OPENECONOMY

Are high executive and banking pay related to results? Or to social value added? Or does executive compensation simply ratchet upwards, irrespective of either? Jeremy Fox reviews work from the High Pay commission, the New Economics Foundation and Ha-Joon Chang suggesting the answers are "No", "No" and "Yes".

The EU's crisis has been framed as an economic one, with the self-interest of individuals in nation states pitted one against the other: if the Greeks do well, the Germans do badly. But Europe needs a plural political existence - European political parties expressing this - in order to function.

While growth remains as our main goal economic and environmental crisis will persist. A green economy requires us to aim at development rather than growth, through the responsible promotion of justice, the common good, and environmental sustainability.

So let’s ask another question. Why do we need banks – what are they for? This is less about what banks get up to, than about money. How should we think about the institutions that deal with our and other people’s money? What does it mean for you or me to have money?

These are despairing times for ever increasing numbers of people around the globe who are fighting for jobs, food and shelter. The fundamental questions of economic justice are violently propelled back on the world’s agenda after a lost decade of ubiquitous security and terrorism concerns.

Non-profits have suffered in the financial crisis no less than their counterparts in the private and public sectors. But could this be a 'Greenpeace moment': might philanthropic foundations support the creation of a civil society conscience for international finance?

The British economy is officially, technically growing. Growth figures in the region of 0.2% confirm that it is out of recession. But what does this even mean? After months and months, in which funny money was flowing off the printing presses of its central bank and its formerly neo-liberal state came to represent more than 50% of GDP, we can be forgiven for viewing such statistics as a hall of mirrors.

The prevailing neo-liberal ideology to which the UK is wedded rests on the idea of completely open borders to trade and capital flows. It is a dog-eat-dog world that places market competition as the prime motif of economic policy-making. Companies are free, even encouraged, to have their products made wherever it is cheapest to do so and to export them into the UK rather than have them manufactured locally.