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Aging will affect France less than most other EU countries, since it has relatively high birthrates. In particular, Germany and Italy have horribly low birthrat
by sentenza 13y ago
Aging will affect France less than most other EU countries, since it has relatively high birthrates. In particular, Germany and Italy have horribly low birthrates and should be affected much more by this.
Since internal trade and capital flows are much more important for the EU economy than external trade and capital flows, what matters is the relative aging effect compared to other EU countries.
So it was valid to discard that effect for a discussion of the broader dynamics.
- humanrebar 13y agoNow apply some numbers to that analysis and we have an argument. How much have medium-term German and Italian default risks (in percentage points) been affected by low birthrates? How do the projected French rates compare? To rephrase, imagine a benchmark test comparing javascript engines. A good blog post comparing those tests would have charts and graphs describing relative performance, what affects performance, and so on. I don't see that kind of reasoning here, just the political equivalent of javascript linkbait. Again, given his goals and target audience, I don't think Krugman wrote a bad column. I just think this is the wrong medium for it.
- freshhawk 13y agoBy your comparison you are looking for an analysis that is guaranteed to be completely flawed. It's just a fact that we don't have a theory of economics that can generate an analysis of that detail that is predictive at all. You should be aware that if you see an analysis like that it's the same level of evidence as this piece, but the turd is polished to look more authoritative. Not a good direction to go in. At all.