Karolina Zubel | CASE Economist

A Renovation Wave for Europe — Greening our buildings, creating jobs, improving lives’ (COM(2020)662) is new strategy aimed at doubling the renovation rate of existing building stock across the European Union (EU) in the next decade that was announced earlier (October 14th) this year. By improving energy efficiency refurbishments and installation of zero-emission heat sources, as well as ‘smart home’ technologies and appliances, the Renovation Wave strategy is to be one of the ways for the EU Member States (MS) to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 in accordance with the broader European Green Deal objectives.

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The article is based on a study prepared by CASE — Center for Social and Economic Research and European Academy Berlin within the project entitled ‘Norma praworządności i jej oddziaływanie społeczne jako czynniki rozwoju gospodarczego Analiza porównawcza Niemiec i Polski’/‘Das Prinzip der Rechtsstaatlichkeit und ihre soziale Wirkung als Determinante des ökonomischen Wachstums Eine vergleichende Analyse Deutschlands und Polens’ (№2018–26).

The rule of law is, as a matter of course, a sine qua non for a modern democratic society. It is also a necessary condition for existence of a stable, effective, and sustainable market economy. The connection between the rule of…

Adam Śmietanka | CASE Economist

The topic of the VAT compliance has gained a particular significance in the recent years in Poland. It has become a part of a recurrent, heated political debate and has been often used instrumentally by politicians and experts alike. However, a growing interest in the forgone VAT revenues is not just limited to Poland. Thus, as the estimation techniques and underlying data on VAT components have been improving, Poland and many other countries in the EU have seized the opportunity to scrutinise national VAT Gaps and estimate their size using various techniques.

This article discusses…

Sierž Naŭrodski | President, CASE Belarus

Aleś Alachnovič | Vice-President, CASE Belarus

The presidential elections that took place in Belarus on August 9th, 2020 were incontestably the most controversial ones in the modern history of the country. Jailing and banning key election rivals, lack of transparency, and multiple recorded falsifications during the votes counting (the incumbent Alexander Lukashenka claimed an improbable 80% of the vote[1]) predictably angered the Belarusian people. As excessive and unlawful use of force against peaceful demonstrators after the election results were announced only added fuel to the fire. Since then, Belarusian citizens have mobilised on an…

Kateryna Karunska | CASE Economist

The recent decades of globalisation and ever-growing international trade resulted in unprecedented integration and interdependency of the local and global production networks. Specifically, with trade in intermediate goods and services accounting for about 70% of total international trade, Global Value Chains (GVCs) play a crucial role in global growth and ‘catching-up’ process of developing countries. Yet, while GVCs provide many opportunities for companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in particular, they remain highly concentrated and largely embedded within multinational enterprises which account for more than 30% of the global production. While beneficial at normal…

Izabela Styczyńska | President of CASE Management Board

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic disrupted rapidly and significantly the world economies. The lockdown measures implemented to limit the spread of the virus have, in turn, affected the world labour markets. As a result, millions of people were left with no jobs, reduced or lost income, and insecurity about future job prospects, salaries, and working conditions.

Preliminary estimates of the International Labour Organization (ILO) suggest that the global workforce loss is around 200 million workers. The European Commission (EC) Spring 2020 Economic Forecasts estimate the shift in the EU-wide unemployment rate up to…

Mehmet Burak Turgut | CASE Senior Economist

The income inequality, defined as a disparity of income distribution in which a small percentage of a population earns a larger percentage of income, has risen throughout the world in recent decades. The empirical evidence increasingly suggests that income inequality can hamper economic growth, decrease labour market prospects, and cause social unrest. These recent trends and evidence put income inequality in the policy frontier. For example, reducing inequality within and between countries is one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. …

By Kateryna Karunska

The accelerating pace of technological transformation raises concerns about digital preparedness of the economies and societies. Indeed, the advance of new technologies has already reshaped the way people work, learn, and live, and underlined the importance of digital and transversal skills for sustained development and economic growth.

Yet, digital proficiency and technological penetration are far from being equally distributed both spatially and socially, with 17% of households in the European Union (EU) and almost half of the households globally having no access to a personal computer.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 has further exposed the digital divide…