, an American woman from Illinois with a PhD in human geography, urban planning and architecture, who moved to Freiburg in Germany 5 years ago, decided to compare how much money someone would earn in the US vs Germany was a similar job and life situation once all the taxes, social security...
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    Economy Britain's deteriorating economy and society

    Most of the news coming from the UK in the last few years has been rather depressing. Obviously the countries suffering from Brexit, but not only. Brexit has exacerbated all previous underlying problems, like the lack of housing and the inefficient NHS. The UK now looks like the sick man of...
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    Economy GDP per capita adjusted for prices and hours worked (The Economist)

    The Economist has published for the second year a new ranking of countries by GDP per capita adjusted for prices and hours worked. GDP per capita adjusted for the cost of life is nothing new. It's usually known as GDP per capita at PPP (purchasing-power parity). What's interesting here is the...
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    Do Sub-Saharan African countries have a better quality of life than the West in the 1950s?

    It may sound like a strange question. Many Westerners still have an image of Sub-Saharan Africa as an underdeveloped place where people live in huts and hunt with spears like in the early 20th century. But even if some tribes of hunter-gatherers survive in isolated parts of the continent, this...
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    Is your image of China up to date?

    I have been three times to China, but the first two were about 20 years ago. If there is one country that has changed beyond recognition in 20 years it is definitely China. New megacities have emerged from almost nothing. There are now skyscrapers over 4300 skyscrapers in China, about four times...
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    Economy Germany in crisis: the end of an economic model?

    The German economy is in crisis. After being dubbed the engine of Europe followed the 2007-8 financial crisis, it is now the slowest growing economy in Europe and many analysts predict that this is only the beginning of the country's economic woes. VisualEconomik underlines three main issues...
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    Economy Chinese EV are bad news for European and Japanese car makers

    German and Japanese car makers are quickly losing market share in China. This appears inevitable Chinese car makers can produce cheaper electric cars that are as good or better than any others. German car makers have also been too slow to adapt to the EV market, trying to prolong the life of the...
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    Spanish bank launches account that pays you interest if you run or walk

    The Local : Spanish bank launches account that pays you interest if you run or walk "Spanish bank Abanca has launched a savings account that rewards customers with interest for running and walking — as long as they meet their daily step targets. The B100 'Healthy Banking' account pays...
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    Economy Social security benefits of an average worker as percentage of earnings

    Here is a new map showing the social security benefits of an average worker as a percentage of their previous earnings in the OECD. The beneficiaries in question are retired workers, disabled workers, and aged widows and widowers. This data does not include unemployment benefits. The most...
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    Economy Market share of electric & hybrid car 2021 vs 2023

    The EV and plug-in hybrid car market is evolving quickly in Europe. I have made two maps to compare the market share of newly registered cars in 2021 and 2023. The biggest growth were in Belgium (14% to 41%) and Finland (26% to 53%), a jump of 27 percent points in two years. Turkey had the...
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    Economy Is Greece's failed economy about to change?

    The Greek economy has been the butt of jokes for over 15 years now. This video explains why it failed so spectacularly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and why it has had such a hard time recovering from it. But the new government has a plan for reforms. Let's see if deeds follow...
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    Economy Countries that do not use credit scores (e.g. for credit cards)

    Over 10 years ago I wrote an article called What differentiates Europeans from Americans: the cultural gap across the Atlantic. I last updated it 5 years ago to add some more differences I had forgotten. One thing I did not mention, as it's not strictly speaking a difference between the US and...
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    Economy Personal income tax rates by country (Europe, USA, Israel and Japan)

    Tax rates vary hugely between countries. When it comes to personal income tax, some countries have flat rates regardless of income size, while others have progressive rates. But while some progressive rates start from 0%, others start much higher (like in Belgium, from 25%). Some countries have...
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    Economy Gap between GDP per capita and actual salaries

    GDP per capita is often used as a proxy to determine how much people earn in average in a country. In many cases it can be a relatively good approximation, but sometimes it's completely wrong. This is because the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of all the money produced in a country...
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    Economy The USA looks like a developing country in many ways. Here is why.

    I have been meaning to start a thread like this for many years. I thought it might be too provocative, but I see how many Americans themselves are dissatisfied with their own country and the situation seems to be getting constantly worse. To many outside observers it has been clear for quite...
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    Economy How Brexit has f*cked the British economy

    The UK is now one of the slowest growing economy in Europe and suffers from the highest inflation. Its labour productivity growth is now the lowest after Greece and Italy, after being one of the highest in the early 2000's. But that's not all, far from it. TLDR summarised it well in this video.
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    Economy New economic maps of Europe

    I have been working on a lot of new maps for the Economic & Wealth Maps page of this site. There are now over 50 maps, with more coming soon. The one that took me the longest to make is the GDP per capita at Purchasing Power Standard (PPS) by NUTS2 region. What is interesting here is how...
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    Economy When did each country reach a GDP per capita of $5000 or 10,000 historically?

    If you ever searched for a country's GDP per capita chances are that you saw a chart showing its evolution over the years. For example the United States had a GDP per capita (PPP) of $54,000 in 2017, but only $37,000 back in 1990 (measured in constant 2011 International Dollars), about the same...
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    Economy Belgian banks threaten to expel Belgians with American nationality

    That's not a joke. You read it well. That's what the Belgian economic magazine Trends explains in this article. It concerns mostly accidental Americans, that is foreigners who were born in the US while their parents were working there (usually for a few years as expats) and were automatically...
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