Insider/outsider

A great paradigm in political thought is the insiders-outsiders dilemma. It's a useful way of analyzing such different things as immigration policy, international trade policy, the labor market (including the cost and benefits of permanent employment contracts), but also antitrust policy and the reform of health-care markets. The latter keeps me busy these days. The insights this paradigm offers form a big part of my political views.

The lessons are: eliminate barriers to entry and thou shall prosper. This requires resisting the lobby of incumbents and vested interests. This takes courage most politicians or even bureaucrats lack. We´re gonna try it in the pharmaceuticals markets and the long-term care sector. If we succeed it will be a policy-achievement of historic proportions (well, in the Netherlands at least).

Naturally Peter beat me to it. After all, he is an experienced blogger:
"In academics it sometimes seems that you must be moving towards your pension to be able to make a dissenting opinion that matters. While it is debated in the streets and in the international institutions; in the Dutch universities a macroeconomic analysis of the insiders-outsiders dilemma on a world scale is largly absent. Whereas this is in fact the core of the development challenge, which is a question of income-distribution. That focus provides binding reasons for trade liberalisation in sectors where the have's often have something to lose, but there's a world to win ."