Vishnudeep Panicker

“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

“As wages in domestic currency rose faster in France and Southern Europe compared to Germany, they needed a steady depreciation of their exchange rate in order to retain competitiveness. Corporations disliked having to manage the resulting exchange rate volatility”
― 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

“The distinguished economist and philosopher Amartya Sen famously called people who always give nothing in this game rational fools for blindly following only material self-interest: “The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics