Alexandre Afonso

Alexandre Afonso

Leiden University

Author: alexandre afonso

  • Why do people think that hitting the poor is the best way to cut the deficit?

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    Last week, Ipsos Mori and King’s College London released the results of a survey showing that Britons are (almost) wrong about everything, and especially welfare. They think that for every 100£ spent on welfare, 24 are spent on fraudulent claims, whereas the actual figure looks more like 70p. They think that a 26’000£ cap on… Read.

  • Why is Portugal lagging behind all other European countries in educational attainment?

    I don’t have the answer. I have just been playing with Barro and Lee’s dataset on education attainment. As the name indicates, it covers education attainment in 146 countries between 1950 and 2010 for different age groups. The two charts above show the average years of schooling of the population 25 and over since 1950… Read.

  • How Strong Are British Trade Unions, Really?

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    In Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron presented Unite’s Leader Len McCluskey as the real master of the Labour party. Len McCluskey is the alien creature about to take over the country with his horde of commies, the new Goldstein. But how powerful are British unions, really? One can think of two ways to measure… Read.

  • La Suisse est le pays d’Europe qui redistribue le moins

    AvenirSuisse a publié aujourd’hui une étude sur les inégalités en Suisse, pour contrer l’initiative 1:12. Ils affirment que les inégalités salariales en Suisse sont les plus basses de l’OCDE. D’après les données du Luxemburg Income Study 2005 (le graphe est basé sur les données de Lane Kenworthy, University of Arizona), c’est le cas seulement avant… Read.

  • How Austerity Killed Greek Parties, While Portuguese Parties Survived

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    This shows the electoral score of the two mainstream parties in Greece and Portugal in 2009 (before the outbreak of the crisis) and in 2011 (in Portugal) and 2012 (in Greece), after the outbreak of the crisis. For Greece, this shows the results of the May elections; new elections were held in June as no… Read.

  • Brazilian Guido Fawkes Masks and Capitalism as a Giant Squid

    This is a factory in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro that produces Guido Fawkes masks – those used by Anonymous. The owner says they’re producing 800 a day to supply the protests that have been taking place in Brazil over the last few weeks. The masks have also been used by the Occupy movement.… Read.

  • How big is the Greek public sector, really?

    In the media you always read about the Greek “bloated and corrupt” public sector full of useless slags.  Now I have been unable to find actual data that can back up this claim. OECD data (picture above) indicate on the contrary that the Greek public sector is actually much smaller than elsewhere. 1) Are the… Read.

  • The Size of Austerity

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    The data come from Andrew Watt’s and Sotiria Theodoropoulou’s ETUI report, (p. 14) based on a survey of country experts. Some data, from Italy and Spain most notably, are missing. This is partly based on 2011 estimates, and as we know forecasts have been all but reliable. There is more data on this on the… Read.

  • Portugal’s Political Crisis, or the Ordeal of Junior Coalition Partners

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    On Monday, the Portuguese Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar resigned. Gaspar was the main architect of  Portugal’s austerity drive since its bailout two years ago. His political charisma was akin to a flat bike tyre, but he was considered a major guarantee of credibility for the Troika and Portugal’s creditors. Apparently, he had already asked to… Read.

  • I have met Pre-distribution. It Wears Clogs, Eats Chocolate, and Works Part-Time.

    “Predistribution” is Labour’s new policy buzzword. It’s been all over the news. Policy Network has events and publications about it, the BBC talks about it, Ed Milliband talks about it, David Cameron ridicules it. Predistribution is supposed to be the new silver bullet for the centre-left, the agenda that will both create social justice and appeal… Read.