Professor Stefan C. Collignon

Professor of Political Economy

Chulalongkorn University, Faculty of Political Sciences
&
London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE)
European Institute

What's new

A Gentle Debate on Traditional vs Modern Society

by Prof. Dr. Stefan Collignon & Pracha Hutanuwatr

This video was created in memory of Pracha who passed away on 13th of May 2023, and also as a celebration for his lifelong relationship with Prof. Stefan Collignon.

Both Pracha and Stefan are intellectuals who devote their life for a better society with different approaches. Pracha is an engaged Buddhist who advocates for traditional Buddhist societal norms with a strong sense of community and culture, and contended lifestyle with less material etc., while Stefan is a political economy professor who advocates for modernity norms of individuality, freedom, and equality. In addition to the discussion of what are the values and principles that a society needs for going forward, this debate reveals the life experience and life lessons that these wise (and old) men have learned from engaging with life fully while critically thinking for their whole life. This video sums up their views on the meaning of life.

Naphat Pattanapeerdej – Editor

Papers

  • Electing the Thai Senate. A Passage to Democracy?

    The Senate elections in Thailand, held in June 2024, were designed as a step in the country’s transition from military rule to democracy. Yet, they were widely criticized for being “antidemocratic” (Campion, 2024), “undemocratic” (Vanijaka, 2024), “flawed” (Phasuk, 2024) and “the most complicated election in the world” (Ewe, 2024). In this paper we ask whether the elections to this Senate have been a step toward democracy in Thailand.

  • The Political Economy of Military Rule in Myanmar

    This paper focuses on Myanmar, where the military has ruled for over 60 years. It gives a historic overview of regime changes under military rule and explains the role of the Tatmadaw (the military) as the guarantor of a hierarchical Buddhist system, which has excluded ethnic minorities. It then formulates a theoretical conflict model with three poles: the two contestants are the Tatmadaw and the Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) who seek to control the government, but the government contributes to economic growth but not to civil war. The military wishes to keep its sovereign status, the EAOs seek to reduce the poverty gap which affects their regions most. To achieve these objectives, they require resources, which they acquire directly by appropriating natural resources and indirectly by transfers from government. Controlling the government can shift the balance of resources in favour of either of the two contestants. A general equilibrium in the balance of power depends on military efficiency and the poverty gap.

  • The Tale of Two Economies: Inflationary Dynamics in the Euro Area and the US in the Context of Uncertainty

    In recent years, the global economy has been hit by a sequence of severe shocks that affected the two largest economies, the USA and the Euro Area, severely. Uncertainties about the future abound. While the challenges are similar for both economies and the policy tools resemble each other, they apply to different economic landscapes. What can they learn from each other? This paper looks at the basic structural facts, the nature of uncertainty shocks, and the efficiency of policy tools in the two economies. The key to understanding recent developments is uncertainty. This paper argues that the channel through which uncertainty influences inflation, wage cost, and unemployment is the markup firms charge to cover their cost of capital. While the measurements of uncertainty are uncertain, adding a proxy for uncertainty can improve the estimates of the basic New Keynesian model. The Federal Reserve Bank has been more successful because it operates in a more integrated capital market. In the Euro Area, uncertainty is higher than in the US and this could make disinflation in Europe more painful in terms of unemployment.

  • A monetary theory of endogenous economic growth

    This paper presents a model where credit money is the engine of endogenous growth, because the claims for interest on debt generate liabilities that need to be matched by higher assets and income, even in the steady state.

  • Varieties of Ideology in the Euro Area

    Reassessing Europe’s open society and its enemies. (with Davide Orsitto)

    The convergence of political narratives in the Euro Area is a necessary condition for the sustainability of the monetary union. We measure the evolution of ideological preferences in Europe over half a century in a two-dimensional space. In addition to the classical right-left cleavage, we define a cultural dimension that is inspired by Popper’s distinction between open and closed societies and Dumont’s opposition of individualism against holism.

    We find that political preferences, as expressed by people voting for party programs, have converged since the end of the Cold War, which also coincides with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Thus, the institutional framework set up for the management of the monetary union has contributed to greater political coherence inside the Euro Area, while ideological convergence outside the Euro Area is significantly weaker. Germany is the leader of a conservative group of member states, France of a progressive group. Compared to Anglo-Saxon societies, the Euro Area is highly centrist, which makes the cooperation across policies easier.

  • Macroeconomic imbalances in Europe: How to overcome the fallacy of unit labour costs

    (with Piero Esposito)

    Policy recommendations based on unit labour costs (ULC) indices can lead to undesirable and counterproductive policies, because they do not reveal possible distortions in the base year. In this paper, we discuss the problems with the ULC-current account relation and provide an alternative measure for relative wage costs called Wage Competitive index (WCI) based on the assumption of convergence of the returns on capital. We show how to calculate it and that it is more efficient than traditional ULC and REER indicators. The implication is that policymakers should not focus on nominal wage setting only, but also more broadly on all factors which affect the return on capital. This implies that the well-known Rehn–Meidner rule, which underlies the Macroeconomic Dialogue should be modified.

Chapter in books

Other contributions

  • EU Treaties – Why They Need Targeted Changes

    an Approach Based on European Public Goods, Citizenship, and Democracy

    Study published in October 2023 by the
    Foundation for European Progressive Studies and supported by the European Parliament. With the debate around EU treaty changes back on the agenda, a group of renowned European experts from a large diversity of countries and disciplines, and after two years of systematic work, launch an innovative report on the topic : ‘EU Treaties – Why they need targeted changes. An approach based on European public goods, citizenship, and democracy’.

Manuscript

Scroll to Top