11/03/2015. Ana Cristina Mingorance Arnáiz, Universidad San Pablo - CEU. In the previous instalment we saw how, throughout the period of expansion, Spain had maintained a positive inflation differential with its main trading partners, while it turned negative with the advent of the crisis, especially when energy was eliminated from the inflation calculation. The reason is that our country has a high external dependence as far as energy is concerned, so the evolution of energy prices is highly conditioned by the evolution of international prices.

06/03/2015. Santiago Álvarez García. Profesor Titular de Hacienda Pública. Universidad de Oviedo. Fiscal balances measure the difference between taxes paid by taxpayers living in a given territory and the improvements arising from public spending on that same territory. Its calculation raises important methodological problems, since different criteria may be used when allocating tax revenues and government expenditure to each territory and, depending on the chosen approach, results may vary significantly.

05/03/2015. José Ruiz Vicioso, MA in the History of Political Thought, University of Exeter. Unless an unexpected change of trend occurs during the election campaign, it seems that, once again, neither conservatives nor Labour will have a sufficient majority in the next British Parliament. The two major parties are still tied in the polls (around 35% of the vote each) and neither of them has managed to stand out above the other in recent months. Typically, and given the characteristics of the British electoral system, the winning party should have a double-digit lead over the second in order to have the necessary majority.

04/03/2015. Ana Cristina Mingorance Arnáiz, Universidad CEU San Pablo. So far, we have seen how inadequate investment in productive capital, technological backwardness and the limited organizational changes that have characterized the Spanish economy have marked its lag in productivity and its losses in competitiveness. In addition, a productive structure based on labour-intensive sectors, coupled with the diversity of employment contracts in our country and labour market regulations, too overprotective of permanent workers, have pushed companies to choose temporary employment, the redundancy costs of which are, for the employer, much lower.

26/02/2015. Javier Zarzalejos es secretario general de la Fundación FAES. The book ‘Agujeros del sistema. Más de 300 asesinatos de ETA sin resolver’ has just been released. It has been written by the journalist and communications director of the Association of Victims of Terrorism (COVITE), Juanfer F. Calderín. If–as Maite Pagazaurtundúa notes in the preface–the book by Florencio Dominguez, Rogelio Alonso and Marcos Garcia Rey, ‘Vidas rotas’ (Espasa Libros, 2011), marked a turning point in the effort to make all victims of ETA fully visible, this book is largely a continuation of that work, complemented and refined by the notion that the suffering caused by the terrorist group to its victims and those who were responsible for them must be confronted squarely. 

23/02/2015. Mira Milosevich es profesora de Relaciones Internacional en IE University. ‘We are more convinced than ever that the Minsk II agreements must be applied’ François Hollande stressed after being asked about the serious violation of the agreements by the pro-Russian militias and the surrendering of more than 2,000 soldiers of the Ukrainian Army in the strategic city of Debaltsevo. ‘Let us not get our hopes up, the peace process in Ukraine will take,’ German Chancellor Angela Merkel concluded.