Business environment
“The Public Wealth of Nations” in Foreign Affairs
27 November, 2014
Foreign Affairs published an article about the forthcoming book, The Public Wealth of Nations: How Management of Public Assets Can Boost or Bust Economic Growth (Palgrave Macmillan). Most countries’ public wealth is larger than their public debt. While managing debt has become a matter of great concern during the financial crisis, public wealth remains […]
Read more...
Renaissance for Reforms
11 March, 2014
The new book Renaissance for Reforms has met wide international interest. It is currently being reviewed in 37 different countries and translations in several languages are planned. Renaissance of Reforms is based on an analysis of 109 governments that completed their term of power in OECD countries between the mid-1990s and 2012. The authors show that governments that introduce market […]
Read more...
How indebted nations can unlock hidden riches
28 January, 2014
In a forthcoming book Dag Detter, Stefan Fölster and additional authors analyze countries´ hidden public wealth, and how it can be converted into a source of growth. Dag Detter is Managing Director of Whetstone and former President of Stattum, the Swedish government holding company, and a Director at the Ministry of Industry. Stefan Fölster, D.phil. […]
Read more...
Housing policies redistribute wealth to the affluent
27 December, 2013
Swedish housing policy has made many home owners wealthy at the expense of younger generations who may want to buy their homes. This overlooked transfer of wealth shakes the entire foundation of all other redistribution policies. This demands immediate measures to encourage housing construction. The lagging pace of housing construction in Sweden is mostly seen […]
Read more...
Aid conditioned on reforms
25 March, 2013
Conditional aid was the idea behind the heavily criticised World Bank and IMF strategy that came under the designation ‘Washington Consensus’. The concept involved poor aid recipient countries were required to promise governmental reforms before they could receive aid. But, it didn’t work. Pressure to provide aid resulted in recipient countries getting the aid without […]
Read more...
How Australia became global leader in entrepreneurship
19 January, 2013
Australia has the highest share of entrepreneurs per population of all wealthy countries, over 20%. This proportion has climbed steadily for many years and continued even after 2000. Until the financial crisis, Australia had experienced an unbroken 17 year period of economic growth. The main characters in this dynamic economic performance are the country’s entrepreneurs. […]
Read more...
Regulatory guillotine helps business climate
19 January, 2013
Entrepreneurs often run into regulations that are more obstacles to their operations rather than help. Many problematic regulations have passed their best-by-date, implemented long ago under circumstances that no longer exist. Many others were simply designed by a well-meaning bureaucrats who simply had limited understanding of practical entrepreneurial issues. Swedish policy makers are certainly not […]
Read more...
Internet helps Azerbaijanis circumvent corruption
19 January, 2013
A modern tax system is an important reason why Azerbaijan, despite is authoritarian regime and widespread corruption, is one of the world’s most successful reform nations. Since independence in 1991, the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan has been marked by a series of problems. The country still has authoritarian government, and wide-spread corruption. But in […]
Read more...
How indebted nations can unlock hidden riches
In a forthcoming book Dag Detter, Stefan Fölster and additional authors analyze countries´ hidden public wealth, and how it can be converted into a source of growth. In the aftermath of the latest financial crisis many countries remain heavily indebted and fettered by fiscal austerity in order to restore budget balance and regain economic growth. […]
Read more...