WEEKEND READING: 17-18 AUGUST

1. Corporate balance sheet adjustment drove much of the rise in unemployment in post-crisis Europe. Except in Greece, where it was mostly down to output growth (see right).  
2. Business Cycle Synchronisation in Europe: new evidence shows the unsynchronised part of the EZ isn't the PIIGS. It's actually Greece, Belgium and France. See pg 29 onwards.
3. Awesome data alert! IMF researchers look at commodity price volatility since effing 1650 in order to test the Singer-Prebisch hypothesis which underpins many standard critiques of international trade.
4. Corruption perceptions are misreported. Small business owners may misreport by 90%, says this study.
5. A world map of labour mobility costs, and their implications for the impact of trade shocks
6. Don't confuse income inequality with injustice: evidence from Egypt's income distribution.
7. A very strong dataset (if badly presented) mapping changes to educational quality over time. With some Greek data.
8. Unemployment as an adult hurts more if you were bullied as a child, says LSE researcher. Some findings in the same direction from the US here.
9. Wonkfest: is China the world's biggest economy? And how would we know?
10. The argument for being pro-market, not pro-business, even if you're a CEO.
11. The most epic blog I've read in ages - a history of MI5 and how crap they were/are?
12. UK Border Agency staff say Greek ID cards are too easy to fake, according to the UK Labour Party's spokesman on immigration. My first thought is that this is another example of anti-immigration rhetoric, and I've found very little evidence to suggest there is widespread abuse by people travelling abroad. But then google isn't where this sort of information ends up. If readers know more, perhaps they could help?
13. Speaking of the UK Border Agency - did you know about their Go Home of Face Arrest vans? They were a very ugly piece of work, turning a rather enlightened policy (a resettlement service that could help trafficking victims and some illegal immigrants return home without criminalising them) into a hostile statement. Well, here's what happens when you respond to low-intensity racism with self-righteous indignation instead of argument. 'They' win.
14. While we're on the subject of right-wing extremism: Russia. You can't make this stuff up: Good ol' Putin plans to stimulate the economy by releasing some of the thousands jailed for 'economic crimes.' We missed a trick in Greece. We could have jailed businesspeople pre-emptively in the good days so that we could have them ransomed now, at a price.