Our guest in this epsiode is Tim Pfefferle, one of the winners of our writing competition on new economic thinking. We discuss his article on fossil fuels and producer subsidies, their detrimental impact on climate change and global climate governance as well as possible ways out of this quagmire. We also talk about the European Investment Bank and their largest investment in the energy sector ever – €1.5 billion for a gas pipeline.

Daniel DeRock exposes the shaky foundations of macroeconomic statistical methods – from GDP figures to debt measurement – and argues for a fundamental rethinking of how scholars and policymakers engage with quantitative indicators.

The EU should be wary: China bought its way into Cambodia to undermine the coherence of the region’s prime institution, ASEAN – and a similar strategy is being applied in the Union’s periphery. Here’s how Brussels can dodge history’s boomerang without compromising on its strategic interests vis-à-vis its ever-closer Eastern Neighbor.

Illicit financial flows have staggering consequences for global health and development in the world’s poorest countries. Existing policies address this issue but their success is limited by a paradigm of centralization. Blockchain and mobile technologies have enabled new policy possibilities around a paradigm of decentralization and disaggregation to a wider range of stakeholders.

Debt fueled consumption lay at the heart of the global financial crisis of 2008. Now ten years later, rising household debt in developed economies remains a significant issue. In this article Babatunde Valentine Onabajo proposes a novel solution: making individual credit scores public.

Fossil fuel subsidies are bad. Bad for government budgets. Bad for the economy. And bad for the climate. While reform efforts have focused on cutting consumer subsidies, those for production remain prevalent. To realize global climate ambitions, the G20 has to get serious and end producer subsidies.