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Aslak Berg Profile picture
Aslak Berg
@BergAslak
Research fellow at @CER_EU, formerly with @EFTASecretariat and the Norwegian Civil Service
2 subscribers
Jul 27, 2025 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The EU-US trade deal is here - it's probably not the end of uncertainty as the details are ironed out, but it's a momentous deal. In sum, it's a political defeat for the EU, but in economic terms I see it as, under the circumstances, a win of sorts. 🧵 Most EU goods will now face a 15% tariff, with some exemptions like aerospace, semiconductor manufacturing equipment. This is a flat, comprehensive rate, meaning that it replaces all existing tariffs. This rate is high enough to inflict some pain, but overall it's manageable for a couple of reasons:
Jun 26, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
This graph shows Actual Individual Consumption in the EU as a percentage of the level in the US. This measure takes into account public services and is one of the best indicators for average living standards we have.I want to talk a little about how that's changed🧵 What you might notice is first that consumption in Europe is much lower than in the US, which is indisputably richer. There are several reasons for this: societal choices, history certain US structural advantages. I won't discuss those here. What's interesting is how stable it is
Jun 20, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Chart of the day. Actual Individual Consumption is a measure that tries to measure personal consumption across countries, including government services. Here's how a few countries have changed compared to the EU average since 2003 Image Note you'd expect formerly Communist countries to outperform, so richer countries would be expected to move closer to the EU average. The US having a smaller declining trend line than others is in that sense an achievement.
Jun 19, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
I want to push back a little on this thread by @gideonrachman and explain why I think the US advantage over Europe is less than it seems. 🧵 First, it is true that the US has some undeniable advantages: abundant domestic energy, USD reserve status and dominance of the global software sector (I refuse say technology -there is advanced technology outside Silicon Valley). It also has top universities and leading research
Jun 16, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
A small thread about regional development in Europe. People tend to talk about Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe. But if you look at regions you get a different picture. Image The engine of the European economy is the zone that stretches from Northern Italy through Austria, Switzerland, much of Germany, Benelux, and southern Scandinavia. Paris is a wealthy enclave by itself. Also some might be surprised by Warsaw and Bucharest here.
Jan 13, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Scale is different, but the US state with the highest life expectancy is Washington (79.2 years). That is worse than any non-ex Communist state in Europe. Mississipi has a life expectancy of 71.2 years, 2.5 years shorter than the worst performing state in the EU (Bulgaria) A lot of people think the US is a more violent society. And it is true there are more intentional homicides in the US than the EU (data for 2021)
Sep 27, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Russia now threatening to sanction Naftogas, making my thread yesterday prematurely optimistic and causing European gas prices to bounce again. Naftogas is the Ukranian company in charge of the pipeline through Ukraine 🧵🧵 Yesterday the Nordstream pipeline through the Baltic was likely sabotaged, rendering it inoperable. The Nordstream 1 pipeline to Germany had not carried gas since end of August and Nordstream 2 famously never even got started.
Sep 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
British gas prices - another fall like today and the spot price will be at around the level where the price cap is costless. As others have pointed out, hedging complicates the picture, but over the 2-year freeze there should still be significant savings over initial estimates. Of course, if it continues to fall below that level there will eventually be savings for consumers as well.
Sep 16, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is unfair on the US in particular: the median American has a higher material standard of living than anywhere in Europe bar 🇳🇴🇨🇭. 🇺🇸 is a very wealthy society, but with pockets of deep poverty and which consistently underperforms on social indicators given its wealth. I would also argue it's unfair on the UK. Being sort of middling compared to your neighbours does not make you poor, even if you have real issues with inequality.
Sep 15, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There's an enormous amount of bad news already priced into the Euro exchange rate and markets do tend to be forward-looking (or at least they try to). It wouldn't take a lot of good news to brighten the outlook considerably, which would strengthen the Euro. Same for the pound. This is particularly true if you look at trade balances as % of GDP
Sep 13, 2022 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
Natural gas price up again slightly today, I think it's a good opportunity to lay out in more comprehensively what I think has happened in the European natural gas market and where I think we'll go from here: 🧵 Looking at it in a 5-year perspective, you can clearly see that Phase 1 started last year. From April to October the price of gas quadrupled. Part of this was recovery from the pandemic, but the main thing here is that Gazprom started limiting exports and, crucially storage.
Jul 13, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
I looked into this data, since they seemed odd to me and I noticed @jdportes also expressed some skepticism. The data is taken from EU-SILC -The problem with this is that the methodology differs from country to country and each country often has multiple break in the time series. A time series break means a revision of methodology, which makes it difficult to compare over time. Differing methodology also makes it hard to compare between countries. Eurostat notes user feedback: Image
Apr 11, 2022 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
Brooks (who's probably forgotten more about macroeconomics than I know) is right that in the absence of energy sanctions the Russian current account surplus will persist and this will prevent a currency crisis. Could and should we provoke one? First, let's be clear about what the current situation does. Russia can support its currency, import necessities. But sanctions have severe effects on domestic production, investment and economic development as I mention here:
Apr 11, 2022 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
I tried to explain here why sanctions haven't caused a financial collapse and the ruble has remained relatively strong (at least in the short run). I want to do some thinking about what effect the sanctions now in place will actually have. 🧵 As mentioned, Russian exports have not been hit to the same degree as imports. But some Russian export sectors have been hit - notably metallurgy and coal. A significant part of exports 30-40% goes to markets that will no longer be accessible. This will hurt the economy and jobs
Apr 8, 2022 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
The ruble is now worth more than before the invasion. Why is this happening with all the sanctions? 1/n Well, Russia runs a substantial current account surplus. So they have a lot of goods to sell, and sanctions have so for not targeted Russian exports to a substantial degree.