Vishnudeep Panicker

“Three important impediments to a unified European market were a plethora of rules and regulations that differed across countries, impediments to the movement of firms and labor across countries, and currency fluctuation. In a series of negotiated agreements, starting with the Single European Act in 1986, the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, and the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, much of Europe agreed to merge into a Union which would implement the four freedoms—the freedom of movement of goods, services, people, and capital across the borders of the signatories. They agreed to a common European citizenship, over and above national citizenship. In addition, a subset of the countries decided to adopt a common currency, the euro.”
― Raghuram G. Rajan, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

“These strongly Aristotelian attitudes, which still dominate many societies today, reflected a suspicion of the middleman. They were thought to make money not by adding intrinsic value to the traded item, but by moving goods or money to areas of shortage, or even, many believed, by creating the shortage in the first place.”
― Raghuram G. Rajan, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

“Eurosclerosis was the term German economist Herbert Giersch used to describe Europe’s slow growth and high unemployment, brought about by the postwar accumulation of regulations and social protections.”
― Raghuram G. Rajan, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

“West Germany, even after absorbing the migrants fleeing East Germany, had yet more jobs to fill, and in the 1960s signed agreements with Greece, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yugoslavia whereby they would send “guest” workers to West Germany, on condition they would eventually return. In 1973, foreign workers were one-eighth of the labor force in Germany. France was not far behind, with 2.3 million foreign workers, or 11 percent of the labor force. Many of these were employed for childcare, as cooks, and as custodians.20 England drew immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia, including those expelled by Idi Amin from East Africa.”
― Raghuram G. Rajan, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind