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At the moment, governments are subsidising wage costs and lending businesses money to enable them to survive the pandemic. To spread the burden more fairly through society, Tsjalle van der Burg (University of Twente) proposes imposing price controls instead.

The dividends in the UK companies have been on the rise, despite uncertain economic outlook due to COVID-19, pension deficits and irrespective of whether the companies have been making profits. This column analyses the reasons for such a dramatic increase in dividend payouts. We attribute it to pressure from investors in three fundamental ways: the threat of takeovers, shareholder value-oriented corporate governance practices measured by director independence and board equity incentives, and short-term trading and institutional ownership patterns.

With the economic impact of Covid-19 shaping up to be immense and inevitable, Latin America desperately needs to reverse the failures of its export-oriented development model, writes Tobias Franz (SOAS, University of London).

Soon, we will all have convinced ourselves that we knew all along what was going to happen. Hindsight bias is how our brain manages its scarce resources and protects us from losing faith.The reality is that for the time being, both policy makers and business leaders have to keep making some of the biggest decisions of their lives under some of the worst uncertainty of their lives. In a previous article, we talked about how we can use resilience thinking to make better choices. Today, we want to look at another crucial aspect: how can we ensure the legitimacy of our actions, i.e., reflect on how much support we can expect from the general public or our employees for what we are about to ask of them.Megaproject management may not be the first area of expertise you turn to for advice in the current situation. We will explain in a little while why you should. Our interest in megaproject management focuses on the risk management side of things, particularly risks surrounding public support (or opposition) of these rather impactful and wide ranging endeavours. Here is why looking at megaprojects for inspiration in the current situation is interesting: They are very significant investments, they cause changes at societal scale (at least locally), they are unique, with a significant dose of first-of-a-kind actions, and at some point they are over and transition what they build into operations. That does sound a bit familiar these days.While legitimacy is important, there are also other factors. Most notably, legality and feasibility. A common pitfall for managers of megaprojects and business leaders or policymakers alike, is to take action that is legal (or at least: later legalised) and feasible, but not seen as legitimate. That leads into dangerous territory of provoking significant resistance.There are three aspects to the legitimacy of megaprojects that also apply to the legitimacy of the rather drastic actions being taken today by governments and business leaders.

Low German wages are often cited as a key contributing factor to imbalances in the Eurozone. Donato Di Carlo and Martin Höpner demonstrate that while nominal unit labour cost growth in Germany consistently undershot that of other Eurozone countries in the first decade of the euro, the country has undergone a ‘silent rebalancing’ following the financial crisis. Unfortunately, this incomplete process is likely to be reversed by the shock from Covid-19.

Published online on March 17th, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency, but it also has the potential to impact on many other elements of European societies beyond health services. Jelena Dzankic and Lorenzo Piccoli write on the effect the outbreak is having on the uses and meanings of citizenship. The rapid spread of the coronavirus has wrecked human mobility, and profoundly disrupted the daily lives of millions of people worldwide. Its effects are mirrored in policies such as evacuations from affected areas or spaces, travel restrictions, and confinement in quarantines, but also in social and behavioural practices ranging from panic-shopping to the alteration of greeting customs that entail physical contact. These occurrences show how profoundly the virus has cut into the relationship between citizenship as a guarantee of the state’s responsibility for the well-being of its citizens, on the one hand, and human rights and practices of solidarity, on the other.